What will make the writer really mad is that the world began with humans, and nothing else, for a basic reason. Before us, there was no one to give the world, or anything else, a name. Some say the beginning of wisdom is understanding the meaning of words. I believe the most essential difference human beings have over all other creatures is the development of stories. And those stories can last for thousands of years.
If you haven't read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, you'd probably dig it. He makes a very good case that storytelling is a cornerstone of the evolution of society as we know it.
Douglas Hofstadter has made a career out of arguing that human consciousness is founded on the ability to interpret analogies. "This is like that except..." Kind of like a generalization of the story theory.
I've read a lot of Hofstadter (GEB, Mind's I, Metamagical Themas), though mostly decades ago,. I don't specifically recall this, though I might have missed it.
It seems to me excruciatingly obvious that either human consciousness does not involve the ability to interpret analogies or else humans are not generally conscious.
This is based on observing innumerable vehement and apparently unresolvable disagreements on the internet over whether a given analogy is valid, particularly in the realm of politics.
One trick of human mind is the ability to work with fuzzy definitions. You can spawn infinite and unresolvable disagreement on the Internet over the true meaning of the word "chair", and yet everyone can use that word correctly in their lives.
They are all correct in the appropriate context. The problem is not the usage and understanding; it is the drive for certainty and absoluteness which ignores the contexts and multiple realities we inhabit.
> human consciousness is founded on the ability to interpret analogies
That's a scary thought, because at least anecdotally it feels like run more and more often into people who can't handle analogies, and aren't even trying. It's like someone who can't digest food not because of something to do with their stomach, more like because they put it in an envelope or in a drawer.
That is, so often the response to an analogy is a difference between the two elements of it being pointed out, any difference at all is supposed to suffice to "refute" it. As if there being a difference was not implied anyway (it makes no sense to "compare" two things that are 100% the same), as if the areas of difference necessarily said something about the point of the analogy.
"The mind is a flame to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled", maybe so it is for consciousness. We take it for granted that we ill remain conscious now that our "species" achieved it once and for all, that we simply become it automagically because the "is a member of conscious species" flag is set in some invisible book... but since it doesn't require consciousness to imitate words and actions and operate machinery, we very well could loose it before we notice something is wrong.
If you add up every thing that an author has argued is a cornerstone of the evolution of society the picture starts looking more and more like the grains of limestone in a concrete foundation.
The reason the term "argued" is used is that we can't prove what actually were cornerstones of the evolution of society. The evidence is scarce enough to allow many different ideas, that in itself is not a valid criticism.
To refine even further, its the ability to record knowledge for our posterity to start slightly better off. Not as good as genetic memory but still one of a kind in the universe that I know of
I feel like this is splitting hairs with words, but you may be wrong here.
Some people consider Neanderthals as a subspecies of human (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) vs completely distinct (Homo neanderthalensis)
So depending on how you decide on that question there may have been non-humans to give names and record history; as mentioned in the article the oldest cave paintings are thought to be from Neanderthals.
Because history is written by the victor and most of those with wealth and power have historically exploited and destroyed everyone around them to obtain their position.
I think even that is misleading/questionable. History is written by the people who are literate and write stuff that is both appealing to reproduce and does get reproduced. Just because a historian writes something doesn't mean it doesn't get lost or ignored, at least for a while.
I find that history is best viewed as a phenomenon of consciousness—the mind's awareness of itself. With awareness of oneself comes awareness of the eventuality of death, the discovery of the "future" and its opposite, the past. In this sense history is a discovery of conscious beings of which humans are the most advanced by probably orders of magnitude (which is a difficult thing to quantify to say the least).
It's not so much that history is "about" humans; it only really applies to humans in the first place. To have a history of "elephants" is just to have a history of elephants as understood by humans—unless it's elephants that are communicating it.
I find this article pretty amusing, because, despite its title, it focuses on anthrozoology (the intersection of humans and animals), which is still fundamentally about humans. It doesn't actually focus on things that are fundamentally about animals, like zoology or paleontology.
late 14c., "relation of incidents" (true or false), from Old French estoire, estorie "story; chronicle, history" (12c., Modern French histoire), from Latin historia "narrative of past events, account, tale, story," from Greek historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry; an account of one's inquiries, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE * wid-tor-, from root * weid- "to see."
I mean, you can cast this as a recent trend if you want, but what are fields like paleontology if not a kind of "history" of animals other than humans?
Easy: animals do not have a history - just like humans did not, say, 50,000 years ago. In the sense that not much changes or happens in the course of millennia that would be worth having a record of.
Is it just another cowardly attempt to withdraw a way from the uncomfortable huge problems and their solutions ("You probably should be out there in the street, protesting the government not doing something against your lifestyle and demanding the destruction of your job, your car and your luxerys") into a controllable little niche - which gives everybody the feeling of doing good, while accomplishing ultimately nothing on the grand scale?
If you save a dog now, the world goes to hell, its grand-grand-descendants will still have to suffer and if it has history books - its archeologists will Marvell at this strange "elder species" who was nice to individuals but nasty to the whole ecological system.
Emotionalize that away, you socially isolated, anthropomorphic romantics.
@Regarding elephant Programmers: Imagine a Keyboard for a trunk.. it would look like a bowl with keys..
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadWhere's his distillation of this?
This is based on observing innumerable vehement and apparently unresolvable disagreements on the internet over whether a given analogy is valid, particularly in the realm of politics.
"What is jello?"
"Uh... tastes like fruit, except it isn't fruit..."
Heck it is how I learn programming... maybe everything.
"cost is like let but..."
That's a scary thought, because at least anecdotally it feels like run more and more often into people who can't handle analogies, and aren't even trying. It's like someone who can't digest food not because of something to do with their stomach, more like because they put it in an envelope or in a drawer.
That is, so often the response to an analogy is a difference between the two elements of it being pointed out, any difference at all is supposed to suffice to "refute" it. As if there being a difference was not implied anyway (it makes no sense to "compare" two things that are 100% the same), as if the areas of difference necessarily said something about the point of the analogy.
"The mind is a flame to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled", maybe so it is for consciousness. We take it for granted that we ill remain conscious now that our "species" achieved it once and for all, that we simply become it automagically because the "is a member of conscious species" flag is set in some invisible book... but since it doesn't require consciousness to imitate words and actions and operate machinery, we very well could loose it before we notice something is wrong.
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
and
"Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History" by Kurt Andersen
Both focus on how humans are unique in their ability to concoct stories, share plans, and propagate fantasies.
Some people consider Neanderthals as a subspecies of human (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) vs completely distinct (Homo neanderthalensis)
So depending on how you decide on that question there may have been non-humans to give names and record history; as mentioned in the article the oldest cave paintings are thought to be from Neanderthals.
This got me thinking, maybe about 64000 years later we will see the first group of elephant programmers :D
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting
Because history is written by the victor and most of those with wealth and power have historically exploited and destroyed everyone around them to obtain their position.
History is written by those with the time and skill to write things others will read, often moderately wealthy elites but thats less true now.
https://scholars-stage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/history-is-wri...
It's not so much that history is "about" humans; it only really applies to humans in the first place. To have a history of "elephants" is just to have a history of elephants as understood by humans—unless it's elephants that are communicating it.
The best explanations I've heard of this concept are in Jordan Peterson's Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories lecture series, available on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I....
His book Maps of Meaning is also fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Pete...
https://www.etymonline.com/word/history
Is it just another cowardly attempt to withdraw a way from the uncomfortable huge problems and their solutions ("You probably should be out there in the street, protesting the government not doing something against your lifestyle and demanding the destruction of your job, your car and your luxerys") into a controllable little niche - which gives everybody the feeling of doing good, while accomplishing ultimately nothing on the grand scale?
If you save a dog now, the world goes to hell, its grand-grand-descendants will still have to suffer and if it has history books - its archeologists will Marvell at this strange "elder species" who was nice to individuals but nasty to the whole ecological system.
Emotionalize that away, you socially isolated, anthropomorphic romantics.
@Regarding elephant Programmers: Imagine a Keyboard for a trunk.. it would look like a bowl with keys..