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Once you accept that people are merely primates with an more extensive vocabulary, everything else begins to make sense, carry on.....

Aaron70 7 Dec 11
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Yes quite. Now here's a thought. Evolution only responds to the current situation, it has no foresight. Therefore if the environment in which an organism lives changes, especially suddenly, it is bound to be badly adapted to the new environment. And it may take millions of year of struggling before it becomes efficient and well adapted to its new circumstances.

Humans probably began to talk and develop language and culture, only in the last million years or two, in a major way only in the last few thousand. And language, the culture which language creates and technology, have caused perhaps the biggest and most rapid change to any animals environment that probably any animal ever survived. We are therefore probably completely ill adapted to the new world in which we now live. Like pandas, which were meat eating bears, who took to eating bamboo quite recently, and now struggle to survive on a diet their gut is ill adapted to digest.

So we have a desire for high value food which was rare on the plains of Africa. But now that same desire when sugar and meat are easy to get, probably kills millions every year.

But the biggest change which took place when we began using language, was that we gained a vastly greater power to create and spread, lies and fantasies. Our new environment is now awash with vast amounts of fiction and untruth. And of course because it all happened in a twinkling of an eye, as a side effect of an adaption, which was designed originally for things like helping us make better hunting plans. We have no instinctive safeguards against it, no sceptical instincts built in, we are ready made to be deceived used and manipulated.

Like this, may post it.

That's good insight. When we evolve too fast, we have no way to cope with our newly acquired skills. That makes a lot of sense to me. Our ancestors didn't have to deal with situations like that too much, I imagine. That's why teaching critical thinking skills in school would be so important, much more important than certain other things.

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That's why one of my very favorite authors is Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham. He wrestles with these topics in his books, "The Goodness Paradox" and "Demonic Males" (unfortunate title, but a great explanation of how close human behavior is to that of our closest primate ancestors). I also think that other primates do have rudimentary language, or at least are capable of it, but we are not wired to understand it. Of course, gorillas can learn ASL. Our closest ancestors are bonobos...

They absolutely have language, much of it body language right....🤔
This Wrangham seems like an interesting fellow....strange I haven’t heard of him....🤨

@Buck Google him. He's interesting, and his books are fun to read...not dry. I got his books on Amazon. The more I read about other species, not just primates, the more I want to know. Crows and ravens are especially fascinating and intelligent.

@Organist1 read "Sapiens"? crows are a trip.

@hankster Not yet, but thanks. I'll get a copy.

@Organist1 interesting read. not about crows tho.

@hankster It looks like an interesting read. I'll get a copy, but it might take me a while to get to it, as I have a list I'm trying to get through.

@Organist1 right on.

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