Category: ROBA
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ROBA as Human-Exclusive Recursion
Steven Pinker was recently on EconTalk with Russ Roberts, who (shameless plug) featured me some years ago and urged me to write my book. Thanks Russ. Pinker tackles the problem of how humans acquire cultural knowledge, which he describes as an infinite regression (recursion) of beliefs. A quick summary: at 1:51 Pinker describes the Finite…
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The Useful Lie
One common claim made in the world of pseudoscience is that the government and mainstream science have incentives to ignore or hide evidence of aliens, nephilim, or non-human intelligences of whatever kind. These incentives include a desire to prevent mass panic, maintain control, or retain the illusion that humans are the only intelligent species in…
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Object-thinkers vs. Relation-thinkers
Recently I published my in-depth article on kinship. Shortly afterward I began reading Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking (1978). Goodman’s hypothesis is that people create their own worlds through the use of language, and we verify these worlds through language. It recalled a discussion I had recently with a friend who’s an avid reader of…
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Kin and Caliber Part 1: A Kinship Primer
This is the first part of a series of kinship essays that will turn into a book called Kin & Caliber. Table of Contents Why Kinship? What Is Kinship? Blood from a Stone: The First Kinship Local Totemism Matrilineal Descent Matrilocal Marriage Patrilineal Descent Patrilocal Marriage and the City Big Man Theory of Origin Warfare…
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The Big Bang of Human Violence (and Answering Eric Gans)
Eric Gans has had arguably the most significant influence on my ROBA Hypothesis. His Originary Hypothesis posits a moment when the violence of the human community becomes so potentially apocalyptic that someone, or everyone, produces the first signal of deferral. In Gans’ configuration, the protohuman group gathers around an animal carcass, which they’ve hunted. In…
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A Vow of Non-Agitation
Or, Deferral as Default There are countless “culture war” agitators out there. They follow a program that is beyond political: it’s fiercely religious. It says, “Be willing to die for your political platform.” It even drops hints that you should be willing to kill for the culture war. I’ve had many agitators over the past…
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Is a Knife a Weapon? Or a Sacrificial Implement?
Of the 332 bronze artifacts with working edges excavated from Yin hsü, 317 are weapons and only fifteen are classifiable as tools; the latter were all wood-working not farming implements. On the other hand, huge quantities of slate knives were unearthed, and these – the so-called Hsiao-t’un stone knives – were reasonably regarded as harvesting…
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The Messianic Message of Planet of the Apes
The film series Planet of the Apes predicts a day when one chimpanzee (“Caesar”) finally evolves to have human-like intelligence. The reason given in the original film series is the domestication of the chimp as a pet when dogs and cats go extinct. The modern film series seem to part from this, removing humans from…
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Grave Sites as the First Chinese Cities
Fortified cities, and the entire social structure, in China might have begun with burial mounds. Whereas there are many mentions in the Li Ji and other documents that concubines, wives, and slaves were killed at the funerals of dignitaries and emperors, the Han Dynasty mostly abolished this. Instead, paper or straw figurines were buried in…
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Good Technology – A Myth?
I recently saw a post by Luke Bergis asking what kind of technology is good: My answer goes back to the ROBA Hypothesis: if we’re hoping to create non-violent technologies that are good for the soul, then we need to reevaluate our biases about violence and stop calling it “apelike” or “inhuman.” We need to…