Tag: evolution
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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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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 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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Cut Stones as Ancient Medium of Exchange
I’ve written previously about how ancient handaxes might have originally been modified stones for the purpose of exchange, not for utility. If reciprocal, object-based aggression (ROBA) is the base system of human combat, then every stone is a potential weapon, every person a potential combatant, and the entire world a potential graveyard. The original act…
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My Book ‘If These Fists Could Talk’ – Now Available on Amazon
My book If These Fists Could Talk: A Stuntman’s Unflinching Take on Violence is now available on Amazon. The eBook version is $7.99 and the paperback version is $12.99. Both are available at the following link. Please spread the word and, if you buy a copy, be sure to leave a review! https://a.co/d/9Vhz1wS
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The Shared Window Into the Infinite
I’m spending the week finishing If These Fists Could Talk, and one major update is a simplification of the ROBA Hypothesis. I had originally thought that the capacity for reciprocal, object-based aggression (ROBA) produces a sensation of apocalyptic dread, which is resolved via deferral. However, since ROBA is agnostic as to the order of events…
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Synthetic Mythology
I’ve previously delved into two myths presented by the standard model of evolutionary science: the myth of the weaponized ape, and the myth of the kinless caveman. These myths are totally without any kind of anthropoligical backing, but they are assumed to be true by most “scientifically minded” people in modern society, even religious ones.…
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Divination and Carpentry
I have a hunch that divination is the way in which manic-schizoid personalities impose their interpretation of symbols on the world, while carpentry is the tendency for autistic personalities to impose their meanings on the world. The two seem to run against each other. I see a parallel in my current reading of Jung. In…
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The Myth of the Weaponized Ape
With my book If These Fists Could Talk coming out this month, I’m starting research for my next book on the mythology of violence. We have a story we tell in our science: that as primates left the jungles of Africa, they underwent the trials of the environment, which evolved their component parts – brains,…
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The Holy War of Modern Synthesis
The mainstream theory of violence, and most of human biology, stems from modern synthesis, which combines Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics, with a dose of Malthusian population theory. One of the main thrusts of modern synthesis was put forward by Ronald A. Fisher in 1930 in a book called The Genetical Theory of Natural…