According to my memory, I've never been wrong.

27 beers in one night can cause a memory lapse, you know.

The being would be incapable of learning anything complex, such as language. Or knowing what food is. Absent some assumption of retained baseline knowledge, the creature would be incapable of independent action.

I do not understand this post.

Well I can’t think about it for you, but thinking is a reliable path to understanding. I can try to think about what you say you don’t understand, but since it is unknown why, if any reason, you don’t understand I’m not sure how can I change that.

You're walking along a dimly lit path and all of a sudden look down to see a squiggly rope-shaped object right next to you

When you write “the phenomena,” what do you mean?

I am a creation of my own perceptions and nothing more.

Is it a snake? If so, I would draw on my experience with snakes, having killed several rattlers in my younger years and having handled some number of benign milk snakes in New England. I would not be particularly traumatized, although I would definitely be alert.

If I had never seen, handled or read about snakes before, I don’t imagine I’d be traumatized.

The phenomena of trauma, the phenomenon that is being discussed in the context of having signals and is of information.

I think its said that most people jump away instinctively unless otherwise conditioned through personal experience.

Ancestors who didn't immedietly jump away were more likely to be bitten and die. Those who did jump away were more likely to survive. Run it over a long time and jumping away becomes a "selected" trait. The trait is passed on to us.

So in a weird way when you get that icky sacred feeling and jump away you are sort of sensing the trauma of those ancestors who were bitten.

Not sure if spank is referring to some other kind of sense. Is that what you mean, spank?

Jordan Peterson makes some similar arguments about how our evolution controls how we perceive things. He’s kind of persuasive once in a while, but I end up being pretty skeptical about views like that.

One case I remember involved a man in his twenties who had trauma symptoms related to an irrational fear of dying in a grease pit. It turns out there was a gruesome accident that killed an uncle exactly like that, and his whole family, shocked and traumatized by the occurrence, never talked about it or the uncle again. He was unaware of the event until a therapist recommended self-research. If I come across the link again I’ll share it. As I recall this was classified specifically as generational trauma, as it came from the first generation preceding the person involved.

I forgot this is the drunk and life thread. This kitten who showed up at the front door recently is kind of intoxicatingly beautiful. She literally just showed up meowing.

Pests!



Revenge is mine!



Outstanding!

I failed my saving throw to kitten. It’s gotten food, a new bed, and a vet appointment so it can become cleared to join the household. One of our cats carries feline leukemia so the other cats have to be vaccinated.

And my kid happened to ask Santa for a new kitten and then one appeared. Ain’t that a peach. If only we had a cold hard rational Christmas we wouldn’t be in this mess.

All mobile phones are the same shape and size. What's going on?

All hands are roughly the same shape and size. Simple. Carry on.

Brexiteers out marching today. Honk if you like Brexit. Honk if you're a pathetic, racist little-Englander, motivated by the politics of hate. Honk or don't honk if you're labouring under the delusion that you have any understanding whatever of global economics. There's a zillion variables involved. Nobody even knows if the FTSE 250 or Bitcoin or the price of gold is going to go up or down tomorrow, and they're out with their placards thinking it's going to be like some romantic movie version of the 1950s again.

This is the correct answer if I recall my evolutionary psych class as well as I believe.

We have adapted to view certain things as dangerous, even if we've never encountered them before. Those who didn't jump away in fear the first time they saw a rattlesnake never got the chance to do it a second time. We are instinctively afraid of things like that, that goes for spiders as well even though many people live in areas where all spiders are harmless. It's not that we think "this particular species of spiders/snakes may be dangerous!", it's just an instinctive response to any sort of insect/reptile that may present a threat. It's just an abstract concept of "small, creepy bug = potential danger!"-reaction

I started reading Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny yesterday. I might make a book review thread for it at some point, but I wanted to tell some random internet people that I think it might be the best science book I read this year.

The interesting bit is that it is our lizard-brain parts that are entirely responsible* for these reactions. So, if by "ancestors" you mean "premammalian ancestors" it isn't incorrect. If you mean "ancestral humans" you are entirely incorrect.

*there have been some small changes since these structures first developed in animals.

I'd love to read a review when you're done. Have read some Tomasello during my studies and it was some of the more enjoyable stuff.

That definitely looks interesting. Please do post a review of it here when you are done.

That kitten is a leg climber. Oh she is cute. And even at a tender age she plays with such gentle claw awareness on human skin. But blue jeans and pajamas get climbed.

Named her Milly Dilly. That’s a whole other story.

A story i wanna hear, nonetheless :wink: