Science - Dangerous Intersection

Today’s Gratitude

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:April 19, 2021
Post category:Evolution Human animals Science
Post comments:4 Comments

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller's Tweet is worth considering, repeatedly:

How many of these ancestors are there? Well . . . just move up your family tree 20 generations and you will find more than one million great great great . . . grandparents. And they all had to find each other and mate at the right time or else you wouldn't be sitting there reading this. This is one of the many cases where facts are more amazing than any fiction you could ever concoct.

I've long been fascinated by this thought experiment. Imagine driving along the highway passing your chronologically arranged ancestors, all standing in a line. What would that be like?

Deceptive Genetic Distance

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:April 15, 2021
Post category:Biology Evolution Human animals Science
Post comments:0 Comments

Ricky Gervais mentions a few of our relatives here . . .

Can this possibly be true. This sources says yes.

And I do LOVE this cladogram. I quick scan shows you where many basic human features start coming online.

What We Are . . .

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:April 14, 2021
Post category:Human animals
Post comments:1 Comment

From Peter Boghossian:

Universal Yard Sign

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:April 5, 2021
Post category:Human animals Ingroup/Outgroup Psychology Cognition Woke Issues
Post comments:0 Comments

For efficiency, we can take down most of the yard signs on display and replace them with this:

Evolution Through Camping

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:April 4, 2021
Post category:Biology Evolution Human animals
Post comments:0 Comments

Geoffrey Miller describes how we got here, and it seems like an impossible journey.

And there is most definitely a selection bias, because many people didn't make it and didn't reproduce. Here's how Thomas Hobbes might have summed up 100,000 generations of camping trips ". . . continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

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