380 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. for - Geography as a driver for civilisation - cultural evolution - impact of geographic obstacles - article - The Economist - Of all the geological periods, the Triassic was the most fabulous - 2024, Dec. 19

      "Biology, though, is not the Triassic’s only legacy to the modern world. For, with the breakup of Pangaea came the period’s final, Parthian shot. The mountainous region which stretches from Anatolia to Afghanistan, Parthia (as Iran, or Persia, was once known) included, began to rise in the late Triassic when a small continent now dubbed Cimmeria collided with the disintegrating supercontinent, squeezing up the seabed sediments between them.

      The Cimmerian orogeny, as this mountain-building moment is called, has created a natural barrier fortress along the southern margin of what is now Earth’s largest continent, Eurasia, dividing Asia’s heartlands from Africa and Europe. This barrier—which includes the Anatolian plateau, the Iranian plateau and the mountains of Afghanistan—is difficult to pass and difficult to conquer. Together with its more recent, eastward, extension, the plateau of Tibet, it has proved to be history’s puppet-master. It has kept humanity’s three great civilisations—China, India and the Mediterranean-focused world of the Middle East, north Africa and Europe—apart, and allowed them, for good or ill, to develop separately, with (until recently) little intercourse between them."

      source - shared with me via LinkedIn contact

      // commennt - If humans did indeed begin in Africa and radiated out to the rest of the world over the course of time, - then once arrived in these far flung places, the travelers became isolated from the original African tribe by geological obstacles and losing any trace of their origin through vast spans of time. - It's ironic then that losing trace caused our ancestors to culturally evolve in isolation from each other - And when modern technology allowed humans to rediscover each other, the differences were so great that with cultural memory erased by time, it enabled the technologically advanced modern humans to perform extreme levels of other, exploiting and colonizing our fellow humans. - Imagine how different our world would be if we hadn't lost track of each other! What a different world we would be living in today! //

  2. Dec 2024
    1. We believe that, for the first time in recorded history, human culture has produced at the least an outline of all the capacities required for us to begin to consciously direct our own cultural evolution for the better.

      for - cultural evolution - first time in history we can have intentional cultural evolution towards a holistic wellbeing-based civilization - Dil Green

    1. when we analyzed the the dominant cultural operating system, because there's more than a political economy, it's a it's a, as we've said, a totalizing operating system. And we're going to call it neoliberalism

      for - definition - neoliberalism - as the name of the dominant, totalizing, cultural operating system of modernity - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023 - summary - neoliberalism - as the name of the dominant, totalizing, cultural operating system of modernity - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023 definition - neoliberalism - as the name of the dominant, totalizing, cultural operating system of modernity - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023 - Neoliberalism is a totalizing, cultural operating system for modernity - It is all of these things: - a political philosophy - an economic practice - a cosmology - a wordview - an ontology - a theocracy - a religious worldview based on faith - Most of the dogmas of neoliberalism have been proven to be false, and yet it is still taught in most institutions of higher education summary - Some of the premises of neoliberalism are: - 1. humans are homo economicus - our chief concern is our selves and NOT others - Enlightenment theories - Scientism - Evolutionary theory - All our systems are designed on this false premise - 2. Hierarchy is inevitable and necessary for order. Without it, we would revert to beasts - The system embeds - Patriarchism - White Supremacy - Gender inequality - 3. The individual is the primary unit of power - together with 1) and 2), it creates inherent competition - 4. Material wealth and power is the measure of wellbeing - If you have money, you are considered a success, otherwise, you are considered a moral failure

    1. Engage, enable or empoweridentified stakeholders

      Puntos de acción

      Asignar un presupuesto para los costos de participación. Incluir líneas presupuestarias específicas para cubrir los costos de participación de representantes de grupos marginados, como compensación por su tiempo y experiencia, y adaptaciones razonables para garantizar la accesibilidad (por ejemplo, intérpretes de lengua de señas, intérpretes guía para personas sordociegas, intérpretes de lenguas indígenas).

      Al facilitar la participación, considera las dinámicas de poder específicas del contexto, incluyendo género, expresión de género, edad, raza, clase, cultura, identidad, habilidades y lenguaje, para garantizar una inclusión efectiva. Además, crea incentivos que motiven a los actores privados a involucrarse activamente en el diseño, desarrollo y gobernanza de sistemas de IA inclusivos.

  3. Nov 2024
    1. and its management in state-buildin
    2. worshiped Pan Hu, a legendary figure, as part of their New Year's celebrations.

      more detailed, specific on beliefs

    3. he treatment is anecdotal
    4. "Miao albums" that were compiled by officials responsible for governing frontier areas during the late Yongzheng or early Qianlong periods. These albums contained illustrations and texts describing the customs and practices of different ethnic minority groups in southwest China.
    5. Qing Imperial Illustrations of Tributary Peoples was based on direct observation,
    6. China saw a rise in ethnographic representation of different peoples, including the development of a systematic ethnography of ethnic minority groups.
    1. If you've been dreaming of plunging into this profession, consider the success of Paul Lundy, who took over Bremerton Office Machine Company from nonagenarian Bob Montgomery; or Antony Valoppi, creator of Portland's Type Space, which combines a traditional typewriter shop with a cultural center; or Trevor Brumfield, a young man in his late twenties who has quickly built Dayton's TB Writers Plus into a busy enterprise.
  4. Oct 2024
    1. explaining the phase transition from the feudal to the industrial age

      for - cultural phase transition - from feudalism to industrial age

      cultural phase transition - from feudalism to industrial age - involved the interplay of a number of factors - cultural exchange of ideas between European and other cultures such as Islam and ancient Greek - colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade - new technologies such as steam engine rendered slaves obsolete by replacing them with more efficient factory systems of production - new human rights movements coincided to abolish slavery

  5. Sep 2024
    1. Labor, and of course we do not merely mean alienated ‘commodity’ labor in which people simply follow orders to increase the profit of some, but labor as creative activity, which transforms nature and the world, which pretty much ‘creates’ the lifeworld we live in.

      for - adjacency - labour - creative force - cultural evolution - intent - emptiness

      adjacency - between - Labour - cultural evolution - progress - progress trap - religion - emptiness - adjacency relationship - Labour is the result of collective agency over space and time - It is the collective effect of the motor control system of the societies of multi-cellular human INTERbeCOMings - driven by their collective intent - Losing sight of the sacred, and not understanding the saliency of emptiness, - we fall into progress traps, - of which commodified Labour is a major one

  6. Aug 2024
    1. he two groups making most use of librarieswere “students and housewives” (women users outnumbered men by twoto one), but neither group was well served; and among employed men,6 percent of whites borrowed books, but only 0.1 percent of Black min-ers.18 These were dreadful numbers.

      reading as a leading indicator of cultural shift to help provide power to women and non-whites.

      Was the Great Books idea being pressed towards "men" a means of pushing back against this in some sense?

  7. Jul 2024
    1. 26:30 Brings up progress traps of this new technology

      26:48

      question How do we shift our (human being's) relationship with the rest of nature

      27:00

      metaphor - interspecies communications - AI can be compared to a new scientific instrument that extends our ability to see - We may discover that humanity is not the center of the universe

      32:54

      Question - Dr Doolittle question - Will we be able to talk to the animals? - Wittgenstein said no - Human Umwelt is different from others - but it may very well happen

      34:54

      species have culture - Marine mammals enact behavior similar to humans

      • Unknown unknowns will likely move to known unknowns and to some known knowns

      36:29

      citizen science bioacoustic projects - audio moth - sound invisible to humans - ultrasonic sound - intrasonic sound - example - Amazonian river turtles have been found to have hundreds of unique vocalizations to call their baby turtles to safety out in the ocean

      41:56

      ocean habitat for whales - they can communicate across the entire ocean of the earth - They tell of a story of a whale in Bermuda can communicate with a whale in Ireland

      43:00

      progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - examples - examples - poachers or eco tourism can misuse

      44:08

      progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - policy

      45:16

      whale protection technology - Kim Davies - University of New Brunswick - aquatic drones - drones triangulate whales - ships must not get near 1,000 km of whales to avoid collision - Canadian government fines are up to 250,000 dollars for violating

      50:35

      environmental regulation - overhaul for the next century - instead of - treatment, we now have the data tools for - prevention

      56:40 - ecological relationship - pollinators and plants have co-evolved

      1:00:26

      AI for interspecies communication - example - human cultural evolution controlling evolution of life on earth

    1. the erosion between whiteness andgainful employment that Davidson and Saul arguedled to a cultural backlash from white Americans andhas caused them to move from the left to the far-rightas a form of retaliation against the neoliberal cosmo-politan left.

      for - key insight - gainful employment of white working class led to cultural backlash and shift from left to far-right - to - Neoliberalism and the Far-Right: A Contradictory Embrace

      key insight - gainful employment of white working class led to cultural backlash and shift from left to far-right - source - Davidson and Saul

      to - Neoliberalism and the Far-Right: A Contradictory Embrace - https://hyp.is/8Hf0lDzqEe-KM9dQxJDxsw/core.ac.uk/download/pdf/84148846.pdf

  8. Jun 2024
    1. These two examples allude to a larger story — which is that a global convergence of change processes is driving us into an unavoidable culmination of planetary collapse.

      indeed 😬

    1. In his 1926 work, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, heargued that education’s task is to “reorient the individual, to enablehim to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, toplace him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals.”

      Is it possible to be above one's own system of beliefs and ideas? Doesn't the system make them a product of it? Evolving from a base at best?

      The idea sounds lovely, but is it possible anthropologically?

    2. Louis Menand summarized the mid-centurysituation and Macdonald’s thinking as follows: “There was a majormiddle-class culture of earnest aspiration in the 1950s, the productof a strange alliance of the democratic (culture for everyone) and theelitist (culture can make you better than other people).

      note here, again, the idea of culture as "capital":

      culture can make you better than other people

    3. To understand elitism in relation to the great books idea, one mustconsider the meaning and existence of cultural hierarchies in litera-ture.
    4. cultural democratization as a sometimes contentious process.

      some of the cultural democratization at that time presumed free time as well as conscious choice to make the effort... what about those who have patience for neither?

      what about the economic choices to participate or not?

    5. By acknowledging individuals, a democratic culture respects differ-ence. As a collective lived experience, it distributes cultural capitalto those individuals via educational institutions (broadly conceived,public, and private).
    6. Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of “cultural capital”

      note that the use of "capital" with respect to culture commodifies it and frames it in an economic context here.

      How is one to earn and then later spend this capital? How might it be quantified?

  9. May 2024
    1. You grow up with the idea that World War II -- with the occupation and the postwar environment -- is part of your genetic inheritance. One of the things I encountered in Japan was people thinking I was the daughter of a prostitute and a GI. There’s all this history you carry around with yourself, even though you didn’t experience it firsthand

      She talks about people's views of her in Japan.

    2. Raised in New Haven, Conn., by an American father and a Japanese mother, both of whom taught at Yale, Lounsbury grew up with a feeling of vague estrangement -- of being aware of her mother’s "Japaneseness" and of knowing, as she says in the film, that "wherever I go, I'm always different." Instead of examining that genetic split, however, and looking at how it had shaped her, Lounsbury followed a path that divided her from her family and roots. At 14 she went to boarding school and from then saw her parents only on holidays. College followed, plus eight years in Japan and a film career that kept her constantly moving. After all that time, Lounsbury said during a conversation in San Francisco, "I was disturbed at how my mother and I had gotten out of touch. So I thought, since I’m such a workaholic and the only thing I pay attention to is what I’m working on, the best thing I could do is make my mother the center of my work . . . give her a chance to see what it is that I do."

      She felt a sense of estrangement, acutely aware of her mother's "Japaneseness" and the feeling that "wherever I go, I'm always different."

    1. we've created a very complex psychosocial World in which we live and we have to adapt to and it changes so rapidly it creates all sorts of problems for us

      for - quote - progress trap - speed of cultural evolution - Ray Noble

    1. this dualism probably isn’t right given today’s complexities

      for - progress trap - post comment - LinkedIn - Ralph Thurn article - progress trap - adjacency - progress trap - maladaptive - attention - focus of attention - cultural evolution - duality - dualism - dualistic

      adjacency - between - progress - progress trap - maladaptive - cultural evolution - attention - focus of attention - Exploring this statement further, it isn't just that it is our dualistic thinking applied here is a problem - but that it is the very nature of human analytic reasoning coupled with our innate ability to focus our attention which requires a deep unpacking - For to focus on an object of attention - is something we can only accomplish by defocusing on everything else - Indeed, it is the very act of attention on the one, that is inextricably accompanied by the act of inattention of the many - Our body, and that of many other organisms is evolutionarily designed - to focus our attention in our field of view on emergent phenomena that is salient to our survival - The nature of reductionist-type research - which is to say, most research - is that we continue applying this evolved adaptive behavior, even though cultural evolution (ie. progress) has accelerated exponentially to such an extent - that this same biologically evolved behavior has become maladaptive in the context of modernity

  10. Feb 2024
    1. Dubbed “litigation terrorism” by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist. ISDS is a corporate tribunal system

      for - litigation terrorism - ISDS - corporate tribunal system - Michael Levin - multi-scale competency architecture - example - adjacency - evolutionary biology - corporate law - climate crisis

      adjacency - between - corporate law - climate crisis - evolutionary biology - cultural evolution - adjacency statement - Biologist Michael Levin's multi-scale competency architecture of evolutionary biology seems to apply here - in the field of corporate law - Corporations can be viewed as one level of a social superorganism in a cultural evolution process - Governments can be viewed similiarly, but at a higher level - The ISDS is being weaponized by the same corporations destroying the global environment to combat the enactment of government laws that pose a threat to their livelihood - Hence, the ISDS has been reconfigured to protect the destroyers of the environment so that they can avoid dealing with their unacceptable externalizations - The individual existing at the lower level of the multi-scale competency architecture(the corporation) is battling to survive against the wishes of the higher level individual (the government) in the same multi-scale competency architecture

    1. Cultural hegemony refers to domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. [Antonio Gramsci (https://www.thoughtco.com/antonio-gramsci-3026471) argued that consent to the rule of the dominant group is achieved by the spread of ideologies through social institutions.

    2. Cultural Hegemony, or our tacit agreement with the way that things are; is a result of socialization, our experiences with social institutions, and our exposure to cultural narratives and imagery, all of which reflect the beliefs and values of the ruling class

    1. Si las DH nacieron con el objetivo de guiar la transformación digital de los sabereshumanísticos, es evidente que no podemos ignorar la geopolítica de los sistemas decomunicación global ni la organización neocolonial de las multinacionales tecnológicas

      Organización de la información en la tecnología. ¿Quién o cómo se define el monopolio de la información?

    1. I believe that we all wish our course could be determined by ourcollective values, ethics, and morals.

      the collective "we" here must broadly be the West, but even there our values, ethics, and morals aren't all the same. Things devolve further and more quickly beyond the cis-gendered white male perspective which Joy represents here.

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    Annotators

    1. other cultures do not think this and that suggests that our sense of self is largely culturally constructed

      for - quote - Sarah Stein Lubrano - quote - self as cultural construction in WEIRD culture - sense of self

      quote - (immediately below)

      • It's just a weird fascination of our weird culture that
        • we think the self is there and
        • it's the best and most likely explanation for human behavior
      • Other people in other cultures do not think this
      • and that suggests that our sense of self is largely culturally constructed

      discussion - sense of self is complex. See the work of - Michael Levin and - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=michael+levin - Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=major+evolutionary+transition+in+individuality

  11. Jan 2024
    1. for - multi scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - evolutionary biology - rapid whole system change - adjacency - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality

      adjacency - between - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - progress trap - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality - adjacency statement - The idea of multi scale competency architecture can be extended to apply to the cultural level. - in the context of humanity's current existential poly /meta/ perma crisis, - rapid whole system change - (a cultural behavioural paradigm shift) - is required within a few short years - to avoid the worst impacts of - catastrophic, - anthropogenic - climate change, which is entangled with a host of other earth system boundary violations including - biodiversity loss - fresh water scarcity - - the driver of evolution through major evolutionary transitions in individuality has given rise to the level of cultural superorganisms that include all previous levels - progress and its intended consequences of progress traps play a major role in determining the future evolutionary trajectory of our and many other species - our species is faced with a few choice permutations in this regard: - individually regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - collectively regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - pursue sluggish green growth / carbon transition that is effectively tinkering at the margins of rapid whole system change - BAU - currently, there doesn't appear to be any feasible permutation of any of the above choices - There is insufficient worldview alignment to create the unity at scale for report whole system change - individual incumbent state and corporate actors still cling too tightly to the old, destructive regime, - creating friction that keeps the actual rate of change below the required - Stop Reset Go, couched within the Deep Humanity praxis and operationalized through the Indyweb / Indranet individual / collective open learning system provides a multi-dimensional tool for a deep educational paradigm shift that can accelerate both individual and collective upregulation of system change

    1. The sectors become the vehicle to carry the problem-solving governance
      • for: adjacency - problem solving - governance sectors - cultural evolution

      • adjacency between

        • governance sectors
        • problem solving
        • cultural evolution
      • adjacency statement
        • Governance sectors culturally evolved to reflect different problem-solving approaches
  12. Dec 2023
    1. Now consider the World Encyclopedia from the point of view of the ordinary educated citizen—and I suppose in a really modernized state the ordinary citizen will be an educated one. From his perspective the World Encyclopedia would be

      The problem is that the material of such a World Encyclopedia would need to be believed as truth. Many in 2023 certainly don't believe in science, much less "truth". Its a complicated issue of identity, mass movements, and belief systems. Something which might be teased apart by cultural anthropologists?

    1. Untangling Threads by Erin Kissane on 2023-12-21

      This immediately brings up the questions of how the following - founder effects and being overwhelmed by the scale of an eternal September - communism of community interactions being subverted bent for the purposes of (surveillance) capitalism (see @Graeber2011, Debt)

    1. A last preliminary word on method: what follows is not to be read as stylistic description, as the account of one cultural style or movement among others. I have rather meant to offer a periodizing hypothesis, and that at a moment in which the very conception of historical periodization has come to seem most problematical indeed. I have argued elsewhere that all isolated or discrete cultural analysis always involves a buried or repressed theory of historical periodization; in any case, the conception of the ‘genealogy’ largely lays to rest traditional theoretical worries about so-called linear history, theories of ‘stages’, and teleological historiography. In the present context, however, lengthier theoretical discussion of such (very real) issues can perhaps be replaced by a few substantive remarks.

      Another beautifully put paragraph.

      Jameson is dealing with the objections, that we encounter too, about creating "periods" (aka stages or phases or paradigms in our onto-social contexts). Because, of course, in any study of cultural phenomena and cultural evolution there are no completely sharp breaks. It is always, at least when zoomed in, evolution rather than revolution.

      But that misses the point. Good theoretical (e.g. dynamical systems theory) and empirical reasons suggest that we do have more discrete changes.

      His second point is that this genealogical not linear. - it is branching and refolding Again of course, though a simplified genealogy is a linear one (e.g. the kings/queens of England).

    1. https://werd.io/2023/doing-it-all

      Interesting to see what, in generations past, might have been a gendered (female) striving for "having it all" (entailing time with children, family and a career) has crossed over into the masculine space.

      Sounds like Ben's got some basic priorities set, which is really the only thing necessary. Beyond this, every parent, especially of new babies, in the W.E.I.R.D. culture is tired. By this measurement he's doing it "right". What is missing is an interpersonal culture around him of extended family and immediate community of daily interaction to help normalize his conditions. Missing this he's attempting to replace the lack of experience with this area by reaching out to his online community, which may provide a dramatically different and biased sample.

      Some of the "it takes a village" (to raise a child) still operates on many facets, but dramatically missing is the day-to-day direct care and help that many parents need.

      Our capitalistic culture has again, in this case of parenting in the W.E.I.R.D. world, managed to privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Here the losses in Ben's case are on his physical well-being (tiredness) and his mental state wondering if his case is "normal". A further loss is the erosion of his desire for a family unit and cohesion of community which the system is attempting to sever by playing on his desire to "have it all". Giving in to the pull of work at the expense of family only drives the system closer to collapse.

  13. Nov 2023
    1. the jarrow have even worse things to tell us they're offering us tobacco and they want to show us how to chew it 00:07:28 it's not good for us they give us alcohol we don't want that either but they still try and make us drink it we don't want any it's bad
      • for: example - cultural destruction - Jawara - cigarettes and alcohol, example - indigenous genocide, example - forced addiction

      • comment

      • example - cultural destruction
      • example - indigenous genocide
      • example: forced addiction
        • Growing up in Canada in an indigenous community, this struck a nerve.In my childhood, I experience how the Haida first nations people of the Queen Charlotte Islands were reduced from a once proud and self-reliant culture to a dependent one living in government housing, the land they lived on denied to them and forced to live on small parcels of "Indian Reservations", their dignity stripped, and made dependent on alcohol and cigarettes.
        • It seems that modernity is simply an arrogant and corrupting force on indigeneity.
        • We see the beginning of indigenous genocide by the attempted infection by ignorant modern citizens who interact with the Jawara by attempting to hook them on the extremely destructive and addictive substances of our culture, alcohol and cigarettes
    2. there are armed poachers who shoot at us they steal they kill our pigs we think about it all the time 00:06:53 after the wild pigs it's deer their numbers have decreased dramatically since the poachers forced the jarrow to hunt for them wild game is being sold illegally on the 00:07:12 indian market
      • for: cultural destruction - Jawara - poachers, modernity - disruption of ecological cycle, example - ecosystem disruption

      • comment

      • example: ecosystem disruption
      • example: human cultural ecosystem in balance
      • the uncontrolled influence of the outside world always follows. Governments are too shortsighted to understand that this always happens and feel they can control the situation. They cannot. Greed breeds resourcefulness
        • In a matter of years, poachers have disrupted the Jawara's traditional diet, forcing them to overhunt deer and disrupt the entire ecological cycle that existed up until then.It's an example of how modernity ruthlessly and rapidly disrupts ecosystems. In this case, ecosystems where humans have integrated in a balanced way.
    3. in the past we used to make candles from beeswax but today we have tortoises the indians give them to us they provide more light and save us from 00:05:19 darkness
      • for: cross-cultural dialogue - jawara and modernity,

      • commentary

        • the tragedy of such myopic relationships and exploitation is that we miss the opportunity to hold cross-cultural dialogues to explore what happens when two human cultures that have developed in isolation meet for the first time.
        • the marvel of modern lights to the Jawara, and their quick embrace of it and expression of wonder is reminiscent of the chronicles of earlier European explorers/colonizers who exposed modern inventions and cultural artefacts to aboriginals many centuries earlier
    1. let's assume that the price of oil uh is at least at the uh 75 range which keeps us out of trouble Keith is at least floating in Alberta maybe even 80 bucks 01:00:56 a barrel maybe even 85 so that we've got some extra money so uh we're going to appoint you and you get to look around for a female and uh 01:01:10 the two of you have to then look around for uh people who are uh indigenous male and female and the four of you are going to be a group and we're going to give you 01:01:22 um uh uh a hundred billion dollars to spend over 10 years which means that you've got uh 10 billion 100 million no we're going to do more 01:01:37 we're going to give you a billion dollars so you've got a hundred million a year and you're going to be able to give it away in 10 million dollar tranches
      • for: interesting idea - project to shift consciousness in Alberta

      • comment

      • interesting idea: project to shift consciousness in Alberta
        • When there is a surplus use it to spend a billion dollars over the next 10 years, 100 million each year given away in 10 million dollar tranches
        • communities of approx. 15,000 people can apply for the 10 million dollar grant to raise consciousness and understand the modernity frame they currently unconsciously live within
        • in order to change the system, you have to first be aware of it and how that system is in you
        • This is an evolutionary experiment because nobody has tried to change a complex system like this before
    1. here is the human 00:50:39 journey the big arrows indicate the way that it in fact developed in history the small errors indicate that of the seven point seven billion of us on the planet people are moving in every direction 00:50:52 from each of those phases and some in each of those phases want to hang on to those phases are not move that's what those great black circles are the little black circles our people who want to 00:51:04 just hang on to what they've got and not move but others are on the move and what's more they're on the move in every possible direction
      • for: cultural evolution - diverse movements, cultural transition - diverse movements

      • summary

        • Bill Reese and Rubin Nelson believe that the dynamic / relational quadrant of indigenous culture is the most viable futures
    2. we've got to leave the bottom left-hand corner and that only gives you three other spaces to go to and I've already noted that one of those spaces may be a place that has a certain utility short-run 00:50:27 but don't try to build your culture there because you can't do it it's a place that you want to be in for a while but then you wanna leave so it really only gives you two places
      • for: major cultural paradigms, modernity - leaving, cultural transition, cultural evolution, MET, Major Evolutionary Transition, kiey insight - 4 major cultural paradigms

      • comment

      • key insight: 4 major cultural paradigms

        • This matrix doesn't quite capture what Ruben is proposing because he later talks about neo-indigenous, which means taking elements of modernity but within an overall indigenous framework, so a hybrid
        • It would be worth exploring implications for an evolutionary framework of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET)
    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(historical_analysis)

      relationship with context collapse

      Presentism bias enters biblical and religious studies when, by way of context collapse, readers apply texts written thousands of years ago and applicable to one context to their own current context without any appreciation for the intervening changes. Many modern Christians (especially Protestants) show these patterns. There is an interesting irony here because Protestantism began as the Catholic church was reading too much into the Bible to create practices like indulgences.)

    1. “This is the science that concerns itself with plants in their local association in the various climates. This science, as vast as its object, paints with a broad brush the immense space occupied by plants, from the regions of perpetual snows to the bottom of the ocean, and into the very interior of the earth, where there subsist in obscure caves some cryptogams that are as little known as the insects feeding upon them.”

      —Alexander von Humboldt, 1807 “Essay on the Geography of Plants”

      Cave paintings/art were known of in Humboldt's time certainly if he's using them to analogize.

    1. I'm tempted to say you can look at uh broadscale social organization uh or like Network Dynamics as an even larger portion of that light 00:32:43 cone but it doesn't seem to have the same continuity well I don't you mean uh it doesn't uh like first person continuity like it doesn't like you think it doesn't it isn't like anything to be 00:32:55 that social AG agent right and and we we both are I think sympathetic to pan psychism so saying even if we only have conscious access to what it's like to be 00:33:08 us at this higher level like it's there's it's possible that there's something that it's like to be a cell but I'm not sure it's possible that there's something that there's something it's like to be say a country
      • for: social superorganism - vs human multicellular being, social superorganism, Homni, major evolutionary transition, MET, MET in Individuality, Indyweb, Indranet, Indyweb/Indranet, CCE cumulative cultural evolution, symmathesy, Gyuri Lajos, individual/collective gestalt, interwingled sensemaking, Deep Humanity, DH, meta crisis, meaning crisis, polycrisis

      • comment

        • True, there is no physical cohesion that binds human beings together into a larger organism, but there is another dimension - informational cohesion.
        • This informational cohesion expresses itself in cumulative cultural evolution. Even this very discussion they are having is an example of that
        • The social superorganism is therefore composed of an informational body and not a physical one and one can think of its major mentations as collective, consensual ideas such as popular memes, movements, governmental or business actions and policies
        • I slept on this and this morning, realized how salient Adam's question was to my own work
          • The comments here build and expand upon what I thought yesterday (my original annotations)
          • The main connections to my own sense-making work are:
            • Within our specific human species, the deep entanglement between self and other (the terminology that our Deep Humanity praxis terms the "individual / collective gestalt")
            • The Deep Humanity / SRG claim that the concurrent meaning / meta / poly crisis may be an evolutionary test foreshadowing the next possible Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality.<br /> - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MET+in+Individuality
              • As Adam notes, collective consciousness may be more a metaphorical rather than a literal so a social superorganism, (one reference refers to it as Homni
              • may be metaphorical only as this higher order individual lacks the physical signaling system to create a biological coherence that, for instance, an animal body possesses.
              • Nevertheless, the informational connections do exist that bind individual humans together and it is not trivial.
              • Indeed, this is exactly what has catapulted our species into modernity where our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has defined the concurrent successes and failures of our species. Modernity's meaning / meta / polycrisis and progress traps are a direct result of CCE.
              • Humanity's intentions and its consequences, both intended and unintended are what has come to shape the entire trajectory of the biosphere. So the impacts of human CCE are not trivial at all. Indeed, a paper has been written proposing that human information systems could be the next Major System Transition (MST) that could lead to another future MET that melds biotic and abiotic
              • This circles back to Adam's question and what has just emerged for me is this question:
                • Is it possible that we could evolve in some kind of hybrid direction where we are biologically still separate individuals BUT deeply intertwingled informationally through CCE and something like the theoretical Indyweb/Indranet which is an explicit articulation of our theoretical informational connectivity?
                • In other words, could "collective consciousness be explicitly defined in terms of an explicit, externalized information system reflecting intertwingled individual/collective learning?
            • The Indyweb / Indranet informational laminin protein / connective tissue that informationally binds individuals to others in an explicit, externalized means of connecting the individual informational nodes of the social superorganism, giving it "collective consciousness" (whereas prior to Indyweb / Indranet, this informational laminin/connective tissue was not systematically developed so all informational connection, for example of the existing internet, is incomplete and adhoc)
            • The major trajectory paths that global or localized cultural populations take can become an indication of the behavior of collective consciousness.
              • Voting, both formal and informal is an expression of consensus leading to consensual behavior and the consensual behavior could be a reflection of Homni's collective consciousness
      • insight

        • While socially annotating this video, a few insights occurred after last night's sleep:
          • Hypothes.is lacks timebound sequence granularity. Indyweb / Indranet has this feature built in and we need it for social annotation. Why? All the information within this particular annotation cannot be machine sorted into a time series. As the social annotator, I actually have to point out which information came first, second, etc. This entire comment, for instance was written AFTER the original very short annotation. Extra tags were updated to reflect the large comment.
          • I gained a new realization of the relationship and intertwingularity of individual / collective learning while writing and reflecting on this social annotation. I think it's because of Adam's question that really revolves around MET of Individuality and the 3 conversant's questioning of the fluid and fuzzy boundary between "self" and "other"
            • Namely, within Indyweb / Indranet there are two learning pillars that make up the entirety of external sensemaking:
              • the first is social annotation of the work of others
              • the second is our own synthesis of what we learned from others (ie. our social annotations)
            • It is the integration of these two pillars that is the sum of our sensemaking parts. Social annotations allow us to sample the edge of the sensemaking work of others. After all, when we ingest one specific information source of others, it is only one of possibly many. Social annotations reflect how our whole interacts with their part. However, we may then integrate that peripheral information of the other more deeply into our own sensemaking work, and that's where we must have our own central synthesizing Indyweb / Indranet space to do that work.
            • It is this interplay between different poles that constitute CCE and symmathesy, mutual learning.
            • adjacency between
              • Indyweb / Indranet name space
              • Indranet
              • automatic vs manual references / citations
            • adjacency statement
              • Oh man, it's so painful to have to insert all these references and citations when Indranet is designed to do all this! A valuable new meme just emerged to express this:
                • Pain between the existing present situation and the imagined future of the same si the fuel that drives innovation.
      • quote: Gien

        • Pain between an existing present situation and an imagined, improved future is the fuel that drives innovation.
      • date: 2023, Nov 8
    1. Ancient Romans had (a lot of) slaves. Ancient Romans only allowed a tiny number of men, specifically, to vote. Ancient Romans imposed a violently enforced extractive empire around the Mediterranean and beyond. A philosophy that arose from those conditions might give me pause to emulate in a modern setting — at least, as someone who believes imperialism to be evil, slavery in all forms to be unacceptable, sexism to be harmful to all, and actual one-person-one-vote democracy to be the most reliable way of allowing some measure of self-governance by the people.

      While true, I don't think the underlying evil as such played a role in whether a philosophy arose from ancient Rome, but having a large enough layer of society that can afford spending time musing and thinking or be an audience for that thinking. The source of that wealth isn't a cause even though the wealth is a prerequisite to free up time and energy. The extraction made that possible of course, and it is not much different now. BigTech probably feels resonance because it's a global extractive industry too. I remember from my Latin at school how we would read texts by certain authors where they made some nuanced ethical point, while in the same text never bothering to question slavery. Or even in the same paragraph along the lines of "you need to treat slaves as human beings", except for the keeping them enslaved part ofcourse.

      There's something here about cultural appropriation across eras. The Renaissance did, claiming the mantle of the Roman civiliisation as its predecessor, and thus we in the West tend to see that as our cultural lineage. Cherry picked of course, not wholesale, as we tend to with more immediate own history too (Dutch Golden Age and the role of slave trade and colonial extraction e.g. unacknowledged but being a safe haven for religious refugees from elsewhere in Europe such as the Sefardim or Hugenots clearly embraced)

    1. By identifying himself with Zionism, Biden expressly indicated his support for the outcome of these policies: a Jewish-majority state, for Jews only.

      This is the logical consequence, but most don't get that far. Most just stop at, "homeland for the Jewish people" - a kind of historical, cultural Zionism of the "next year in Jerusalem" aspirational variety.

  14. Oct 2023
  15. Sep 2023
    1. If you are not of the faith, if you do not belong to thechurch, you can nevertheless read such a theological bookweU by treating its dogmas with the same respect you treatthe assumptions of a mathematician. But you must always keepin mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certainform of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

      What comes out of alternately reading theological books with understanding and compassion and then switching to raw logic?

    1. a useful way to answer such questions is to look at when it has been used on Fox News. Analysis of closed-captioning collected by the Internet Archive shows that use of “Chinese Communist Party” or “CCP” has been far more common on Fox News and Fox Business than on CNN and MSNBC.

      One can query the text in closed-captioning from the Internet Archive to track trends, and particularly politics, on television news.

    1. we are fundamentally a cultural species. 00:09:51 Culture is our life support system. Our cumulative culture allows us to cushion ourselves against the harsh realities of the environment and to reshape the environment.
      • for: cultural evolution, cultural evolution - Bruce Hood, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, gene-culture coevolution

      • paraphrase

        • Our evolving technology allowed us to expand into new territories and manipulate the environment in ways that gave us an edge.
        • Places like this remind me about how harsh nature can be.
        • We're so used to living in air conditioning, and having the comfort of the modern world, but when you go out into nature and experience it first hand, you're reminded very powerfully about how weak we are as an animal.
        • And this is because we are fundamentally a cultural species.
        • Culture is our life support system.
        • Our cumulative culture allows us to
          • cushion ourselves against the harsh realities of the environment and to
          • reshape the environment.
    1. synthetic bioengineering provides a really astronomically large option space for new bodies and new minds that don't have 00:04:28 standard evolutionary backstories
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, bioengineering, novel life form, culturally evolved life, bioethics, progress trap, progress trap - bioengineering, progress trap - genetic engineering
      • comment
        • cultural evolution, which itself emerges from biological evolution is acting upon itself to create new life forms that have no evolutionary backstory
        • this is tantamount to playing God
        • progress traps often emerge out of the large speed mismatch between cultural and biological/genetic evolution.
        • Nowhere is this more profound than in bioengineering of new forms of life with no evolutionary history
        • This presents profound ethical challenges
    1. Since arriving at the school, I have said to each class that I am too old to change journalism. Instead, I would watch and try to help students take on that responsibility.
  16. Aug 2023
    1. Some may not realize it yet, but the shift in technology represented by ChatGPT is just another small evolution in the chain of predictive text with the realms of information theory and corpus linguistics.

      Claude Shannon's work along with Warren Weaver's introduction in The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948), shows some of the predictive structure of written communication. This is potentially better underlined for the non-mathematician in John R. Pierce's book An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (1961) in which discusses how one can do a basic analysis of written English to discover that "e" is the most prolific letter or to predict which letters are more likely to come after other letters. The mathematical structures have interesting consequences like the fact that crossword puzzles are only possible because of the repetitive nature of the English language or that one can use the editor's notation "TK" (usually meaning facts or date To Come) in writing their papers to make it easy to find missing information prior to publication because the statistical existence of the letter combination T followed by K is exceptionally rare and the only appearances of it in long documents are almost assuredly areas which need to be double checked for data or accuracy.

      Cell phone manufacturers took advantage of the lower levels of this mathematical predictability to create T9 predictive text in early mobile phone technology. This functionality is still used in current cell phones to help speed up our texting abilities. The difference between then and now is that almost everyone takes the predictive magic for granted.

      As anyone with "fat fingers" can attest, your phone doesn't always type out exactly what you mean which can result in autocorrect mistakes (see: DYAC (Damn You AutoCorrect)) of varying levels of frustration or hilarity. This means that when texting, one needs to carefully double check their work before sending their text or social media posts or risk sending their messages to Grand Master Flash instead of Grandma.

      The evolution in technology effected by larger amounts of storage, faster processing speeds, and more text to study means that we've gone beyond the level of predicting a single word or two ahead of what you intend to text, but now we're predicting whole sentences and even paragraphs which make sense within a context. ChatGPT means that one can generate whole sections of text which will likely make some sense.

      Sadly, as we know from our T9 experience, this massive jump in predictability doesn't mean that ChatGPT or other predictive artificial intelligence tools are "magically" correct! In fact, quite often they're wrong or will predict nonsense, a phenomenon known as AI hallucination. Just as with T9, we need to take even more time and effort to not only spell check the outputs from the machine, but now we may need to check for the appropriateness of style as well as factual substance!

      The bigger near-term problem is one of human understanding and human communication. While the machine may appear to magically communicate (often on our behalf if we're publishing it's words under our names), is it relaying actual meaning? Is the other person reading these words understanding what was meant to have been communicated? Do the words create knowledge? Insight?

      We need to recall that Claude Shannon specifically carved semantics and meaning out of the picture in the second paragraph of his seminal paper:

      Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.

      So far ChatGPT seems to be accomplishing magic by solving a small part of an engineering problem by being able to explore the adjacent possible. It is far from solving the human semantic problem much less the un-adjacent possibilities (potentially representing wisdom or insight), and we need to take care to be aware of that portion of the unsolved problem. Generative AIs are also just choosing weighted probabilities and spitting out something which is prone to seem possible, but they're not optimizing for which of many potential probabilities is the "best" or the "correct" one. For that, we still need our humanity and faculties for decision making.


      Shannon, Claude E. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 1948.

      Shannon, Claude E., and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, 1949.

      Pierce, John Robinson. An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise. Second, Revised. Dover Books on Mathematics. 1961. Reprint, Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, Inc., 1980. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Information-Theory-Symbols-Mathematics/dp/0486240614.

      Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774.


      We may also need to explore The Bandwagon, an early effect which Shannon noticed and commented upon. Everyone seems to be piling on the AI bandwagon right now...

    1. Methodenstreit mischten sich zahlreichenamhafte Historiker und andere Geisteswissenschaftlerein. Warburg leistete keinen direkten publizistischen Bei-trag, nahm jedoch, wie der Zettelkasten belegt, als passi-ver Beobachter intensiv an der Debatte teil.359

      Karl Lamprecht was one of Warburg's first teachers in Bonn and Warburg had a section in his zettelkasten dedicated to him. While Warburg wasn't part of the broader public debate on Lamprecht's Methodenstreit (methodological dispute), his notes indicate that he took an active stance on thinking about it.

      Consult footnote for more:

      59 Vgl. Roger Chickering, »The Lamprecht Controversy«, in: Historiker- kontroversen, hrsg. von Hartmut Lehmann, Göttingen 20 0 0, S. 15 – 29

    1. In general the professors of the humanities and the socialsciences and history, fascinated by the marvels of experi-mental natural science, were overpowered by the idea thatsimilar marvels could be produced in their own fields by theuse of the same methods. They also seemed convinced thatany results obtained in these fields by any other methods werenot worth achieving. This automatically ruled out writerspreviously thought great who had had the misfortune to livebefore the method of empirical natural science had reachedits present predominance and who had never thought ofapplying it to problems and subject matters outside the rangeof empirical natural science.

      Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

      One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

    2. Behind these tariff walls the professors who hadmany of the great writers and much of the liberal arts intheir charge contentedly sat, oblivious of the fact that theywere depriving the rising generation of an important part oftheir cultural heritage and the training needed to understandit, and oblivious also of the fact that they were deprivingthemselves of the reason for their existence.

      It can be easy to deprive a generation of important pieces of their cultural heritage by omitting any focus on it.

      • shiboleth
      • philology
      • disinterest
      • overwhelm

      Compare the loss of classical education and cultural heritage by "internal decay" as described by Hutchins in the early 1900s and the forced loss of cultural heritage of Indigenous Americans by the U.S. Government in roughly the same period by re-education and stamping out Indigenous language.

      Certainly one was loss through lack of exposure, but the other was outright erasure due to the natures of orality and literacy.

    1. About ten years ago, a massive breakthrough happened in genomic research technology. A method appeared which is called NGS, next generation sequencing, and this method significantly cuts time and costs of any genomic research. For example, have you ever heard about the Human Genome Project? It was quite a popular topic for science fiction some time ago. 00:03:10 This project launched in 1990 with the goal to decrypt all genomic information in a human organism. At that time, with the technology of the time, it took ten years and three billion dollars to reach the goals of this project. With NGS, all of that can be done in just one day at the cost of 15,000 dollars.
      • for: progress trap, cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, speed of cultural evolution, human genome project
      • paraphrase
        • the human genome project took 10 years and cost 3 billion dollars
        • with NGS technology, 10 years later, the same job takes 1 day and costs $15,000 dollars
    1. While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth), the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
      • for: climate change - evolutionary causes, cultural evolution - unsustainability, unsustainability
      • definition: Anthroecological theory (AET)
        • This theory proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering
    2. In AET, this process results in a species that is prone to niche construction and ecosystem engineering, and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises. This increasing scale coupled with human propensity for niche construction leads to human unsustainability
      • for: for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power, gene culture coevolution
      • key finding
        • paraphrase
          • In AET,
            • multi-level selection acting on the genome and
            • occurring in concert with selective and non-selective mechanisms acting on culture and technology
          • results in a species that is prone to
            • niche construction and
            • ecosystem engineering,
          • and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises.
          • This increasing scale
            • coupled with human propensity for niche construction
          • leads to human unsustainability
    3. To Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection from the individual level to the group level. Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt driven by the imperative to produce surplus
      • for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power
      • paraphrase
        • to Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection
          • from the individual level
          • to the group level.
        • Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt
          • driven by the imperative to produce surplus
    4. Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: AET, Anthroecological theory, anthropocene - causes, ecological crisis - roots, overshoot
      • paraphrase
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that
          • human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

      • Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

      • Author: Brian F. Snyder

      • Abstract

      • Summary
      • Paraphrase
        • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
        • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
          • climate change,
          • biodiversity loss,
          • population growth
        • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
          • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
        • Here, we integrate this theory with
          • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
        • and propose a model linking
          • energy extraction from the environment with
          • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
        • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
        • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
          • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
          • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
        • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
        • in all species,
        • but in humans, they are also determined by
          • technology and
          • culture.
        • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
          • the ability of an individual or social group
        • to increase its carrying capacity,
        • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
        • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
          • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
    1. What is the culture of the future?
      • for: futures, decarbonizing - cultural sector, climate futures - cultural sector, climate futures - cultural industry
      • paraphrase
        • more local performances
        • more local purchases
        • leverage point for regional transition
        • reduce capacity
        • slowdown
        • reconceive / eco-conceive the arts so that it may endure
        • educate and change public policy
    2. The Shift Project has estimated that if only 3% of festival-goers attending the Vieilles Charrues Festival come by plane, they account for more than 60% of carbon emissions linked to public transport!
      • for carbon inequality, carbon emissions - air travel, carbon emissions - concerts, stats - air travel - concerts
      • paraphrase
      • stats
        • The Shift Project has estimated that
          • if only 3% of festival-goers attending the Vieilles Charrues Festival come by plane, they account for more than 60% of carbon emissions linked to public transport!
        • Tomorrowland concert - close to 25,000 festival-goers fly in via "party flights"
        • North America Burning Man - 20% of festival goers fly in
        • In general, the largest footprint for famous cultural events is air travel
    3. artists are complicit in
      • for: carbon emissions of the 1%, carbon inequality, carbon emissions - artists, high carbon lifestyle
      • comment
        • top tier entertainers are conditioned to a high carbon lifestyle. This is a challenge to overcome.
        • example given
          • DJ who flew to perform in four different EU cities in the same evening!
    4. Culture, a hyper-consumerist sector
      • for: carbon emissions - culture, carbon emissions - cultural sector, carbon footprint - culture,

      • paraphrase

      • stats
        • for France
        • culture and leisure are the third reason for travel after work and shopping
        • watching movies at movie theatre alone is responsible for nearly one million tons of CO2 emissions
        • culture takes up 60% of all downloads on the internet, 80% if porn is included
        • tens of thousands of buildings such as auditoriums are depending on fossil fuels to operate
        • cultural events drive high carbon tourist industry:
          • account for 60% of revenue of hotels and restaurants at the Avignon Festival
          • Louvre's carbon footprint of 3.4 million tons of CO2 emissions are in large part due to air travel of tourists from around the globe
      • for: emissions reduction, bend the curve, TPF, W2W, emissions reduction - cultural sector, bend the curve - cultural sector, TPF - cultural sector, W2W - cultural sector, carbon emissions - cultural sector, carbon inequality

      • comment

        • well written article on the carbon emissions challenges of the cultural sector
        • this is related to the carbon emissions of the luxury industry as well
      • question
        • same question as asked about luxury, since there is overlap with culture industry and luxury
        • Given that the 1% have the same carbon emissions as the bottom half of humanity, does the sustainability impacts of the decarbonization efforts of the luxury aspects of the culture industry measure up to stay under earth system boundaries in time?
      • reference
      • for cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson,
      • comment
        • Freeman Dyson opines that cultural evolution of humans now determines the genetic fate of all species on the planet
          • and gives a warning of how human cumulative cultural evolution now has the potential to threaten, via genetic sciences to play God over biology itself -reference
        • Musician Yoyo Ma quotes Freeman:
        • https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F2fBmGXqHvk8%2F&group=world
    1. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson, Anthropocene
      • comment
        • while Freeman spoke to the direct dangers of genetic engineering,
          • he neglected to point out the broader threat of progress itself, which has already placed our species in the position
            • of playing God with the evolution of many species on the planet already, via the enormous impacts of organized human activity - ie. the Anthropocene
    2. The story that they are telling is of a grand transition that occurred about fifty thousand years ago, when the driving force of evolution changed from biology to culture, and the direction changed from diversification to unification of species. The understanding of this story can perhaps help us to deal more wisely with our responsibilities as stewards of our planet.
      • for: cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution
      • paraphrase
        • The story that they are telling
        • is of a grand transition that occurred about fifty thousand years ago,
        • when the driving force of evolution changed
          • from biology
          • to culture,
        • and the direction changed
          • from diversification
          • to unification of species.
        • The understanding of this story can perhaps help us to deal more wisely with our responsibilities as stewards of our planet.
  17. Jul 2023
    1. The consequences of our current choices bear not juston us. They bear on the continued evolutionary unfoldingof life in the universe. This marks the scale of our currentresponsibility
      • for: human impacts, MET, major evolutionary transition, progress trap, human responsibility to life, CCE, cumulative cultural evolution, playing God
      • comment
        • Very true, in fact our species is in the unprecedented position that
        • human activity, and specifically our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) now determines the biological / genetic evolutionary future not only of our own species, but of all life on earth.
        • In other words, of evolution itself! -This is an awkward position as we have nowhere near the wisdom to play God and determine the future direction of evolution!
      • References
    1. the entire biosphere is made out of 00:41:23 um female desire for no reason no reason to it right night not with an objective of reproducing but just with an objective of wow that's really sexy I like it 00:41:35 and that's a very very good reason isn't it to to save the planet
      • for: climate communication, mass mobilization, collective action, climate messaging, beauty, evolution
      • claim
        • the natural world is sexy, beautiful, and it would be a waste to have it all destroyed
        • the entire biosphere is made out of female desire for no reason to it
          • not with an objective of reproducing
            • but just with an objective of wow that's really sexy I like it
          • and that's a very very good reason isn't it to to save the planet
        • these beautiful qualities that have no Rhyme or Reason to them but are actually to do with creativity and Imagination
          • are not some kind of special thing that human beings impose from some kind of abstract Heaven onto Earth
          • they are actually heaven on Earth
          • they're part of Heaven and they are coming out of our embodied biological being right and this is an amazing thing
            • pity and
            • compassion and
            • generosity
          • and all these things are are traits in primates
            • sharing things and
            • being kind right
          • and so I reckon you know the kind of religious feeling that we need to inculcate
          • it is actually about this feeling inside
            • this kind of surging feeling of
              • inspiration and
              • love and
              • passion
            • and everything is exactly coming to us from our Evolution and
            • it's coming for no reason at all
            • it's just coming from random genetic mutation and the fact that having these feelings doesn't kill you
          • so this is a very good reason I think to save Earth
          • the essence of us is
            • our future and
            • our physical biological being
          • and it's always just a little bit off to the side like tomorrow is just a little bit off to the side of today
            • but I'm going to get there at some point right and
            • I think that's the attitude
    1. Books aren’t something one approves or disapproves of; they are to be understood, interpreted, learned from, shocked by, argued with and enjoyed. Moreover, the evolution of literature and the other arts, their constant renewal over the centuries, has always been fueled by what is now censoriously labeled “cultural appropriation” but which is more properly described as “influence,” “inspiration” or “homage.” Poets, painters, novelists and other artists all borrow, distort and transform. That’s their job; that’s what they do.
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY

      Lots of controversy over this music video this past week or so.

      In addition to some of the double entendre meanings of "we take care of our own", I'm most appalled about the tacit support of the mythology that small towns are "good" and large cities are "bad" (or otherwise scary, crime-ridden, or dangerous).

      What are the crime statistics per capita about the safety of small versus large?

      Availability bias of violence and crime in the big cities are overly sampled by most media (newspapers, radio, and television). This video plays heavily into this bias.

      There's also an opposing availability bias going on with respect to the positive aspects of small communities "taking care of their own" when in general, from an institutional perspective small towns are patently not taking care of each other or when they do its very selective and/or in-crowd based rather than across the board.

      Note also that all the news clips and chyrons are from Fox News in this piece.

      Alternately where are the musicians singing about and focusing on the positive aspects of cities and their cultures.

  18. Jun 2023
    1. I turn to Joan and say, “My word, Joan. I’m so impressed. Melissa knows Yiddish?” Joan goes, “No. She doesn’t know Yiddish and I don’t know Yiddish. But anybody who’s speaking to you in Yiddish is telling you a joke so you laugh at the end of it. I’ve taught her that much so nobody will think she’s stupid.” That was Joan in her 50s. She’s almost 80 now and she still treats her daughter the same way.
    1. Gallagher, John. Review of As the Priest Said to the Nun, by Carla Roth. London Review of Books, June 1, 2023. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/john-gallagher/as-the-priest-said-to-the-nun.

    2. Roth asks ‘how might our own reading of early modern sources change if we had access to the oral spheres within which they were embedded and which framed their reception?’

      The level of orality in societies can radically change our perceptions of their histories, though quite often this material is missing in our evaluations.

    3. Commentators insisted that gossip was the province of women. Originally meaning ‘godparent’, ‘gossip’ shifted its meaning across the early modern period. It became commonplace to accuse women of gossiping and of being gossips, and a set of meanings crystallised around the word that reflected men’s anxiety about what women were saying about them behind their backs.
    4. Early modern jokes can be bewildering. It’s been argued that finding a joke you don’t understand in the sources can be the first step to unlocking the ways in which a society is different to ours, though that’s also the kind of thing you might say after reading one too many jestbooks and wondering what the punchlines mean.
  19. May 2023
    1. I am a product of your work I'm a product of the work of the people in 00:02:05 this room and watching this stream thanks to you to your actions your thoughts your memes I am Who I am today my learning and my capabilities have 00:02:16 been shaped but by what you've done
      • comment
        • example of
          • Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE)
    1. it is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all the business of evolution appointed without being asked if he wanted it and without proper warning and preparation what is more he 00:05:49 can't refuse the job whether he wants to or not whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth that is his 00:06:02 inescapable Destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it the better for all concerns
      • quote

        • "it is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all the business of evolution appointed without being asked if he wanted it and without proper warning and preparation what is more he can't refuse the job whether he wants to or not whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth that is his inescapable Destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it the better for all concerns"
        • Julian Huxley
      • Comment

    1. the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name, such as: Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining and legitimising the capitalist state The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working-class An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent Absolute historicism A critique of economic determinism that opposes fatalistic interpretations of Marxism A critique of philosophical materialism
    2. Is there potentially a worry amongst Republicans that by losing the "culture wars" that they'll somehow lose control of society and the capitalist order which funds their party and helps to keep them in control?

      Link to Gramsci's idea about cultural hegemony: https://hypothes.is/a/pRnPLPTtEe2_pyt2-Z7pwg

    3. Cultural hegemony is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than the use of force to maintain order.
  20. Apr 2023
    1. Bei einer Vollversammlung des permanenten Forums der UN für indigene Angelegenheiten warnten Vertreter indigener Völker nachdrücklich vor einer Dekarbonisierung auf ihre Kosten, etwa durch Bergbau. Auch Artenschutz wird angeführt um indigene zu vertreiben, wie bei einem von den Vereinigten Arabischen Vereinigten Emiraten vorangetrieben Wildreservat im Massai-Gebiet. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/23/un-indigenous-peoples-forum-climate-strategy-warning

    1. I just watched the documentary Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (Wechsler, 2016) via Kanopy (for free using my local library's gateway) and thought that others here interested in the ideas of memory in culture, history, and art history may appreciate it. While a broad biography of a seminal figure in the development of art history in the early 20th century, there are some interesting bits relating to art and memory as well as a mention of Frances A. Yates whose research on memory was influenced by Warburg's library.

      Also of "note" is the fact that Aby Warburg had a significant zettelkasten-based note taking practice and portions of his collection (both written as well as images) are featured within the hour long documentary.

      Researchers interested in images, art, dance, and gesture as they relate to memory may appreciate this short film as an entrance into some of Aby Warburg's more specialized research which includes some cultural anthropology research into American Hopi indigenous peoples. cc: @LynneKelly

      syndication link

    1. 51:20 - [Aby] Not until art history can show51:22 that it sees the work of art51:23 in a few more dimensions than it has done so far51:27 will our activity again attract the interest of scholars51:31 and of the general public.51:36 Every serious scholar51:37 who has to venture on a problem of cultural history51:40 reads over the entrance to his workshop Goethe's lines:51:43 "What you call the spirit of the age51:46 "is really no more51:47 "than the spirit of the worthy historian51:49 "in which the age is reflected."51:57 In my role as psycho-historian,51:59 I tried to diagnose52:00 the schizophrenia of Western civilization52:02 from its images in an autobiographical reflex.52:10 May the history of art and the study of religion,52:13 between which lies nothing at present52:15 but wasteland overgrown with verbiage,52:18 meet together one day in learned and lucid minds,52:22 and may they share a workbench in the laboratory52:24 of the iconological science of civilization.
    1. “what could we appeal to that is so strong, so compelling that it spurs the kind of collective action and coordination needed to tackle the dangers of exponential technology?”

      // - To find a God that can kill Moloch - requires an understanding of the nature of progress as well - Relationship to progress traps - Exponential technologies - are technologies, and all suffer the same fundamental flaw - Progress is an expression of our cumulative cultural evolution - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=cumulative+cultural+evolution - which grows exponentially faster than genetic evolution - The problem of which is that - the shadow side of progress, the progress trap - - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress%2Btrap - is growing even faster, due to our misunderstanding of it, - allowing it to fester like an untreated wound - turning a minor condition, into a life-threatening disease - Human progress has always been a bungling two step forwards, one step backwards dance - the imperfections of progress are inherent - and baked into the innovation process itself - For we develop technologies based on what we know, or what is visible - but what we know is like the tip of the latent knowledge iceberg - and is always accompanied by a much larger hidden component of what we don't know - In other words, - finite and visible knowledge - is always accompanied by infinite and invisible ignorance - Design is based on intent, - a one dimensional, inherently myopic imagination - of a multi-dimensional reality - A problem is a one dimensional focus - on a small sliver of reality - A solution to the problem is necessarily - myopic and - one dimensional as well - Both problems and their (designed) solutions - are extreme simplifications of a complex system - Language itself is a way - to direct and focus our attention - to this aspect of reality - then that aspect - Thinking is reduced to parts, and never experiences the whole, undivided gestalt of reality - Out of this process - Progress traps are born //

  21. Mar 2023
    1. Mentioned this to someone who moved to Bushwick and kept saying "I wish more of Brooklyn was like this" with a rebuttal saying "this is why the people who made it attractive to you aren't here anymore" and got the "it's not my problem" shit. https://twitter.com/hollley/status/1641149981678530560. I think that's where being a "transplant" into a different place becomes violent - your presence IMMEDIATELY disrupts the environments you're in (and because of that, you have an obligation to minimize it as much as possible).
    1. Our core criteria follow the definition of CCE provided in Tomasello's quotation above. We suggest that the minimum requirements for a population to exhibit CCE are (i) a change in behaviour (or product of behaviour, such as an artefact), typically due to asocial learning, followed by (ii) the transfer via social learning of that novel or modified behaviour to other individuals or groups, where (iii) the learned behaviour causes an improvement in performance, which is a proxy of genetic and/or cultural fitness, with (iv) the previous three steps repeated in a manner that generates sequential improvement over time.

      Definition - Cumulative Cultural Evolution - The core criteria follow the definition of CCE provided in Tomasello's quotation above - A population exhibits CCE iff - (i) a change in behaviour (or product of behaviour, such as an artefact), typically due to asocial learning, followed by - (ii) the transfer via social learning of that novel or modified behaviour to other individuals or groups, where - (iii) the learned behaviour causes an improvement in performance, - which is a proxy of genetic and/or cultural fitness, with - (iv) the previous three steps repeated in a manner that generates sequential improvement over time.

    2. In contrast [to non-human species' cultural traditions], human cultures do accumulate changes over many generations, resulting in culturally transmitted behaviors that no single human individual could invent on their own.
      • Boyd & Richerson give a nice explanation of CCE
      • In contrast [to non-human species' cultural traditions],
        • human cultures do accumulate changes over many generations,
        • resulting in culturally transmitted behaviors that no single human individual could invent on their own.
    3. In recent years, the phenomenon of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has become the focus of major research interest in biology, psychology and anthropology. Some researchers argue that CCE is unique to humans and underlies our extraordinary evolutionary success as a species. Others claim to have found CCE in non-human species. Yet others remain sceptical that CCE is even important for explaining human behavioural diversity and complexity. These debates are hampered by multiple and often ambiguous definitions of CCE. Here, we review how researchers define, use and test CCE. We identify a core set of criteria for CCE which are both necessary and sufficient, and may be found in non-human species. We also identify a set of extended criteria that are observed in human CCE but not, to date, in other species. Different socio-cognitive mechanisms may underlie these different criteria. We reinterpret previous theoretical models and observational and experimental studies of both human and non-human species in light of these more fine-grained criteria. Finally, we discuss key issues surrounding information, fitness and cognition. We recommend that researchers are more explicit about what components of CCE they are testing and claiming to demonstrate.

      Title: What is cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)?

      Authors: - Alex Mesoudi - Alex Thornton

      Abstract - In recent years, cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has become the focus of major research interest in - biology, - psychology and - anthropology. - There is a range of opinions on CCE - some argue that CCE is unique to humans - and underlies our extraordinary evolutionary success as a species. - Others claim to have found CCE in non-human species. - Yet others remain sceptical that CCE is even important for explaining - human behavioural diversity and - complexity. - These debates are hampered by multiple and often ambiguous definitions of CCE. - Here, we review how researchers define, use and test CCE. - We identify a core set of criteria for CCE - which are both necessary and sufficient, and - may be found in non-human species. - We also identify a set of extended criteria - that are observed in human CCE - but not, to date, in other species. - Different socio-cognitive mechanisms may underlie these different criteria. - We reinterpret - previous theoretical models and - observational and - experimental studies of both - human and - non-human species - in light of these more fine-grained criteria. - Finally, we discuss key issues surrounding information, fitness and cognition. - We recommend that researchers are more explicit about what components of CCE they are testing and claiming to demonstrate.

    1. How do we make them ‘‘benefit humanity as a whole’’ when humanity itself can’t agree on basic facts, much less core ethics and civic values?
    2. In June 2021, OpenAI published a paper offering a new technique for battling toxicity in GPT-3’s responses, calling it PALMS, short for ‘‘process for adapting language models to society.’’ PALMS involves an extra layer of human intervention, defining a set of general topics that might be vulnerable to GPT-3’s being led astray by the raw training data: questions about sexual abuse, for instance, or Nazism.
    1. Title: Fox News producer files explosive lawsuits against the network, alleging she was coerced into providing misleading Dominion testimony

      // - This is an example of how big media corporations can deceive the public and compromise the truth - It helps create a nation of misinformed people which destabilizes political governance - the workspace sounds toxic - the undertone of this story: the pathological transformation of media brought about by capitalism - it is the need for ratings, which is the indicator for profit in the marketing world, that has corrupted the responsibility to report truthfully - making money becomes the consumerist dream at the expense of all else of intrinsic value within a culture - knowledge is what enables culture to exist, modernity is based on cumulative cultural evolution - this is an example of NON-conscious cumulative cultural evolution or pathological cumulaitve cultural evolution

    1. It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

      there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

      Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

      argued that - culture steers human evolution,

      Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

      After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

    1. "In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,"
      • Quote
        • In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,
        • Tim Waring
    2. It’s possible, the researchers suggest, that the appearance of human culture represents a key evolutionary milestone.
      • key observation
        • human culture may represent a key evolutionary milestone
        • culture may be the next evolutionary transition state
          • pre-single self organisms like mitochondria increased fitness by sharing the environment with other life forms and formed the single cell
          • then multi-cellular organisms set the stage for the next big evolutionary paradigm
          • splitting into plants and animals
          • sexual reproduction
          • transition to land
        • we are possibly undergoing the next major evolutionary transition
        • in which we will still evolve genetically,
        • but genetics may not determine human survival as much as culture does
    3. Here's why: Culture is group-oriented, and people in those groups talk to, learn from and imitate one another. These group behaviors allow people to pass on adaptations they learned through culture faster than genes can transmit similar survival benefits. An individual can learn skills and information from a nearly unlimited number of people in a small amount of time and, in turn, spread that information to many others. And the more people available to learn from, the better. Large groups solve problems faster than smaller groups, and intergroup competition stimulates adaptations that might help those groups survive. As ideas spread, cultures develop new traits.In contrast, a person only inherits genetic information from two parents and racks up relatively few random mutations in their eggs or sperm, which takes about 20 years to be passed on to their small handful of children. That's just a much slower pace of change.
      • key observation
      • paraphrase
      • why cultural evolution is too fast for genetic evolution

        • Culture is group-oriented, and people in those groups talk to, learn from and imitate one another.
        • These group behaviors allow people to pass on adaptations they learned through culture faster than genes can transmit similar survival benefits.
        • An individual can learn skills and information from a nearly unlimited number of people in a small amount of time
          • and, in turn, spread that information to many others.
        • And the more people available to learn from, the better.
        • Large groups solve problems faster than smaller groups,
        • and intergroup competition stimulates adaptations that might help those groups survive.
        • As ideas spread, cultures develop new traits.

        • In contrast, a person only inherits genetic information from two parents

          • and racks up relatively few random mutations in their eggs or sperm, which takes about 20 years to be passed on to their small handful of children.
        • That's just a much slower pace of change.
    4. human culture may be driving evolution faster than genetic mutations can work.

      !- key finding - human culture may be driving evolution faster than genetic mutation can work - the major delay, measured in many orders of magnitude - does not allow genetic evolution to adapt quickly enough - to harmful environmental changes brought about through cultural evolution

    5. Humans might be making genetic evolution obsolete
      • TItle: Humans might be making genetic evolution obsolete
    1. As a consequence of sociocultural niche construction, humans have become a global force of nature – for better and for worse. It is only by embracing these sociocultural realities that we might shape better futures for both humans and non-human species alike.

      // In Other Words

      • we must undo the myopic cultural evolution that has already taken place with a more collectively conscious form of cultural evolution //
    1. Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality
      • Title: Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality
      • Author: Herbert Gintis

      //Abstract - Summary - Human characteristics are the product of gene–culture coevolution, - which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture - over long time periods. - Gene–culture coevolution is a special case of niche construction. - Gene–culture coevolution is responsible for: - human other-regarding preferences, - a taste for fairness, - the capacity to empathize and - salience of morality and character virtues.

      • Title: Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus
      • Author:
        • Jeremy Kendal
        • Jamshid J. Tehrani
        • John Oding-Smee
      • Abstract
        • summary
        • Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution,
      • reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection.
        • It works by adding ecological inheritance,
        • comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche construction,
        • to genetic inheritance in evolution.
        • Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both human evolution, and the evolution of other species.
        • Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally potent
        • because it includes the social transmission and inheritance
        • of cultural knowledge, and material culture.
        • Human genetic inheritance
        • in combination with human cultural inheritance
        • thus provides a basis for gene–culture coevolution,
        • and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution.
        • Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human sciences.
        • We elaborate on these processes,
        • and provide brief introductions to each of the papers published in this theme issue.
    1. Abstract
      • Abstract
      • summary
        • The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time
        • is a key feature of human evolution,
        • culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens.
        • A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere,
          • a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent
          • from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets.
        • Such data suggest that, by the Late Pleistocene,
        • humans had begun to engage in activities
        • that have led to alterations in the distributions of a vast array of species
        • across most, if not all, taxonomic groups.
        • Changes to biodiversity have included
          • extinctions,
          • extirpations, and
          • shifts in species
            • composition,
            • diversity, and
            • community structure.
        • We outline key examples of these changes,
        • highlighting findings from the study of new datasets, like
          • ancient DNA (aDNA),
          • stable isotopes, and
          • microfossils, as well as
          • the application of new statistical and computational methods to datasets that have accumulated significantly in recent decades.
        • We focus on four major phases that witnessed broad anthropogenic alterations to biodiversity:
          • the Late Pleistocene global human expansion,
          • the Neolithic spread of agriculture,
          • the era of island colonization, and
          • the emergence of early urbanized societies and commercial networks.
        • Archaeological evidence documents millennia of anthropogenic transformations
        • that have created novel ecosystems around the world.
        • This record has implications for:
          • ecological and evolutionary research,
          • conservation strategies, and
          • the maintenance of ecosystem services,
        • pointing to a significant need for broader cross-disciplinary engagement between:
          • archaeology
          • the biological sciences and
          • the environmental sciences.
    2. Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions
      • Title: Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions
      • Author:
        • Nicole L. Bolvin
        • Melinda A. Zeder
        • Dorian O. Fuller
        • Michael D. Petraglia
  22. Feb 2023
    1. For years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind.
    1. “culturaldiglossia”: the situation where a particular social group is simultaneouslyengaged in two cultural systems, which stand in asymmetric relation toeach other.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Hesiod’s depictionof humans in the myth of Prometheus and Pandora. We consider theimplications of this myth for the Greek view of society and particularly of

      women and gender roles.

      If my perception of mythology and orality is correct, can we look at Indigenous stories, myth, and knowledge and draw parallels from their knowledge about women and gender to similar stories in the Western canon which have lost linkage to their narratives? What would this show us potentially about Western mythology and gender studies?

    2. Vandiver, Elizabeth. Classical Mythology. Audible (streaming audio). Vol. 243. The Great Courses: Western Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2013.


      Vandiver, Elizabeth. “Classical Mythology: Course Guidebook.” The Teaching Company, 2013. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/classical-mythology.

    1. St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday of rather nonlinear origins, as it developed gradually over time

      Pre-internet, pre-television, pre-telephone, and pre-radio, proliferation of cultural practices more closely resembled generational genetic adaptations than the viral spread we are used to witnessing with proliferation today. And because our practices are responses to the world around us, the changes in the world leads to changes in the practices. In the case of St. Patrick's Day, casual observation reveals that the meaning of the celebration has been a moving target for centuries, and that What we recognize, Why we recognize, and How we recognize have all been evolving and somewhat decentralized elements of cultural practice. (For example, recognition of discrimination endured by Irish-American immigrants figures prominently in today's practices even though the holiday was already hundreds of years old when the first of these people crossed the Atlantic.]

    1. Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by [[Taylor Lorenz]]

      shifts in language and meaning of words and symbols as the result of algorithmic content moderation

      instead of slow semantic shifts, content moderation is actively pushing shifts of words and their meanings


      article suggested by this week's Dan Allosso Book club on Pirate Enlightenment

    2. Where does the line exist for moving from coded language into the space of dog whistles and a "wink and a nod"?

      Do these exist in all cultures?

      What level is contextual?

    1. I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.                I am Joaquín.The odds are greatbut my spirit is strong,                        my faith unbreakable,                        my blood is pure.I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.                I SHALL ENDURE!                I WILL ENDURE!

      The final stanza adequately represents the theme of "Yo Soy Joaquin", which is cultural identity.  Joaquin represents his people and rejects assimilation into American society at large. Joaquin's pledge of endurance demonstrates his resolve to uphold his cultural identity in the face of any difficulties. 

    1. Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (Hrsg.): «Keine Ostergrüsse mehr! Die geheime Gästekartei des Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera». Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.Der reich bebilderte Band bietet eine spannende Reise in ein Stück Schweizer Tourismusgeschichte: Die Herausgeber haben die 20'000 Karteikarten aus den Jahren 1920-1960 sehr sorgfältig kuratiert, nach Themen gegliedert und in einen grösseren, gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt.Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren viel über die Klientel im Hotel Waldhaus, zum Teil sogar in kleinen biografischen Porträts; und sie können an konkreten Beispielen verfolgen, wie sich der Sprachgebrauch der Concierges im Laufe der Zeit verändert – gerade zum Beispiel im Zusammenhang mit jüdischen Gästen.

      Google Translate:

      Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.

      The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.

      The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.

    1. According to Shulman, "Cargo-cult is a belief that mock airplanes made of manure and straw-bale may summon the real airplanes who bring canned beef. Reverse cargo-cult is used by the political elites in countries lagging behind who proclaim that, in the developed world, airplanes are also made of manure and straw-bale, and there is also a shortage of canned beef."[29]

      "Екатерина Шульман: Практический Нострадамус, или 12 умственных привычек, которые мешают нам предвидеть будущее". vedomosti/ (in Russian). Retrieved 24 June 2021.


      A Note on the Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten

      Modern cargo cults can be seen in many technology and productivity spaces where people are pulled in by exaggerated (or sometimes even real claims) of productivity or the general "magic" of a technology or method.

      An example is Niklas Luhmann's use of his zettelkasten which has created a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants and users who read one or more of the short one page blog posts about his unreasonable productivity and try to mimic it without understanding the system, how it works, or how to make it work for them. They often spend several months collecting notes, and following the motions, but don't realize the promised gains and may eventually give up, sometimes in shame (or as so-called "rubbish men") while watching others still touting its use.

      To prevent one's indoctrination into the zettelkasten cult, I'll make a few recommendations:

      Distance yourself from the one or two page blog posts or the breathless YouTube delineations. Ask yourself very pointedly: what you hope to get out of such a process? What's your goal? Does that goal align with others' prior uses and their outcomes?

      Be careful of the productivity gurus who are selling expensive courses and whose focus may not necessarily be on your particular goals. Some are selling very pointed courses, which is good, while others are selling products which may be so broad that they'll be sure to have some success stories, but their hodge-podge mixture of methods won't suit your particular purpose, or worse, you'll have to experiment with pieces of their courses to discover what may suit your modes of working and hope they'll suffice in the long run. Some are selling other productivity solutions for task management like getting things done (GTD) or bullet journals, which can be a whole other cargo cults in and of themselves. Don't conflate these![^1] The only thing worse than being in a cargo cult is being in multiple at the same time.

      If you go the digital route, be extremely wary of shiny object syndrome. Everyone has a favorite tool and will advocate that it's the one you should be using. (Often their method of use will dictate how much they love it potentially over and above the affordances of the tool itself.) All of these tools can be endlessly configured, tweaked, or extended with plugins or third party services. Everyone wants to show you their workflow and set up, lots of which is based on large amounts of work and experimentation. Ignore 99.999% of this. Most tools are converging to a similar feature set, so pick a reasonable one that seems like it'll be around in 5 years (and which has export, just in case). Try out the very basic features for several months before you change anything. Don't add endless plugins and widgets. You're ultimately using a digital tool to recreate the functionality of index cards, a pencil, and a box. How complicated should this really be? Do you need to spend hundreds of hours tweaking your system to save yourself a few minutes a year? Be aware that far too many people touting the system and marketers talking about the tools are missing several thousands of years of uses of some of these basic literacy-based technologies. Don't join their island cult, but instead figure out how the visiting culture has been doing this for ages.[^2] Recall Will Hunting's admonition against cargo cults in education: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”[^3]

      Most people ultimately realize that the output of their own thinking is only as good as the inputs they're consuming. Leverage this from the moment you begin and ignore the short bite-sized advice for longer form or older advice from those with experience. You're much more likely to get more long term value out of reading Umberto Eco or Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren[^4] than you are an equivalent amount of time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, or trolling social media like Reddit and Twitter.

      Realize that reaching your goal is going to take honest-to-goodness actual work, though there is potential for fun. No matter how shiny or optimized your system, you've still got to do the daily work of reading, watching, listening and using it to create anything. Focus on this daily work and don't get sidetracked by the minutiae of trying to shave off just a few more seconds.[^5] In short, don't get caught up in the "productivity porn" of it all. Even the high priest at whose altar they worship once wrote on a slip he filed:

      "A ghost in the note card index? Spectators visit [my office to see my notes] and they get to see everything and nothing all at once. Ultimately, like having watched a porn movie, their disappointment is correspondingly high." —Niklas Luhmann. <small>“Geist im Kasten?” ZKII 9/8,3. Niklas Luhmann-Archiv. Accessed December 10, 2021. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V. (Personal translation from German with context added.)</small>


      [^1] Aldrich, Chris. “Zettelkasten Overreach.” BoffoSocko (blog), February 5, 2022. https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/.

      [^2]: Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.

      [^3]: Good Will Hunting. Miramax, Lawrence Bender Productions, 1998.

      [^4]: Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

      [^5]: Munroe, Randall. “Is It Worth the Time?” Web comic. xkcd, April 29, 2013. https://xkcd.com/1205/.


      Recommended resources

      Choose only one of the following and remember you may not need to read the entire work:

      Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.

      Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.

      Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html.

      Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.

      Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.

      Gessner, Konrad. Pandectarum Sive Partitionum Universalium. 1st Edition. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1548.

      Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.

      Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife.

      Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.

      Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.

      • = human being's = altricial nature - is an = evolutionary adaptation
      • resulting in exceptional = complex social learning
      • tradeoff of helplessness at birth
      • is complex social learning
      • that enables cumulative cultural evolution
    1. Humans are especially good at filling new ecological niches “because we have the capacity to learn how to survive in new environments,” Goldstein said. “Once your parents learn an adaptive skill, you’ll learn from them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
      • = cumulative cultural evolution
      • humans excel at surviving in = novel ecological niches
      • because we share information with each other
      • = cumulative cultural evolution - prevents us
      • from = reinventing the wheel
      • = feral children
  23. Jan 2023
    1. while I was listening to all of you and to our wonderful scientists 00:57:28 I thought of something that the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson wrote shortly before he died he said he believed that 00:57:40 the speed of cultural Evolution the speed of cultural evolution is now faster than the speed of biological evolution so 00:57:53 what does that mean to me it's something very simple it means that we now hold our destiny in our hands and that's what you're all talking about

      !- quotable : Freeman Dyson - the speed of cultural evolution is now faster than the speed of biological evolution - references on the speed of cultural evolution: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=stopresetgo&max=50&any=Cultural+evolution - Freeman Dyson essay on biological and cultural evolution: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fviahtml.hypothes.is%2Fconversation%2Ffreeman_dyson-biological-and-cultural-evolution&group=world

    1. Our double task is now to preserve and foster both biological evolution as Nature designed it and cultural evolution as we invented it, trying to achieve the benefits of both, and exercising a wise restraint to limit the damage when they come into conflict. With biological evolution, we should continue playing the risky game that nature taught us to play. With cultural evolution, we should use our unique gifts of language and art and science to understand each other, and finally achieve a human society that is manageable if not always peaceful, with wildlife that is endlessly creative if not always permanent.

      !- Dual task: wrt biological and cultural evolution

    2. The discoveries of Svante Pääbo show that as early as fifty thousand years ago the transition from biological to cultural evolution was already far advanced. Biological evolution, as demonstrated by Kimura and Goodenough, accelerated the birth of new species by favoring the genetic isolation of small populations. Cultural evolution had the opposite effect, erasing differences between related species and bringing them together. Cultural evolution happens when cousins learn each other's languages and share stories around the cave-fire. As a consequence of cultural evolution, biological differences become less important and cousins learn to live together in peace. Sharing of memes brings species together and sharing of genes is the unintended consequence.

      !- The story of human evolution : is the story of hybrid biological and cultural evolution - Svante Paabo shows that 50,000 years ago biological evolution was already deeply affected by human cultural evolution - biological evolution favoured genetic isolation of small populations, like cave dwellers during the ice age - when cultural evolution took over between Neanderthal, Denisovan and Early ancestors of modern humans and memes drove inter species socialisation, crossbreeding LED to mixing and sharing of genes as an unintended consequences

    3. the cultural evolution of creative new societies requires more elbow-room than a single planet can provide. Creative new societies need room to take risks and make mistakes, far enough away to be effectively isolated from their neighbors. Life must spread far afield to continue the processes of genetic drift and diversification of species that drove evolution in the past. The restless wandering that pulled our species out of Africa to explore the Earth will continue to pull us beyond the Earth, as far as our technology can reach.

      !- expansion into outer space : natural consequence of evolution itself to continue genetic drift

      !- comment : Dyson Extrapolates that expansion into outer space is a logical next step for evolution

    4. In each case, a small population produced a star-burst of pioneers who permanently changed our way of thinking. Genius erupted in groups as well as in individuals. It seems likely that these bursts of creative change were driven by a combination of cultural with biological evolution. Cultural evolution was constantly spreading ideas and skills from one community to another, stirring up conservative societies with imported novelties. At the same time, biological evolution acting on small genetically isolated populations was causing genetic drift, so that the average intellectual endowment of isolated communities was rising and falling by random chance. Over the last few thousand years, genetic drift caused occasional star-bursts to occur, when small populations rose to outstandingly high levels of average ability. The combination of imported new ideas with peaks of genetic drift would enable local communities to change the world.

      !- explaining human history : combination of cultural and biological evolution

    5. The contribution of genetic drift to cultural evolution remains a speculative hypothesis.

      !- connection : genetic drift and cultural evolution - still no compelling evidence

    6. As a result of cultural evolution, a single species now dominates the ecology of our planet, and cultural evolution will dominate the future of life so long as any species with a living culture survives. When we look ahead to imagine possible futures for our descendants, cultural evolution must be our dominant concern. But biological evolution has not stopped and will not stop. As cultural evolution races ahead like a hare, biological evolution will continue its slow tortoise crawl to shape our destiny.

      !- quotable : Cultural Evolution

    7. Wells's biggest work is Outline of History, published in 1920, a picture of cultural evolution as the main theme of history since the emergence of our species.

      !- H.G. Wells : Outline of history - cultural evolution as the main theme

    8. Cultural evolution had its beginnings as soon as animals with brains evolved, using their brains to store information and using patterns of behavior to share information with their offspring. Social species of insects and mammals were molded by cultural as well as biological evolution. But cultural evolution only became dominant when a single species invented spoken language. Spoken language is incomparably nimbler than the language of the genes.

      !- Herbert Wells : Cultural Evolution

    9. Wells saw that we happen to live soon after a massive shift in the history of the planet, caused by the emergence of our own species. The shift was completed about ten thousand years ago, when we invented agriculture and started to domesticate animals. Before the shift, evolution was mostly biological. After the shift, evolution was mostly cultural. Biological evolution is usually slow, when big populations endure for thousands or millions of generations before changes become noticeable. Cultural evolution can be a thousand times faster, with major changes occurring in two or three generations. It has taken about two hundred thousand years for our species to evolve biologically from its or

      !- modern humans : unique species adept at cultural evolution

    10. In the near future, we will be in possession of genetic engineering technology which allows us to move genes precisely and massively from one species to another. Careless or commercially driven use of this technology could make the concept of species meaningless, mixing up populations and mating systems so that much of the individuality of species would be lost. Cultural evolution gave us the power to do this. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.

      !- genetic engineering : risk - cultural evolution via genetic engineering could make the concept of species meaningless - it is a significant b potential progress traps

    11. Biological and Cultural Evolution Six Characters in Search of an Author

      !- Title : Biological and Cultural Evolution Six Characters in Search of an Author !- Author : Freeman Dyson !- Date : 2019

    1. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity


      link to Toki Pona as a conlang


      Link to https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

    1. “She is likely our earliest Black female ethnographic filmmaker,” says Strain, who also teaches documentary history at Wesleyan University.

      Link to Robert J. Flaherty

      Where does she sit with respect to Robert J. Flaherty and Nanook of the North (1922)? Would she have been aware of his work through Boaz? How is her perspective potentially highly more authentic for such a project given her context?

    1. Learning a New Language Can Help Us Escape Climate Catastrophe

      !- Title : Learning a New Language Can Help Us Escape Climate Catastrophe !- Author : Nylan Burton !- comment : summary - while I agree with the analysis, the futures-related question I ask is this: what does a desirable hybridized linguistic landscape look like that integrates English, evolved into a post-colonialist lingua franca and reconstituted indigenous languages with their rich bio-cultural heritage?

    1. If it interests you, GPC lists phrases like dysgu ar gof. This page then gives the example, "Yn yr hen ddyddiau byddai pobl yn dysgu cerddi ar gof" - like saying "to learn by heart" in English.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/learnwelsh/comments/10acr9j/sut_i_ddweud_i_memorized_yn_gymraeg/

      Fascinating that the Welsh language doesn't seem to have a direct translatable word/verb for "to memorize". The closest are dysgu (to learn, to teach) and cofio (to remember).

      Related phrase: yn dysgu cerddi ar gof (to learn poems by heart), though this last is likely a more direct translation of an English concept back into Welsh.

      Is this lack of a seemingly basic word for such a practice a hidden indicator of the anthropology of their way of knowing?

      If to learn something means that one fully memorizes it from the start, then one needn't sub-specify, right?

    1. These may occur on rock walls, but were commonly engraved onto robust bones since at least the beginning of the European Upper Palaeolithic and African Late Stone Age, where it is obvious they served as artificial memory systems (AMS) or external memory systems (EMS) to coin the terms used in Palaeolithic archaeology and cognitive science respectively, exosomatic devices in which number sense is clearly evident (for definitions see d’Errico Reference d'Errico1989; Reference d'Errico1995a,Reference d'Erricob; d'Errico & Cacho Reference d'Errico and Cacho1994; d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Doyon and Colage2017; Hayden Reference Hayden2021).

      Abstract marks have appeared on rock walls and engraved into robust bones as artificial memory systems (AMS) and external memory systems (EMS).

    1. Symbiocene

      !- symbiocene :key attribute - understanding the dangers of cultural evolution to the degree that we can mitigate the dangers emergent from progress traps

  24. Dec 2022
    1. he concept of cultural evolution began with the father of evolution himself, Waring said. Charles Darwin understood that behaviors could evolve and be passed to offspring just as physical traits are

      !- Charles Darwin : cultural evolution - Darwin understood that behavior could evolve and be passed on to offsprings

    2. cultural evolution can lead to genetic evolution. "The classic example is lactose tolerance," Waring told Live Science. "Drinking cow's milk began as a cultural trait that then drove the [genetic] evolution of a group of humans." In that case, cultural change preceded genetic change, not the other way around. 

      !- example of : cultural evolution leading to genetic evolution - lactose intolerance

    3. But nowadays, humans mostly don't need to adapt to such threats genetically. Instead, we adapt by developing vaccines and other medical interventions, which are not the results of one person's work but rather of many people building on the accumulated "mutations" of cultural knowledge. By developing vaccines, human culture improves its collective "immune system,"

      !- in other words : cumulative cultural evolution

    1. The longer it prevails, the more likely we will suffer catastrophic failure as a species here on earth. While this would be a tragedy of huge proportion for humans, we will take thousands, perhaps millions, of other species down with us.

      !- equivalent to : cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) - the cultural activity of our species will determine not only or species fate, but that of all other species in the biosphere through the complex webs of entangled life or collective human behaviour will impact

    1. I’m reminded of an old poem by Bertolt Brecht, which my Viennese grandmother, the daughter of a lifelong socialist and union man, taught me. It’s called “Questions From a Worker Who Reads”:

      Bertolt Brecht has a poem "Questions From a Worker Who Reads" which points out how necessary societies are to their great accomplishments which can't ever be solely attributed to kings and leaders as if there is only a "Great Man theory of history".

    1. You know, I haven’t been to the movies in over three years, and at this point I’m not sure what would bring me back.

      reply to https://werd.io/2022/you-know-i-havent-been-to-the

      @benwerd Having kids makes the value proposition even worse... (and I'm saying this as a movie addict whose run a theater before).

    1. Because I am as interested in the attitudes and assumptions which are implicit in the evidence as in those which were explicitly articulated at the time, I have got into the habit of reading against the grain. Whether it is a play or a sermon or a legal treatise, I read it not so much for what the author meant to say as for what the text incidentally or unintentionally reveals.

      Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and surely other researchers must often "read against the grain" which historian Keith Thomas defines as reading a text, not so much for what the author was explicitly trying to directly communicate to the reader, but for the small tidbits that the author through the text "incidentally or unintentionally reveals."

    1. I'm finding that IndieBlocks may be the way to go since most of the indieweb plugins that are out there are lacking block editor compatibility and most of them state you need classic editor enabled which isn't helpful if you are trying to move forward with the way in which WordPress is going with the block editor. Maybe some of these devs haven't "learn javascript deeply" like Matt Mullenweg suggested and are still stuck in PHP land like many of the people like me are, sadly.

      Anecdotal evidence of long time WordPress fans who are being left behind in the move to Gutenberg and more JavaScript.

    1. So to the people listening or watching this, what kind of closing thoughts do you have to summarize what we just talked about and to leave them to think about or apply to their own lives? 01:17:49 Simon Michaux: So I would say to them that they're in better shape than anyone before, even as scary as it is and the unknown we're walking into. And there is no one plan. So like diversity of species in a jungle environment is a strength for the long-term survival of that jungle, diversity of ideas have the same strengths. 01:18:13 So we need them all for our long-term survival. We can't face one consensus, it's just like a broad brush direction. So we've got to put these ideas out there and discuss amongst ourselves. And understand that this is very, very challenging, and none of us actually know what we need to do. 01:18:37 Even though our skills are not necessarily what we need. We're almost like a blank canvas in terms of skills. But in terms of our self knowledge and our ability to think, our opinions mean something. We believe in human rights. We have education. Men and women are educated now. So we are in better shape now than we've ever been. 01:19:04 Instead of banging on about the problems and our past failings, we should probably try to face the future with open hearts, and actually think positive with the understanding that this is going to be rough.

      !- Futures Thinking : summary - our generation has the most wisdom to deal with the problem, even though it is an unprecedented problem - We need diversity of opinions and perspectives. Like in evolution, that diversity will emerge an optimal solution - To consciously culturally evolve, we need to put all ideas on the table and discuss openly - An open, interpersonal, people-centered knowledge ecosystem such as Indyweb is suitable for such a process

    2. I don't know how this will look like. What I do think is it will come to cultural identity. What is the cultural identity? And that's what we will all gravitate to, and we'll gravitate.

      !- future global fragmentation : by culture - Michaux believes people will fragment in the future along cultural boundaries as we move through tumultuous transition. This makes sense as ingroups will naturally form - this should be further explored to explore implications: - will we get political polarization? At what level? National, regional, city / community scale? - what implications will this have on cooperation and sharing? will it create policy gridlock? Will it become even more urgent to educate everyone on a Deep Humanity type of open praxis that finds common human denominators (CHD)?

    3. what our work is showing is very soon it can't. And so it's going to go through a death throws and any organism it will fight to survive. And so yes, there will be pushback and resistance. And so what I'm proposing is a plan, whether that plan gets carried out or whether it's 00:37:22 allowed to be carried out, that's a different matter.

      !- Social Superorganism : Biological Survival metaphor - the current social superorganism is fighting to survive as it's life is threatened by the transformation - the metamorphosis will transform it to group 4, if successful

  25. Nov 2022
    1. In 1964, after earning four O-levels, including one in art and maths, Eno had developed an interest in art and music and had no interest in a "conventional job".[12]

      When did the definition of a so-called "conventional job" emerge? Presumably after the start of the industrial revolution when people began moving from traditional crafts, home work, farm work, and other general subsistence work.

      What defines a non-conventional job? Does it subsume caring work? What does David Graeber have to say about this in Bullshit Jobs?

    1. And so I’m blogging this to reflect on and record this dynamic, so I never forget this idea of trying the snack break ahead of a “peer feedback” session.

      Providing a snack break before a peer feedback classroom session can dramatically improve the interactions during it.

      This is not dissimilar to conferences providing socializing and snacking time/spaces both at the start of the event and throughout the day.

  26. view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org
    1. The word “kafala” in Arabic has traditionally been used to describe a social and moral “responsibility to another.”  Researchers Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan write, “kafala contracts were used to protect the weak and vulnerable by instituting the patronage of a prominent local who provided whatever protection was required.” Think of raising an orphaned child, for example. In business, kafala originally referred to contracts where a guarantor assumes liability for another person (e.g. a cosigner for a loan).    Kafala nowadays is often used to describe the legal relationship between businesses and migrant workers. Employers, typically citizens, act as sponsors for workers and assume legal responsibility for their movement and actions in exchange for their right to work in a geographic area. 

      The use of kafala shows a shift from a meaning of social responsibility into a meaning co-opted by capitalism and social contract.

  27. Oct 2022
  28. Sep 2022
    1. In the United States, we have col-lectively decided that we are not going to protect all families to the same degree,and this is reflected in our social policies and resulting poverty rates for thesefamilies.

      Presumably this is part of the reason for the problem mentioned above: https://hypothes.is/a/2uAmuEENEe2KentYKORSww

    1. The overall effect of cultural pre-emption is to reduce the fraction of adaptive information stored in genes and inherited genetically and to increase that fraction in culture.

      !- for : futures studies !- key finding : CCE

    2. Far beyond simply altering human evolution, this evidence suggests that human cultural inheritance is of global evolutionary significance.

      !- impact : human cultural evolution - is of global evolutionary significance

    3. Evidence [28] and theory [29] support the assertion that cultural evolution is more rapid than genetic evolution [27,28,30,31], even when measured on comparable scales [30,31]. One simple reason for this difference is that the ‘generation time’, G, of cultural transmission can be orders of magnitude shorter than that of genetic transmission [30]. In humans, the average time between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring, genetic G, ranges from roughly 2 to 3 decades, while cultural G, the average time between learning a piece of information and transmitting it, ranges from seconds to decades. Thus, it is reasonable to presume that cultural inheritance may provide greater adaptive capacity than genetic inheritance.

      !- definition : Generation time - generation time of genetic transmission in range of 2 to 3 decades while for cultural transmission can vary from seconds to decades.

    4. human long-term GCC is characterized by an evolutionary transition in inheritance (from genes to culture) which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group).

      !- for : Cultural Evolution - the findings of this paper point to culture is displacing genetic adaptive potential as the main driver of evolution. This is a very profound finding!

    1. Describing himself as a “messenger from the past”, Berger says that this discovery destroyed the preconceptions of a progressive, linear development of humans from apelike ancestors to what we are now. H. naledi is now dated at between 236,000 and 335,000 years old and was, therefore, a contemporary of Homo sapiens at that stage, which proves that a small-brained hominid was living side by side with its large-brained cousin, who is supposed to represent the apotheosis of sentient beings.

      !- for : Deep Humanity - intriguing result with important implications on cultural evolution

  29. Aug 2022
  30. Jul 2022
    1. Even though human existence in such a bare state may seem inconceivable, it is therenevertheless: every time a baby is born, a new, not yet programmed, prepersonal human is lookinginto somebody’s eyes ([27 ]: p. 133). This undeniable prepersonal presence we already call human leadsus to logically infer that humans do happen to exist prior to their personware [ 20 ,25 ,28 ]. It is thereforeour fundamental point of departure that humans are marvellous, intelligent, living cognitive agents inthemselves that can be said to exist prior to and independently of any particularly determined socialpersona. The point of acknowledging a prior prepersonal platform is not made towards arguing that ahuman can exist without any personware.

      !- for : altricial, feral children, mOTHER as the significant OTHER * The bare state of zero culture, zero social context is what each and every neonate starts with in life * The mOTHER is the most significant OTHER that begins the process of socializing and enculturating the neonate into a social system * Altrciality forces human parent into role of strong socialization * Without culture, the neonate born into the world outside the womb can become a feral child * https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/feral-children/ * The state of human ferality can tell us an enormous amount of the perspective of virtually every modern, encultured person - we have a bias towards a cultural perspective because almost noone has seen from a feral perspective * Language is the gateway into the symbolosphere, where enculturated, modern humans spend a significant portion of their lives immersed in this ubiquitous, constructed, symbolic reality

    1. von neumann was furious at him furious that he would waste precious machine time 00:04:20 doing the assembly that was clerical work that was supposed to be for people right and so we saw the same story happened just a little bit later when john backus and friends came up with us idea they called fortran this is so call high-level language where you could write out your formulas as if your writing mathmatical notation you could write out loops and this was shown to the assembly programmers and once again they just 00:04:46 they weren't interested they don't see any value in that they just didn't get it so um I want you to keep this in mind as I talk about the four big ideas that I'm going to talk about today that it's easy to think that technology technology is always getting better because Moore's law because computers are getting always more capable but ideas that require people to unlearn what they've learned and think in new ways there's often 00:05:10 enormous amount of resistance people over here they think they know what they're doing they think they know a programming is this programming that's not programming and so there's going to be a lot of resistance to adopting new ideas

      Cumulative cultural learning seems to be stuck in its own recursive loop- the developers of the old paradigm become the old "guard", resistant to any change that will disrupt their change. Paradigm shifts are resisted tooth and nail.

    1. what is our purpose so so so over on the right there i just want to reemphasize we are anticipatory we are cognitive we are problem solvers 01:25:44 we are a we and then i have below that i am a we you know like i i am i can i am i'm intimately connected with this i'm i'm everyone in that sense you know 01:25:57 yep yeah the whitman um you know i contain multitudes and also gilbert at all i have a paper called um we were never individuals kind of on that wavelength that you were talking about with the sort of distributed systems all the way down 01:26:09 approach and also dennis noble no privilege level of biological causality similar uh basically realization that multi-scale perspective complexity science basically entails 01:26:22 either the choice of a priori level like saying it is multi-scale and humans are the best scale or gaia is the scale or quantum is the right scale that's a claim as well as it being a claim 01:26:35 actually there's no privileged level of causality so that's the sort of table as it's said right right right right right and you know what it's not that really 01:26:46 this this entire project you could say in like a sentence you could say this whole project is to help us be who we are more be more uh honestly who we are more real 01:27:01 to who we are right it's not the it's not to to have people behave in some unusual way or some altruistic way or anything like that it is it is to have 01:27:12 it is to be more more ourselves more fully ourselves more completely ourselves and then all of these pages all these things we're talking about is who that self is who who are we really and it's about the 01:27:25 adjacent possible for who we are who we are is not an essence that is uh there's uh seven seals and it's being unlocked it's actually something that's being drawn out through 01:27:36 inactive realization in the niche through niche modification through stigma through becoming and and then the adjacent possible is where the imagination and the planning comes into play and if people are hesitant to talk about 01:27:49 the adjacent possible for who we could be just think about chess it's the adjacent possible with the strategy on the board and we're talking about the adjacent strategy possible for who we could be in terms of our strategy 01:28:02 for you know all these recursive layers our strategy for how we think of ourselves and all these other things you're talking about absolutely absolutely and then and then ultimately serving the 01:28:13 serving the kind of fitness purpose of you know if we take action a is that going to reduce our uncertainty about those things that we that really matter you know that are that are the the 01:28:27 the key variables

      Consciousness is the psychological aspect existent at one level of a multi-level human pyscho-biological-cultural INTERbeCOMing gestalt.

    1. The lesson of fallen societies is that civilization is a vulnerable organism, especially when it seems almighty. We are the world’s top predator, and predators crash suddenly when they outgrow their prey. If the resulting chaos unleashes nuclear war, it could bring mass extinction in a heartbeat, with Homo sapiens among the noted dead.

      The maladaptive cultural evolution of our species has led us to the height of human technological and economic prowess as well as the height of ecological disaster. This can be interpreted as the result of linear vs nonlinear thinking, simplistic modeling vs complex modeling and reductionistic approach vs a systems approach. An attitude of separation engenders a controlling attitude of nature based on hubris, instead of humbling ourselves at the vast ignorance each of us and also collectively we have about nature. Design based on a consistent attitude of willful ignorance is sure to fail. Then Ascent of Humanity will lead to a trajectory of its own downfall as long as that ascent depends on the cannibalization of its own life support system based on ignorance of our deep entanglement with nature. http://ascentofhumanity.com/text/

  31. Jun 2022
    1. For most of history, humanity’s challenge was how to acquire scarceinformation. There was hardly any good information to be foundanywhere. It was locked up in difficult-to-reproduce manuscripts orstuck in the heads of scholars. Access to information was limited, butthat wasn’t a problem for most people. Their lives and livelihoodsdidn’t require much information. Their main contribution was theirphysical labor, not their ideas.

      This is an overly painful Western cultural viewpoint and totally erases orality and oral cultures from the discussion. We can and should do better.

    1. From the classroom, to the street, to the Internet, Eric’s voice carried, and carried within it the possibility of a kind of education–amplified with digital technologies– that enables other human beings to become conscious, to become responsible, to learn.

      Sadly, we seem to have othered orality and cultural practices which don't fit into the Western literate cultural box. This prevents us from moving forward as a society and a diverse culture.

      In the 90's rap was culturally appropriated by some because of its perception as "cool" within the culture. Can this coolness be leveraged as a reintroduction of oral methods in our culture without the baggage of the appropriation? Can it be added to enhance the evolving third archive? As a legitimate teaching tool?

    1. how should issues of historical and cultural specificity informboth the analytics and politics of any feminist project.

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    1. evolution works on a much longer time scale right than than 00:35:09 any given life and so we need to we rely pretty heavily on helpful social norms right these cultural norms that actually teach us the right way to engage with each other and that can transcend any 00:35:22 one generation um and you know we worked really hard um in the west you know not just i mean this has happened everywhere but it you know we're where we're from um to acquire norms from from that we would 00:35:35 have called you know liberal democracy right that tolerance and respect and and these things and individual rights and you know it you see those things start to erode now and you start to see some of that base 00:35:48 nature taking back over the tribalism and the seeing the other as the enemy um the outgrouping of people and it we know from history it doesn't end well there right like the erosion of these norms 00:36:02 not only will continue to exacerbate collective illusions they i i think they're the biggest threat to free society that we face in a very long time yeah yeah you made a very convincing case for that

      Biological evolution works on relatively long time scales. Cultural evolution works on very short time scales. If we do not seriously listen to the lessons of history that teach valuable social norms, then we don't learn from history and history repeats.

  32. May 2022
    1. By exam-ining how movement toward equality has actually been produced, wecan learn precious lessons for our future and better understand thestruggles and mobilizations that have made this movement possible,as well as the institutional structures and legal, social, fiscal, educa-tional, and electoral systems that have allowed equality to become alasting reality.

      Understanding the history of inequality and how changes in institutional structures in legal, social, fiscal educational, and electoral systems have encouraged change toward equality, we might continue to change and modify these to ensure even greater equality.

    1. I would share concerns about ‘Disneyfication’ and trivialisation about much of our public life - one has only to turn on the TV any evening to see that - but this revival and the many others like it that are happening in Wales, as well as their ‘wassailing’ counterparts in England which are now spreading from their southwest redoubt to parts that never had them before, are a welcome antidote to such trivialisation. No two ‘traditions’ will be completely alike, but then they never were, completely, even the first time round.

      https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/could-we-have-a-thread-on-welsh-customs/4068/68

      Example of the word 'Disneyfication' used in a setting relating to the revival of cultural traditions. It's happening in the same area the original culture stemmed from so it's not exactly cultural appropriation, though that is often what Disneyfication does.

      Another example appears a few posts further up the page.

  33. Apr 2022
    1. XERXES. Alas, the triple banks of oars and those who died thereby! CHORUS. Pass! I will lead you, bring you home, with many a broken sigh!

      Xerxes sees the impact of his hubris, religion and fate are used as aids to feel better about mortal actions.