Against Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug

 

UNITS

1. Human Nature

   1. Postmodernists deny nature, almost a ban on using the word "nature"

      1. Kojeve

      2. Extreme: Rorty denies truth

   2. People assume that if you believe in human nature, you must be right wing. That's wrong.

      1. Don't cede nature to the right 

         1. Especially now, when the environmental movement is so important

      2. Doesn't make sense

      3. It makes it look like you're scared, like you don't want to deal with facts

      4. I'm not afraid of the concept of nature because I think left wing politics is perfectly compatible with nature

      5. In fact, Karl Marx believed in human nature, as did Bakunin and Noam Chomsky.

   3. On the other hand, "Natural Law" theorists are also wrong

      1. Generally using a faulty concept of nature to justify their own prejudices and their own political and ideological agendas

      2. Human nature is not fixed; Nature is not eternal

2. What is nature?

   1. What isn't nature:

      1. No "great chain of being"; no hierarchy

         1. No creature living today is "more evolved" than any other

         2. We've all been evolving for the same amount of time

            1. You are not more evolved than a worm.  Humans and ladybugs have spent the same number of hundreds of millions of years evolving to survive in your own niche

            2. Of course, they weren't humans and ladybugs that whole time

         3. Some creatures are more evolutionarily stable than others

            1. In a way, you could say that a horseshoe crab is more evolved than a human

      2. Natural does not mean "good"

      3. Natural does not mean "healthy" (death is just as much a part of nature as life)

      4. Nature does not protect us

      5. Nature is not something in the past

         1. "state of nature"

            1. Hobbes

            2. Rousseau

      6. Nature is now 

      7. “Nature never draws a line without blurring it.”

   2. Everything is nature (everything is the environment/ecological)

      1. The universe is nature

         1. People think of grass and trees and bunnies

            1. Yes, but also desert and magma

            2. And the liquid metallic hydrogen deep in the planet Jupiter, and the Bose-Einstein condensates in neutron stars

      1. Nature is reality; nature is truth*

         1. More accurately, nature is a way of looking at the universe

         1. Everything humans do is natural

            1. Kinsey

      2. Everything that ever was, was part of nature; everything that ever will be, will be part of nature

         1. Not only all of the past, not only all the present, not only the future that will happen, but every possibility that could possibly happen - it's all nature

      3. Insurance and dry cleaning and plastic six pack can rings and nuclear bombs are all part of nature

         1. Again, that doesn't mean that they're good, or good for you

      4. Rather than thinking of nature as something in the past, I tend to err in the other direction: we are now more "natural" than we ever were before

         1. We are "becoming" natural

         2. And in the future we will be even more natural than we are now

         3. Nature is revealing itself through us

         4. Everything that humans do is an expression of human nature

   3. Nature is what science attempts to investigate.  Nature is what science tries to learn about.  (i.e. Science looks at everything as if it were natural)

      1. Science "naturalizes"

         1. Yeah, so what?

         2. I think naturalizing is a healthy attitude

            1. Not perfect, but comparatively healthy, a lot of the time

            2. Take, for instance, homosexuality

            3. Naturalizing is a way of looking at the universe that tries not to be judgmental

            4. If something doesn't fit into your worldview, you should change your worldview

            5. "That's funny" - Asimov (but he didn't say it)

      2. Emphasis on "attempts" "tries" - not guaranteed, doesn't always succeed

         1. We don't know everything about human nature

      3. Science is not value free

         1. Science values honesty - and a particular kind of honesty

      4. By the way, I do not claim that science is the only way to truth

         1. Walking out into traffic

         2. My argument on the internet with "willfully obtuse" person

            1. They would say they are being more "honest" by being straightforwardly political

            2. I'm going to try to be neutral - is that "dishonest"?

         3. Not natural vs. artificial

            1. Artificial things are natural

            2. Natural vs. Supernatural

               1. Btw, if we prove that supernatural stuff exists, then it's part of nature

               2. If God exists, he's part of nature

               3. "Nature and nature's God," per Jefferson

   4. Nature is change/adaptation/evolution

      1. "Life finds a way"

      2. even change is changing

         1. Change is slowing down

            1. Caring for sick, old, hungry

         2. change is speeding up

            1. Exponential growth

   5. 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics - everything tends toward disorder, homogeny

      1. Another way of saying this is energy, potential

      2. Heat death of the universe

3. WEIRD

   1. Anthropology, missionaries, imperialism

   2. Performing exoticism

      1. bellydancing and the World's Fair

   3. “pizza effect” Agehananda Bharati

4. Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection

   1. patterns

      1. Some patterns make other patterns more likely

      2. Webs of probabilities of patterns

      3. Some patterns make themselves more likely

         1. "self-catalyzing reactions"

   2. genes

      1. DNA vs RNA

         1. Messenger RNA

         2. DNA as "save file"

            1. Turing machine?

      2. But also: prions... memes?

   3. abiogenesis

   4. Endosymbiosis / Symbiogenesis

   5. Single celled/multicellular

   6. non-teleological

   7. Convergent evolution

      1. Crabs, rabbits, mouse-like guys

   8. importance of niche

   9. competition

      1. interspecial

      2. intraspecial

      3. Arms races

   10. cooperation

   11. cephalization

   12. Fermi Paradox

5. Ecology

   1. cycles

   2. K-selected vs R-selected organisms

6. Cladistics

   1. What is a species?

   2. monophyly

   3. One family of all living things

      1. Animals (kingdom: animalia)

      2. Chordates (phylum: chordata)

      3. Mammals (class: mammalia)

      4. Euarchontoglires include

         1. rodents

            1. We're a lot like rats and mice

            2. That's why scentists do tests on them

         2. lagomorphs

         3. Tree shrews

         4. primates

         5. colugos

            1. 2 kinds of flying lemurs

      5. Origin of primates: teilhardina

         1. Lived during eocene

         2. Kind of like squirrels

      6. Primates (order)

         1. Lorises

         2. Golagos

         3. Lemurs

         4. Haplorhines

            1. tarsiers

            2. simians

               1. monkeys

               2. apes

      7. Apes

         1. Hylobatidae (lesser apes)

            1. 20 species of gibbons

         2. Hominidae (great apes) (family)

            1. Pongo

               1. Orangutans (3 species)

            2. Gorilla (2 species, eastern & western)

            3. Hominini

               1. Pan

                  1. Chimpanzees

                  2. Bonobos

               1. Homo

               2. And several extinct genera

      8. Early hominines

         1. Ouranopithecus

         2. Sivapithecus

         3. Chororapithecus

         4. Oreopithecus

         5. Graecopithecus

         6. Sahelanthropus

         7. Orrorin

         8. Ardipithecus

         9. Australopithecus

      9. Early Homo

         1. Homo rudolfensis

         2. Homo habilis

         3. Homo ergaster

         4. Homo antecessor

         5. Homo erectus

         6. Homo heidelbergensis

         7. Homo naledi

         8. Homo longi

         9. Homo sapiens

            1. Neanderthals

               1. "Fat factory" at Neumark-Nord site 125,000 years ago

            2. Denisovans (=longi?)

            3. Homo Floresiensis

   4. But don't forget: niche!

7. What makes humans human?

   1. Tool use? Nope

   2. Language? Nope

   3. My answer? Nothing 

      1. No human "essence"

   4. Humans have 23 chromosomal pairs (46 total)

      1. All other great apes have 24 (48 total)

      2. Human chromosome 2 is the result of fusion

8. Niche - but ever-changing: the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptedness) or ancestral environment

   1. Gathering

      1. fruit

   2. Hunting

      1. Hunting parties

   3. Walking / Long distance running

      1. Sweat glands

      2. hairlessness

         1. Convergent with pigs? (Elephants, hippos)

         2. Aquatic phase?

   4. Sitting/squatting (WEIRD?)

   5. Throwing/Catching?

   6. sports/games/play

   7. Hand axe

9. Game theory

   1. Prisoner's dilemma

   2. Iterated prisoner's dilemma

   3. Tit for tat

   4. super-rationality

   5. Free rider problem

   6. trust

      1. Detective stories/mysteries

10. Sociality

    1. aggregation

    2. Swarm intelligence

       1. stigmergy

    3. eusociality

    4. Fission-fusion behavior in primates

    5. Small bands of humans

       1. Dunbar's number

    6. Blood feuds that last many generations

11. Sex & Reproduction

    1. Sexual dimorphism

    2. Pair bonding

    3. infanticide

    4. mating season

    5. Ovary shape

    6. Concealed ovulation

    7. Penis size

    8. breasts

    9. consortship

    10. Same-sex coupling

    11. Macaques mating with deer

12. Politics

    1. Alpha males?

    2. Alpha females?

    3. Decision-making among baboons

    4. In group vs out group

    5. alliances/politics

       1. Competing for alliances

       2. friends

       3. popularity

       4. Kissing babies

    6. status

       1. grooming

       2. Hierarchy

          1. honor

          2. loyalty

          3. obedience

          4. trust

             1. "my word is my bond"

    7. “permssion structures”

       1. how far does this go?

       2. mating out of season?

    8. war

13. Empathy (Morality?)

    1. Frans de Waal's chimp experiment

    2. Empathy

       1. Super power

       2. Mirror neurons

       3. Not enough

          1. Not only empathy but accurate empathy

             1. Don't assume you understand someone else

             2. You can't read minds

          2. "Dark empaths"

          3. I don't regard empathy as inherently moral; nor do I see empathy as exclusively or primarily a tool for manipulation.  Rather, I see empathy, per se, as morally neutral.  It's a tool, a system of perception.  It depends how you use it.

    3. "expanding circle"

    4. Theory of other minds

    5. Ascribing intention and agency to people

    6. Trying to figure out "What is he up to?"

14. Human brains

    1. larger

       1. Human brains are about 3 pounds

       2. Chimp brains are about 1 pound

    2. more effective at some tasks, less at others

       1. Chimpanzee visual memory tasks

    3. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

       1. Neocortex vs Allocortex

    4. Temporal Lobe - especially temporal cortex

       1. Arcuate fasciculus much larger in humans

       2. This region is important in social and emotional processing

       3. Particularly language processing

    5. Greater neuroplasticity?

       1. Yes and no: rats have higher neurogenesis, and some fish, reptiles, and amphibians have very high neuroplasticity

          1. planaria

             1. Biochemical memory

       2. greater risk for Alzheimer's

       3. autism

       4. schizophrenia

       5. FOXP2

    6. Association - not necessarily reason 

       1. "What I tell you three times is true"

       2. Group decision making - quasi-democratic? But not necessarily rational

    7. Learning

       1. Dopamine

          1. Not just the result but the entire process, inc preparation

          2. addiction

          3. "superstition"/ritual

             1. As Mark Twain put it, one can learn too much from experience - the cat on the stove

             2. Baseball superstitions

    8. Pattern detection/iteration

       1. apophenia

       2. Human difficulty with randomness

15. Mimesis

    1. Mimicry

       1. Batesan mimicry

       2. Other forms of mimicry

    2. Imprinting (Lorenz)

    3. Do babies imitate parents? Do parents imitate babies?

       1. Baby talk

    4. Younger siblings

    5. Imitating powerful / high status

    6. Mimesis as play

       1. Mocking, mimicry 

    7. Conformism

       1. WEIRD concept of individuality

       2. Nietzsche "herd instinct in humanity" - you say that like it's a bad thing

       3. Conformism is one of our most powerful tools.  Don't give it up unless you have a very good reason to

       4. Tradition makes you powerful (Dylan)

       5. games

    8. Variation

       1. Culture

16. Signaling 

    1. mimesis

    2. Signaling as an alternative to violence

       1. The "superglue on the accelerator"

       2. The leash effect

    3. Sexual signaling

       1. flirting

    4. Other kinds of signaling

    5. Origin of emotions

       1. "cart before the horse"

       2. Facial expressions

       3. Body language

       4. behaviorism & the cognitive revolution

    6. Internal signalling

       1. pain

       2. pleasure

       3. loneliness

    7. Sounds

17. Begging

    1. Birds

       1. genes, hormones, etc..

    2. African wild dogs

    3. poson dart frogs, beetles, ants, termites, meerkats, etc., etc.

    4. advocating, negotiation

18. Music

    1. dance

       1. Lots of animals "dance" (spiders)

       2. only a few "dance" according to scientists: several species of parrots (Snowball), asian elephants, and humans 

    2. Making sounds

       1. Club-winged manakin

    3. Singing

       1. Whales, insects, bats, frogs, crickets, cats, wolves

       2. birdsong

          1. Mimic birds

             1. Lyre birds, parrots

    4. Pattern detection, pattern iteration

19. Cooking

20. Language/Memes

    1. Chomsky?

    2. Aid to empathy

    3. gesture

    4. Arising from the labor process (cooking)

    5. Visual cortex vs language areas of brain

    6. rules

       1. overregularization

       2. This is where morality truly starts

          1. Morality as grammar

21. Humor

22. Crying

23. Pride

    1. You can be proud “of” someone else

24. Embarrassment/shame

25. Disgust

26. Cosmetology

    1. First art form

    2. War paint

    3. Jewelry, body modification, adornments

    4. Derrida?

27. Initiation rites / Rites of passage

    1. Hunting parties

    2. Often, physical transition between living spaces - such as, women's hut to men's hut

    3. Arnold von Gennep's "preliminal," "liminal," "postliminal"

    4. Often, puberty; sometimes earlier, occasionally later

    5. For some tribes, a single ceremony.  But for many, initiation can take months or even years

    6. Genital mutilation

    7. beatings

    8. Urapmin of Papua New Guinea

       1. Ban

          1. Beatings,

          2. sacred objects,

          3. Reveal secret knowledge (Weng Awem)

          4. Then told this knowledge is untrue (famoul)

    9. Sateré Mawé of Brazil

       1. Bullet ant stings

    10. Smbari Anga or "Sambia" people of Papua New Guinea

        1. Sharp stick is inserted into nostril, causing profuse bleeding, to remove woman's "tingu"

        2. Simulated or actual sex acts, such as fellatio

    11. Tattoos

    12. Scarificaton

    13. piercings

    14. Cosmetics, special clothing, etc..

    15. Special name

28. Menstrual taboos

    1. Seclusion at puberty

       1. Zulu (South Africa)

          1. She must cover her head & hide among reeds by river until sunset

       2. Tiyans of Malabar: not allow another person or cow to see her

       3. In New Ireland, New Guinea, seclusion may take years

       4. Tukuna (Northwest Amazon), women are seen as especially susceptible to destructive magic during puberty

    2. Menarche hut

       1. Nepal: Chhaupadi

    3. Ritual impurity; special washing or bathing rituals

    4. Apache: pubescent women are capable of giving supernatural blessings

29. Poetry

    1. mnemonics

       1. rhyme

       2. alliteration

       3. wordplay (homophony etc)

       4. rhythm

    2. Establishing the (conformist) general opinion, common wisdom, "truth" - get your version of events out there first

    3. fame

    4. boasting

    5. heroism

    6. storytelling

       1. Identifying with characters, inc. hero

          1. Side-effect of empathy superpower

    7. Competitive poetry

    8. Telling stories/"nursery rhymes" to children

    9. Stories often have message

       1. obey

       2. Be careful, etc.

30. Altered states of consciousness

    1. hypnosis

    2. Rhythm, dance

    3. drugs

31. Magic, sorcery and shamanism

    1. "darts"

    2. I suspect it worked reflexively. At first, disease and other problems were blamed on rival tribes.  Then people began to offer services of protecting from black magic - then, eventually offensive magic.

       1. Perhaps mimesis? Imitation of (what you interpret to be) outgroup sorcery

32. Death rites and funerals

33. Ghosts, spirits, etc..

34. Ancestor worship

    1. "It's what he would have wanted"

    2. "Never speak ill of the dead"

35. Sacrifice

36. Cannibalism

37. Ritualized battle

38. Anthropomorphism, Animism

    1. Ascribing intention and agency to things

39. Paleolithic Era

    1. Old stone age tools

       1. Chimpanzees have been observed making simple spears and hunting galago

       2. Archeological evidence for composite (stone-tipped) spears 500,000 years ago - quite likely not by humans

       3. Rafts (840.000 bp)

       4. Earliest needle: 60,000 bp, South Africa, made of bone

40. Early economics

    1. obligations

    2. family

    3. Gift economy

    4. Earliest form of trade was between tribes

       1. Highly ritualized

       2. May involve religion and games, sports

    5. Tribute

    6. Debt

41. Domestication of animals - part 1

    1. Dogs (30,000-35,000 to 15,000 bp)

    2. Humans

42. Ceramics 

    1. Figurines (29,000-25,000 ya) 

       1. Venus of Dolni, Czech Republic

    2. Vessels (18,000 ya)

       1. Jiangxi, China

43. Agriculture (approx. 13,000 BCE - 7000 BCE)

44. Bread (12,600-9,600 BCE)

    1. pizza

45. The patriarchy

46. Slavery

47. Marriage

    1. Endogamy vs Exogamy

    2. Group marriage?

       1. Nivkh/Gilyak

    3. Joining two (or more) families into an alliance

    4. May be planned generations in advance

       1. "seventh generation"

    5. At first, perhaps, only powerful families

48. "pawns," etc.

49. Australian aboriginal culture

    1. The Dreaming, or Dreamtime

    2. Everywhen

    3. Aranda people: "alcheringa" (mistranslated?) eternal, uncreated

50. Domestication of animals - part 2

    1. End of Pleistocene Era: 11,700 years ago: around 10000-9500 BCE

    2. Beginning of Neolithic: around 10000 BCE

       1. Sheep

       2. Goats

       3. Pigs

       4. Cattle

       5. Cats?

51. Gobekli Tepe (9500-8000 BCE)

52. Copper (9000 BCE) "Chalcolithic Age"

    1. Cold working

    2. Smelting (5500-5000 BCE, Serbia)

53. Gods & Religion

    1. What is religion?

       1. fertility

    2. festivals

    3. calendar?

    4. Often one chief god, with several subordinate gods

    5. Sometimes Deus absconditus

54. Mead (7000 BCE)

    1. Wine 6000 BCE

55. Egypt, part 1

56. Starcevo Culture (6200-4500 BCE)

    1. Tells

57. Linear pottery culture (LBK) (5500-5000 BCE)

    1. longhouses

    2. Ended with mass death, as in Tellheim death pit

    3. WHG (western hunter-gatherer) genetic grouping, mixed with farmers

    4. Made cheese (we have the sieves they used to separate curds and whey)

58. Bronze Age begins

    1. The earliest piece of bronze is from 4650 BCE, and there have been other early pieces found in Serbia and Bulgaria.

    2. But bronze did not become widespread until about 3300 BCE, when humans started making bronze in Mesopotamia - this is usually cited as the beginning of the "Bronze Age"

59. “Civilization”

    1. Could earlier civilizations have risen and fallen?

60. Writing, the State, and Money

    1. These are intertwined in a complex way. Can we untangle them?

    2. The State (government?)

       1. Up until now there has been no government

          1. lack of imagination

       2. How did it start?

          1. Why do people fight for their own oppression?

          2. Not an easy question

          3. One way of reframing it is how did people learn to betray their own families

             1. The sense of family

             2. A deep sense of loyalty that perhaps cannot be put into words

             3. You do anything for family

             4. You sacrifice everything for family, even your own life

                1. Maybe all these fancy theories of “rational maximizers” don't understand that

             5. How did this break down?

             6. Antigone

       3. One obvious answer: war. Soldiers defeat them. Conquered

          1. This isn't enough.

       4. Another answer: religion

          1. This isn't enough.

       5. Another answer: debt adjudication, debt relief

61. Mesopotamia, part 1

    1. Ubaid Period (5500-3700 BCE)

       1. Tell al-Ubaid

    2. Uruk Period (4000-3100 BCE): Sumer

       1. Ur

       2. Uruk

       3. Eridu

       4. Larsa

       5. Umma

       6. Adab

       7. Kish

       8. Each city-state had its own Ensi (ruler)

62. Egypt, part 2

63. Mesopotamia, part 2

    1. Jemdet Nasr Period (3100-2900)

       1. Tell Jemdet Nasr

       2. Nippur

       3. Akshak

       4. Akkad was somewhere in Northern Mesopotamia, but its precise location is unknown

       5. Meanwhile, east of the Euphrades were the Elamites

          1. Susa

    2. Early Dynastic I Period (2900-2350 BCE)

       1. Lagash

          1. Eannatum, Ensi of Lagash, establishes the first empire

             1. Destroyed Susa

    3. Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334-2279 BCE)

       1. Started as cup-bearer to Ur-Zababa, King of Kish

64. Indus River Valley Civilization

    1. Harappa

    2. Mohenjo-Daro

65. Inanna and the Huluppu Tree (c.2100 BCE)

66. Julian Jayne's theory of consciousness

    1. I love kooks because they simultaneously open our minds to possibilities we had not yet considered and because they allow you to put your own thoughts in sharpest contrast to their thoughts, which gives you the chance to articulate your own position more clearly