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Comment by Avshalom | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone ever bother asking the Tukanoans why they process the manioc like that?

I wash my hands, I can't see bacteria or germs, I've certainly never seen a anyone die directly because of unwashed hands, and it's just a slow statistical increase in sickness if a whole bunch of people stop...

but I don't wash my hands because I observed my elders, or because some cultural figure told me it was merely the way of our people. Some just told at some point to wash my hands cause otherwise people get sick, and if I had had questions they'd have mentioned germs and stuff.

Like did any one check if the Tukanoans know manioc will slowly poison them otherwise? I know it's a bit of a fuzzy line but is that process "tradition" or is it "technology"

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I think part of the why to your question is that Its deceiving to view the human as a singular entity.

There isnt a you, practically, there is infact an Us, and as an organism, the rule of large numbers wins everytime, we select for what we think is right as a social collective/organism.

That kind of thinking is accepted in science, but not wide spread amongst the singular individuals.

Older cultures didnt need to check for anything, decisions probably evolved through intra generational symbolism and stories about ghosts and evil spirits. Life wont answer the why, it just is, and if we push itll just eat us.

In the same breadth, science is nature too. So whatever works, really.

> we select for what we think is right as a social collective/organism.

This is simply not true. Our values are something the elites ( not all necessarily but enough ) bestow or force upon us with either carrots or sticks. Look at any cultural, social, legal, etc values in society. It wasn't the "collective" that decided it, it was the few elites who convinced us to believe in it. Like Moses coming down the mountain with those tablets, we are told what is right or wrong, we don't decide it.

Their behavior is part of the organism. Each part of society is trying to maximize for its own good. I dont define good and i dont even try .. what is right is an amoral thing and what is right is simply what is selected for over time, thats actually biological, you seem to maybe want to ethically justify it on a personal level, but thats irrelevant, as an individual, you are a spec, wood to a fire. You can only do you, to the best of your abilities. You may wish for the universe to care, and thats a soft sentiment. The closest youre getting here is maybe this conversation, and the attitudes of those who know and love you.

Think about the world for the past two thousand years, without mass media, with a state-controlled religion, with vast majority of the population poor and illiterate.

They , realistically, could not take part in the process.

Well i see how you're categorizing into rich and poor, but i see a continuum.

The rich were poor before they became rich. Social media, religion, government, even your own thinking, and mine, its all nature and happening.

Also if you would entertain me, try and think about the actual relevance of someone like those rich people you are speaking about, and embed that into the universe’s timeline. I think the amount of importance and significance given to this group of people is absurd. Elon Musk isnt some Rothchild, niether is Bill gates, or warren buffet.

The rich are a by product of their environment as it is embedded in time and space. The rich are just one element of the machinery which includes the poor, just like your body has different parts tasked to do different things, people of different temperaments will grow to be a certain thing, and even expand in time as families, maybe dynasties, which histories has seen rise and fall like the waves of a an ocean ebb and flow.

What saddens a bit is thinking maybe you don't see your own potential, may i ask where you see yourself? Rich, poor? Powerful, powerless?

I am talking about a medieval society, where majority of the population were peasants or serfs, and the nobility had their status enshrined in law. This is not an ambiguous situation.

In Russia a kilo of honey was worth more than a serf, so was a good horse.

> Each part of society is trying to maximize for its own good.

No. Only the elites are even capable of reasoning about their own good nevermind trying to maximize it. The vast lower class are incapable of even formulating a concept of "their own good". As orwell so cleverly put it, the proles are pretty much animals, they aren't able to organize and think about their own "good" no more than livestock in an industrial farm are able to think about their own good. If the proles were capable of maximizing their own good, they wouldn't be proles, they would be the elites.

"As the Party slogan put it: 'Proles and animals are free.'" --1984

> I dont define good and i dont even try

Neither have I.

Its a difference of belief, and if i may, you sound a little bit depressed and nihilistic.

Maybe you need to realize your own agency in the story. You are a part of that machine too.

Id recommend jordan peterson and his take on hierarchy, its very eye opening.

> Its a difference of belief

It isn't a matter of belief. It's a matter of history and society. The proles don't have the capacity to do what you claim they can. Individually, a clever prole can rise up, but not collectively.

> and if i may, you sound a little bit depressed and nihilistic.

I'm neither. You might be projecting. Maybe a few more peterson videos that you will misunderstand/misinterpret will cure you?

> Maybe you need to realize your own agency in the story. You are a part of that machine too.

You seem to think I am part of the proles. I'm certainly not.

> Id recommend jordan peterson and his take on hierarchy, its very eye opening.

Nothing jordan peterson has stated is new. His take of hierarchy isn't his. It's been around a long time, even before peterson was born. But I agree that many could learn a thing or two from peterson. Unfortunately, it looks like some aren't able to understand him.

Anyways, if you provided any evidence to your claim, maybe this discussion would have been worth it, but I can see it's simply a misguided belief, so I'll leave you to it.

Well i certainly see your sarcasm and negative attitude to my argument, which is Ofcourse not pleasant - i agree with ending this, and i wish you nothing but good things, have a great day man

Or the groups or that did the wrong thing simply died, and what we are left with are the accidental randomly distributed beliefs that came about for no reason at all, but happened to be ones that weren't slightly more correlated with dying.

The example I like to use here is that it is often assumed that cannibalism taboos arise because people don't want to/don't like to eat other humans, or that doing so increases risk of disease. But 1. Meat is meat, especially once cooked 2. Have you _seen_ some of the stuff we eat? and 3. Instances of humans eating other humans still happen routinely in the modern world when people are hungry enough, though in some well documented instances they don't actively kill anyone for food.

I find a plausible alternative hypothesis to be that the innate (pre-cultural) disposition toward eating conspecifics is essentially random, and that cannibalism is actively selected against because human beings hate nothing more than the feeling of being prey. We kill everything and anything that is even remotely threatening to us. Groups _without_ the cannibalism taboo are thus much more likely to be wiped out as a result of virtually universal hatred and fear by any other group around.

"Why don't we eat the people we kill mommy?" -> "Because eating people is bad and you are more likely to get sick." vs "Because if we did everyone else would hunt us down and kill us and anyone who believed like us. Better to leave them be or bury them to show we are not predators."

There is probably an answer out there waiting to be found in a pile case studies and social science polls.

tl;dr It's the hunting not the eating.

Its more or less what i said in a different narrative. So the groups that did the right thing went on to survive, and the process to abstract what is “right” continued.

I think the need to abstract what is right is born out of the local phenomena of suffering .. just like the diety of medicine and healing Sekhmet or Hepius.

Death and disease would have still been universal, independent of which tribe survived. Im not arguing for the morality of disease here, but i am saying its a universal trait the system has, and we seem to try and minimize pain/suffering, much in the same way we need food.

I actually kind of agree with ur tldr, but only because i don’t see a real differences between hunting and eating. Its one process, and its discreteness is a local illusion - its actually happening everywhere at once, which we seem to be bad at imagining.

>Older cultures didnt need to check for anything, decisions probably evolved through intra generational symbolism and stories about ghosts and evil spirits.

Did anyone check if that is actually true is part of what I'm asking here. Or did/do the Tukanoans keep this process alive not out of intra generational symbolism, but because they make sure to tell the next generation it's poison.

Well dawkins wrote about memes, carl jung wrote about the collective unconscious, ofcourse darwin himself is seminal work ... behavioral and evolutionary psychology is an attempt to abstract these things. Could even look at military application and research of psychology during war.

I think the you are here today typing in a keyboard is proof enough it works - i also think today’s science is a part of that mechanism - i also don't really think our science today is any different than stories about evil spirits, at least in function and eventual “goal”, both don't have alot of power to influence the phenomena they are trying to explain.

Woah, this sentiment nails it. Please recommend reading.

dawkins wrote about memes, carl jung wrote about the collective unconscious, darwin himself is seminal work, behavioral and evolutionary psychology is an attempt to abstract these things. Could even look at military application and research of psychology during war.

We don't have to go very far to meet the collective ideal, its almost in every abstraction we make, also in art and seemingly non sciency things.

I copied a part of an answer i gave before for the readings, i hope you dont mind.

You didn't ask me but I have a similar outlook and would appreciate reading suggestions.

Jordan Peterson talks about the diversity of opinion being important because there is no single or constant fitness function. His lectures on personality get into this a bit. His 12 rules book does not.

I believe he's informed a lot by the work of Jonathan Haidt. His book The Righteous Mind is good.

It’s actually a lot of child development literature by w.d winicot and r.d laing, and the developmental psychology cult, also my own experience as a meditator, some nietzsche, existential theory (sartre, nausea). I surprisingly didnt read Haidth but ill check him out.

Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious influenced me alot too, and i find alot of sense / approval in Peterson's lectures.

I generally think the fact that we can generalize our behavior (childrens psych lit, behavioral psych lit.) is so astounding ... the fact we can agree on a minimum set of things we can agree we dont like happening to us (note: smart way of asserting universality of morals, you dont want to be murdered can be a good minimim example here) blows my mind.

In the end its what i choose to believe, i dont think im unique in thinking this way either.

I think even my thinking’s rightness is the result of that same intra generational process, im not unique, nor do i think i am in control (beyond the local control i exercise by trying not to die or be eaten).

> but I don't wash my hands because I observed my elders, or because some cultural figure told me it was merely the way of our people. Some just told at some point to wash my hands cause otherwise people get sick, and if I had had questions they'd have mentioned germs and stuff.

Not trying to be sarcastic or anything but want to point out that this basically is the same as observing one's elders. Our parents, teachers, doctors, etc, told us to wash our hands, and, when we asked why, explained that, they because of germs, it is the way of our people.

> I've certainly never seen a anyone die directly because of unwashed hands

I’ve sure seen someone get gastro from inadequate hands-washing, and after copping a bad batch myself that’s motivation enough.

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