Humans 1, Chimps 0: Correcting the Record
jasoncollins.blog
jasoncollins.blog
Modern Japanese has two numeral systems - Arabic and Chinese. The Arabic numerals were introduced to Japanese relatively recently (only in the modern period). In pre-modern Japanese, only the Chinese numerals existed. In contemporary Japanese, Arabic numerals are more common, but Chinese numerals are still used in some contexts (especially texts written vertically)
一 / 1 (one stroke vs three)
十 / 10 (two strokes vs four)
万 / 10,000 (three strokes vs seven)
一 / 1 (one stroke vs one)
十 / 10 (two strokes vs two)
一万 / 10 000 (or 10K) (four strokes vs five)
When you get to numbers like 5462, there's no contest versus 五千四百六十二.
yea, and university students? would have been fair comparison if they tried to train members from some tribe who haven't been exposed to schooling,.
An example which springs to mind is the utterly absurd physical traits and likely corresponding hand-eye coordination Homo naledi possessed in order to perform their burial rituals
It took world-class climbers risking their lives to even reach the burial chamber, let alone do it repeatedly without modern climbing gear or even light
Despite their size and build being advantageous, I do not see how their mental attributes wouldn’t be more conducive to related skills than even trained (but tool-less) Homo sapiens
Source: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/june/claims-homo-na...
It is unlikely homo sapiens have equal or better neurological attributes for certain domains. In this example Homo naledi likely possessed superior balance and motorskills for the average naledian to be able to make it that deep
"No scientific evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and produced rock art" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
Humans have a lot of advantages; obviously our high-quality brains, fantastic eye sight, wonderful hands, etc. but I would argue that the fact we are physically weak, in the literal "strength" sense of that, even when we do exercise and strengthen to our very limits, is perhaps our biggest disadvantage compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.
(So, it isn't just a science fiction trope that there's a lot of things stronger than us. However, if the Klingons and the Vulcans and pretty much every other alien species in Star Trek can outwrestle a human, one does sometimes wonder how they can do that but also still have human, or slightly better than human, intelligence. Perhaps arguably the Vulcans should be a little weaker yet.)
humans can throw a punch much harder than a chimp even though a chimp's arm is stronger. humans can kick harder, etc, even though a chimp would usually tear a person up in a 'fight'.
humans can throw a ball faster and harder than any other primate, likewise we can swing a stick harder and with more precision.
some people will play down human skills saying, 'thats because they are trained and specialized, the average human cant do that'.
THATS LITERALLY OUR SPECIAL ABILITY. Humans are adaptable both physically and mentally to do virtually any task. adaptability means we aren't inherently good at any one of those tasks without training and practice. Its a feature, not a bug.
However, there’s inherent strength vs endurance tradeoffs involved. Space taken up by mitochondria is in direct competition with the cellular machinery that turns ATP into motion. Similarly, increased capillary density can supply more nutrients and oxygen, but again displaces more directly useful muscle tissue.
The further your muscle Anchor Point is from the pivot, the greater the mechanical lever. For example, the human bicep anchors only inch or two from our elbow pivot. You could anchor twice as far and double the resulting Force, and in fact many animals do exactly that.
It's hard for me to imagine the comparative kinematics in your example, but I would think throwing a baseball and a heavier Rock would go through essentially the same motion. Attempt might be far better at an overhand throw than a human, but a temp might be simply incapable of performing an underhanded or side pitch
Not what I’m talking about.
> You could anchor twice as far and double the resulting force > throwing a baseball and a heavier Rock would go through the same range of motion
I think you’re missing a key detail here. Muscles can only contract at a finite percentage of their total length per given unit of time even with near zero load. This is mostly irrelevant when lifting something, but means very fast motions want the anchor point near the point of rotation. People are really quite extraordinary in how far the can throw light objects but it’s a real tradeoff.
[1] But you have the “literal strenght” narrow fallback though.
No, you don't.
https://afan.ottenheimer.com/articles/myth_of_persistent_hun...
https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hu...
It is untestable, sure, but some of the main arguments in the proposed theory are based on untruths, and none of the evidence that we would expect to have found to support it being widespread has been found yet. We have found plenty of evidence pointing to humans using other hunting strategies, so it seems odd that there is no evidence pointing to persistence hunting and that the strategy that we evolved so many traits for would have died out in all but one or two remaining primitive cultures.
Simply put, a group of humans gambling 10s of thousands of calories each in order to possibly capture a single large animal miles away from the rest of the tribe is an absolutely horrendous survival strategy.
> Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders.
https://theweek.com/articles/468207/russian-family-that-live...
and
I'm saying that there is not a lot of evidence of it being widespread, or that it was a driver of human anatomy in evolution.
The theory is based on a handful of papers, some with major bad assumptions, and a few anecdotes. The arguments against it being widespread or common are just as strong or stronger than the arguments for.
My objection is just that the Outdoor magazine and Joe Rogan set like to cite it as if it is more or less settled.
Humans are weak, but that's not because we're using the energy elsewhere. We have comparable muscle mass to chimpanzees. We don't have comparable strength; our anatomy is what makes us weak, not a diversion of energy to other purposes.
I agree our physical inferiority is a big disadvantage, but I would say the biggest one is by far how much time is required to raise children.
Homo sapiens generally need anywhere from 10 to 30 years to reach proper adulthood, depending on social norms of the people concerned.
Contrast most animals who are done raising their young in months if not weeks, sometimes even days.
The article is misnamed, the actual score is 1 to 1.
> Cook and Wilson (2010b) subsequently trained two university students to a level superior to the chimpanzee.
Sounds like humans do in fact win.
There's a documentary on that, with Mark Wahlberg.
The humans had more than 20 years of training, going through mandatory education and then college.
It is not a competition between species. It's a competition between quality training on the one hand and on the other, the notion that some species are somehow born with skills.
I think humans tend to naively apply our own constructs to describe what we think defines intelligence, but this habit does not necessarily generalize onto other species. As an aside, for similar reasons I'd wager generalized AI will be a surprise event rather than an incremental discovery.
Recent studies described Goldfish that can remember certain types of problems beyond a year later. Far beyond what anyone assumed possible for such a simple creature.
Some people are unique, as I met one lady that could remember 93 non-sequential digits. While she was not successful academically, it would be unwise to play card games with that person for money. =)
Primates belong in their own habitats, and should be left alone unless people have a well defined _necessary_reason_ to exploit them as subjects.
Have a great day, =3
Great apes are hard for humans to match in e.g. upper body strength, so we are not strictly superior anyway...
I strongly believe that human intellectual superiority will come to an end within a lifetime, will be quite interesting to see how our species deals with it (to be clear: talking about AI there, not apes :P).
Of course a gun will solve this problem, hence my comment about 'baseline'. Perhaps I should have said 'unaugmented'.
What does that tell us about humans? Nothing.
You can improve your performance at this game by playing in extremely high contrast, so you can use the retinal afterimage to give you more time to study the numbers. Similar to how that "LSD" video requires you reconstruct persistence of visionsl while watching a too-slow animation of light painting.
Such a weird case, since any human could directly objectively test the claim on their own.
If you are in academia and you are not publishing your stuff to the public domain, including your git repo, please take some time to think about this and do what you need to do to pivot.