Jane Goodall has died
latimes.com
latimes.com
She also was speaking on a panel just a week ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0GWlZm3gk
she was quite an example of how anyone can impact the world while just doing what they love.
Understanding what chimpanzees are like has made me realize that we humans are not so different from other animals as we used to think. What makes us most different is that we are far more clever than even the cleverest chimp, and we have words. We have a spoken language. We can tell stories about what happened a week or a year or a decade ago. We can plan for the future, and we can discuss things - one person's idea can grow and change as other people contribute their ideas. Great ideas become greater, problems are solved.
My Life with the Chimpanzees (1996), p. 140
-- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest
The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization.
Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" almost 60 years ago - all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
We came from the caves, we didn't know any better we just multiplied like a cancer. More population also brings more benefits, more geniuses more inventions etc.
The trick is doing it without wars and inequality, good luck with that.
it is so dangerous and naive to think that utopia is possible, even if we all could agree that Star Trek is one, which we shall not, because I certainly do not think its depiction of watered down "luxury space communism with military ranks" is a desirable society.
It is largely based on the premise of having copious amounts basically free energy, free food (through replicators), safety, and a wide open universe for settlers to join when they do not want to stay in the Federation. Basically, it is based on the absence of contention of resources. Until we have that, either through shrinking or expansions of habitat, we will retain conflict.
Inequality not so much but much progress has been made in eliminating abject poverty.
Have we? After the nightmare of The War to End All Wars, did anyone in the mainstream honestly expect Europe to turn into an even bigger charnel house (~30-50 million dead) two decades later?
It's been 80 years since then, and we've not had a 'large' industrialized war since then. But we have all been living under an atomic sword of Damocles.
Do you think we're going to get to 200 years without that sword falling? What odds do you give on that (We've had many close calls since then)? How many people would die if it does fall? If in 2145, half a billion[1] people will die in nuclear fire, will we retroactively consider the brief stretch of history we live in to just be a brief ceasefire?
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[1] That would be a best case outcome for a nuclear war - a limited one, that wouldn't rise to the level of a global catastrophe.
10 billion is gonna be the high end by the looks of things, and that decline is going to be hardly conducive to utopia. The math of dependency ratios is inescapably painful.
At current trends, the global population will begin actively shrinking as soon as 2040, just 15 years away.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/hu....
This isn't a theoretical - most of Western Europe has been in this boat for a long time, and relies heavily on immigration to fill the labour gap (despite however much political posturing about wanting to restrict immigration)
If we do this on a global scale, there is nowhere to draw immigrants from, and a bunch of old folks are going to be abandoned to die...
The problem I have with this logic is that it seems to assume a binary of the population either staying at least as high as it is or massively reducing. The idea that there's no middle ground where the population goes down slowly rather than massively spiking all at once feels like it needs much more justification rather than just assuming it.
Unfortunately, we will return to that level. Then 25 years later, we'll be only half that number (or worse).
>all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
Hilariously wrong, you mean. I especially like the ones about how the UK would be filled with cannibal savages by the 1980s, because everyone would be starving.
What are your main reasons for thinking that?
If she has fewer than that, population is shrinking, each generation is smaller than the last. In China and other parts of East Asia (not just China, this isn't the One Child Policy and its effects), it's already at or below 1.0. Heading that way everywhere else. This isn't a prediction, it's already happening. And in Europe, in North America, everywhere but a few countries in Africa (and they're trending towards this too).
This is real, I would say it can't be denied or ignored except most people are ignorant and in denial. Low fertility rates can become social norms, they do become social norms, and after that they never raise back to safe/healthy ones. Little children grow up thinking that having one child or no children at all is normal and they do not buck the trend when they become adults themselves. It's how humans become extinct.
Don’t you think it’s likely more of a pendulum? Maybe the equilibrium is 5-7 billion, and there are times when people have more kids, and times of fewer. Even if we drop to 3 billion, the world would find ways to go on, likely implementing policies that make big families more favorable again.
No. For it to be a pendulum, it would have to be true that some little girl, herself the only child from a long line of only-children, who grows up in a society where people have only one child or more likely no children, all her role models being childless... her school teachers, celebrities, everyone she's heard of, that little girl would grow up and say "I want to be a mommy and have 5/8/12 kids!" And that's so absurd I don't know why you'd even ask.
Nor is it likely, as many of those with unearned optimism believe, that some "high fertility families" can just outbreed everyone and come out the other side of this. Their children become indoctrinated faster than they can have them... the Duggars aren't on track for 400 (20x20) grandchildren. Insularity doesn't help, the Amish only survive with their lifestyle as long as our lifestyle exists... it requires too much technology that they buy from us. They either would need to change and become like us, or revert to technology from centuries before after which their fertility plummets.
>Maybe the equilibrium is 5-7 billion,
What's the life expectancy in China? Find that number, n. In that many years, China's population will be less than half what it is today. Much less. You have no intuitive sense of the math here. The current generation being born will live until that life expectancy number, then die (on average). So the current generation being born right now will evaporate in that number of years... but the generation they'll start giving birth to in about 25 years, it will be only half the size. The older generations, almost all of those will be dead in n years, since they're way past life expectancy.
It's fucking bleak.
>Even if we drop to 3 billion, the world would find ways to go on, likely implementing policies that make big families more favorable again.
There are no policies that can incentivize this that are also affordable. How much do you think you'd need to bribe someone who calls themselves "childfree" to have children? Sure, everyone has a price. Is that $1mil, or $1bil? And sure, the US government can afford even the $1bil number. But the United States can't afford $1bil times the 500,000 births we need next year. And if the US can't afford it, how the fuck will Portugal or Taiwan or Australia afford it?
It's not that you're thinking unclearly about this. It's that you haven't thought about it at all. Because no one's ever rang the alarm bell. And why haven't they? They keep telling you that it's no big deal. This is human extinction.
https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/...
Gary Larson cartoon incident
One of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons shows two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a blonde human hair on the other and inquires, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?"[114] Goodall herself was in Africa at the time. The Jane Goodall Institute thought the cartoon was in bad taste and had its lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate in which they described the cartoon as an "atrocity". They were stymied by Goodall herself: when she returned and saw the cartoon, she stated that she found the cartoon amusing.[115]
Since then, all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon have gone to the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the controversy, and the institute's letter was included next to the cartoon in the complete Far Side collection.[116] She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behaviour of humans and animals. In 1988, when Larson visited Goodall's research facility in Tanzania,[115] he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo.
That last sentence is missing from the Wikipedia page. What is the source on it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side#Jane_Goodall_cart...
> Frodo's aggression was not limited to colobus monkeys and other chimpanzees. In May 2002, he killed a 14-month-old human child that the niece of a member of the research team had carried into his territory.[61] As a result, the Tanzanian National Parks Department considered killing Frodo.[61] In 1988, he attacked visiting Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, leaving him bruised and scratched.[61] Frodo had a history of attacking the researchers observing him; Goodall was attacked by Frodo on multiple occasions and, in 1989, the ape beat her head so violently her neck was nearly broken.[61]
https://blog.michael-lawrence-wilson.com/2014/01/19/frodo-30...
Those which are structurally whimsical - well, if you had to deal them as liabilities, then you would have to do it preemptively (it may not be that it's Chimpy that is so brutal - they just can be brutal).
Re-watch "Life of Brian".
Tech (and business, and politics) tends to attract a lot of people who are convinced they already know everything and who could probably benefit from a little more confidence and perspective.
That combination makes for a lot of thin-skinned bullshit. I could name names, but you all know the people I am talking about.
I like the strip that shows a scientist who has invented an animal translator learning that what dogs are really saying is "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
This just made the whole story so much funnier. I'm really glad to have read it. Poor guy, but hilarious to read about.
Her work transcended science. It touched on compassion, respect for all living beings, and a deep curiosity about the natural world that inspired generations. She didn’t just study chimpanzees; she taught us what it means to observe with empathy, to advocate with conviction, and to act with hope. Her legacy will echo for a very long time.
Imagine what kind of world we would live in if we put these kinds of human beings in charge instead.
> Her most disturbing studies came in the mid-1970s, when she and her team of field workers began to record a series of savage attacks.
> The incidents grew into what Goodall called the four-year war, a period of brutality carried out by a band of male chimpanzees from a region known as the Kasakela Valley. The marauders beat and slashed to death all the males in a neighboring colony and subjugated the breeding females, essentially annihilating an entire community.
For all the good Jane Goodall has done in the world, I am forever grateful that she cared enough to give a young girl a gift she can treasure forever.
It was so gratifying to see her turn into a global leader in conservation, compassion, and peace. I had a former supervisor who got to meet her personally at a conference on wildlife conservation in Africa several years ago (I was quite jealous)... I was fortunate to see her speak publicly though.
RIP Jane Goodall!
If you don't like paraphyletic labels for aesthetic reasons, just include the apes to make it monophyletic. The main reason we don't is that many people have strong, visceral reactions to being called a monkey.
You can't do that to fish or trees without including a bunch of things that are obviously not trees and fish.
a quick search and, as the french say, "Viola" :)
see https://www.wsj.com/video/is-jane-goodall-fighting-a-losing-...
https://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/what-we-do/conservation/...
No more will chimpanzees be able to conduct research with that tramp (https://screenrant.com/far-side-controversial-comic-strip-ja...).
Good(all?) on her, it's nice to see leaders both have a sense of humor and actually lead.
"60 Minutes" re-published a 2018 interview about Tom Mangelsen with Jane Goodall:
Also, the "Speech for History" last year:
> But I kept asking people, “But where does the egg come out of the hen, because I can’t see a hole that big?” And nobody told me. So one day - I remember this really well - I saw a hen (she was brown) going into one of these hen-houses, and I must have thought, “Ah, she’s going to lay an egg”. So I crawled after her. Big mistake! Squawks of fear - she flew out. But now I’m on the path of discovery: I’m going to jolly well find out how this egg comes out. So I waited in an empty hen-house, and I waited for four hours. For a child of four - some of you are parents - that’s a lot of patience. My mother was about to call the police; nobody knew where I was. And then she sees this excited little girl rushing towards the house, because I had seen how a hen lays an egg and where the egg comes out. I don’t know who was more excited - me or the hen. Anyway, so she sat down to hear this wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg.
> I tell that story because isn’t that the making of a little scientist? Curiosity, asking questions, not getting the right answer, deciding to find out for yourself, making a mistake, not giving up, and learning patience - it was all there.
(From the "Speech for History".)
Remarkable woman. I feel thankful to have had the chance to just stand there and listen to her and look around at all the other rapt faces around me.
Rest in peace, Jane. You will be missed.
Jane Goodall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall
"Dr. Jane Goodall Teaches Conservation" https://www.masterclass.com/classes/jane-goodall-teaches-con...
"Primatologist Answers Ape Questions From Twitter" https://youtube.com/watch?v=z4BmXSBXz-c
> I am gorilla. I am flowers, animals. I am nature. Man Koko love. Earth Koko love. But Man stupid. Stupid! Koko sorry. Koko cry. Time hurry! Fix Earth! Help Earth! Hurry! Protect Earth. Nature see you. Thank you.
I saw that and felt like I was in crazy land. That's supposedly the kind of talking Koko's been doing this whole time?? Turns out, there was a lot of government funding into ape communication in the 70s, and when researchers figured out that apes can't meaningfully communicate, the funding dried up. Her handler, Penny Patterson, pivoted from research to PR. And how.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/what-does-koko-know-about-...
That's why it's never been done again. Because it was never done in the first place.
> Some viewers took the video a little too literally, however, and were surprised at Koko's pithy and timely exhortation to heed the perils of global warming. But nothing about the video indicates that Koko can actually entertain, much less communicate to humans, thoughts about environmentalism.
Personally I never took it literally. I saw the video and knew right away it was just a marketing stunt, but that didn't mean I suddenly thought research into ape intelligence and language should stop. I do wish they had made it more clear that it was just a stunt because I'm sure people like you felt mislead.
I am still fascinated with Koko and the brains of great apes! Also fascinating that they've never asked a question but at least one grey parrot has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)#cite_note-jordan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#Criticism_a...
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Regarding:
> I do wish they had made it more clear that it was just a stunt because I'm sure people like you felt mislead.
People like me felt like "what the hell was that?", maybe :D
The more you look into Penny Patterson's claims, the more you go "what the hell?"
This is awful news, though I can't help but to feel she really did it all the right way. Happy she was a part of my timeline.
The weird thing is just today I had recommended that book to a friend.
Rest in peace, Jane.
RIP.
RIP Jane Goodall
We have learnt to communicate with them, but they also don't seem to ask questions, at least not the way that humans do.
There is obvious intelligence in their eyes and deliberation in their movements, but they seem to be content with an almost static culture. Which was also true for the Neanderthals.
What was the last subtle mutation that prodded our species onto the road of intellectual curiosity?
We still don't know.
To elaborate, there seems to be a difference between physical curiosity and intellectual curiosity.
Many mammals, especially when young, are very curious about their environment, peeking, sniffing, burrowing in the ground etc. So are human children.
But the ability to ask more abstract questions "why do the stars shine?" does seem to be limited to humans alone, and maybe not even all humans. And it is very uncertain if archaic humans had it as well.
I guess it’s mainly related to the fact that we have a different kind of consciousness than other mammals. Maybe that’s tautological? Maybe asking questions about stars defines our consciousness?
Perhaps expecting change makes change more likely. Also, when things are scarce and life is tenuous you are less likely to experiment. Why waste the resources? Why take the risk? When surplus calories became commonplace is when cultural change took off.
True, but not the entire picture either. From what we know, even hunters and gatherers living in inhospitable regions have a rich oral culture and extensive pantheons of gods, demigods and legendary heroes. There seems to be something in us humans that yearns for more than just calories.
And we have no evidence that we are different in this from Neanderthals (arguably also humans). There is evidence of cultural variation among chimps, so there must also be cultural change. Do they yearn for things more than calories? Well, they play. They are curious.
I am extremely skeptical of claims that humans are special. We are strongly motivated to find this to be true. On the one hand, it flatters us. On the other hand, it justifies believing we are ethically distinct. This same way of thinking has been applied to other humans with results we now deplore.
Are we special, the chosen creatures? Maybe. We sure want to believe we are. It's fun and useful to be special! But maybe we should be cautious leaping to that conclusion. I think Jane Goodall was of this mind as well.
For me, humans are special in their capability to create extensive culture. That does not mean that $deity has created us in its image, it may well be a random fluke of evolution.
But we haven't seen a cave painting done by non-humans yet, nor heard a story narrated by them.
Obviously not, even though there are aspects of a shared global culture indicated by their global distribution. Material culture is related to culture, but it's an imperfect and imprecise record. The same issue occurs with correlating culture with genetics or language.
The evidence on the ground is of course, limited. But it's a fairly common view among anthropologists/archaeologists that our perspective on ancient societies is immensely limited by the material record, hence the generally positive reception to Dawn of Everything despite its sketchy details and interpretations.
The Neanderthal claim is what you can call unsubstantiated (so, one claim, not so many), but I would like to draw your attention to the extreme stability of the Mousterien industry. No Homo sapiens sapiens industry comes close to this level of stability.
"infected with exceptionalism"
So, we aren't exceptional at all? How do you square this rejection with the fact that you have never encountered, say, a written comment by a member of another species?
The word "infected" is very negative. I like intelligent animals, but no one except for us has, for example, as versatile hands as we do.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.
But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the GalaxyDolphins are plenty smart, but their absence of a material culture also leaves them exposed to various forces beyond their control.
Are dolphin moms not grieving when their baby gets eaten by killer whales?
This sort of threats is ubiquitous in nature, but almost unknown in a civilization.
True nature is brutal.
You will find a similar gap between some humans. Just saying.