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Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

(news.asu.edu)
273 points geox | 1 comments | 17 Jun 24 21:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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gcanyon ◴[18 Jun 24 00:41 UTC] No.40712874[source]▶
You have to think that there were breakthroughs in communication technology — not just language in general but possibly also one individual who happened to be good at explaining things, either before or after language, who both taught more people, but also taught them how to teach — that led to step changes in technology.
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dboreham ◴[18 Jun 24 01:03 UTC] No.40713012[source]▶
Theory: there are no humans without language. Consider: what language do you think in?
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mkl ◴[18 Jun 24 01:09 UTC] No.40713064[source]▶
Quite a lot of humans don't think in language, or do only some of the time, see e.g. https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-monologue..., https://www.livescience.com/does-everyone-have-inner-monolog..., https://www.bustle.com/wellness/does-everyone-have-an-intern....
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aurareturn ◴[18 Jun 24 02:12 UTC] No.40713436[source]▶
There are also humans who can’t conjure up an image in their head. Mozilla cofounder wrote a fairly famous piece about his own experience.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11501230/blake-ross-cant-...

If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will and are just a bunch of chemicals controlling our behavior. It also makes you think about consciousness and whether it’s even real.

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thfuran ◴[18 Jun 24 02:28 UTC] No.40713514[source]▶
>If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will

That seems like a bizarre leap. What's the connection?

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aurareturn ◴[18 Jun 24 03:29 UTC] No.40713807[source]▶
Because it implies that we only behave based on how we feel, not how we think. The thinking part is an illusion. Therefore, our “consciousness” has no effect on how we behave.

I’m not willing to die on this hill by the way so if someone else comes along and argues otherwise, I’m open to other ideas.

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1. card_zero ◴[18 Jun 24 11:13 UTC] No.40716344{5}[source]▶
There's alien hand syndrome in split-brain people, where the verbal hemisphere will invent its own confidently incorrect explanation of "why I just did that" when the non-verbal hemisphere does something with the hand it controls. And there's Marvin Minsky's society of mind. But none of this undermines free will, it just means the will is a function of lots of components, only some of which are involved in contemplative thought (and not necessarily verbally).