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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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You have made it available for Medium members only so I can only see a wee bit of it.
The way I see it, Medium is a forum for those who are interested in getting as many readers as possible so they can get paid. So my thinking was, most folks will fall into the good well researched, lots of people will read and follow types of areas that really hold zero interest for Wiley.
I can go to, say, Malaga Bay and read (not an easy read is he or she) something much more original for free.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Origins of Agriculture Mick Harper 3 min read 23 hours ago
The present explanation — ‘it just happened’ — is no longer good enough |
There is only one society in the world today that is both successful and uses pre-agricultural methods, the Sámi reindeer-herders of Sweden and Finland. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to look to them for clues about the vexed question of how agriculture came about. It may not have been the Sámi and it may not have been reindeer, but if we shift the Sámi model back to c. 40,000 BP, before domestication of either plants or animals, what are the prospects out there on the Great Eurasian grassland steppes?
Left to their own devices, human beings are not well suited to grasslands. We can’t eat the grass, and there are precious few alternatives ripe for the plucking. Nor are we designed to catch animals designed not to be caught by the many and varied predators. What to do?
There is one abundant food source that can be ‘kept up with’ — the vast slow-moving herds always to be found on grassland plains. They may be wildebeest, they may be bison, but let us assume for these purposes they are reindeer.
True, these toothsome beasts are fearfully difficult to kill individually but en masse they are available for a spot of symbiosis. Human beings in numbers can do one thing: they can keep predators away which is the one thing that disturbs slow-moving herds of herbivores. Looked at from the reindeer’s POV, this might definitely be worth the price of co-operation.
Especially if that price is little more than allowing these two-legged fellow-travellers to dine on the sick, the lame and the dead. Before you know it, it’s a permanent arrangement. The reindeer can peaceably continue their annual migrations north and south in search of new grass, the human beings can start dreaming up ways of building on this new relationship.
For instance, both sides to the bargain have a vested interest in increasing the number of reindeer and all grassland herbivores are limited by the same factor: the availability of grass in the dry season — or in the case of reindeer, the cold season. It’s under snow in the north and it hasn’t got started in the south. Can human beings do anything to help?
They can try. If a few of them are excused herd-following duties they can keep competing herbivores away from what grass there is and the herd will be only too grateful to be ‘directed’ to these pastures new.
Useful but not decisive. There is though one brand new factor that has been introduced into the Palaeolithic Era: a bunch of human beings professionally concerned with maximising grassland pastures and nothing to do all day except saying boo to herbivores intent on minimising it. So what did they do with those IQ’s the same size as ours, invent cricket? No, perforce, they turned their attention to Mother Nature who was doing plenty of minimising on her own account. Uneaten grass waits for no reindeer, that which does not wither is dispatched to the four winds.
Our left-behind (or sent on ahead) would-be agronomists had thirty thousand years to think about it, so to summarise their better ideas:
* Everything we think of today as human cereal consumption — from bread to beer — should be reinterpreted as by-products of experiments to make animal feed more nutritious, storable for longer, or more easily transportable. What was good for the reindeer herd was eventually found to be even better for the reindeer-herder. What is muesli but bran-plus-reindeer milk?
* Everything we think of today as farm animals are really designed — domesticated as we would call it — to exploit these new protected pastures: a main grazer (cattle), a short grass specialist (sheep), a rough grazer (goats) and a what’s left omnivore (pigs). Semi-domesticated reindeer could be left to the Sámi.
* Everything we think of today as ‘civilisation’ happened when the southern pastures were full and there was only semi-arid savannah and full desert to the south. Let’s invent irrigation!
Anthropology Transhumance Sámi Startup Lessons
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I am afraid it does interest me as you predicted, and I can't see why it would not interest others, just as you predicted.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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That theory is taken from Megalith Empire which has had sales in three, if not four, figures. As far as I know -- and I have eagle-eyes for Google mentions -- it has not garnered a single response in ten years. Not one, not even an adverse one. Now maybe there are thousands of people out there bursting with this new knowledge but somehow I don't think so. Those that read it, shrugged. 'That's just Harper & Vered's opinion, what do I care?" Or worse, "Harper & Vered are spouting some cockamamie theory they read on the internet -- they never give sources -- so what do I care?"
On the other hand if that same theory was taught in the classroom, the universal response would be, "Oh, so that's how it happened. Next!"
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I still use Megalithic Empire for a way of helping me solve, blocks in my thinking. I just go to the index and see what you both said. Do I always agree? No. Am I inspired. Sure.
Case in point, I was immediately thinking, "brilliant, he has updated his thinking" "This could help me develop my ideas on circular time and space". Good news for Wiley as, tbh, there are now plenty of other voices discussing all things linear, including revising linear history by subtracting, (I had a spirited try at adding to see whether subtracting was a good idea) 300/500/700/600/32/3 years........(bogus list) and it really dooesn't (in Wiley's analysis) make a jot of difference if you reach the same point after 2 years or 444 years if this is where you actually are, it's just your place in the circle at that time.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I put anything involving 'circular time and space' firmly in the 'non-valid' basket and switch off. But why? Presumably because it offends against my own personal scientific code. But when I try to get reasonably open-minded people interested in the Hydrological Theory, they say after five minutes, "I'm afraid this offended against my scientific code so I switched off." I'm looking for where the difference lies and/or how to finesse it.
PS Reading polemical works to stimulate thought and reading polemical works to learn something new are two different things.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I was actually part inspired by "walking round in circles" so I am afraid you lot can't weasel out of it now, you are going down as early influences whether you like it or not.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An interesting aspect of AE was illustrated in the following exchange I had on Medium, starting with this
The piece -- which is very long and not worth reading in full -- relied on one underlying assumption: that Russia went to war with Ukraine because of NATO’s expansionism. Now nobody knows why Putin went to war (perhaps not even him) but it is a matter of record that NATO expansionism wasn't mentioned as a casus belli at the time. The point here is that it's an open question. So I blundered through
| I see no relationship between Russia's war on Ukraine and NATO expansion. Russia has lived peaceably side-by-side with NATO since 1949 and was still doing so in 2014 when it invaded Crimea -- with no appreciable opposition from NATO. The first we heard about NATO expansionism was when Russia failed to overrun Ukraine -- with no appreciable opposition from NATO -- and Putin was casting around for a reason to give to the Russian public as to why they should be digging in for the long haul. |
I didn't expect the dude to agree with me but I didn't expect this (I've had quite affable relations with him before). Just the lowlights
| Then you don't know the history. Open the links if you wish. Russia 'invaded' Crimea after the coup by the way. The first you heard of Russia having an issue with NATO was 2014 cause you're obviously not well read in this area, with all due respect….. It’s also massively hubristic to think that the way some western people ‘see’ things (they don’t really, they know what NATO is) is the only thing that counts. |
I kept my cool in the approved polemical manner
| I didn’t mention the coup, by the way. I’ll pass over the rest of your argument, as being irrelevant, but suffice it to say that NATO expansion was so off the table that, to this day, nobody can agree whether promises were made, by whom or when. I’m not questioning that Russia would rather NATO was more at arm’s length than it is, I’m questioning whether this was a factor when the decision to go to war with Ukraine was made. |
This struck me as sort of unarguable and I assumed he would either leave it or pick me up on some trifling point. But instead another tirade (again excerpted)
| Irrelevant? I think you'll find how conflicts are solved and the agreements that are drawn up and who is included and who isn't makes all the difference. Why are you talking about some bullshit promise? This shows me how little you know here. I'm sure you have a wondrous mind in other areas, but c'mon this is amateur stuff. NATO did expand as a matter of fact. And it's neither here not there whether R was promised some bullshit about not a single inch to the east. NATO expansion began with Clinton, so no idea what you're talking about with off the table. The fact you're just making the same tired old arguments and not listening to anything I say makes not at all for a fruitful conversation. Plus you're being rude again. |
It's all irrelevant to the original point but what stung me was the accusation of rudery after my careful non-rudery (except maybe that crack about irrelevance and a bit of over-cuteness). Anyway I contented myself with this
| I think you will find the rudeness was on your side. Honestly. Take a look. |
Which finished the exchange. What is the AE aspect? It is to do with red mist. It appears that the mere act of opposing is all it takes to make it descend and it gets in the way of everything when human beings are trying to make progress via argument. I don't know what can be done about this since opposition is required to make an argument.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Today I announce a new principle of AE for which I don't have a snappy name (suggestions, please) but concerns impending crises that are never reached. Actually we have a whole thread that deals with one example here http://www.applied-epistemology.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=126&start=0 but I will give two more recent examples.
You will recall during the Covid epidemic that the NHS was always on the point of collapse, it was just about to run out of x or y or z. It was always at '99% capacity' and demand was always 'rising exponentially'. Yet nothing ever happened. In vain I kept pointing out that the NHS simply doesn't have finite limits. All that would happen was that priorities would be re-ordered, new resources would be summoned up from somewhere, but above all the crisis would be quietly renamed something less crisis-worthy. Nobody, as far as I know, actually died because there were no beds, no ventilators, no oxygen, no doctors, no surgical gowns, no ... well, you'll all remember the nightly scare stories. Though we did have the average number of deaths so presumably everybody else was suffering from the same shortages.
The same thing can be seen in Gaza. Where, as soon as the Israelis put a total blockade on, people would soon be dying for lack of everything from water to electricity, from food to oil, from hospitals to power stations. The effect tended to be spoiled by footage of apparently well-fed people turning up in ambulances to take the injured off to hospital. And we're now in Day Nineteen of the crisis.
Why does it persist? Presumably because it would seem too heartless to say anything different.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An interesting example of something we deal with in Applied Epistemology quite a lot, but haven't got round to systematising. The inability of people to judge what's important and what's not. This often occurs in climate debates when, say, people will object to lithium mining on pollution or amenity grounds and deaf to appeals on the need for more lithium to avoid global warming. I am not saying this applies in any particular case but it is quickly obvious that the frame of reference is all wrong. It is, I suppose, whether Nimbyism applies to Little Snoring or Planet Earth.
The example I was referring to was the Maui Fire in which ninety-nine people died in part because they couldn't drive out of town. The reason they couldn't was the roads were gridlocked, the reason the roads were gridlocked was because they had fallen power lines across them and the police had closed them.
Essentially, the police had decreed either you burn to death or you take your chances driving over powerlines. Even without rubber tyres as insulation -- and the fact they had been switched off -- I know which decision I would have taken. I'm not so sure though I would have done so if I'd been the police chief. A secondary AE point is that, as we found out during the pandemic, doing things for the first time is not the best preparation.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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There's a bloke on Medium called Douglas Giles who has been busy setting up a sub-group of Medium devoted to philosophy and was appealing for 'suitably qualified' members. I decided to do so myself because Mr Giles styles himself thisaway:
| Philosopher by trade & temperament, professor for 21 years, bringing philosophy out of its ivory tower and into everyday life. |
He's an applied epistemologist! I had every expectation of success because, from the dozens of responses and Giles' replies to them, it appeared you only had to apply to be accepted. But you know me, I couldn't resist putting in a snarky aside when I put mine in. The result? I was neither accepted nor rejected.
This bit of 'careful ignoral' was irritating but also of course intriguing. So from then on I would respond to Doug's Medium stories in an irritating (but intriguing) way, occasionally reminding him he hadn't said yea and he hadn't said nay to my application. These little pinpricks from me evinced no action on Doug's part until this one:
It was the usual liberal/orthodox guff so I posted up
| The word 'politics' presupposes group action. That is only possible after 'group thought'. Your recommendations will, at best, lead to a better ability to choose sides. And generally speaking, that is done once per lifetime. In rare cases, twice. This is not compatible with any truly philosophical cast of mind. |
I had managed to stir up the hornet!
| Douglas Giles wrote: | | So you imagine yourself too far above other people to work with them to build a better society. That’s not philosophical, that’s ideological. And deluded. |
I had rarely been presented with so open a goal but as soon as I began to compose my annihilatory rebuttal, I got this
| The author has closed discussion for this story. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here is an excellent example of the bogus list. It's from 'Can we hold back the tide of extremism?' by Julia Ebner in the Guardian Review. After a bit of scene setting we get this
| There are various ways we can try to prevent and reverse the spread of extremist narratives. |
We are being promised a list that will help with something that is certainly going on, irrespective of whether you think it should be curtailed or not. First on the list
| For some people who have turned to extremism over the past few years, too little has changed: anger over political inaction on economic inequality is now further fuelled by the exacerbating cost of living crisis. |
OK, that's fair enough, whether you agree with it or not. Second on the list
| For others, too much has changed: they see themselves as rebels against a takeover by “woke” or “globalist” policies. |
Now that strikes me as a subset or an uberset of the first. And Ms Ebner appears to agree with me
| What they have in common is a sense that the political class no longer takes their wellbeing seriously |
And that's the end of the list. So now we get the antidote as promised in the title
| moves to improve social conditions and reduce inequality would go some way towards reducing such grievances. |
That's fair enough, Whether you agree with it or not, any self-respecting Guardian-reader would heartily endorse it. Of course what was left out of the list was what most people would say is driving 'extremism' (including most Guardian-readers if they 'fessed up). Immigration. So why wasn't that on the list? Somewhere. First, second, third, anywhere? I expect it's because no self-respecting Guardian reader wants to take that one on. But there was a list, so maybe Julie will be getting round to it in her next column.
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