It's hard out there for a chimp
I recently read again two great books that I had read before, "Nature via Nurture" by Matt Ridley and "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker, to refresh my ideas of sociobiology. As I wrote in "Humans, nature and the human nature",
I tend to believe in sociobiology because it would be very easy to
falsify with a few simple counterexamples, but for some reason,
proponents of social constructionism never seem to bother to do so.
Sociobiology simply fits and explains the observable facts, whereas the
competing theories do not, but have to sweep the embarrassing facts
under the carpet.
The first book contained two very interesting tidbits about chimpanzees. First, the book explained that chimpanzee troops do practice warfare in which they kill the males of another troop, but they let the females live and join their troop. Such behaviour, of course, is well-documented in primitive tribes of humans also, for example, the tribes in the Old Testament. But where was the primitive tribe that behaved the opposite way so that after the victory, they killed the enemy women and let the men join their group? (Men, after all, would be useful as warriors in future wars in further conquests.) I have never heard of such tribe, and I kind of doubt that one has ever existed. It is quite astonishing that the primitive societies, independently of each other and separated by vast gulfs of time and space, all tossed the coin the same way or went "eenie meenie miny moe, men!" when deciding which sex to kill and which sex to keep. Or at home, choosing which sex should rule. The coin tosses were surprisingly uniform for me to doubt that the coins were "weighted" by some outside constraint.
Please: if any of my readers can name primitive tribe anywhere in the human history whose modus operandi after war was to kill all enemy women and let the enemy men join their tribe, please do so. Name even one such tribe, and I will instantly rebuild and thoroughly re-examine all my beliefs in sociobiology. After all, It is important to put your head on the chopping block occasionally. As Steve Dutch constantly reminds us on top of his essays, the simple question "What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?" cuts through a lot of crap in ideological questions. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific.
This observation alone should demolish a certain theory that seems to be very popular with the Blank Slaters: the belief that in the idyllic neolithic era, men and women lived peacefully as equals in pastoral Hobbit-style villages, until for some reason, the patriarchy emerged and men started oppressing women. So who could have guessed that the patriarchal brainwashing in movies and porn videos also reaches the cute and innocent chimpanzees in their Rousseauian state of nature and makes them behave so badly? Forget the Taliban and its atrocities against women, here is truly a great sexist injustice for the Western academic feminists to oppose! Diversity and tolerance training and profeminist deprogramming of the sexist attitudes of the young chimpanzee males is sorely needed, and we should start a collection to fly a bunch of corporate diversity trainers to combat this chimpanzee sexism.
Second, the book explained that just like horses and donkeys can breed and produce sterile mules, humans and chimpanzees are genetically so close that it might be possible from them to similarly interbreed. However, nobody has ever actually attempted this due to "ethical concerns". I would say that it's time to try this (with artificial insemination, of course, otherwise it would be, like, yeck gross) and see what happens! If this experiment succeeded, the effect would be enormous, almost going beyond words. Christianity, leftism, basically pretty much every anti-reason ideology out there would instantly topple like dominoes. It would be then absolutely hilarious to watch the proponents of such ideologies debate whether this creature is human and has human rights, assuming the creature had the mental capacity of a Down syndrome patient.
In fact, when I read about the last State of the Union address of President Bush, I raised my fist in the air and went "woo-hoo!" the way Homer Simpson often does at the moment when I read that Bush had explicitly opposed creating human-animal hybrids. This was absolutely excellent, since now the leftists will never again be able to oppose engineering such hybrids! Christians and fundies are opposed to human-animal hybrids already and always will be, so the effect that the presidential speech had on them is pretty much a moot point. But if somebody ever successfully creates a humpanzee hybrid, heck, what could they do? Burn a few embassies and organize boycotts?
The book "Blank Slate" was similarly important in reminding me that the concept of the "blank slate" is not a caricature, but it really is the actual belief of many people out there. This absolutely boggles the mind. Another good reminder of reality in the book was its absolutely unbelievable depiction on how university leftists treated important researchers of sociobiology a few decades ago. And if you look at the modern world, the leftists and their present-day children are pretty much the same way today. Frankly, I will be astonished if the leftist student associations don't start disrupting Larry Summers's lectures once he leaves his current job and becomes a professor, so that they would suddenly start chanting "sexist Larry, we don't want you here; racist Summers, the people reject you" in the middle of a lecture and then throw water balloons or feces on him.
The first book contained two very interesting tidbits about chimpanzees. First, the book explained that chimpanzee troops do practice warfare in which they kill the males of another troop, but they let the females live and join their troop. Such behaviour, of course, is well-documented in primitive tribes of humans also, for example, the tribes in the Old Testament. But where was the primitive tribe that behaved the opposite way so that after the victory, they killed the enemy women and let the men join their group? (Men, after all, would be useful as warriors in future wars in further conquests.) I have never heard of such tribe, and I kind of doubt that one has ever existed. It is quite astonishing that the primitive societies, independently of each other and separated by vast gulfs of time and space, all tossed the coin the same way or went "eenie meenie miny moe, men!" when deciding which sex to kill and which sex to keep. Or at home, choosing which sex should rule. The coin tosses were surprisingly uniform for me to doubt that the coins were "weighted" by some outside constraint.
Please: if any of my readers can name primitive tribe anywhere in the human history whose modus operandi after war was to kill all enemy women and let the enemy men join their tribe, please do so. Name even one such tribe, and I will instantly rebuild and thoroughly re-examine all my beliefs in sociobiology. After all, It is important to put your head on the chopping block occasionally. As Steve Dutch constantly reminds us on top of his essays, the simple question "What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?" cuts through a lot of crap in ideological questions. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific.
This observation alone should demolish a certain theory that seems to be very popular with the Blank Slaters: the belief that in the idyllic neolithic era, men and women lived peacefully as equals in pastoral Hobbit-style villages, until for some reason, the patriarchy emerged and men started oppressing women. So who could have guessed that the patriarchal brainwashing in movies and porn videos also reaches the cute and innocent chimpanzees in their Rousseauian state of nature and makes them behave so badly? Forget the Taliban and its atrocities against women, here is truly a great sexist injustice for the Western academic feminists to oppose! Diversity and tolerance training and profeminist deprogramming of the sexist attitudes of the young chimpanzee males is sorely needed, and we should start a collection to fly a bunch of corporate diversity trainers to combat this chimpanzee sexism.
Second, the book explained that just like horses and donkeys can breed and produce sterile mules, humans and chimpanzees are genetically so close that it might be possible from them to similarly interbreed. However, nobody has ever actually attempted this due to "ethical concerns". I would say that it's time to try this (with artificial insemination, of course, otherwise it would be, like, yeck gross) and see what happens! If this experiment succeeded, the effect would be enormous, almost going beyond words. Christianity, leftism, basically pretty much every anti-reason ideology out there would instantly topple like dominoes. It would be then absolutely hilarious to watch the proponents of such ideologies debate whether this creature is human and has human rights, assuming the creature had the mental capacity of a Down syndrome patient.
In fact, when I read about the last State of the Union address of President Bush, I raised my fist in the air and went "woo-hoo!" the way Homer Simpson often does at the moment when I read that Bush had explicitly opposed creating human-animal hybrids. This was absolutely excellent, since now the leftists will never again be able to oppose engineering such hybrids! Christians and fundies are opposed to human-animal hybrids already and always will be, so the effect that the presidential speech had on them is pretty much a moot point. But if somebody ever successfully creates a humpanzee hybrid, heck, what could they do? Burn a few embassies and organize boycotts?
The book "Blank Slate" was similarly important in reminding me that the concept of the "blank slate" is not a caricature, but it really is the actual belief of many people out there. This absolutely boggles the mind. Another good reminder of reality in the book was its absolutely unbelievable depiction on how university leftists treated important researchers of sociobiology a few decades ago. And if you look at the modern world, the leftists and their present-day children are pretty much the same way today. Frankly, I will be astonished if the leftist student associations don't start disrupting Larry Summers's lectures once he leaves his current job and becomes a professor, so that they would suddenly start chanting "sexist Larry, we don't want you here; racist Summers, the people reject you" in the middle of a lecture and then throw water balloons or feces on him.
There is one good critical remark:
Sociobiology isn't very good at positively predicting what will happen or work but it is admittedly excellent at predicting what will not.
Gould and Lewontin supposedly rested sure in their criticism that critical aspects of human brain and behaviour could never be examined and explained on molecular and cellular level. All their criticism can now be reviewed in this light with obvious results.
Posted by Catilina | 12:41 PM
"humans and chimpanzees are genetically so close that it might be possible from them to similarly interbreed."
"THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes...Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior."
Posted by C. Van Carter | 7:01 PM