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The Old Hack

Story Friday 22, December 2017

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23 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Not true. The stone age humans were using tools, but not technology.

In that case we need to define technology. Wiktionary's definitions are pretty vague, so I don't think they're helpful here; Wikipedia on the other hand says "Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator."

By this definition, stone tools (and other tools used by stone age people) count as technology; the Wikipedia article even goes on to list stone tools and fire in the history of technology.

I'm not sure this definition isn't too broad, but ok ... what about pre-stone age people?

Or, at least, we can say that while discussing current human without tools is meaningless, pre-stone age human can be discussed without technology.

In any case, I don't believe the first definition of "natural" is automatically excluding any homo sapient. It's not like homo sapient actually arrived on earth in spaceship: we evolved here naturally. But then WE started to use tools in way no other animal did - and there are lot of examples of animals using tools and sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what is the difference, where is the boundary ... but if you look around, there must be some somewhere. Because humans changed whole ecosystem in almost as radical way as the cyanobacteriea which started to use oxygen as weapon against others, and WE did it DELIBERATELY. Mostly. And much faster.

And if the word "natural" is supposed to have any meaning which makes more sense than those labels on food, putting the boundary there makes sense.

23 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Hmmm ... can ghost be result of natural death? :)

Actually, if ghosts really existed they'd probably count as part of the natural world (at least according the broader definition); my mentioning them was a half-hearted attempt to make a joke on the term "supernatural".

It may work as a joke, but supernatural would likely count as natural even from etymology.

(It also reminds me what paranormal means)

EDIT:

3 minutes ago, animalia said:

On the topic of living creatures changing their environment has anyone else here ever heard of the Great Oxygenation Event?

... just talked about it. There is pretty big difference there. For one, cyanobacteria don't have any experts arguing about if that was natural or not.

(Also, Earth is very average planet orbiting very average star in average area of average galaxy, astronomically important only because all astronomers we know about live there.)

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In related tool use. Did you know Egyptian Vultures use rocks to break open eggs?  The reason I bring both this, and the Great Oxygenation Event up is because as human we wan't things to have neat and tidy definitions but they don't always do. Things like what is natural and what is unnatural is one of those things. On the surface it SOUNDS obvious. But the more you start to study things in detail the more those words lose their meaning.

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7 minutes ago, animalia said:

In related tool use. Did you know Egyptian Vultures use rocks to break open eggs?

Tool use by non humans is fairly common.  Technology (i.e. tools to make tools) is less common.  Off the top of my head limited to Humans, Chimps and Crows/Ravens.

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1 minute ago, mlooney said:

Tool use by non humans is fairly common.  Technology (i.e. tools to make tools) is less common.  Off the top of my head limited to Humans, Chimps and Crows/Ravens.

Speaking of tool use among Chimps did you know that Chimps have tool using culture? What I mean by that is certain types of tools will be found in some groups of Chimps but not others. ANd yet a group that lacks the first type of tool use may have a different kind. Let me know if I did not make my thoughts clear enough.

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23 minutes ago, animalia said:

Did you know Egyptian Vultures use rocks to break open eggs?

Did you know that Egyptian Vultures populations have declined in the 20th century and some island populations are endangered by hunting, accidental poisoning, and collision with power lines?

I would say their usage of technology is inferior.

23 minutes ago, animalia said:

The reason I bring both this, and the Great Oxygenation Event up is because as human we wan't things to have neat and tidy definitions but they don't always do. Things like what is natural and what is unnatural is one of those things. On the surface it SOUNDS obvious. But the more you start to study things in detail the more those words lose their meaning.

The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

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56 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I'm not sure this definition isn't too broad, but ok ... what about pre-stone age people?

Or, at least, we can say that while discussing current human without tools is meaningless, pre-stone age human can be discussed without technology.

In any case, I don't believe the first definition of "natural" is automatically excluding any homo sapient. It's not like homo sapient actually arrived on earth in spaceship: we evolved here naturally. But then WE started to use tools in way no other animal did - and there are lot of examples of animals using tools and sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what is the difference, where is the boundary ... but if you look around, there must be some somewhere. Because humans changed whole ecosystem in almost as radical way as the cyanobacteriea which started to use oxygen as weapon against others, and WE did it DELIBERATELY. Mostly. And much faster.

And if the word "natural" is supposed to have any meaning which makes more sense than those labels on food, putting the boundary there makes sense.

If you have a less--broad definition of "technology" that you prefer, I'd love to hear it.

As for "pre-stone age people", if you restrict the term "people" to Homo sapiens, there weren't any - hominids at least as far back as Homo habilis are known to have made stone tools, and there is some evidence the creation and use of stone tools may go back even further, to members of the Australopithecus genus.  (Which gets us back to what I was saying earlier, that tool use is a part of human nature, and you can't really talk about what's "natural" for humans without taking it into account.)

I agree that if we could figure out the "boundary" between the way we use tools and the way other animals use tools, that would be a useful basis for refining the definitions of "natural" and "unnatural". However, I'm not very confident it's possible to identify that "boundary".

58 minutes ago, animalia said:

On the topic of living creatures changing their environment has anyone else here ever heard of the Great Oxygenation Event?

Yep, that's probably my third favorite mass extinction, after the Permian Disaster and the K-T event. :)

Edited by ChronosCat
Added a recap to the part about stone age tech.

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15 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

I agree that if we could figure out the "boundary" between the way we use tools and the way other animals use tools, that would be a useful basis for refining the definitions of "natural" and "unnatural". However, I'm not very confident it's possible to identify that "boundary".

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

We may not be able to identify that boundary exactly, but we can still say it's there. When we base definition of "natural" on it, we may get some unknown corner cases (likely including cooked meat) but it could still identify most things in way consistent with intuitive understanding of the word.

15 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

As for "pre-stone age people", if you restrict the term "people" to Homo sapiens, there weren't any - hominids at least as far back as Homo habilis are known to have made stone tools, and there is some evidence the creation and use of stone tools may go back even further, to members of the Australopithecus genus. 

But did Australopithecus used technology?

 

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5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

But did Australopithecus used technology?

By my definition , i.e. using tools to make tools, highly likely they did.

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29 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

True. But sometimes we come across a situation where the exact boundary is important (such as this conversation), and then we have a problem.

5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

But did Australopithecus used technology?

By the definition I'm using, yes. And technically so do chimps (a very simple, pre-stone age technology, but it still fits the definition).

The Wikipedia article on technology actually seems to count any tool use as technology, but I think perhaps that's going a bit far. I think I'd limit it to cases where the tool is actually created or modified by an individual or group for use as a tool. That still includes tool use by a number of animal species, including elephants, orangutans, crows, and as I already mentioned chimps and several million years worth of pre-sapiens human ancestors.

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59 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

We may not be able to identify that boundary exactly, but we can still say it's there. When we base definition of "natural" on it, we may get some unknown corner cases (likely including cooked meat) but it could still identify most things in way consistent with intuitive understanding of the word.

But did Australopithecus used technology?

 

I suggest you read a book called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham about that last one.

 

By the way does anyone else feel the urge to quote The Princess Bride. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

True. But sometimes we come across a situation where the exact boundary is important (such as this conversation), and then we have a problem.

If we return to the start of conversation, let's try some example:

A family of people meets Dinofelis or say leopard.

A natural result of such encounter is that the family runs away and the slowest child will die.

There is little gray area involving use of spear.

However, there is nothing natural for the father to keep attitude and the slowest child shooting the cat from M60D machine gun.

EDIT: Wait. I meant altitude. Although attitude may work too.

1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

The Wikipedia article on technology actually seems to count any tool use as technology, but I think perhaps that's going a bit far. I think I'd limit it to cases where the tool is actually created or modified by an individual or group for use as a tool. That still includes tool use by a number of animal species, including elephants, orangutans, crows, and as I already mentioned chimps and several million years worth of pre-sapiens human ancestors.

I would say that it's not technology until one individual will create the tool and other use it. In other words, when the group starts recognizing that the tool can be done worse or better depending on who does it and how thoroughly, which is only small step away from 1) division of labour, 2) trade and 3) research of how to teach everyone to make the tool better. Not sure if this includes any animal.

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21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

If we return to the start of conversation, let's try some example:

A family of people meets Dinofelis or say leopard.

A natural result of such encounter is that the family runs away and the slowest child will die.

There is little gray area involving use of spear.

However, there is nothing natural for the father to keep attitude and the slowest child shooting the cat from M60D machine gun.

EDIT: Wait. I meant altitude. Although attitude may work too.

I would say that it's not technology until one individual will create the tool and other use it. In other words, when the group starts recognizing that the tool can be done worse or better depending on who does it and how thoroughly, which is only small step away from 1) division of labour, 2) trade and 3) research of how to teach everyone to make the tool better. Not sure if this includes any animal.

what does "keep altitude" mean?

 

In any case. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

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7 minutes ago, animalia said:
27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

EDIT: Wait. I meant altitude. Although attitude may work too.

what does "keep altitude mean?

M60D is helicopter-mounted machine gun. I was trying to imply they are hunting from helicopter without directly saying it.

170px-M23_Gunner.jpg

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In any case for humans using technology IS Natural. You can argue that SOME technology hurts us more than it helps us. But lets not confuse the issue by saying it isn't the natural way for humans to do things.

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5 minutes ago, animalia said:

In any case for humans using technology IS Natural. You can argue that SOME technology hurts us more than it helps us. But lets not confuse the issue by saying it isn't the natural way for humans to do things.

It is perfectly natural for humans to do something unnaturally. :)

Even technology which helps us can be unnatural. Being natural have nothing to do with if it hurts us or help us. Even in case of food it's debatable - there are lot of completely natural substances which are deadly poisons, while most drugs are unnatural.

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Oh! In that case you are arguing about weather something is good or bad. Which AGAIN has nothing to do with whether or not it takes place in Nature. What you are talking about is a common logical fallacy called Appeal To Nature. To me we can argue against hunting from helicopters without bringing in the unnatural argument

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11 minutes ago, animalia said:

Oh! In that case you are arguing about weather something is good or bad. Which AGAIN has nothing to do with whether or not it takes place in Nature. What you are talking about is a common logical fallacy called Appeal To Nature.

Didn't I just SAID that it has nothing to do with being good or bad?

11 minutes ago, animalia said:

To me we can argue against hunting from helicopters without bringing in the unnatural argument

It's bad for the ecosystem, however if I would like to found city in place full of large predators, I would call the helicopters before inviting families.

(Not that I would expect there is any place like that left on earth ... at least not on dry land ... any place full of large predators is going to be natural reserve or something with building inside disallowed. And, hopefully, hunting from helicopter disallowed.)

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I am guessing for you Nature is like Pornography. "You can't define it, but you know it when you see it." 

6 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

1: Didn't I just SAID that it has nothing to do with being good or bad?

 

2: It's bad for the ecosystem, however if I would like to found city in place full of large predators, I would call the helicopters before inviting families.

Misunderstanding on the first. On the second Most large predators have learned to leave humans alone, as we genreally kill those that DO kill us. As a result in most areas of the world Man-Eating animals are pretty rare. And MOST exceptions to the rules are injured animals that are to weak to hunt their usual pray. That being said there ARE exceptions even to that rule of thumb. For example the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh has a large population of Man-eating tigers.

But as for Snow Leopards and Humans.

Quote

Snow leopard attacks on humans are rare; only two instances are known.[52] On July 12, 1940, in Maloalmaatinsk gorge near Almaty, a rabid snow leopard attacked two men during the day and inflicted serious injuries on both.[52] In the second case, not far from Almaty, an old, toothless, emaciated snow leopard unsuccessfully attacked a passerby in winter; it was captured and carried to a local village.[52] There are no other records of any snow leopard attacking a human being.[53][54]

 

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3 minutes ago, animalia said:

I am guessing for you Nature is like Pornography. "You can't define it, but you know it when you see it." 

Actually I suspect I would be pretty bad at recognizing pornography. Nature is easier.

5 minutes ago, animalia said:

On the second Most large predators have learned to leave humans alone, as we genreally kill those that DO kill us. As a result in most areas of the world Man-Eating animals are pretty rare. And MOST exceptions to the rules are injured animals that are to weak to hunt their usual pray.

I was editing the previous comment on this topic. Note that Dinofelis went extinct sometime around when Homo Habilis evolved into Homo Erectus and I wouldn't be surprised if Homo Erectus was involved.

5 minutes ago, animalia said:

That being said there ARE exceptions even to that rule of thumb. For example the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh has a large population of Man-eating tigers.

... oh. I'm surprised.

8 minutes ago, animalia said:

But as for Snow Leopards and Humans.

Quote

Snow leopard attacks on humans are rare; only two instances are known.[52] On July 12, 1940, in Maloalmaatinsk gorge near Almaty, a rabid snow leopard attacked two men during the day and inflicted serious injuries on both.[52] In the second case, not far from Almaty, an old, toothless, emaciated snow leopard unsuccessfully attacked a passerby in winter; it was captured and carried to a local village.[52] There are no other records of any snow leopard attacking a human being.[53][54]

I think the fact that they mostly live far from cities helps. The farmers whose liverstock is attacked by some would likely still prefer the helicopters.

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2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Actually I suspect I would be pretty bad at recognizing pornography. Nature is easier.

I was editing the previous comment on this topic. Note that Dinofelis went extinct sometime around when Homo Habilis evolved into Homo Erectus and I wouldn't be surprised if Homo Erectus was involved.

... oh. I'm surprised.

I think the fact that they mostly live far from cities helps. The farmers whose liverstock is attacked by some would likely still prefer the helicopters.

Well government payouts to fully endorse herders do to lost livestock do to predators also works.

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21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I would say that it's not technology until one individual will create the tool and other use it. In other words, when the group starts recognizing that the tool can be done worse or better depending on who does it and how thoroughly, which is only small step away from 1) division of labour, 2) trade and 3) research of how to teach everyone to make the tool better. Not sure if this includes any animal.

Something about that doesn't sound right to me, but I can't put my finger on it. On the other hand, I was considering adding to my definition the restriction that for it to count as technology there should be a mechanism for passing on the knowledge of how to make the tool, which has a similar effect to your definition on what tools count as technology.

To my knowledge, my revised definition would rule out all existing animal tool use except that by humans and chimps; yours would further rule out chimps.

As for Australopithecus and other ancient hominids, we don't know enough about how they acted to know if their tool use met your definition of technology; the archaeological evidence that far back is so sparse and open to interpretation we may never know.

17 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

It is perfectly natural for humans to do something unnaturally. :)

That sounds a lot like the point I was trying to make at the start of this conversation...

If modern technology is "unnatural", but humans naturally do unnatural things, doesn't that mean that it's natural for humans to use modern technology? :)

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1 minute ago, animalia said:

Well government payouts to fully endorse herders do to lost livestock do to predators also works.

Yes. Which sounds like good idea if we want our children to know snow leopard better than from image. Although I don't think we can argue with "natural" here, considering liverstock - domesticated animals - is pretty unnatural.

2 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I would say that it's not technology until one individual will create the tool and other use it. In other words, when the group starts recognizing that the tool can be done worse or better depending on who does it and how thoroughly, which is only small step away from 1) division of labour, 2) trade and 3) research of how to teach everyone to make the tool better. Not sure if this includes any animal.

Something about that doesn't sound right to me, but I can't put my finger on it. On the other hand, I was considering adding to my definition the restriction that for it to count as technology there should be a mechanism for passing on the knowledge of how to make the tool, which has a similar effect to your definition on what tools count as technology.

To my knowledge, my revised definition would rule out all existing animal tool use except that by humans and chimps; yours would further rule out chimps.

I'm not completely sure we know enough about chimps but I wouldn't miss them in the definition :)

5 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

As for Australopithecus and other ancient hominids, we don't know enough about how they acted to know if their tool use met your definition of technology; the archaeological evidence that far back is so sparse and open to interpretation we may never know.

Obviously.

10 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
41 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

It is perfectly natural for humans to do something unnaturally. :)

That sounds a lot like the point I was trying to make at the start of this conversation...

If modern technology is "unnatural", but humans naturally do unnatural things, doesn't that mean that it's natural for humans to use modern technology? :)

Something about that doesn't sound right to me, but I can't put my finger on it. Most likely, natural is used in two different meanings in that sentence (I mean even the one I did.)

But otherwise yes.

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2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Yes. Which sounds like good idea if we want our children to know snow leopard better than from image. Although I don't think we can argue with "natural" here, considering livestock - domesticated animals - is pretty unnatural.

 

It also makes sure farmers don't go broke when their livestock ARE killed.

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3 hours ago, animalia said:

In related tool use. Did you know Egyptian Vultures use rocks to break open eggs?  The reason I bring both this, and the Great Oxygenation Event up is because as human we wan't things to have neat and tidy definitions but they don't always do. Things like what is natural and what is unnatural is one of those things. On the surface it SOUNDS obvious. But the more you start to study things in detail the more those words lose their meaning.

As far as we know, humans are the only critters that use tools to make their tool-making tools...

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

I once read something on the order of "we may not be able to define precisely when day ends and evening begins, but we can certainly distinguish between noon and midnight."

-----

Part of one of the working definitions of species is that two populations are of different species even if they *could* jointly reproduce successfully and have fertile offspring, if they would never meet (or for some other reason never mate*) absent human intervention. 

This is problematic when applied to humans. We NEVER meet without human intervention. We NEVER reproduce without human intervention. (Aside from a very few alleged events all of which, coincidentally, are associated with the founding of one religion or another; none of said alleged events being recent enough for rigorous documentation including medical records or DNA analysis.) So, by this definition, we became extinct in the wild the day our distant ancestors first qualified as "human".

(Identifying that occasion is left as an exercise for others - see previous remark about noon and midnight.)

* There are several species of firefly that differ primarily in the patterns of flashes they use to signal readiness to mate. Scientists have used LEDs to make females' flashes match the pattern of another species, and gotten cross-breeds... who happily mate with each other but not with either parent species, because their flash-pattern is a mix. Artificial species.

 

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3 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

As far as we know, humans are the only critters that use tools to make their tool-making tools...

I once read something on the order of "we may not be able to define precisely when day ends and evening begins, but we can certainly distinguish between noon and midnight."

-----

Part of one of the working definitions of species is that two populations are of different species even if they *could* jointly reproduce successfully and have fertile offspring, if they would never meet (or for some other reason never mate*) absent human intervention. 

This is problematic when applied to humans. We NEVER meet without human intervention. We NEVER reproduce without human intervention. (Aside from a very few alleged events all of which, coincidentally, are associated with the founding of one religion or another; none of said alleged events being recent enough for rigorous documentation including medical records or DNA analysis.) So, by this definition, we became extinct in the wild the day our distant ancestors first qualified as "human".

(Identifying that occasion is left as an exercise for others - see previous remark about noon and midnight.)

* There are several species of firefly that differ primarily in the patterns of flashes they use to signal readiness to mate. Scientists have used LEDs to make females' flashes match the pattern of another species, and gotten cross-breeds... who happily mate with each other but not with either parent species, because their flash-pattern is a mix. Artificial species.

Ever hear of a ring species? That being said I never meant that ALL words break down. But some of them. For example NATURAL do.

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