Re-Computing "Human"

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Looks like I'm late to the party here --

Kanzi (born October 28, 1980) . . . is a male bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude . . .

In an outing in the Georgia woods, Kanzi touched the symbols for "marshmallows" and "fire." Susan Savage-Rumbaugh said in an interview that, "Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick." The Telegraph has published photos of Kanzi putting together a fire for food.

Paul Raffaele, at Savage-Rumbaugh's request, performed a Haka for the Bonobos. This Maori war dance includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering. Almost all the bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor. All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm; he then communicated with Savage-Rumbaugh using bonobo vocalizations; Savage-Rumbaugh understood these vocalizations, and said to Raffaele, "he'd like you to do it again just for him, in a room out back, so the others won't get upset." Later, a private performance in another room was successfully, peacefully, and happily carried out.

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has observed Kanzi in communication to his sister. In this experiment, Kanzi was kept in a separate room of the Great Ape Project and shown some yogurt. Kanzi made some vocalizations which his sister could hear; his sister, Panbanisha, who could not see the yogurt, then pointed to the lexigram for yogurt, suggesting those vocalizations may have meaning.

Kanzi's accomplishments also include tool use and tool crafting. Kanzi is an accomplished stone tool maker and can flake Oldowan style cutting knives. He learned this skill from Dr. Nick Toth, who is an anthropologist with the Stone Age Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. The stone knives Kanzi creates are very sharp and can cut animal hide and thick ropes.

In one demonstration shown on the television show Champions of the Wild, Kanzi was shown playing the arcade game Pac-Man and understanding how to beat it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzi

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Does Wiki list the author?

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You could click the link and see . . .

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Examples of Kanzi's behavior[edit]
The following are highly suggestive anecdotes, not experimental demonstrations. As with all anecdotal accounts, the strength of conclusions drawn must be limited, as compared with well-controlled experimental evidence.
In an outing in the Georgia woods, Kanzi touched the symbols for "marshmallows" and "fire." Susan Savage-Rumbaugh said in an interview that, "Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick."[9] The Telegraph has published photos of Kanzi putting together a fire for food.[10]
Paul Raffaele, at Savage-Rumbaugh's request, performed a Haka for the Bonobos. This Maori war dance includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering. Almost all the bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor. All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm; he then communicated with Savage-Rumbaugh using bonobo vocalizations; Savage-Rumbaugh understood these vocalizations, and said to Raffaele, "he'd like you to do it again just for him, in a room out back, so the others won't get upset." Later, a private performance in another room was successfully, peacefully, and happily carried out.[9]
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has observed Kanzi in communication to his sister. In this experiment, Kanzi was kept in a separate room of the Great Ape Project and shown some yogurt. Kanzi made some vocalizations which his sister could hear; his sister, Panbanisha, who could not see the yogurt, then pointed to the lexigram for yogurt, suggesting those vocalizations may have meaning.[9]
Kanzi's accomplishments also include tool use and tool crafting. Kanzi is an accomplished stone tool maker and can flake Oldowan style cutting knives. He learned this skill from Dr. Nick Toth, who is an anthropologist with the Stone Age Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. The stone knives Kanzi creates are very sharp and can cut animal hide and thick ropes.
In one demonstration shown on the television show Champions of the Wild,[11] Kanzi was shown playing the arcade game Pac-Man and understanding how to beat it.

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In case we don't know what we're supposed to believe, and how we're supposed to regard paradigm-disturbing data already (or we forget), you're on the job to remind us.

You crack me up, Spice.

You're an intellectual border collie. Keeping the sheeple in the pen where they're supposed to be.

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In case we don't know what we're supposed to believe, and how we're supposed to regard paradigm-disturbing data already (or we forget), you're on the job to remind us.

You crack me up, Spice.

You're an intellectual border collie. Keeping the sheeple in the pen where they're supposed to be.

And you're a revisionist who stoops to editing out what you disagree with.

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Spicy --

I transmitted the data. What I omitted was the opinion it was framed by.

Wikipedia is notorious for that. Nobody, it seems, can just post information there about anything that would rock the boat. Whatever unsettling-to-the-status-quo-ante information people do include is in the context of what amounts to a sermon. Drawing heavily, as sermons do, on pre-existing beliefs. These presentations are aimed, ultimately, at upholding those beliefs. That makes Wiki articles on anything "controversial" good practical introductions to the rationalisation, minimising, justification, denial, straw-man "rebuttals" and the rest of it that impersonate Science (captal "S").

Maybe this way makes better sense : Any establishment/cartel operates the same way a street gang does. The goal in both cases is control and exploitation of territory, be that academic or literal.

The first thing a street gang does when it moves into a new territory is to "tag" it -- to spray paint its identifying emblems on the buildings there. It's animal-level behavior, no different in principle from dog pee on a telephone pole or grizzly claw marks on a tree. It's an announcement that "This place is Mine (Ours)."

In the academic cartel, the "interpretation" of evidence is where (and how) the appearance of control is maintained. As in the addendum you felt compelled to include. If it had prefaced the information with "What follows are the wild ravings of a bunch of insufficiently rigorous, prone-to believing nonsense, Stinky Old Poopy Heads who should be disregarded as self-evident idiots," casual readers would catch on to the nature of what's really at stake after a while. So the preferred strategy is to appear to be at arms' length, and using "objective" terms.

Simply presenting information that could upset the apple cart to the interpretation of the reader, who is free to draw inferences from it, is too dangerous. So interpretation is woven into and substituted for it with the intent that, properly "framed," the data itself should appear lame and "unconvincing."

Critiques of data and interpretation do have their place. But that place is not presenting themselves as if they are of greater importance than the data themselves are. Anybody who tells you they are is preaching a belief.

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One example :

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis is the hypothesized large air burst or earth impact of an object or objects from outer space that initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BP calibrated (10,900 BP uncalibrated) years ago.[1][2] The hypothesis has been largely questioned by research that stated that most of the conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, misinterpretation of data, and the lack of confirmatory evidence.[3][4][5][6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dr ... hypothesis

Obvious enough by now ?

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What does all this have to do with an ape building a fire so he can roast his marshmallows?

We already have a lot of evidence of cognitive, cooperative thought and action in animals.
So what is the defining human trait?

I would suggest two things.
Clothing and a sense of time that allows for the willingness to suffer “short term pain for long term gain.”

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One example :

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis is the hypothesized large air burst or earth impact of an object or objects from outer space that initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BP calibrated (10,900 BP uncalibrated) years ago.[1][2] The hypothesis has been largely questioned by research that stated that most of the conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, misinterpretation of data, and the lack of confirmatory evidence.[3][4][5][6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dr ... hypothesis

Obvious enough by now ?

Yes, you're quite obvious.

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Why deal with fact & inference when you can turn it into a personal issue ?

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Maybe you can see what I'm getting at here (?) :
..............................
Modern science attempts to describe our reality using meaningless language (e.g. “the fabric of space-time”) and invalid metaphors with the result that ever more forces, unreal dimensions and invisible or virtual matter are invoked. It seems to me that our salvation lies with engineers who must deal with the real world. For it was an outstanding and outspoken electrical engineer and physicist, Hannes Alfvén, who gave us an electrical engineer’s practical explanation of many of the mysteries of the universe—known as plasma cosmology. But in a classic academic ‘Catch-22,’ because it’s not mainstream students are not given the opportunity to consider it at any university.

Alfvén emphasized the influence upon him of Kristian Birkeland’s earlier research into the electrical nature of the aurora and other phenomena in the solar system. Birkeland seemed to intuitively sense the real electrical nature of space but was too far ahead of his time. The theory of electric discharges was still in a very primitive state. He wrote:

It seems to be a natural consequence of our point of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying ions of all kinds. We assume each stellar system in evolution throws off electric corpuscles into space. It is not unreasonable therefore, to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in ‘empty’ space

Birkeland met overwhelming resistance, particularly from Sydney Chapman who was perhaps the most influential scientist in the field of geophysics in the period 1920-1960. But in 1973 satellites confirmed the existence of electric currents aligned with the magnetic field. These field-aligned currents are now called “Birkeland currents.” In 1987, reflecting his own struggle with orthodoxy, Alfvén wrote tartly:

Since Chapman considered his theory of magnetic storms and aurora to be one of his most important achievements, he was anxious to suppress any knowledge of Birkeland’s theory. Being a respected member of the proud English tradition in science, and attending – if not organizing – all important conferences in this field, it was easy for Chapman to do so. The conferences soon became ritualized. They were opened by Chapman presenting his theory of magnetic storms, followed by long lectures by his close associates who confirmed what he had said. If finally there happened to be some time left for discussion, objections were either not answered or dismissed by a reference to an article by Chapman. To mention Birkeland was like swearing in the church.

Many dissident scholars have echoed the comparison of modern institutionalized science with a religious order.

Alfvén’s plasma cosmology is an excellent theory when measured by its successful predictions. Despite this;

..the continuing resistance to Alfvén’s work is based on a widely held opinion that his predictions are not derived from a plausible physical theory (i.e., a theory that conforms to the dominant paradigm). If a theory is not acceptable, it does not gain credit by making successful predictions.

Stephen G. Brush, Alfvén’s Programme in Solar System Physics, IEEE Transactions On Plasma Science, Vol. 20, No. 6, December 1992, p. 577.

http://www.holoscience.com/wp/alfven-tr ... ain-again/