April 11th, 2024

> Both show how you can’t understand psychological differences among individuals just by looking at their genes, or at their immediate environment — you have to see what’s been happening in the hundreds and thousands of years of their ancestor’s cultural history. They also both point to the importance of “cognitive tools” gained through culture, argue that we’re smart because we connect up with others, and think that mimesis is at the very base of our cognition.

Henrich makes a big point that the social sciences, thus far, have proceeded on the assumption that humans “are just a really smart, though somewhat less hairy, chimpanzee”. But cultural evolution has made us a fundamentally new kind of animal — and that the scholarly road ahead is wide open for exploring this. I sorta can’t imagine a more Egan-y thing to say. I think that one of the reasons Egan’s ideas didn’t spread is that they were ahead of their time; this was the paradigm Egan’s ideas make sense in.

> We tell ourselves we must punish people so they will feel “bad”, but the truth is that underneath the dissociation and repression, they already feel bad.

— @c__morrigan

[QT slushy tweet]

this is, of course, not true for the most extreme psychopaths or sociopaths

but for them, punishment also doesn't work AT ALL

source of original quote

clementinemorrigan.com/p/whatever-it-is-you-can-face-it

great article on how cancellation punishes abuse victims (not how I'd phrase it but eh) and fucks with the learning of those who are cancelled

clementinemorrigan.com/p/you-can-love-your-cancelled-boyfriend

"This file can't be opened because you're offline"
...so you're telling me your fancy-ass web-app is less functional than a simple webpage with hyperlinks? I don't care if it can't be loaded! let me acquire the link and put it in a new tab

<screenshot saved 2024-04-11 @ 22:55 >