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[zompist]

Human instincts lead us to cruelty and selfishness, the bloody struggle for dominance, sexual violence and betrayal, and ignorant superstition. Our highest ideals derive from reason and it requires intense study and practice to fulfill them with any regularity.

Could you please provide evidence for this? I think human instincts lead to the second sense as well – I certainly couldn't reason for my axiom that “other people matter just as much as me”¹, but that doesn't mean that I have to do “intense study” to feel revulsion at [insert atrocity here], or decide to be kind to someone, even if it has no other impact on my life. Is it not possible to believe humans can be roughly equally disposed to both good and bad, or do you have to take a bad things as evidence for human nature and all good things as a product of some higher reasoning?

You could look at animal behavior, which probably gives a lot more examples of cooperation than of aggression. Animal aggression is normally highly limited in context and in time: if animals fight, it's over quickly, and there's generally the option to run away. Cooperation, by contrast, may require months or years of intense effort.

Edit: is there any actual evidence for such a clear separation between “human instict” and “higher reasoning” anyway? I thought they were both influenced by the other, which is itself damaging to Malloc's theory.

Like theories of the "cruelty" of nature, stories of the baseness of "instinct" are pretty outdated. Reasoning has a pretty mixed record, as should be evident from the fact that humans have come up with multiple ways to destroy ourselves, while animals have coexisted on the planet for hundreds of millions of years. (Not that animals are always nice, far from it. But both instincts and species tend to balance each other out.)

[malloc]

Could you please provide evidence for this? I think human instincts lead to the second sense as well – I certainly couldn't reason for my axiom that “other people matter just as much as me”¹, but that doesn't mean that I have to do “intense study” to feel revulsion at [insert atrocity here], or decide to be kind to someone, even if it has no other impact on my life. Is it not possible to believe humans can be roughly equally disposed to both good and bad, or do you have to take a bad things as evidence for human nature and all good things as a product of some higher reasoning?

Monarchy, patriarchy, and war are universal across societies. Everywhere from Europe to China to Africa to Mesoamerica and so forth instinctively gravitated toward the same terrible political struggle of hereditary kings ruling over slaves and peasants with an iron fist. Liberalism, abolitionism, and feminism only evolved once when the Enlightenment challenged tradition and intuition in favor of abstract reason.

Edit: is there any actual evidence for such a clear separation between “human instict” and “higher reasoning” anyway? I thought they were both influenced by the other, which is itself damaging to Malloc's theory.

Nobody has an instinct for abstract algebra or complex numbers. One must learn those concepts through painstaking study, clearly showing that they are anything but instinctual.

[keenir]

Could you please provide evidence for this? I think human instincts lead to the second sense as well – I certainly couldn't reason for my axiom that “other people matter just as much as me”¹, but that doesn't mean that I have to do “intense study” to feel revulsion at [insert atrocity here], or decide to be kind to someone, even if it has no other impact on my life. Is it not possible to believe humans can be roughly equally disposed to both good and bad, or do you have to take a bad things as evidence for human nature and all good things as a product of some higher reasoning?

Monarchy, patriarchy, and war are universal across societies.

have you heard of the Na people? of the Piraha? they violate your claim, as do others.

Everywhere from Europe to China to Africa to Mesoamerica and so forth instinctively gravitated toward the same terrible political struggle of hereditary kings ruling over slaves and peasants with an iron fist.

...except in societies which have none of those, or only one of them. I realize you're going to ignore everything I say, but I want to suggest the Discover magazine article When husbands share a wife for some examples.

I admit the Tibetans (as one example among many) may be said to have patriarchy...but I don't think you could argue they have the other things...unless you say that king=lama.

Edit: is there any actual evidence for such a clear separation between “human instict” and “higher reasoning” anyway? I thought they were both influenced by the other, which is itself damaging to Malloc's theory.

Nobody has an instinct for abstract algebra or complex numbers. One must learn those concepts through painstaking study, clearly showing that they are anything but instinctual.

no, some people do have an instinct for those very things -- sometimes such people are said to be "deficient" in other areas, such as social situations.

[Raphael]

Random question unrelated to the current ongoing discussion: Does anyone know what happened to Michael Tomasky's book on the Beatles?

Back in 2014, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first tour of the USA in 1964, Michael Tomasky wrote a fairly short book about that tour and its repercussions. But for quite a while, I found it basically impossible to find much of a trace of it online. It's not on Amazon. It's not on the competing online bookstore where I usually get my ebooks. It doesn't even seem to be anywhere in the, ahem, shadier parts of the internet. So what happened there?

[Darren]

Random question unrelated to the current ongoing discussion: Does anyone know what happened to Michael Tomasky's book on the Beatles?

Back in 2014, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first tour of the USA in 1964, Michael Tomasky wrote a fairly short book about that tour and its repercussions. But for quite a while, I found it basically impossible to find much of a trace of it online. It's not on Amazon. It's not on the competing online bookstore where I usually get my ebooks. It doesn't even seem to be anywhere in the, ahem, shadier parts of the internet. So what happened there?

I guess you mean Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now. I can find links to an old Amazon page, but it's been taken down. It was only released as a kindle ebook once in 2014 so I guess they just stopped selling it. No trace of it on libgen. And since it's an ebook, there's no second hand editions either. Unless you can find someone who bought it 11 years ago and somehow still has it, it seems to be lost to the ages (although it's probably in the library of congress or something).

[Raphael]

I guess you mean Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now. I can find links to an old Amazon page, but it's been taken down. It was only released as a kindle ebook once in 2014 so I guess they just stopped selling it. No trace of it on libgen. And since it's an ebook, there's no second hand editions either. Unless you can find someone who bought it 11 years ago and somehow still has it, it seems to be lost to the ages (although it's probably in the library of congress or something).

Thank you.

[Raphael]

Why do I keep writing "scenarios" as "scenariors" today? Happened at least twice so far.

[Man in Space]

Why do I keep writing "scenarios" as "scenariors" today? Happened at least twice so far.

YIELD TO THE RHOTACISM
LET IT CONSUME YOUR

[keenir]

Why do I keep writing "scenarios" as "scenariors" today? Happened at least twice so far.

You coined a word. Be not afraid.

Scenariors = plural of scenarior.

Scenarior = 1. One who performs scenarios in mind and-or in body, exploring the potentials thereof.

2. ?

[Man in Space]

Why do I keep writing "scenarios" as "scenariors" today? Happened at least twice so far.

You coined a word. Be not afraid.

Scenariors = plural of scenarior.

Scenarior = 1. One who performs scenarios in mind and-or in body, exploring the potentials thereof.

2. ?

scēnarior, scēnarī, scecūtus sum ‘to envisage, to daydream, to imagine, to come up with an idea’

[keenir]

I have no doubt others have arrived at this conclusion long before I did (and I only got there today)...

It hits me that the aliens from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of DARMOK, fully understood what Picard and the others were saying the entire time.

There's precedent - sort of - aplenty. If the primary reason was to encourage - or force - the Federation to learn their language...On the IRL space stations, American and Soviet astronauts would each speak in the language of the others: Americans speaking Russian, Soviets speaking English. And if the primary reason was security, there's how the US military used first Cree and later Navaho words to encrypt transmissions.

So unless the Darmok aliens were seeing how long it would take the Federation to start parroting their words, (and constantly babble unintelligently the whole while), the above is what makes sense...right?

[Man in Space]

I have no doubt others have arrived at this conclusion long before I did (and I only got there today)...

It hits me that the aliens from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of DARMOK, fully understood what Picard and the others were saying the entire time.

There's precedent - sort of - aplenty. If the primary reason was to encourage - or force - the Federation to learn their language...On the IRL space stations, American and Soviet astronauts would each speak in the language of the others: Americans speaking Russian, Soviets speaking English. And if the primary reason was security, there's how the US military used first Cree and later Navaho words to encrypt transmissions.

So unless the Darmok aliens were seeing how long it would take the Federation to start parroting their words, (and constantly babble unintelligently the whole while), the above is what makes sense...right?

My headcanon on that is that in everyday speech the Tamarians use their meme-speak but have a more conventional register available for when meme-speak would fail; their insistence on using it for first contact is a way of forcing others to appreciate them on their own terms—like, “we’re willing to deal with you because you took the time to understand our culture and how we do things”.

[Raphael]

Repeating something I posted in the Star Trek Thread years ago, IMO, what TNG did best, when it was at its best, was to take an idea, and sort of explore that idea a bit, without caring too much about whether the basics of the idea actually make sense or not. This allowed it to explore ideas that it couldn't have touched if it had cared more about strict plausibility.

And Darmok is a classic example: linguistically, it doesn't make much sense, but it's still an interesting idea, so it's nice that they decided not to worry too much about strict plausibility and went with it anyway. That, IMO, explains the basics of that episode better than any headcanon about what was really going on.

[Halian]

I wish I had a car instead of unmedicated ADHD so I could drive myself places ;-;

[rotting bones]

I still like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqC5FnvAEc

[rotting bones]

I wonder if most people would associate an image of Hephaestus holding a hammer and Ceres holding a sickle with Marxism.

[WeepingElf]

The coat of arms of Austria shows an eagle holding a hammer and a sickle (and a broken chain).

[Raphael]

I wonder if most people would associate an image of Hephaestus holding a hammer and Ceres holding a sickle with Marxism.

If they don't know who Hephaestus and Ceres are, probably yes.

[Darren]

I've heard a claim that the Darmok people had an intelligence which was unable to conceive of irrealis events, so had to frame everything in terms of analogical historical stories. So when they get on the planet, the guy can't say, "we should work together to whoop this monster's ass", so he's just like "remember that time Whingus and Dingus whooped that monster's ass on Tenagra? (hint hint...)". Picard is like "who the fuck is Whingus and Dingus? Do you want to fight a duel?" so the guy is like "Duel? Nah, think more kinda 'Whingus and Dingus at Tenagra'." Presumably he could say "Whingus and Dingus fought a monster and became friends when they were on Tenagra" and Picard would get it, but he's too obstinant and/or stupid to do so.

[Man in Space]

Presumably he could say "Whingus and Dingus fought a monster and became friends when they were on Tenagra" and Picard would get it, but he's too obstinant and/or stupid to do so.

That’s basically one of the reasons I find the dialogue, as delivered, plausible—this is a cultural thing with them, and they only want to bother with people who took the time to understand them. Tamarians are perfectly capable of speaking Federation Standard (see Lt. Kayshon from Lower Decks), and the Universal Translator renders them as literal phrases instead of handling them as figures of speech, so I think the inference is that they’re using a restricted vocabulary on purpose. I don’t think it’s a rare thing either—the Tamarians seem to respond to things the others say in a manner that suggests it’s not merely theater but some sort of…not exactly any of but more like a kind of conceptual blend of “secret”, “formal”, “hunting”, and/or “avoidance”. It is culturally meaningful enough that people can “improvise” with it readily and presumably has some sort of conventional niche.

IIRC in the TNG episode it’s mentioned contact has been attempted multiple times but frustrated because nobody understood them. Dorath kidnapping Picard and having him be the one to understand is, to the Tamarians, a diplomatic overture. I don’t know how much they knew about Starfleet or any other Alpha/Beta Quadrant civilizations so I don’t know whether this was Dorath’s idea, his boss(es)’ idea, or just standard operating procedure, or indeed if they knew who Picard was or if he was just the lucky lotto winner.

(I don’t know if they ever got into detail on the El-Adrel incident in any subsequent canon.)