I made this comment originally on another book review of the Everett Pirahã book (lightly edited):
Gwern has a great book review on this one: https://gwern.net/review/book#dont-sleep-there-are-snakes-everett-2008. The ending of Gwern's review brings up probably the best theory I have read to explain the Pirahã, although I would put it more bluntly: maybe they are just extremely inbred and very dumb. They can't plan for the future the way some children cannot plan for the future. They cannot learn how to count to ten, because that is too complicated for them.
The *New Yorker* article (cited by Gwern and found here https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2) also implies that the Pirahã are really dumb. An evolutionary biologist, William Tecumseh Fitch (yes, he is a direct descendant of the American Civil War general), traveled down there to test the Pirahã, and he had a lot of problems getting them to pass basic grammar test which apparently even all monkeys tested could pass. According to the article, Fitch eventually found one sixteen-year-old who could pass the test. I cannot figure out from Fitch's Google Scholar page where he wrote up these results--maybe they're buried somewhere.
Getting genetic samples of the Pirahã would clarify how inbred they are, and it would at least partly let us guess their genetic IQ, insofar as we can use one of those fancy polygenic scores for educational attainment/cognitive ability to estimate it. I also would like to see someone replicate Everett's work (Margaret Mead's fieldwork did not replicate). Even the *New Yorker* journalist had to rely on Everett's translations.
Per Wikipedia, "[Everett] says that he was having serious doubts by 1982 and had abandoned all faith by 1985." And wouldn't you know it, he completed his masters thesis in 1980 and PhD in 1983 in linguistics under a Brazilian-French advisor. His thesis provided "a detailed detailed Chomskyan analysis of Pirahã." Anyways, it sounds like he begins to reject his faith as a Brazilian graduate student in a (presumably) atheistic/secular atmosphere.
Incredibly, Everett is an avowed defender of the blank state.
You have to be incredibly blank-slate-pilled in the first place to avoid immediately seeing Pirahã stories as "Wow, so this is what homo erectus society and culture looked like before the last batch of brain developments". Guess Christianity that posits fundamental difference between humans (however dumb) and non-human entities, could have kinda similar effects.
That makes sense, except Christianity does not posit quite that--theology accounts for adults without the use of reason (consider, as an analogy, that infants do not possess a knowledge of good and evil, yet they still often get baptized, although not in Everett's denomination). Thomas Aquinas addressed it similarly: "Some are so from birth, have no lucid intervals, and show no sign of reason; with these we should decide as with children."
As far as I can tell, Everett's particular theological bent (he went to Moody) also accommodates this situation, because everyone has an answer to what happens if a baby dies. (They [Evangelicals] basically say that culpability presupposes knowledge, so babies and adults without the use of reason go to heaven.)
I always have to remind myself at the doctor that this is a real question. “Fine thanks how — wait no, I have a 103° fever and my veins are all red and squiggly.”
"It doesn’t even need to be in person — histories of the Aztecs or the Carthaginians demonstrate exactly the same kind of 'sweeping positive statement / truly horrific details' phenomenon."
And at some point people will say exactly the same kinds of things about us. "Everyone had food and emergency medical care. They could vote and go to school, where they might be shot in their classrooms by a stranger, and people accepted this. 'Nothing can be done'."
I'm guessing the divorce and children cutting him off have to do with him being an unreliable self-promoting a hole.
It's super convenient that the ONE language that has NONE of the features of other languages has a super small number of speakers, is difficult to learn, and a linguistic isolate (there are not other languages in the same family against which his claims can be compared). So he is the lone expert in this language (his wife is the only other) and he says it has all these weird features no one can check.
How do we evaluate the quality of life of people like the Pirahã? On the one hand, their lives are objectively pretty awful. On the other hand, they actually seem... pretty damn happy about the state of their society? Would their experience of reality be better if they were raised in modern, wealthy Western societies? What are we optimizing for here?
Random thought but... maybe that's why mafias rarely lasted more than a generation or two into being uprooted to northern climes? We assume that the younger generation assimilated and the culture faded. But maybe they were just reacting to the local microbe community, and, a few generations later, are now depressed and anxious.
as a fellow snorter of Hajnal lines, I thank you.
I made this comment originally on another book review of the Everett Pirahã book (lightly edited):
Gwern has a great book review on this one: https://gwern.net/review/book#dont-sleep-there-are-snakes-everett-2008. The ending of Gwern's review brings up probably the best theory I have read to explain the Pirahã, although I would put it more bluntly: maybe they are just extremely inbred and very dumb. They can't plan for the future the way some children cannot plan for the future. They cannot learn how to count to ten, because that is too complicated for them.
The *New Yorker* article (cited by Gwern and found here https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2) also implies that the Pirahã are really dumb. An evolutionary biologist, William Tecumseh Fitch (yes, he is a direct descendant of the American Civil War general), traveled down there to test the Pirahã, and he had a lot of problems getting them to pass basic grammar test which apparently even all monkeys tested could pass. According to the article, Fitch eventually found one sixteen-year-old who could pass the test. I cannot figure out from Fitch's Google Scholar page where he wrote up these results--maybe they're buried somewhere.
Getting genetic samples of the Pirahã would clarify how inbred they are, and it would at least partly let us guess their genetic IQ, insofar as we can use one of those fancy polygenic scores for educational attainment/cognitive ability to estimate it. I also would like to see someone replicate Everett's work (Margaret Mead's fieldwork did not replicate). Even the *New Yorker* journalist had to rely on Everett's translations.
Per Wikipedia, "[Everett] says that he was having serious doubts by 1982 and had abandoned all faith by 1985." And wouldn't you know it, he completed his masters thesis in 1980 and PhD in 1983 in linguistics under a Brazilian-French advisor. His thesis provided "a detailed detailed Chomskyan analysis of Pirahã." Anyways, it sounds like he begins to reject his faith as a Brazilian graduate student in a (presumably) atheistic/secular atmosphere.
Incredibly, Everett is an avowed defender of the blank state.
You have to be incredibly blank-slate-pilled in the first place to avoid immediately seeing Pirahã stories as "Wow, so this is what homo erectus society and culture looked like before the last batch of brain developments". Guess Christianity that posits fundamental difference between humans (however dumb) and non-human entities, could have kinda similar effects.
That makes sense, except Christianity does not posit quite that--theology accounts for adults without the use of reason (consider, as an analogy, that infants do not possess a knowledge of good and evil, yet they still often get baptized, although not in Everett's denomination). Thomas Aquinas addressed it similarly: "Some are so from birth, have no lucid intervals, and show no sign of reason; with these we should decide as with children."
As far as I can tell, Everett's particular theological bent (he went to Moody) also accommodates this situation, because everyone has an answer to what happens if a baby dies. (They [Evangelicals] basically say that culpability presupposes knowledge, so babies and adults without the use of reason go to heaven.)
> “how’s it going?” is usually not an actual question
Yesterday I heard someone answer that with 'you don't want to know, but thanks for asking.'
I always have to remind myself at the doctor that this is a real question. “Fine thanks how — wait no, I have a 103° fever and my veins are all red and squiggly.”
Same.
As a youngster I was in the camp of taking the question seriously. I had to train myself to understand that nobody actually cared about me.
"It doesn’t even need to be in person — histories of the Aztecs or the Carthaginians demonstrate exactly the same kind of 'sweeping positive statement / truly horrific details' phenomenon."
And at some point people will say exactly the same kinds of things about us. "Everyone had food and emergency medical care. They could vote and go to school, where they might be shot in their classrooms by a stranger, and people accepted this. 'Nothing can be done'."
I guess as long as you sidestep the horrific details personally, it's a positive experience.
+1 on the Kyle Harper books — they are fantastically illuminating, if often grim reading.
For me, it was William H. McNeil's _Plagues and Peoples_. The OG and still the best.
I'm guessing the divorce and children cutting him off have to do with him being an unreliable self-promoting a hole.
It's super convenient that the ONE language that has NONE of the features of other languages has a super small number of speakers, is difficult to learn, and a linguistic isolate (there are not other languages in the same family against which his claims can be compared). So he is the lone expert in this language (his wife is the only other) and he says it has all these weird features no one can check.
huh how bout that.
Research opportunity, Kath!
Maybe I'm missing something here - why would ADHD be selected for in American society?
Also, the Pirahã are a perfect of example of why subjective happiness is not the highest good.
I assume it's because, in a reproductive landscape of widespread birth control, unusually impulsive people will have more babies.
How do we evaluate the quality of life of people like the Pirahã? On the one hand, their lives are objectively pretty awful. On the other hand, they actually seem... pretty damn happy about the state of their society? Would their experience of reality be better if they were raised in modern, wealthy Western societies? What are we optimizing for here?
Random thought but... maybe that's why mafias rarely lasted more than a generation or two into being uprooted to northern climes? We assume that the younger generation assimilated and the culture faded. But maybe they were just reacting to the local microbe community, and, a few generations later, are now depressed and anxious.
Dammit, more books I want to read now.
I'm so mad at the link in footnote 5. And I didn't even click on it.
🫡
This was a fascinating and run to read article that sparked for me a number of new lines of thought, so thank you.