What a lovely fellow.
Strawman arguments, picking something he doesn't aggree with from posts so he can attack and completely ignoring the rest and finally calling everyone that isn't his opinion "neanderthals".
Sounds like a bitter couch potato defender to me.

What has become of the ancient greek ideal of having a fit mind, body and sense of art as well?
http://cdn.gagbay.com/2012/11/captain_murica-178606.jpg
Oh well...

Wow. I really thought I laid it on thick enough that no one could miss the sarcasm in everything I said about race drivers. I mean, come on, my text is full of facts that demonstrate (F1) race drivers do have to have certain physical abilities (or they're likely to literally end up killing themselves by running into a wall).

Where did I say that? (It's other people saying stuff isn't sports unless it's physical enough. I never said that.)

It's not clear what "it" is in your sentence, so I don't know for certain how to answer. But let me say that the huge bias most of the western world has for games of a physical nature over games of a mental nature is in fact a vestage of a time when extreme physical prowess actually mattered a lot more than it does now (thus the reference to "neanderthals" and the "industrial revolution"). It used to correlate pretty well with success. Now days that's not so true, yet the culture has not changed to keep up with the reality. E.g., cheerleaders for highschool boys bashing their heads together on the football field? Check. Cheerleaders for academic decathalon team? Um, not so much. Professional careers paying out millions a year (powered by ticket sales to fans) to dunk a bit of rubber in a hoop? Check. Same thing for autonomous robot competitions? Nope. Which of those skill-sets is likely to help you succeed in the real world and which is likely to be useless (or even get you an injury)? It would seem the positive reinforcement is completely off target from where it should be if we want to encourage people to succeed in modern life.

You're completely misconstruing my position. The position I was railing against was that a sport has to be more physical than mental, or it's not a sport. (See Klumpen0815's statement: "The physical aspect must be at least as demanding as the mental one") I never said you can be a fat narcaleptic blob of jello unable to process input or deliver output and still do mental sports. I was only saying that something could be more mentally challenging than it is physically challenging and still be a sport.

(Another swing and a miss...) My reference to testosterone had nothing to do with atheletes doping -- it was a reference to a known, studied, measured, and proven fact that testosterone levels in the spectators are affected by watching sporting events. (E.g., <i>"Flinn says that when watching a favorite sport team the viewer is a part of a coalition of fans in the community and can also get a rise in testosterone levels while watching games."</i>) The crowd is driven by these biochemical forces (adrenaline is another one), and these reactions existed in neanderthals, and I'm sure they were very useful back then. Now days they don't have much use, but people enjoy them none the less. (It's much like masterbation in that respect, but more socially acceptable in public.)

Back up that statement.

Are you saying something's meaning was changed because it was taken out of context? If so, back that up. If not, what's your point? I'm not allowed to point out when somebody says something I think is wrong/not-very-logical?

Actually, I was being kind. The origination of the part of your brain that thinks that physicality is so important predates the neanderthals by a good margin (though it was likely still useful for some time after that). We all have these very old parts of our brains that are incredibly crude in their functionality, and provide us to a large extent with things like base emotions. The key is to try to allow the new parts, the ones that bless (at least some of) us with the ability to reason to prevail. The question I would pose is where do you think your perceived need for physicality in sports originates? Is that coming from reason/logic, or is it more emotional in origin? (I would guess it's the latter.) Of course, my post takes it one step further than that by rejecting the current form that competitive sports take (as something more there to be watched rather than to be participated in).

I don't even own a couch. (No comfy chairs either.) I suppose I could still defend them without being them, but assuming that would just be the same error SweatyGremlins made (that just because I don't stress body over mind somehow means I think the body should be completely neglected).

Well, it sure as hell doesn't exist in America (or Germany), not for "mind" and not for "sense of art". For "body" it still exists (but only as an "ideal", not as a reality for most.)

I really like the thought of GOG supporting this guy:
Axiom CranK's First Mailbox
&
Axiom CranK's Second Mailbox

All's well, send more rice...

I'm positive the sponsorship will prove worthwhile in the end. By the way, check out the team uniform.

ahah. nice

You mean that as a compliment certainly !

Now that I read it with that tone it makes more sense, it did otherwise seem convoluted to be calling them pussies yet at the same time saying their life depended on it. Sarcasm and text doesn't always work well for me *sigh.

Reading that post again, you didn't say anything directly like it. I read the post with a condescending tone I misconstrued from the first paragraph and subsequently the 'neaderthals' and 'I don't give a shit about sports' gave me the impression you resented or diminished physical activity.

Sure there is an ugly side to sport, and physicality in general (pick any war or conflict) but there isn't a complete social stigma against mind activities or else the arts would never have thrived. The industrial revolution was a particularly horrible period, I don't think anyone working 12 hours would have had the energy for much of anything. Neaderthals is a weird group to pick on though since they probably spent more time with 'mind activities' than working people do these days.

Fair enough, I did jump the gun.

When I said testosterone marketing I had the MMA crowd in mind. It creeps into E-sports too though, mainly in FPS groups but also in SC2. That issue is mostly cultural, my local football club plays matches on the weekends and people for the most part watch quietly, with a few encouraging calls here and there. It's a different entry level and environment compared to the high tier sport that gets televised, it's mostly families watching their children keep fit.

My point wasn't about ugliness on one side or saying that there is stigma against the other (though both points could be argued I guess). My point was to just show where society is placing a very visible emphasis, essentially saying "Look here, what these guys are doing is awesome!", and how that is completely misaligned with where our focus should be if we want to actually promote productive lives. Some focus on staying fit? Sure. Competitve sports? I'm not so sure we need a lot of focus there. Math, science, egineering, arts? We sure as hell need a lot of that kind of stuff -- people without such skills are being displaced over time by machines, and society is going to be a really ugly place if we end up with something like 75% "useless eaters" trying to live by taxing the 25% of the population that is actually still productive.

(I'm a little tempted to correct you on such thinking, at least in comparison to the alternatives at the time, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make and I don't want to go off on another tangent. If you wish to learn, watch this.)

I guess I should have clarified that reference as well. (I considered doing so in my previous post, but it was already getting wordy.) I only mentioned the industrial revolution because it was a pivot point in history -- that is the time in history where wide-spread mechanization (and specialization and other efficiency gains) in production really got started (and those still continue to this day). And not coincidentally that is also the point at which the shift in usefulness (in a productivity sense) from physical prowess to mental prowess also really got started on a wider scale (which also continues to this day). That's certainly not saying that some people didn't make a living relying mostly on their minds before that point or on their strength after that point, just that it was a historical inflection point where the trend turned just a bit towards the mind, with the long arm of time leveraging that small angular deflection into very noticeable differences today.

I like how it's gone from "I was picking on modern people by comparing them to neanderthals" to "I'm picking on neanderthals by comparing them to modern people." :-)

(Just to be clear, you didn't say the first one, Klumpen0815 essentially did. But I still find it kind of funny that I'm being 'hit' from both sides of that when I wasn't actually saying either one.)

It was not my intention to pick on neanderthals. I was just alluding to the fact that some of the "brain baggage" we have today also existed in their time (and before their time as well), and that some of it was likely a lot more useful in their time than it is in ours. (I admit this allusion was a bit too subtle to expect most people to pick up on it. Sometimes I get too artsy in my writing for my own good.)

And while I may sadly concede the point that their minds may have actually been more active than the average person today (and their brains are known to have been physically larger, though the significance of that is debated), I can at least console myself in the knowledge that I have got to peer into the possibilities that computers provide, and both create and play with some of the results, while they had to spend a much larger chunk of their brain power just staying alive (which, in the end, it's not really clear they even managed to do -- i.e., the whole debate about whether or not any neanderthal DNA still exists in modern humans).

I'm all for that -- close family and friends looking out for and encouraging each other. (Fitness can be tough.) It's interesting to note that when people play (American) football for fun, it is almost always touch football, and no protective gear because there's no body blows, whereas in the "professional" realm (and the highschool and university programs that wash players out to see who makes pro) it's all tackle football and "high violence".

To be fair though, how accessible is a lecture or documentary on engineering when you are tired after work? Spectator sports are popular because of how accessible and entertaining they are by comparison. One of the issues is maybe technology, there used to be a variety of entertainment people engaged in. It wasn't just elites and snobs who went to the theatre, and the public used to attend University lectures and debates. I'm not sure what the catalyst is here but it must be cultural rather than biological since people from periods past were actively engaged in philosophy, arts, mathematics; and many of the classical mind games like chess have quite antiquated origin. Even primitive people who you point to as spending most of their time surviving had time to invent art, language, ritual, music etc.

I think the academic institute at some point must have made an effort towards alienating people. When I compare sociology texts to something from one of the chief sciences, for example, the sociological texts are so much more wordy and dense than a physics or chemistry textbook.

It wasn't what I expected, I'm not sure why you linked it to me! Not many people outside of eco-terrorist hippies would think blowing up industry that supports 7 billion something lives is a good idea.

The I.R. is neither a good or bad story, but the working conditions were objectively harsh (and often forced, see the closing of the commons); hence my point that they probably didn't have much energy or interest in mind sports, though it's just an assumption. I know it's in the aftermath (when conditions were improving) but I'm thinking The Jungle level of depression.


It's a weird point though, I think it actually supports mind sports more than anything. Logic and reason were more valuable than physical prowess in primitive times; even the world's strongest or fastest man is humbled by chimps, gazelles etc. They overcame the environment through observation: cooking to overcome weak jaws and teeth, clothing to reach colder climes. Not only that but if we look at people living hunter gatherer lifestyles today we see they actually have a fair amount of leisure time, usually spent on games, art, story-telling, teaching etc.

The physical stuff is really a man vs man narrative, and I guess in some cases sport can be seen as an ugly mock up of that competition.

There's a lot of money in high tier sports so the stakes are very high, I mean look at what Lance Armstrong did to his body. I have no idea what the solution could be though, if more people went to local sports rather than viewing sport at home that would take the money out of it I guess.

LOL. You think lectures and documentaries are the best STEM has to offer in terms of entertainment/introduction?

I already mentioned autonomous robot competitions before. I don't know about elsewhere, but pretty much name any state in the US and there are such robot groups/competitions. (Just going down the west coast: Washington -> ; Oregon -&gt; [url=http://www.portlandrobotics.org/home.php?link_id=1]PARTS; California -> RoboGames) I have entered such competitions myself, building my own robot from scratch in my spare time (which really didn't take very long), doing everything from simulation to design to assembly/soldering to programming. (I had the mechanical parts I designed laser-cut and had the bare circuit board I designed fabricated, but otherwise did everything myself.)

There are also (less interesting IMO but still fun) remote-controlled robot competitions such as BattleBots. Surely the masses can sit back and get all of the violence they so desperately need watching stuff like that, can't they? Just an FYI, my robot is a pacifist. :-) Throw the kind of money behind engineering competitions that professional sports sees, and you would see some wickedly impressive constructions.

In case it's not clear, I was talking about placing a "visible emphasis" on useful subjects, not hitting people over the head with a boredom stick (or "in over their head" stick). The idea is that instead of doing something counter-productive like effectively trying to get kids to become football and basketball stars by fawning all over such sports, we try to get kids interested in things that are in reality far more interesting than such sports are, and which are at least 1,000 times more likely to provide the kid with something they can actually do for a living as an adult.

I believe it is both biology and society. You think biology can't devolve? It can. Pay people to sit around, not work and make babies (as current society does for many people), or pay them to be useless (worse, counter-productive) bureaucrats that do the same, and you create a set of evolutionary pressures that do not include "being a productive individual". And society in previous periods has associated much more prestige with intellectualism and a true liberal education than it does today.

I don't think so, not directly anyways. I think the issue is that they have failed to actually educate people.

How they have failed to educate people: Example #1: The most important subject anyone can learn, a subject kids should probably start learning at around age 8 or so, is not taught in any gradeschool or highschool I have heard of in the US, and most college graduates never take a single class on the subject. That subject is logic. Some of this is stuff Aristotle developed over 2,000 years ago. It is the absolute bedrock upon which towers of rational thought can be built. And people don't learn it. Some people get a "short tour", maybe get some terms like "modus ponens" tossed at them to make them feel like they've learned something, but they are not taught formal logic. Example #2: The scientific method. That thing has to be internalized, and understood for what it can and can not do. (There's an excellent Richard Feynman lecture on that subject that's probably on youtube.) There are a lot of people walking around these days who think a GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) untested model qualifies as "science". The schools are doing nothing to fix this situation. Example #3: Economics. You can't learn proper economics in most schools - most schools that teach something called "economics" flat-out provide false information. (If you want to learn about real economics, you can start or [url=http://www.mises.org/]here. The subject and how and why schools teach fraudulent economics is way beyond the scope of this post.)

How that failure results in people not seeking education: Logic (deductive and inductive) and the scientific method -- if people can't learn those right, they can't learn anything right. Your head simply isn't screwed on right without those. And once people's intellect has been knee-capped like that, and you throw in the Dunning-Kruger effect, you end up with people that simply do not know how stupid they really are, how much they are hurting themselves and everyone else. Dysfunctionality follows. People act without being properly informed, and they don't know they need to be better informed. They don't seek education unless it's forced on them. (Thus you see colleges turning into diploma mills -- screw learning, everyone just wants their diploma so they can get a job.) Add in a lack of understanding of economics, and things just get worse -- people try to use governments to "fix things" in ways that absolutely can not ever work, and only make things worse, though that's another whole topic. In the area of academics, economics has an affect in multiple ways. One is that ignorance of economics creates both direct and indirect burdens which will make furthering one's own academic pursuits more difficult. Another is that ignorance of economics leaves people unable to make good choices about when and what to pursue academically.

In that video he talks about how modern people tend to think that working conditions back then were objectively bad, but don't understand that those conditions (at least in voluntary situations, slavery and other forms of coercion is of course another story), as bad as they were, tended to be an improvement over what came before.

Well, the typical European these days works about an average of what, 5 hours a day? So that's (compared to the industrial revolution work day you described) an extra 12-5=7 hours a day they could use improving their minds and skills if they so choose.

Not very much in forms we'd easily recognize today. They were certainly not having logic debates with each other. Maybe in the form of pack hunting tactics, animal tracking skills, and things like knowing that if Uga has his head smashed in and Buga's club has fresh blood on it, Buga is probably guilty. (Poor Buga, no due process for you!)

It's hard to justify calling the ability to imitate someone else creating a spear (so you too can then create one, and your sons can eventually imitate you) to be "logic and reason". Some of the other things they did, sure, but not imitation. And it's this imitation skill (and the random neanderthals that probably via trial and error "invented" and improved their weapons over time, along with a sort of evolution of "best weapons") that allowed them to get away with less strength (with the major benefit of not needing to consume the calories needed to sustain a greater muscle mass).

You might want to rethink that: "Humans can outrun nearly every other animal on the planet over long distances."

And the human walking gate is one of the most efficient of all animals. (Great apes, but not chimps, and bears use a similar walking gate in terms of how the feet work, but they don't walk upright which hurts their efficiency.)

Note that walking upright came before big brains in the evolution of humans. The efficiency of such walking, the freeing up of our hands to specialize as manipulators, and our upright position giving us a better view of the world, these were major advantages for humans over other animals well before we got our bigger brains. I believe I've heard speculation that our ability to gather more food (especially meat) than we need for base survival, in large part due to our walking efficiency, may very well be what enabled us to have bigger brains. All animals would of course benefit from being smarter, but brains suck up a lot of calories which can easily wipe out that benefit. That's why my diet and exercise program includes lots of thinking. :-P

Also, I think you're kind of missing the point on strength. Yes, even early humans had to balance the benfits of having strength with the costs, and therefore did not have infinite strength. That does not change the fact that more strength is vastly more useful to someone trying to jam a spear into a bear than it is to someone trying to program a computer.

That does not seem to be what cooking was for. Our jaws and teeth are perfectly able to eat raw meat. Cooking has all kinds of benefits. The biggest appears to be that digesting meat that is cooked requires fewer calories, meaning cooked meat provides us more net energy. Some (plant) foods that can't be eaten raw either because we can't digest them or because they are toxic can be eaten if cooked. And cooking can also help if the meat is "off", preventing the eater from getting sick.

That kind of makes sense. Hunter/gatherer populations can really only expand as much as the land will allow on a pretty much constant basis. If they do not use really large stockpiles of food to smooth out all of the bumps, that would mean that they might be completely busy (eating/sleeping/working) when food is most scarce, but the rest of the time they have free time corresponding to how plentiful (easy to obtain) the food is.

That really depends on who you look at. The conditions may have improved for some of the people on the lowest rungs of poverty but he is ignoring the misery (in some cases artificially created poverty to force people to work, see paragraph 3 under Parliamentary Enclosures http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain), illness, and alienation that the I.R. brought to the workers. Was it worth it? Well, I certainly enjoy our modern lifestyle and technology, so I'm grateful to the people who went through the I.R. but I don't want to fairy wash the period.

Here in Australia it's probably around 8 or so. I can't lump everyone in the same boat though since some jobs are more physically straining, others mentally. There's certainly time for some of us (i.e. me) but I know people who spend 2 hours commuting to and from work, and there is also an issue with people taking work home. There's a lot more to it than just lazyness, society is more complex these days in a lot of ways.

They were definitely more complex than that. People have spent some time trying to rediscover how they made a lot of their technology. There's a particular glue for holding spear heads, it's like a black tar, they have had a lot of trouble replicating it. Neaderthals had the more advanced technology, which surprised them since anthropologists used to assume they were rather simple. Also, the sort of communication required to organize large hunting parties, plus social structure and so on; it's the framework for modern thinking.

In long distance running sure, and some African tribes use it as a hunting technique even today, but it is very situational. It only works in hot climates, terrain safe for running barefoot or with minimalist footwear, and on animals that won't turn around and try to gore you.

I'd say you are overvaluing strength actually :P I've spent a bit of time looking at primitive skills over the years, our local Aborigine tribes for example did hunt, but usually in (strength wise) very conservative ways: bird nets, fishing nets, boomerangs, and various traps. Hunter and Gatherer communities often emphasise the 'gathering': collecting grubs, moths, roots, nuts, grains etc.

There was some strange experiment regarding strength that happened not long after Western people first arrived in Australia. Because of Rousseau there were all sorts of ideas about 'the savage,' the one that applies here is the belief that they were physically superior due to the requirements of their lifestyle (running, hunting, fighting). They basically pitted the Aborigines against the Western sailors in some sort of strength gauntlet, and anyway they were surprised to find the sailors weren't weaker but actually far stronger, the Aborigines couldn't compete. Their lifestyle required less physical strength than a sailor's.

Again though logic is still necessary, he can't just power through it like a lion or animal with large powerful jaws. He has to cut, select, use tools etc. and cooking for most people makes the chewing incredibly easier. This guy has to be careful with his teeth, chew more, spend more energy etc. Without logic and reason our ancestors would not have survived, let alone thrived and learned to use the rest of the animal body to make tools and clothes with.

The other food our H&G tribes ate is roots. Our ancestors like Australopithecus were chewing machines, they lived on fibrous roots, they had massive jaw muscles and flat broad teeth. Later humans (and even modern groups in Africa) relied on similar roots but required cooking to even consider eating them since our jaws were so reduced.

Yeah it completely depends on the tribe and period in question. Some where doing it hard, while others lived at sustainable and comfortable levels.

...

You say that, but then don't back it up. You may think you are backing it up, but you're not. Trial and error made humans. I.e., just because something is minorly complex (like whatever steps were needed to produce a given neanderthal spear) does not in any way prove it was the result of any intelligence beyond trial and error (combined with imitation and evolution).

I assume you know this, though your argument fails to reflect it: Aborigines are not neanderthals.

To the best of my knowledge: Neanderthals did not have nets. Neanderthals did not have boomerangs. Neanderthals did not have traps (not counting themselves laying in wait). Neanderthals did not have the privilege of living the life of "physical pussies" like the aborigines (and many/most other modern day people).

Do I really have to say "Lions aren't neanderthals"?

Spoken as if neanderthals had no tools they used to cut meat. I guess they ate by doing a face-plant in a side of mammoth. (That last sentence is sarcasm, BTW.)

That [url=http://www.aps.uoguelph.ca/~swatland/HTML10234/LEC17/CHAP17.html]depends on the meat[/url]: "So, take a steak like beef filet with a very low connective tissue content. The longer you cook it, the tougher it gets. Take a steak like a cross-cut arm roast of beef with quite a high connective tissue content. Cooking makes all the myofibrils tougher, but reduces the strength of connective tissue. Thus, the overall effect is - the longer the cooking, the more tender the meat." It's hard to say (with any evidence) what it does on average, but at least in part it's a wash.

"careful with his teeth"? Where are you getting that from? Your teeth are not going to break or significantly wear down chewing meat (unless you have some abnormal or otherwise already highly-compromised teeth).

<<sigh>> Australopithecus are not neanderthals.

The (side) topic at hand is "was physical strength more useful to the typical neanderthal than the typical modern day human". Your "logic" appears to consist of comparing modern day humans to everything under the freaking sun - chimps, aborigines, lions, gazelles, ... everything EXCEPT neanderthals. Ignoring evidence and engaging in a plethora of speculative arguments (that can easily be knocked down one after the other) is not "logic".

So what do the people who actually study neanderthals say about neanderthals vs modern day humans? Neanderthals were stronger.

From : <i>"A Neanderthal would have a clear power advantage over his Homo sapiens opponent. Many of the Neanderthals archaeologists have recovered had [url=http://news.discovery.com/history/neanderthal-hormones-strong-arms.html]Popeye forearms, possibly the result of a life spent stabbing wooly mammoths and straight-tusked elephants to death and dismantling their carcasses. Neanderthals also developed strong trapezius, deltoid, and tricep muscles by dragging 50 pounds of meat 30 miles home to their families."

Following one of those links yields: "Remains of an early Neanderthal with a super strong arm suggest that Neanderthal fellows were heavily pumped up on male hormones, possessing a hormonal status unlike anything that exists in humans today, according to a recent paper. Neanderthal males probably evolved their ultra macho ways due to lifestyle, genes, climate and diet factors, suggests the study, published in the journal Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia."

From here: "Evidence suggests they were much stronger than modern humans" and "It has been remarked that Neanderthals showed a frequency of such injuries comparable to that of modern rodeo professionals, showing frequent contact with large, combative mammals. The pattern of fractures, along with the absence of throwing weapons, suggests that they may have hunted by leaping onto their prey and stabbing or even wrestling it to the ground."

Now comes some actual logic. As already presented earlier in the thread, calorie efficiency is a very strong evolutionary pressure. Those that spend calories on things that are not sufficiently useful to them lose out to those that don't spend calories on such things. So when you combine that pressure with the fact that the typical neanderthal was stronger than the typical modern human, you get the logical result that physical strength was in fact more useful to the typical neanderthal than the typical modern day human.

(I haven't followed up on your industrial revolution link yet. I've been too busy working on my RPG and getting pissed off at "The Snake" for constantly upping his demands for ale in the Stronghold military campaign.)

EDIT: Just found another one: "Neanderthal woman could whup Schwarzenegger"; "Modern man is big wuss, claims anthropologist"; And the icing on the cake: "We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear. These people were much more robust than we were. At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then."

Well, that man in your article is not a neaderthal either, he also isn't a shoe rack or a canoe.

You've made a point of saying X isn't X but likewise: Neaderthals aren't modern humans, they aren't industrial revolutionaries, and they aren't modern sporting crowds, so I really don't see the issue.

You make some confusing remarks like "Spoken as if neanderthals had no tools they used to cut meat." I'm not sure why you are saying that, I said they had tools more advanced than our ancestors at the time (hence their intelligence). Trial and error? Sure, but you need a brain and intelligence to make something of it, otherwise any animal out there would have an entourage of interesting paraphernalia and art.

They also possibly had nets etc. as these things do not fossilize easily. Likewise, Aborigines and other modern H&G groups are often used as a point of reference, although the climate was incredibly different it's really nothing outrageous.

As for their strength, neaderthals were physically far superior than our ancestors and yet were supplanted by our ancestors, so again, how important was physical strength?

*shrugs*