July Subscriber Post

Help me make a FAQ

Infinite snek, Andrew Cutler and MidJourney

The blog now has over 100,000 words of content which I want to make easier for newcomers to navigate. Part of that is producing a FAQ answering questions about the timeline, the extent to which a single ritual could produce self-awareness, why the mix of psychometrics, machine learning, and anthropology, and “Do you really believe this?” You can view the current draft here, if you like. If you have any questions, however minor, please ask in the comments and “like” any you want to give a +1. This will help me get an idea of what I need to put on the FAQ (or maybe address it in a future post).

Previously on Vectors of Mind…

It’s been a productive season. Bookmark what looks interesting.

A follow-up to the post Archeologists vs Ancient Aliens in which I argue that a bias against diffusion puts archeologists in a bad position. Dozens of archeologists and anthropologists have argued that far-flung cultural similarities are due to a common root, but now the only people talking about it are those saying the similarities are proof of alien experiments (and, just as bad, snake cult enthusiasts). This post looks more deeply at a mid-century archeologist in the diffusionist school.

Archeologists are also biased against the Bible. Don’t be fooled by the title or image (I couldn’t help myself); in the case of relating Gobekli Tepe to Eden, the answer is actually not that conspiratorial or ideological. Newspapers started saying that Genesis was a memory of GT. This was fine when it was German newspapers, but when Turkish papers took up that line, it threatened archeology at the site. It’s a religious country, and the government does not want foreign archeologists digging up Adam’s grave. This story is linked on Gobekli Tepe’s official blog.

An Armenian folktale presented with limited commentary.

Video of a slide show that I presented at LessOnline. The major innovation is to couch the Snake Cult in terms of “Memetic Eve” and then argue that Memetic Eve’s discovery was “I am.” I like this because most of my research has been on whether something spread coinciding with modern behavior, not necessarily a snake cult.

Most comments on Substack/Notes were positive, and most on X were negative. Such is life. The post isn’t exhaustive, but I hope it manages to be fair intro to the debate. I wrote this partly as a response to AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton’s widely circulated video. It’s worth highlighting that the Godfather of AI believes chatbots have feelings, and there is a 50% chance AIs will stage a coup and kill us all in the next decade. And that is being boosted by Elon Musk. I am AGI wary—there are plausible risks and much uncertainty—but I think it’s a bad sign that “Doomers” are so keen to take Hinton’s estimates at face value. It’s highly relevant that Hinton believes chatGPT has subjective experiences, for example. If you don’t believe that, then one can significantly discount his P(doom) of 50%. I wish those who boost his predictions on doom would also say their position on chatbot consciousness or explain why Hinton’s doesn’t matter.

When prepping for the Snake Cult presentation at LessOnline, I realized that it’s more productive to argue about whether diffusion can explain the Sapient Paradox than about whether a highly overdetermined cultural package involving snake venom spread. I’m more than happy to talk about the spread of creation myths (about snakes), calendars, or recursive language. And even make the case that a snake cult spread “I am.” But it’s easier to do that within the Memetic Eve framework, which is more general. Ease-em-in, right?

Links

From the always-excellent

Misha Saul

, the story of Dan Everett, a linguist-cum-missionary who tried to convert the Pirahã, a tribe living like relics of antediluvian man. They speak a language without grammatical recursion, can’t be taught to count, and it’s unclear if they have a narrative sense of self. Their Edenic existence ended up breaking Everett’s faith, who fell in love with their way of life. I’ve wanted to review the book from that angle, as I also lost my religion as a missionary and am familiar with the soul-searching that produces. Saul does well framing the book as a portrait of ignorance of the human condition vs. the long slog to (post-)modern man:

“Reading all this, how can one not gasp at the wonder of Western progress? At whatever miracle propelled Europeans to create, to aspire, to conquer the world. In the chasm between these forgotten peoples and our own civilisation, we glimpse an ocean of gratitude.”

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes

An economist blogging on the subject asks, “Is it implausible that the language faculty could decay in a small and isolated tribal population who had no need of its more abstract tricks?” Everett discusses being asked the same by his colleagues. Gwern also makes the case: “On the other hand, gene-environment co-evolution would make tremendous sense; over millennia of reproductive isolation and specialization to their ecological niche, Pirahã have reached a local optimum where abstraction and planning are unnecessary and only lead to trouble.” I haven’t seen anyone frame this as recursion being new and the Pirahã a holdout from the before times.

Everett claims that the Pirahã have no rituals (even when burying the dead) but makes one exception:

“Pirahãs have told me about a dance in which live venomous snakes are used, though I have never seen one of these (such dances were corroborated, however, by the eyewitness account of the Apurinã inhabitants of Ponto Sete, before the Pirahãs dispersed them). In this dance, the regular dancing is preceded by the appearance of a man wearing only a headband of buriti palm and a waistband, with streamers, made entirely of narrow, yellow paxiuba palm leaves. The Pirahã man so dressed claims to be Xaítoii, a (usually) evil spirit whose name means “long tooth.” The man comes out of the jungle into the clearing where the others are gathered to dance and tells his audience that he is strong, unafraid of snakes, and then tells them about where he lives in the jungle, and what he has been doing that day. This is all sung. As he sings, he tosses snakes at the feet of the audience, who all scramble away quickly.

These spirits appear in dances in which the man playing the role of the spirit claims to have encountered that spirit and claims to be possessed by that spirit.” ~Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes

Memories of the Snake Cult? Or is dancing with venomous serpents in us all? Maybe, but it contradicts the snake detection hypothesis, which posits snakes appear in creation myths due to an evolved fear of snakes. Recall that indigenous people across the Americas have snake dances. That of the Hopi Indians is best documented, and it includes dancing with a rattlesnake in an initiate’s mouth. This is part of their bullroarer mystery cult.

Odds and ends

• Neanderthal introgression is modeled to have started 47,000 years ago and last 7,000 years. This seemingly puts a young limit on when Homo sapiens made it to Australia, where Aboriginals share the Neanderthal signal. (Or maybe the Australian remains 65,000 years ago are from another group who were later replaced?)

• I recently had to read up on Graph Neural Networks and found this high-quality introduction. The website seems to be a peer-review system for exploratory ways to communicate information, such as interactive plots or sandboxes to play with neural nets.

• Aeon Magazine: “Memories within myth: The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records”

• Flint Dibble and Graham Hancock are fighting on X again. Flint shared this quote from one of Hancock’s books. Just look at the carnage of those ellipses jumping backwards hundreds of pages. Doesn’t inspire confidence.

I cover the broader phenomenon in this post:

Religious podcasts

Some Andrew lore. The first time I met a Freemason was when I knocked on their door as a missionary. It was cold; he let us in, gave us some hot chocolate, and asked for a Book of Mormon. We came by the next week after he’d had a chance to read some of it. He said there were symbols found in religions all across the world that Masons understood, and they were also found in our scripture. The margins were full of notes he wouldn’t show us.

You don’t have to spend two years knocking doors to get this experience. You can listen to a podcast. Here, for example, Freemasons discuss whether Frank Herbert drew from their tradition in writing Dune:

At one point, they discuss the role of the Freemasons in uplifting the consciousness of the world. In the 18th century, Freemasons were part of the Enlightenment and took part in revolutions against monarchs and colonial powers. What, then, is the role of Freemasonry today? I was struck by how milquetoast the answer was: fight political polarization, economic inequality, the sharing economy, and send people to Mars. The last is epic, but for comparison, most Mormons would say their goal is to literally “build up the kingdom of god on earth.” Right now, that is accomplished by building up the Mormon church, which is currently led by prophets who talk directly to god. But once Christ returns, He will directly be at the helm. Mormons can directly participate in that end game. This vision is far more metal (and seemingly better able to motivate members). How far the Freemasons have fallen!

Another peek into foreign ideologies: strict Christians discussing whether psychedelics can be used as medicine. Pro: it’s a one-and-done, which seems better than most prescribed drugs. Con: you may be possessed.

Or, put another way (by a completely different person):

Speaking of possession, Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an approach to psychotherapy that identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities within a patient. Apparently, many psychiatrists in that tradition end up believing some personalities are literal demons that require exorcism. Scott Alexander with more:

Book Review: The Others Within Us

2nd Edition of the Supra Oracle Deck by Peter Durham. Supra is an oracle deck loosely based on Jungian psychology and how it mingles with Gnosticism.