By David Futrelle
So an amateur phrenologist in the Men going Their Own Way subreddit has come up with a new (to him) bogus reason why men are smarter than women: their brains are a little bit bigger. (Never mind that brain size doesn’t actually correlate with intelligence.)
Then he has some thoughts on dogs and cats and the right to vote.
Speak for yourself, dude. I would totally let dogs and cats vote. Not so sure about humans, though.
My favorite response to this post?
Know wonder why they say there light on their feet. They have half a brain.
Know wonder.
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@ olhmann
I’m really fascinated by human evolution and development.
There are obviously still huge gaps in our own knowledge but we’re learning more all the time; and that’s causing some radical re-interpretation of our understanding of our ancestors.
Neanderthals for instance created art:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02357-8
Took care of their sick
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181004110042.htm
And engaged in ritual behaviour
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131216-la-chapelle-neanderthal-burials-graves/
I have no doubt that if you took a kid from Neanderthal, Denisovan, Heidelbergensis; or whatever other human population, and stuck them through uni, then there’s no reason they couldn’t have gone on to be a rocket scientist.
Or at least engineer some really creative bongs; college after all.
ETA: But the idea that the various populations may have had different approaches to life is a really interesting one; and brings up some really fascinating questions as to to whether that’s socialisation or innate.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’ve seen replicas of Neanderthals in museums and it looked like with some modern clothing they could probably pass for human. If we ever find a way to create one, it would be an interesting experiment (though probably unethical) to raise them as a H. Sapiens child and see whether, if properly socialized, they can interact with modern society.
Homo Erectus may have also made art, as we have ancient statues that date back to when they were the dominant species.
@ naglfar
Well of course, Neanderthals were human. But as you say, we wouldn’t even notice them if they were around today. A lot of people classed as Neanderthals don’t even noticeably show the classic Neanderthal features. The first Neanderthal skulls found weren’t identified as such because they had no real distinguishing features. It’s really only the population from the Neanderthal valley that can be readily identified; and they seem to be a bit of an outlier group. Most Neanderthals have features that fall within the modern population.
But even the most ‘obvious’ Neanderthals hardly stand out.
Is this a thing people say about women? It’s a thing people say about cats. Is he confusing women and cats?
Speaking of cats, my cat gives great advice sometimes when I ask him. He delivers it in the form of blank stares and the occasional headbutt, so it can be hard to interpret, but he’s definitely helped me figure out some things over the years.
At the risk of a self own, give the male Neanderthal up there black hair and he’s the spitting image of my maternal Grandfather …
I’ve spent much of the last 3 years saying that a dead cat would make a better president than Drumpf so letting cats vote doesn’t seem too outrageous.
We might just wind up with comfy seats on every street corner as mayors court the feline vote. I’m less sure about the rolls to toilet paper hanging on the walls of public buildings ready to be shredded though.
The first Neanderthal is a double for a guy I went to school with (I’ve seen him recently); the second would fit perfectly in the family of a close friend.
@Sheila Crosby
My only issue with cats voting is that I’m allergic, so I’d worry about voting booths getting cat hair all over.
IIRC, some creationists maintain that both death and procreation only started after the Fall, when human sin destabilized the Garden of Eden. In other words, God initially expected there’d never be a need for more than two humans.
(And yet he built them with mutually compatible plugs)
I would be interested in knowing what are the minimal requirement to be educated like a human and being meaningfully a part of our society. I suspect it’s almost the same thing as being able to talk, and I wonder if something like thoses grey gabon parrots could not actually be educated to be member of our society.
Since I’ve heard people express the belief that all dogs are men and all cats are women that wouldn’t surprise me that much.
@Battering Lamb
I had a cousin who was a conservative Christian who thought this. I was unable to persuade her otherwise. Since she was about 14 at the time, she may have grown out of this belief since.
@Ohlmann
African Grey parrots appear to top out at about the intelligence and verbal ability of a human 5 year old. So they could probably participate similarly to a human 5 year old. Regarding voting, in the US the right to vote requires understanding what voting is, so if a parrot was able to become a citizen and understand voting they could maybe vote.
We should not speak for the parrots but let the parrots speak for themselves…
AFAIK there’s plenty of precedent in assisting mentally disabled humans in voting. At least in my country it’s common for, say, nursing home staff to assist the voting of residents who barely understand what voting is anymore. Naturally this is somewhat controversial, with all the possibility for voter manipulation, and you have to draw the line somewhere.
The principle seems to be that all people over 18 can vote, as long as they manage to make a deliberate voting choice and express it. (I think professional caregivers are expected to assist in the act of voting, but not in any research to make a truly informed choice) The assumption is that adults are *usually* capable of making a somewhat informed choice, and exceptions must be tolerated (including also people who simply choose to vote at random) because, as Ohlmann wrote,
(continued)
@Naglfar
Well what else could we raise them as? 🙂
@threp
But that horrible photoshop job…
One of my ex’s had the most slanted forehead humanly possible, probably at least as slanted as a lot of the skulls shown in the Neanderthal exhibit at the museum, if not more so. You wouldn’t even notice it unless you looked at him closely from the side. He had a lot of hair,
and wasn’t a terrible looking guy by any measure.
One might ask whether, say, children aged 12-17 would be much less competent voters than adults generally are. Would they be collectively competent enough to deserve the right? What if only few of them would bother to vote anyway, and those would be self-selected for relative maturity? What if some huckster could suddenly mobilize many of them with patently unrealistic promises….oh wait.
I suppose that presently at least any demographic or species where most individuals cannot read to gather information should not be eligible for voting. This might change when we all have personal AI servants reading for us – and then we can discuss whether those AIs should be also eligible to vote.
@Lumipuna
This is the issue parrots would have, we don’t know how well they can express an actual choice rather than just repeating what humans say to them. If you ask a 5 year old who they want for president/prime minister/other high level position, they will probably either suggest someone not on the ballot/not real (e.g. Superman, Willy Wonka, etc) or, if they suggest an actual candidate, will probably say whoever they overheard their parents or guardians talking about without doing any research, because they’re 5. Parrots would likely do the same.
AFAIK parrots cannot read either, so their research would be limited even if they are capable of making a choice.
As for letting children 12-17 vote, some towns in the US have experimented with letting 16-18 year olds vote in local elections. The result in Takoma Park, MD was increased voter turnout for all ages, as teens convinced their parents to vote. This could have been an unusual case, but I wouldn’t be opposed to lowering voting age nationwide to 16.
EDIT: Apparently parrots can learn to recognize words, but there is a big difference between recognizing and saying individual words and being able to full sentences or understand sources of information like news stories or campaign information.
@Moogue
I more meant that it would be unethical to tell them they were H. Sapiens rather than another species, as it would be deception.
Mind you, would the results be any worse than we get currently?
@ naglfar
I would have to disagree there. The species/sub species classification is so arbitrary.
Already there’s been a shift in taxonomy from Homo neanderthalensis to Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; and I think even that distinction will vanish soon.
If people can interbreed, bring up children; and those children carry on interbreeding themselves; then how are they not all the same?
To me, telling children they weren’t of the same species, would be the deception. There’s nothing to suggest the marginal differences in morphology are any more relevant than hair colour or build.
No doubt there would be people who insisted on a distinction; we make enough out of insignificant varieties in attributes as it is (not suggesting for one second that’s your reasoning).
Although as it seems Neanderthals may have skewed white*; I wonder what the usual suspects would make of them?
(Possibly with reddish hair and freckles!)
Alan wrote:
I suspect any particular population of live flesh-and-blood neanderthals would present a combination of subtle racial features that doesn’t quite match any current sapiens population. A lone neanderthal would easily pass for a slightly weird looking sapiens. A population would be clearly “different race”, though not outstanding looking compared to the sapiens racial diversity.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’m sure if there were enough Neanderthals we would see anti-Neanderthal discrimination begin to occur. Bigots will find any little thing to be hateful about if it means getting to maintain power over others.
Looking online I’m seeing a lot of different artist depictions of what they looked like, ranging from very similar to modern humans to having very different facial structure. Given the differences in facial structure, I’m curious if some would pursue plastic surgery to try to look more like modern humans (or go the other way for Sapiens to look more Neanderthal-like).
I was thinking that someone who was created from ancient Neanderthal DNA but wasn’t told that, night later find out and feel like they had been lied to. I’m not sure how they’d feel because I’m not in that situation, but it seems possible.
Derrick (my neighbor cat) just jumped from her balcony to ours and spent a good amount of time scratching up the screen to our balcony door before i caught him.
This little bastard boy is so lucky he is cute.
@Lainy
My dog did that when she was very little (the screen-shredding, not the balcony jumping). She’s grown out of it, but when she stopped I had to replace 3 screens she had destroyed. Maybe you could set up a scratching post nearby so he can scratch something that’s meant to be scratched instead of your door?
A while ago some racists on the internet were arguing along the lines of “As far as I understand, human races are basically different subspecies*, so isn’t miscegenation like, borderline bestiality?”
* You can always find some crank with vague scientific authority leaning toward this taxonomic view. I suppose these get often cited by neonazi propagandists.
Indeed, if “bestiality” were as simple as interracial families, then what’s the problem with it? What exactly is bestiality, anyway?
Traditionally, bestiality gets a bad rap mainly because we intuitively tend to hate people having really weird sex. Also something about mixing and blurring neat categories, which we also tend to hate. Traditional prejudice against “miscegenation” apparently reflects these same gut feelings to some extent, plus ethnic territoriality.
There are/could be some genuinely problematic aspects in traditional bestiality, but these don’t apply between, well, humans. There’s no inherent communication or power imbalance issues. There’s no known adverse health effects for the “hybrid” offspring (despite what neonazis sometimes claim). It probably wasn’t much different between sapiens and neanderthal – or perhaps childbirth might have been rather dangerous with sapiens mothers due to the head size.
Modern humans and Neanderthals definitely interbred, and most people in/from Western Eurasia have significant Neanderthal DNA, but that gets into the weeds of what exactly a species is. Coyotes, wolves, Cape Hunting dogs, and domestic dogs are distinct populations with distinct traits, but they can all interbreed with each other. That’s probably a reasonable estimate of how various members of genus Homo interacted. Clearly Sapiens Sapiens had some kind of edge, cos none of the others exist as distinct populations anymore. But neither do red wolves, and they were a species before the coyotes got them.
Long ago the late Finnish paleontologist Björn Kurten wrote two novels on hypothetical sapiens-neanderthal interaction in northern Europe. He had this idea that neanderthals maybe perished because interspecies hybrids had reduced fertility – in the novels, the hybrids were fully sterile. However, Kurten struggled to explain why the hybrids would be predominantly born in neanderthal (rather than sapiens) communities.
In the novels, the neanderthals were very pale (compared to the brown-skinned black-haired sapiens migrating from far south), had decent technology and mythology but no visual art, and had complex language despite somewhat limited phonetics. They saw the sapiens as “baby faced” and therefore harmless, but also culturally superior. The sapiens saw them as ugly and not much human, “trolls”. Even a sapiens boy grown up in a neanderthal village would later find sapiens girls more pretty when he eventually got to see them.