Friday, February 09, 2007

Primate parley

Luke talked a little about the (mis)uses of primate studies in discussing human behavior. This article seems like a much more thoughtful effort to relate primate and human behaviors.
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6 comments:

Luke P. said...

"More thoughtful" than what?

February 10, 2007 at 1:56 PM
Luke P. said...

I don't get this. Are you trying to bait me by linking to something put out by the fucking CFR?

February 10, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Noah Berlatsky said...

I'm not trying to bait you. I didn't see who put it out. I don't even know who the CFR is.

I thought it was pretty interesting; it was basically arguing that there are lots of different kinds of primate behaviors, and that drawing inferences based on primate behavior is therefore kind of dicey. In particular, it's arguing that aggressive behaviors (among primates) seem to be learned as much as they are innate, and that therefore warlike behavior among people may be cultural rather than biological. I thought it was pretty balanced, and careful not to make the mistake of arguing that people and apes are one and the same.

Honestly, no baiting intended. I just saw the article and thought people might like to read it. My apologies if that was not the case.

February 10, 2007 at 2:20 PM
Noah Berlatsky said...

Oh, and I thought it seemed more thoughtful than the bonobo video you mentioned. Sorry; thought I'd made that clear.

February 10, 2007 at 2:21 PM
Luke P. said...

This article is scientistic propoganda about how we can be good hairless monkeys by welcoming global government and erasing borders.
I'll post more about it later.

February 11, 2007 at 4:37 PM
Noah Berlatsky said...

Hmm. Well, that's not quite what I got from it, though admittedly I read it pretty quickly. Still, I'm interested to see what you have to say about it.

I'm actually cautiously interested in the idea of isolationism. But I kind of like the idea of pacifism too. They don't really go together, unfortunately.

February 11, 2007 at 6:43 PM

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