Comments on: Pi in the Sky

By: Tony Marmo

Tony Marmo — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:48:30 +0000

Well, probably next claim will be that, as do not count the days, they have no concept of year, so you cannot think that they have lived for years. I have had the patience to browse some sections of Daniel's work and so far none of the examples he himself presents supports his claims. It is that he expects to find data in a certain morphological format, but not all languages bear it. I give you one example: (1) Canadians went to the water. A sentence like (1) in many languages is interpreted as having an implicit some operator, or a usually frequence, etc. In other languages the bare plural can be understood as a most phrase. Well, what happens in one example of Daniel's paper, number (15), is that they use the name of their People to convey the idea that all the persons went to swim. That is something very logical, because if you think that elements a1...an belong to a set S, and if you say something about S, you mean all elements of S and not only one or some of them. In another example, the Pirahã speakers could not be more explicative to him. In (16) they say that they eat most of the fish and that by consequence a part of the fish was left. And the funny thing is that he uses these examples to show that neither all nor most exist in Pirahã. Daniel's work is a 52 page essay and it is time-consuming, so I cannot promise I can finish it, since I have other readings to complete.

By: Joseph Hertzlinger

Joseph Hertzlinger — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 07:39:26 +0000

They haven’t been living successfully, without numbers, for countless thousands of years, they have been living successfully, without numbers, for countless manies of years. Similarly, we have many years of oil left, etc.

By: Windhorse

Windhorse — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:00:05 +0000

Bellatrys, I was actually thinking in terms of cancer having both a genetic and a triggering aspect when I wrote the post, but there’s no way I could offer enough qualifiers in the space allotted to prevent someone taking issue with a general claim. I don’t think anyone is claiming that all diseases are psychosomatic, but in the case of Amazonian tribes they have fewer triggers for cancer both in terms of stresses and toxins. Your point about stress being involved in a number of pathologies is well taken, and seems to support the point I was trying to make. A less stressful existence will naturally equal less stress-related illnesses including heart disease, the triggering of some kinds of cancers, insulin-response conditions, low-immunity responses, and others. Interestingly, the issues of counting ability and stress and health seem to be interwoven. If you don’t learn to count, you will never develop the necessary technology to introduce, say, dioxin into your environment, and you will not have that or other environmental toxins to cope with. You won’t have three things to sell by 4PM, or a $2000.00 mortgage due by the 1st, so your overall stress level will be lower. And this is part of what Vernaculo is trying to communicate, it seems to me. Indigenous people won’t experience all the benefits (including advanced medicine) that come with having to manage an industrial society, that’s for sure. But they have learned to live in harsh environments for thousands of years, and if it weren’t for the fact that bulldozers are at their doorstep, would likely continue for thousands more. So is the hunter-gatherer way of life subjectively preferable or less preferable to our way of living? I guess the answer depends on what kind of life you want. I think there is an unspoken assumption behind many of these posts that because they have a relatively primitive lifestyle that it can only be harsh and unsatisfying, that these people can’t have rich lives. Probably the only way to test that perception is to live with them for a while. I know a few people who have, and they personally have come away humbled by the experience, for whatever that is worth. Is their societal-technological level objectively preferable or less preferable, as some people here have asked? Well, that question may be easier to answer if we don’t find a way to reign in the deleterious effects of an industrial civilization on the world.

By: Tony Marmo

Tony Marmo — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:03:30 +0000

Well, Serial Catowner, I was talking about what is natural for humans. I thought this was understood. But, ok, if you read that Ducks can count up to three, so it means that even Ducks can count. One extra example of how absurd is to assume that the Pirahãs would lack a capability that, according to your post, even some birds possess.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:27:04 +0000

Claiming that “to count, to enumerate” are natural abilities is a weak reed, in the absence of any proof. For example, ducks can’t count above three, a fact I read in a book, but easily observed by looking at duck mothers with older ducklings. Count ‘em, there are usually three. The same book said people can usually count to about seven, which makes us about twice as smart as a duck, or a “whole lot smarter” than ducks- take your pick. But choose wisely- your ability to ‘naturally enumerate’ will be reflected in your answer.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:17:50 +0000

dan simon- “given that “our” way has resulted in billions of healthy, long-lived people dominating the habitable parts of the planet, while their way has resulted in a tiny tribe of low-lifespan, resource-poor tribespeople in a remote patch of South America, I’m inclined to place my bets with “our” way and take my chances.” Since the teenager in his dad’s car didn’t seem to have much effect, how about this: Crack cocaine is probably about as good as pharmacological euphoria’s going to get. It’s pretty seductive, I’ve been near it, but never on it. I’ve seen it “work”, as a drug and as a lifestyle. The parallel with “our” way, as opposed to the primitive way of the indigenes in question, is pretty symmetrical. The “way” you defend has been around for less than a century, or if you want to stretch it, less than two centuries. In that time it’s brought its own adherents to the brink of extinction, though most of them haven’t confronted that yet. It has spent the capital of its, and the world’s, natural resources beyond replenishing in “our” lifetimes. Children are kept indoors now, moving from one controlled environment to another; the fields that surround “our” cities are hostile landscapes of poison and industrial geometries, birdless monoculture deserts. The US alone burns 380 million gallons of gas every day. The automobile is the single largest killer of people under 30, and yet it’s the first technology most of the chauvinists of “our” way would point to as indispensable. Billions of healthy people for how much longer. Ten years? A century? And how much of a factor is happiness in your definition of healthy? With enough medical technology a brain-dead body in a coma can be kept “healthy” for years. Happiness doesn’t mean anything in that context though, does it? My main point is the timeline. The aborigines – thousands of years, tens of thousands. You, “us”, this – a few decades. Decades in which the conditions have been set for massive climate and ecological disruption to be made ineluctable, and inadvertently, blindly. But like the crack-head’s minutes of rushing bliss those few years have been so exhilarating, and so saturated in power, there’s no way you’ll go back. No way.

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:55:53 +0000

More geekdom – the Trolls in Discworld: “One, two, many, lots.”

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:35:11 +0000

Psychological stress exacerbates cancers. It also exacerbates heart disease, diabetes, MS, and every other ailment known to man. This does not mean that all diseases are “psychosomatic.” (I could go into detail about the fact that ‘cancer’ is a name for a class comprising hundreds of different diseases with different causes and symptoms, and that it seems to always have a genetic aspect and a triggering aspect, as well as a basic explanation of why emotional strain has objective physical consequences, but I’ll just join Doctor Memory in finishing wiping off my screen here…)

By: Tony Marmo

Tony Marmo — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:44:08 +0000

Of course, Dan. What you point is not an objection. Counting by twos, fives, tens, twelves, are systems that can be created and changed thanks to the very natural capacity of counting. Without such capacity, none of such systems would have been possible from the very start. Next time there will someone claiming to have discovered a society where People do not walk, even considering that their legs, bones, nerves and brains in perfect state. They will not walk because in their culture there is no concept for motion. After that, another great mind will claim an even more curious discovery: a village of languageless humans. Those will be real hits.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:55:11 +0000

to count, to enumerate, or to use natural numbers is a natural capacity, something that does not depend on the cultural environment. Really? What about counting by twos? By fives? By seventeens? Addition? Multiplication? My understanding is that even in our mathematically advanced society, dealing with numbers beyond five or six is a completely mechanical, non-intuitive process. For the untutored Piraha, the threshold seems to be three. That doesn’t sound to me like the kind of fundamental difference in cognitive capacities that couldn’t be put down to lack of familiarity and practice. they were living successfully, without numbers, for countless thousands of years. The assumption is that “our” way of living is more adaptable – even through incipient, and catastrophic, ecological disruption – and likely to be still more successful in future. That assumption is baseless and void of proof. Well, given that “our” way has resulted in billions of healthy, long-lived people dominating the habitable parts of the planet, while their way has resulted in a tiny tribe of low-lifespan, resource-poor tribespeople in a remote patch of South America, I’m inclined to place my bets with “our” way and take my chances. In fact, I’d go further and surmise that the invention of the natural numbers would find some application—indeed, likely a whole bunch of applications—in the world of the Piraha, even in their state. Arithmetic is, after all, an extraordinarily versatile conceptual tool.

By: novalis

novalis — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:41:08 +0000

omada, I knew my merely second-hand knowledge of Lovecraft would come back and bite me someday. Oh, the humiliation of being outgeeked on CT! ;) Belle, I don’t recall that from Anvil of Stars (but maybe I’ve blocked it out). In Sundiver (another book I’ve blocked out), some of the aliens don’t have irrational numbers. My friend Mark demolishes that view quite eloquently.

By: Tony Marmo

Tony Marmo — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:41:35 +0000

The use of machines, such as computers or airplanes, or of simple implements, such as pencils or knives, involve different kinds of knowledge, which are acquired through human experience. And of course, such examples, as the examples given by Dan Simon, depend on technological development and social-economic organisation. But some cognitive capacities are radical or fundamental and have not been invented. There is no term of comparison between the capacity to enumerate and that to browse the internet. If there is no internet in the society where one lives, he or she will probably not know how to browse the internet. And, this is the same for other non-elementary instances of mathematical knowledge, such as the use of zero and negative and complex numbers, or the method of solving second degree equations. But to count, to enumerate, or to use natural numbers is a natural capacity, something that does not depend on the cultural environment. The same applies to the cognitive capacities of memorising things or of commanding your legs to walk. To belief the contrary is the same as to claim that culture or language can have a more devastating impact on the lives of people than a stroke or a any form of cerebral damage.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:17:57 +0000

Fair amount of ethnocentrism here. Counting only matters if you have a quantity of something that’s the same or can be measured. If not, the ability to count is usually misleading. One reason we often buy fruit by the pound, to save arguments about whether one batch of 10 apples is better than an alternate batch of ten apples. You experience this all day, every day. Theoretically identical in size, minutes vary widely in their value to us and their size as we experience it. Counting minutes is usually a good sign that you’ve lost control and are actually losing minutes faster than you think you can sustain. Which of course is insane; you don’t ‘lose’ minutes, they pass at exactly the same rate at all times. They were never yours to begin with. That’s what makes them minutes.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:05:12 +0000

Do people still use insult-words like “Eskimo” to describe circumpolar people? A diverse group of folk who, in a neat way, circle the earth. There may not have been 300 different words for types of snow, but the ability to describe exactly the conditions of an unforgiving environment were crucial to them, and the means of that expression were there, obviously, regardless of the linguists documentation. As Ray Davis points out, it’s contact and taking the “test” that are problematic for the Pirahã. These natives will make soft meat for the merchants they encounter but it needs emphasizing, they were living successfully, without numbers, for countless thousands of years. The assumption is that “our” way of living is more adaptable – even through incipient, and catastrophic, ecological disruption – and likely to be still more successful in future. That assumption is baseless and void of proof. A teenager driving his father’s car at 100mph knows he’s immortal just as certainly, and just as validly. – As far as people spitting up over someone else describing cancer as “psychosomatic”… That the psyche impinges on somatic function is beyond debate, the question being only degree and mechanism. Less than two hundred years ago the majority view of medical professionals as to the cause of disease was “miasma”. In a more local context having seriously propounded that absurdity would be enough to delegitimize any further expression.

By: german

german — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:14:03 +0000

Where Mathematics Comes From by Lakoff and Nunez is an interesting study. The book is based on research in cognitive blending and its application to logic to mathematics