Storytelling = Key to sapient life. No, really. · 5:33am Dec 6th, 2018
Among all other animals on Earth, the chimp is the closest one to humans. Their biology is almost the same, their genetics are almost the same, but they spend their days swinging in trees and eating fruit while humans forge empires and land on the moon. This makes "What makes them not like us?" a very interesting question. I believe Doctor Tetsuro Matsuzawa has the answer.
You don't need to watch all of this, I'll summarize it, but here's an explanation on the main difference between human and chimps in terms of brain usage.
There's an interesting thing that chimps can do which humans can't. Chimps possess the ability to instantly memorize data and replicate it/utilize it immanently even if shown this data for less than half a second. Even if that data is long and complicated. Specifically, if you flash a series of 10 (or more) numbers up on a screen with each number in a random place for a split second, a chimp can easily and instantly touch the screen in the numerical order. They can understand which symbol comes after which, and memorize their positions, all in that fraction of a second.
Humans cannot do this. Not to the degree a chimp can, with an exception for low functioning autistic humans who have limited to no language skills.
Here's the more interesting thing. Chimps, our closest living relatives, do not possess any form of complex communication. Chimps have a set of about 66 different gestures which they use to communicate with one another, and those gestures mean very very simple things.
"The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggest either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions. Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other less sophisticated animals convey with non-verbal communication."
Dr Susanne Shultz - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28023630
As far as we can tell, the main difference between ourselves and Chimps is language. Specifically: The ability to communicate about things which are happening at times other than now. When our ancestors left the trees for the Savannah, they encountered an environment where without the ability to communicate and coordinate as a team they would not survive. Chimps ancestors stayed int he safety of the trees and needed only to be able to quickly react when a predator began to scale their tree or came near them. They had easy escapes, we did not.
Evolution isn't magic. Things have to develop from other things. It's an adaptation, not creation. Brains do not like to grow bigger to develop brand new structures, those structures are simply repurposed as needed to fit a new environment. The difference between a human brain and a chimp brain is we traded hyper-detailed short-term memory for hyper-detailed communication. There's a trade-off in the biology of great apes, Good Communication for Good Short-term memory.
This trade-off is the key to sapience due to what good communication allows a species to do. We can understand ideas that begin with concepts like "maybe" and "if". Humans can discuss hypothetical and abstract concepts and events, in detail. Because of this, we can plan for the future and learn far more from the past than would otherwise be possible. As far as we know, no other animal is capable of this.
The capacity for imagining the future is unique. It is THE definitive human skill. That is what we do. Snakes poison. Cheetahs run fast. Birds fly. Fish swim. Humans imagine.
Human imagination is the key to everything. It's why while other species make tools, no other species has made such a simple tool as a bow, or an atlatl, or even a proper knife. These are all simple machines, devices so simplistic they are almost a single part, a lever, a wedge, a spring. That's all those things are. Human children playing in the woods can make crude versions of these things, and will if you let them.
Seeing as how the knife is literally just a narrow wedge and you can find sufficiently pointy rocks laying around, chimps relay have no excuse for not figuring that one out unless they lack the capacity to imagine. They have had just as long as humans to work out "Hey, if we make more pointed rocks like this one, we can use them to cut things like logs so we can get grubs more easily." and have been unable to do so.
Meanwhile, here I am, a human, and I am using an extremely complicated geometric pattern etched into a special kind of crystal to channel a fundamental universal energy in just the right way to turn my finger's moments into letters which you can read anywhere in the world. Our species have had the same amount of time on this world, and are nearly identical in every single way, and yet they are not even in the stone age while we are literally wizards who don't understand we perform magic every single day.
We are gods when compared to every other animal, and yet most of us don't even realize this because our abilities are so mundane and normal to us. I do not speak in jest. Humans can move rivers, bring untold devastation to any region of the globe we choose, slip free from the bonds of gravity to fly from place to place without wings of our own, voyage among the stars, and speak to people too far away to hear our voices.
All of this, thanks to language and the capacity to imagine the future, so we can prepare for the dangers of tomorrow.
However, imagination does another thing aside from keeping us safe and allow us to live more comfortably. It allows us to be entertained. We can understand the concept of a story, that something being said is not real but is a fantasy meant to entertain. No other animal can do this. They cannot understand hypothetical scenarios. This ability is, so far as we can tell, uniquely human.
Or rather, uniquely a feature of hominids. Some of the very first ancestors of the human species to split off from Chimps must have been capable of this. We are the only surviving hominids, but we know our extinct brothers and sisters could communicate too. We have found Neanderthal paintings. We have found non-human hominid artifices which show they had a culture, produced art, and had societies which are like our own. They too had the gift of language, imagination.
In short, stories are almost certainly the very first art form. Ever.
This makes stories even more special than they already are. They are not merely a form of entertainment but are arguably the very first form of entertainment hominids developed. They are uniquely the product of sapient minds, which in the modern world makes them uniquely human. No other life form known to us possesses the capacity to understand something isn't real and isn't supposed to be, as it is meant simply to entertain.
The fact that humans can distinguish fantasy from reality is one of the most primal and basic parts of our very species. Storytelling is an art form and tradition that is not only older than civilization, not only older than our species but is actually the key to sapience itself. It is what makes us human. The capability to tell and understand stories IS humanity.
How does it feel to be participating in a tradition older than humans?
woah.
I just...
When you write like that. It makes what we do, what we create on this site, all the more amazing. All the more grand and humbling. I am reminded of a video.
this is great. Thank you very much for the information.
Blogs need fav ability and thumb up ability.
4977095 Yes they do. I realy wish I could put Kkat's world building blogs in my library.
4977091 Yes. It also makes me very sad when people say "The story isn't important" in regards to movies, or video games, or whatever. Yes. Yes it is important. Arguably, there is nothing more important.
English is made of about 66 simple symbols? Phonemes? And try listening or watching a totally new language that you have no prior equivalence of and see how much you hear and understand. One value I saw recently, about the linguistic capability between a rich interaction child, and a poor interaction child, was the rich interaction child, who was well spoken, comprehensive etc, had heard about 35 Million more words in general conversation and interaction. But, they didnt say what that was that many More than between them.
Other research is suggesting that like Machs Principle (?) Watching TV, listening to Radio or reading books, for learning from teh start, is vastly worse than General Communication in a Real World Enviroment. Theres a huge amount of side band information that sensed and crossed linked to form the whole. Multiple senses give multiple coordinates, not just one or two.
Elephants grieve, Whales sing, the climate shifts.
What Id like to know, generally, is how happy were each cogent species before humans came along with the next general exitinction.
What makes humans demand to be Gods?
Been there, done that, its a Trap.
A lot of the human mind is devoted to simulation, which leads to advanced pattern recognition. But why is it devoted to simulation?
4977241 It's a function of our base survival. If we couldn't simulate events we couldn't understand what is likely to happen in the future vs what is unlikely to happen.
All this power, and yet Knighty still can't fix his gay site.
(kniggy, genfic, pls)
4977317 We also can't fix a toilet in the white house the same day it breaks :P
The magic we hold at our fingertips
Eveytime i try to go on about that peaople call me fucking crazy
The simplest tool ive ever tried to convey the magic behind to someone was a bowl or cup think about it water is a force of natre it creates rushing rivers and erodes mountains to simply pick it up and it would fall between your fingers to freedom yet with a simple bowl we can steal from the mightyest of rivers and weve contained and controlled all 4 elements in ways that are breathtaking even electricity and light bends to our will
No one has ever got it though, everyone looks at me like im crazy
4997958 Its sad how blind we are to our own unique greatness... :c