Dennis Junk

Literature - Anthropology - Psychology - Human Evolution
At work on "He Borara", a novel about an anthropologist among the Yąnomamö"

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

My article on censorship and how stories foster moral development on #skeptic 's awesome new website.
#anthropology #psychology

https://t.co/lx7Lt325XM

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

A prehistoric cave older than Neanderthals and modern humans discovered, sealed for 300,000 years https://t.co/2A009Fm2Ii

[Oliver Scott Curry @Oliver_S_Curry]

Analyses of "genome sequences from Sunghir, a site…~34,000 years before the present, containing multiple anatomically modern human individuals…suggest that Upper Paleolithic social organization was similar to that of living HGs [hunter-gatherers]" https://t.co/OMDosMxbED

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

@JoyceCarolOates This is a poor paraphrase. He wrote, "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology."

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Not only have conservatives become vanishingly rare in academia, so have centrists. That’s how complete the left’s dominance is: Even moderates are now a fringe group in academia.

https://t.co/3TCZW5YzIF

[Iosif Lazaridis @iosif_lazaridis]

"Here we successfully extracted and analysed ancient enamel proteins from five male and one female Middle Pleistocene H. erectus specimens from approximately 0.4 million years ago, from the Zhoukoudian, Hexian and Sunjiadong sites."

https://t.co/gn39zlCC7z

[Will @Evolving_Moloch]

Worth thinking about how this pattern might look across various cultural contexts. In Chagnon’s data on Yanomami for example nearly every headman (presumably ‘smarter’ than avg in the pop.) had killed someone. In many contexts it’s been smart to engage in (at least some) violence

[Daniel Tabin @DanTabin]

The idea that Bonobo's are more peaceful than Chimpanzees is common misconception. Another study on wild animals also found a sex differences also demonstrated that Bonobo Males are MORE aggressive to one another. Chimpanzee violence is more intense, but rarer

[Macken @MackenMurphy]

There’s a well-known phenomenon in the facial aesthetics literature whereby “average faces” (that is, faces formed by superimposing many faces atop one another) tend to be more attractive than the average person.

This may be counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you consider the following: Individual faces are all slightly flawed, from a beauty perspective, in idiosyncratic ways. And when you average lots of faces, you average out all of these minor issues. So, an “average face” is errorless and looks quite pleasant as a result.

However, another thing you’ll notice about these “average faces” is that none of them could be models. They’re more attractive than the average human, yes, but less attractive than the most attractive humans.

This is because extremely attractive faces tend to have certain features that are, mathematically, extreme. (For example, male models tend to have lower-set brows and larger jawbones than you would see in any average face.)

Recently, I have begun to wonder if LLM-writing faces a similar challenge. It’s always “more attractive than average,” because all of the flaws of normal human writing have been averaged out. But it's also missing the unusual taste and style of the best human writers I've read. In my experience, it's only ever 85%-good; like an "average face," it's never flawed, but equally, it's never exceptionally beautiful.

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

"The researchers said the Aurignacian signs display some design features found in written languages but that other features are missing including the connection to spoken language structures." https://t.co/THNOkRsODA

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

@Evolving_Moloch How is anthropology niche? It's, like, everything.

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

When the replication failure fails to replicate.

[The Dark Fiddling Pirate Jussim @PsychRabble]

Ego-Depletion Lives! Despite suffering repeat multi-lab failures to replicate, a new multi-lab replic, with a much more intensive manipulation, conducted in both China and several western countries, reports reliably and repeatedly getting the effect! Link in reply.

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

@G_S_Bhogal I'm trying to track down the original source. Can you help?

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

Released on the same day. Now I have a dilemma.
#IanMcEwan @sapinker

[Philip E. Tetlock @PTetlock]

These seven words from William Butler Yeats leave a more lasting impression than 700,000+ words of psychometric wrangling over the linkages between personality and ideology

[Jens Notroff @jens2go]

Say "Hi!" to a new (well: old, but you get the idea) human sculpture at #GobekliTepe.

Well fitting to another, apparently quite related find and type:

https://t.co/KBU1akhlQu

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

@chrisbuckley888 https://t.co/faW2VSABME

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

"...using draft animals for plow agriculture typically only increases inequality in societies where land is scarce. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example, farming is confined to river valleys." https://t.co/xVXCtWPb55

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

10 Month Old Infants Infer the Value of Goals from the Costs of Actions.

"After seeing an agent attain two goals equally often at varying costs, infants expected the agents to prefer the goal it attained through costlier actions."
https://t.co/2cGpk78xub

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

The Qimmit are closely related to a 3,700-yo dog found in Alaska, suggesting a rapid Inuit migration from Alaska to Greenland, possibly within a few generations.
https://t.co/ua7m4EyrEU

[Dennis Junk @DJunkInTheTrunk]

The obvious point @marcatracy misses is that it isn't just about white men. It's about the complete capture of the publishing industry by the leftist monoculture. He misses it because he's comfortably ensconced within it. "F#ck the laudable ideologies." https://t.co/LQy7spdaDd