Andrew Cutler

Machine learning psychometrics, lexical hypothesis, snake cult enthusiast

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Eve Theory of Consciousness in a few panels. 'I' was a discovery that made us human.

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

>Prohibition killed a lot of people: 12k people died in 1927 from drinking industrial alcohol that the feds had poisoned on purpose to discourage consumption

TIL

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Today's article is an absurdly deep dive into what life was like in America 100 years ago, in 1926, on America's 150th

Some favorite factoids about life in 1926:

- Farming is collapsing: Agriculture’s employment share fell from 50% in 1870 to <25% in 1926. The price of cotton & corn fell 50% after WWI. percent.
- Manufacturing productivity growth is insane: In 1910, it took ~15 hours to put together a Model T; by 1926, a new car rolls off an assembly line every 10 seconds. A vehicle that cost the avg worker two years’ wages before World War I cost 3 months’ earnings in 1926
- Americans are obsessed, obsessed, obsessed with cars: 1920s Kansas had more vehicles than France
- The influence of flappers on fashion is quantifiable: The amount of fabric in the avg dress fell from 20 yards in 1910 to 7 yards in 1926
- Prohibition killed a lot of people: 12k people died in 1927 from drinking industrial alcohol that the feds had poisoned on purpose to discourage consumption—adjusted for population, that'd be the mortality equivalent of 36k people dying in 2026, which is roughly the number of car deaths
- Sports were very different: No TV means no commercial breaks, and players were in a rush. In one doubleheader against the New York Yankees on September 26, 1926, the St. Louis Browns won 6–1 in 72 minutes and then won 6–2 in 55 minutes with a one-hour break in between
- 1926 might have been the high-water mark for literacy in US history: The number of books published annually had doubled since the 1910s; magazine advertising revenues grew by 500%
- All this change was driving ppl crazy: In Germany, where medical records were better, the number of patients registered in mental hospitals grew from 40,375 in 1870 to 220,881 in 1910. Over the same period, the share of patients admitted to general hospitals for illnesses of the nervous system rose from 44 to 60%.

https://t.co/ThhKO5YWm1

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@CoelingAurochs The Eleusinian Mysteries were passed down from Gobekli Tepe: https://t.co/mwfhYgr8hd

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@vsbuffalo I've been pretty happy with ultracode, or building a critic into the workflow

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Yeah, it was my Fable project when it was briefly available. I started with my bullroarer research (~200 attestations), then sent agents loose to find more. Built a whole harness of rejecting edge cases (buzzers, blog posts, etc).

The Kurnai in the SE also connect the Dreamtime/bullroarer to the time of the rising seas: https://t.co/KNcsVWWdSZ

It's unclear to me why this isn't a better researched question. There are some academics that bang on about taking indigenous knowledge seriously. Isn't this exactly the type of thing?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien @MungoManic this is up your alley

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Yeah, it was my Fable project when it was briefly available. I started with my bullroarer research (~200 attestations), then sent agents loose to find more. Built a whole harness of rejecting edge cases (buzzers, blog posts, etc).

The Kurnai in the SE also connect the Dreamtime/bullroarer to the time of the rising seas: https://t.co/KNcsVWWdSZ

It's unclear to me why this isn't a better researched question. There are some academics that bang on about taking indigenous knowledge seriously. Isn't this exactly the type of thing?

[Hugo @lowlandsapien]

WOMEN AND CHILDREN SCATTER!
YARAPIRI IS ABOUT TO APPEAR!

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Michael Witzel has a book on the origins of the world mythology and he covers rainbow serpent in Africa and Australia. He ties himself in knots to say this must be some shared story from before OOA but really a more reasonable model is something like:

[Hugo @lowlandsapien]

@VectorsOfMind Yes pygmy Genesis is one of the most astounding things ive ever learned. They also have Rainbow Serpent mythology with the god Khonvoum.

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@simonw Exhaustive atlas of the bullroarer https://t.co/9x3RSikQ9J

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien For those interested I cover some of this in my tour of the bullroarer: https://t.co/c2Nm8ULgxV

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

The Yolgnu say the Djang'kawu sisters came from a large island to the North (some sources even say North East) by canoe. They are to this day depicted in an x-ray style rock art that, when diffusion was a kosher concept, was widely believed to have diffused from Eurasia. Among many other things, the sisters established initiation rituals that involve being symbolically eaten by a monster. The bullroarer is used. Despite being linked to originating with women, women are now barred.

Then if you go to a big island to the northeast there is New Guinea where they also associate the bullroarer with ceremonies involving being eaten by a monster. Male-only cult, but bullroarer originally belonged to women.

I very much think you're right that this goes back to Sahul. Why did you make the inference?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien Also, not to overwhelm but have you read the Pygmy version of the fall of adam and eve? It's a shockingly good fit for EToC / bicameral breakdown: https://t.co/Z9XVLEaabX

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

You really need your own benchmarks. If you are translating hieroglyphics, use Gemini 3.5 Flash. If you are running a vending machine use Opus 4.8.

(This is one reason why I am skeptical of just swapping out models to optimize costs or generic benchmarks without testing first)

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@RubenLaukkonen "-like" doing a lot of work here

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@akarlin They are good on long range diffusion in linguistics and mythology. A lot of the deep time macro language families are from Russian scientists. Huge country that spans many language families made that easier

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

So, fraud

[Luke Glowacki @HSB_Lab]

Been at focal groups where the locals are saying "we want cows", "we want revenge" and it gets translated by the RA who knows what the PI wants as "we have no water, we have no food, that is why we fight"

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@razibkhan @ezraklein Klein in 2006 wrote about how the Piraha lacked the ability to count:

"Moreover, the Pirahas apparently lack the faculty for “getting” numbers. They cannot be taught to count to ten, nor do basic arithmetic. Anyway, it’s interesting stuff."

https://t.co/KJh7F8uASH

[Aurochs @CoelingAurochs]

What's your most esoteric history theory?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@CoelingAurochs https://t.co/gKefiUbakV

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@jamesxlawrence @ClaudeDevs Why is this so bad??