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0 pointswhimsicalism4y ago0 comments

> human nature (if there is such a thing) has remained unchanged for at least as long as there has been writing

I've seen statements of this sort very frequently - ie. that the "behaviorally modern" human evolved tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I'm curious what the backing of such claims are. It seems profoundly unintuitive to me that human behavior would remain evolutionarily unchanged over tens to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution/founder effects, especially when you consider widespread evolution of various other traits like lactose tolerance in the past ~5,000 years.

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ahelwer4y ago

If the wisdom of the classics stopped being applicable to modern times then they would die out and stop being read. So, only the observations remain that are most stable, general, and enduring over time.

SiempreViernes4y ago

The power of the classic is largely in being pliable enough to be read in new ways by successive generations, if taken litteraly Plato obviously has nothing to say about downvote etiquette.

CRConrad4y ago

He doesn't make even a single throwaway comment on the process of throwing black or white potsherds into an urn to decide whether someone shall be banned from the city of Athens, i.e. the original meaning of ostracism? Because AFAICS that would be pretty literally (actual literally-literally) about downvote etiquette.

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