
Most of what chimpanzees and humans do today is not directly comparable - FossilHominid
https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/chimpanzees-cant-tell-us-much-about-being-human/
======
hyperion2010
Well if Chimps can't then Baboons sure as hell can. Have a read of A Primate's
Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. The vast majority of human social and politic
interactions are stereotypical of almost all primates, the only difference is
that we have the gall to think that walking erect seems to have freed us from
our vicious primate past. Spend some time watching a group of primates or work
with a group of them over time as I did a number of years ago, and you will
start to see that humans behave in almost the exact same way, our brains lie
to us about our motivations so we are obivious to the fact that we are acting
from ancient primate social instincts, and worse you get stuff like this piece
which pulls on the old great chain of being.

Chips may not have governments, as the author says, but I suggest that he go
back an take an introductory course in political science, because our entire
understanding of modern political structures is founded on the idea that in
some sense all politics are family politics (in group behavior). Macaques,
chimps, baboons, and many more have extremely well studied and understood
family group politics.

One of the steps on the road to enlightenment is the realization that the
monkey on your back is you.

~~~
joe_the_user
_Well if Chimps can 't then Baboons sure as hell can. Have a read of A
Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. The vast majority of human social and
politic interactions are stereotypical of almost all primates, the only
difference is that we have the gall to think that walking erect seems to have
freed us from our vicious primate past._

I thought the difference is that by dint of our language use and our ability
to modify our environment, we have the potential reproduce all the different
social behaviors that the various primate species have - as well as social
behaviors from even non-primate species.

Sure, it's wrong to image one is entirely outside of a social species, that
things like dominance and submission don't play any part. But it seems just as
wrong to make a single analogy to a single species and be done. We can be like
wolves (predictors), sheep (prey), chimps (violently competitive), Bonabos
(nonviolently cooperative), and so-forth but it's the complex structures of
human society that are going to determine which of these sorts of animal we
wind-up with.

It's important not to let the shock of realization "wow, human are just
animals" stand in the way of thinking, "but we can still collectively shape
_which_ animals we will resemble".

------
brighteyes
The headline probably wasn't chosen by the author, and is pretty bad. The
minor headline is actually quite good:

> Although there is merit in recognizing how we resemble our primate
> relatives, sometimes we need to understand what sets our species apart.

That's 100% true. Both sides are right.

But it's not just the headline which is bad. The author goes too far in one
direction:

> The argument goes that if warfare, sexual coercion, male aggression, the
> creation and use of tools, hunting, and other patterns show up in both
> chimpanzees and humans, then these are evolutionarily old, shared traits.
> Thus, understanding the reasons behind these behaviors in chimps can offer
> insight into similar behaviors in humans. This premise is nice, but it is
> mostly wrong.

No, as the previous sentence says, it can offer insight - not complete
answers, but _some_ amount of insight. How much is still very open to debate.

> We have evolved the capacity to be the most compassionate, the cruelest, the
> most creative, and the most destructive of all life on this planet.

The first two - most compassionate, cruelest - are an overly anthropocentric
perspective. It would take extraordinary evidence to claim that humans are
more compassionate than all other animals. And that's just not likely to be
true - why would it?

> Racism and global climate change are not explained by our shared history
> with chimpanzees, nor are gender diversity

No, _some amount_ of them probably are explained that way.

~~~
dang
I'm not sure that splitting the difference is accurate here because the
article contains "This premise is nice, but it is mostly wrong."

But the title is arguably baity, so we replaced it with a representative
sentence from the text.

------
kstenerud
> Racism and global climate change are not explained by our shared history
> with chimpanzees, nor are gender diversity, the #MeToo movement, and the
> recent rise in nationalism.

No. It can all be compared to how most social mammals operate.

Racism & nationalism have their roots in tribalism, a very useful tool to keep
a tribe cohesive and thus competitive against other tribes.

Climate change: Have a look at any invasive species for examples.

Gender diversity & MeToo: Genders in mammals will take on certain specialized
roles in order to survive in their environment.

Are they right and ethical? Of course not. Times have changed, and our psyches
haven't kept up. But ignoring our evolutionary heritage only results in
treating the symptoms rather than the cause. That's not how you correct
problems.

> It’s only by delving into humanity’s distinctive evolutionary history, since
> our split with the other ape lineages, that we are better able to develop a
> fuller understanding of the human niche, of what makes us specifically
> human.

Uh, no. It's also important to find out what's baked into our psyche, no
matter how ugly or inconvenient, and take steps to compensate for them or
maybe even correct them. That's what higher reasoning is for.

~~~
kazinator
I would say that racism is rooted not specifically tribalism but more broadly
in inductive reasoning (particular-to-general heuristics) which has been
absolutely indispensable to survival and evolution.

It is critical to classify a creature as friend or foe based on what class it
belongs to, rather than granting the instance benefit of doubt.

How previously observed members of a group have behaved in the past
constitutes rational evidence for estimating the future behavior of a newly
observed member of that group.

~~~
tkahnoski
Trying to understand the thread of reasoning here so correct me if I didn't
interpret this correctly.

An individual observing some members of a group with different physical
characteristic with a certain behavior, an individual infers all members of
that group behave that way.

Then with an individual being exposed to a sampling of that groups behavior
due to say the news or social media algorithms the individual makes an
inference but is unable to account for the bias these sources might have.

~~~
kazinator
> _individual infers all members of that group behave that way._

E.g. "all sharks bite legs off"

This leads to survival: not having your legs bitten off.

------
SubiculumCode
Several years ago I attended a distinguished lecture by a researcher with a
long history of working with non-human primates. For an entire hour we watched
clip after clip of chimps failing at trivially easy human mental tasks mostly
involving 2nd order cognition, even after extensive training and guidance by
researchers in each task, and videos of research data in which the researcher
had anthropomorphized the observed anaimal behavior when the data doesn't
actually support it He was trying to undermine the notion that humans are just
a better chimpanzee (i.e. quantitative) but are a different order of
chimpanzee (i.e. qualitatively different). I was convinced.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I'm not sure I have a good sense of what mental tasks require 2nd order
cognition - what are some examples of the tasks that you saw?

~~~
nyolfen
thinking abstractly or indirectly — thinking about thinking

~~~
SubiculumCode
Thanks. That is exactly what I meant. I was busy writing up some research
today and didn't make my way back here to answer.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I'm still curious how you'd design a task that requires "thinking about
thinking" and give it to chimpanzees, given that they don't have language.
It's a useful restatement, but do you have an example you could share please?

------
brosirmandude
Yeah but they can tell us a whole lot about being a chimpanzee. That's about
all we can rightfully expect of them.

------
AltVanilla
Chimps defend territory and go to war. Its not just human nature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War)

------
n0tme
Of course they can't, they don't speak.

------
Zhenya
How can this be the leading sentence in a scientific article??

"Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee?"

Edit: this is in response to this idea being floated in the media and this
article is responding to it. Thanks child comment for the context.

~~~
jasode
_> How can this be the leading sentence in a scientific article??

>"Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee?"_

If you look again at that sentence you quoted, it has a hyperlink to
primatologist Jane Goodall comparing Trump to a chimpanzee.[1]

Because Goodall is somewhat of a celebrity on the subject of chimps, and Trump
is...obviously Trump, a lot of various media outlets picked up on the
combination. E.g. Guardian, FT, Huffington, Fox News, etc.[2]

So it seems like the author is basically responding to all of that.

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-aggressive-chimp-and-
ma...](http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-aggressive-chimp-and-may-not-last-
long-668128)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=comparing+President+Trump+to...](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparing+President+Trump+to+a+chimpanzee)

~~~
Zhenya
Great point. Updating my comment.

