> Many details of this particular experiment made me greatly reduce my confidence and interest in social science.
There is a reason why many scientists diplomatically classify social "science" as a soft science. Less diplomatically minded scientists like Feynmann call it pseudoscience.
> but we don't find anything like signs of a struggle at an inhabited cave or post battle burial pit or stolen artifacts that would be loot, or attempts at creating defenses like fortifications or armor, or cave paintings depicting battles, or signs of a culture that valued warriors. T
We don't see that amongst primitive peoples who lived a basic subsistence living? How shocking! We don't see any of that for chimps either, but guess what? Chimps fight neighboring groups of chimps.
> It's further worth noting that in observations of modern hunter gatherer societies, interpersonal violence is common but group violence is basically non-existent.
This is true for pretty much all human and all social animals. Humans, like most animals, try avoid deadly fights. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Also, the 'modern' hunter gatherer societies that survived to this day probably were the less violent/more cowardly variety. The violent hunter gathers probably did a good job of killing themselves. Especially when europeans came around with modern weaponry.
> The idea of savages killing the men and stealing the women of neighboring tribes is a myth.
That it happened with frequency is a myth. But given the lack of diversity in the male Y chromosome compared to female mitochondrial, it isn't rocket science to assume it happened.
> For starters, Native American Y-chromosomes come from many haplogroups and are predominantly not european in origin, so your claim is just incorrect on the face.
No shit. That's my point. In the US, which haplogroup dominates today? The native haplogroup or the european?
> Second, we know for a fact that Homo Sapiens came to europe for several thousand years and then died out. The Neanderthals didn't just get a few licks in, they won overall.
If the neanderthals 'won', homo sapiens wouldn't have survived in europe for several thousand years.
> The Neanderthals didn't just get a few licks in, they won overall.
Any evidence for that? Of course not.
> Yet we have no evidence of any male neanderthal ever fathering a child with a sapien female.
Hmmmm... I wonder why?
> Finally, the europeans didn't murder all the men and rape all the women in the americas;
No shit. Why are you playing these manipulative games? Did I say every single native was raped and killed in half the globe?
> while Europe gained polical hegemony and did numerous terrible things, there were numerous alliances with various native polities
No shit.
> and the overwhelming majority of the Americas' depopulation was due to disease.
Nonsense. Native depopulation was primarily a result of war and habitat loss. But what does that have to do with the haplogroup assertion?
> Sapiens having difficulty producing fertile offspring with Neanderthals would make it more likely that Neanderthals die out, not keep them around.
No. You wrote: 'The evidence is much better explained by only male sapiens-female neanderthal couplings producing fertile offspring, which is a common thing for hybrids.' That's what I was responding to.
> And given that this interbreeding was happening rarely over the course of thousands of years as Neanderthals were going extinct, hybridizing as a last resort is a very likely explanation for the pairings.
Are you being intentionally dense? What does 'hybridizing as a last resort' even mean? The neanderthals were realizing they were going extinct so they decided to speed up the process by intentionally mixing with humans?
You wrote: "Again, there is no evidence to suggest that things were substantially different then." Humans today aren't different from humans 100000 years ago. Or 50000 year ago. Think about it.
> For anyone curious, there is absolutely no evidence of coordinated violence between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens [0]
'coordinated'.
> and it is believed that war developed during the Neolithic when well defined territories became more important.
What about simple tribal violence?
> If it was just "to the victor go the spoils" you'd expect a mix as sometimes one side would win and sometimes the other over the thousands of years.
Two examples refutes your assertion. In the US/Canada/Australia, the natives won a few and yet the male native lineage has been effectively wiped out. Almost all the interbreeding between the europeans and natives was between european males and native females. Mexico is another example. About 65% of the male Y chromosome is european while almost 100% of the female lineage is native. Mexico never experienced whole mass european immigration like the US, Canada or Australia. With only a tiny spanish population, over 400 years, the spanish male lineage has come to dominate mexico.
> The evidence is much better explained by only male sapiens-female neanderthal couplings producing fertile offspring, which is a common thing for hybrids.
Except that modern homo-sapiens completely displaced the neanderthals. If it was simply a matter of innocent hybridization, neanderthals would still exist as they breed better with each other than hybrids do. Not to mention most animals have an innate aversion to hybridization. It only tends to happen as a last resort in the wild.
> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone.
You need the 'flashcards' before you can read, listen or talk. Go try reading a book where you don't know most of the words. Heck you need 'flashcards' before you needs 'flashcards for words'. You need to memorize the alphabet first. Try reading a text where you haven't learned the writing system.
> Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1.
Because they can't read.
> They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama.”
Obviously you aren't a parent. You think a child magically decides one day to say mama? Or do you think it's the mother constantly saying 'mama' to the child until the child 'remembers it' and repeats it?
> They have actual needs in an actual social context and attend to nuanced details of that context to make complex statistical inferences about the world, their perceptions, and their body.
What? Complex statistical inferences about the world?
> We're good at focusing on our long-term greed and hunger over short-term greed and hunger.
If that were true, the modern world centered around consumerism wouldn't exist. We wouldn't have the obesity epidemic, environmental degradation or the genocide of dozens of native nations. Feels like short-term thinking where it's at.
> DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.
There you go.
> There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece
But you weren't talking about archaic rome. Also cherrypicking 'some' instances doesn't prove anything. There are some instances where the US is closer to China than Britain. So what?
> I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.
You didn't convey anything. Not even a vibe. Your current response shows that you were just spewing nonsense with your original comment.
> Well, okay, but rote memorization is neither necessary nor sufficient to internalize concepts.
Of course it is. It's how every human child learns initially. By rote memorization. How does a toddler learn how to say mama? By constantly hearing and repeating it. How does a kid learn their ABCs? Rote memorization is the basis of all memory.
> Memorization in programming gives us architecture astronauts and design-pattern soup rather than elegant code.
Dumbest thing I've ever read. You write programs well by doing and remembering. Same with writing. Memorization is the necessary component to programming well. In other words, you program well by remembering elegant code.
> For me, at least, trying to memorize something without context
After the basics, most memorization is contextual.
> At the same time, memorization has a real cost: it takes time and it's frightfully dull.
Oh dear. Something isn't fun all the time. What a childish worldview. It's more fun to eat candy and drink soda than eating 'dull'. It's more fun to sit and watch youtube than to workout.
> Sometimes a bit of memorization is unavoidable, but I've found that to be relatively rare.
Relatively rare? In order to be competent in anything, you have to memorize lots. You can't write a good essay without having memorized much of the material. Trying reading a book where you have to constantly look up definitions of words because you lack the vocabulary. Try having a conversation with someone who has to constantly look up words because he lacks the vocabulary. Try having code review with someone who doesn't remember anything about their code.
> Otherwise, my time is generally better spent on some sort of practice in context.
Why? Because it helps you remember?
To the idiot ( probably OP ) who downvoted, try coding without having 'memorized' the keyboard. The anti-intellectual, anti-hard work, anti-memorization agenda pushed by some 'people' online bears looking into.
> I agree with the other counterarguments raised in the article about sound shifts etc.
With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.
> one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.
We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.
> I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc.
Yes I know. 'Local' as in 'localism' aspect of deterministic classical physics which got 'disproven' by bell. It's why modern physics is a nondeterministic quantum physics variety.
It seems like you are disagreeing with me but no 'local hidden variable' is exactly my point. It's obvious you don't even have a basic introductory grasp of the topic at hand and yet you bothered to comment.