Certainly things that have been around for a long time are more likely to be adaptive than new things, just as most de novo mutations are bad for the bearer. Chesterton’s Fence is a useful heuristic when reasoning under uncertainty! But not everything traditional is actually adaptive, and not everything adaptive is morally good — my beef is with people mistaking a heuristic for a moral principle.
But the been-around heuristic might be stronger than the feels-moral heuristic, in terms of predicting adaptability. We only have heuristics about that.
Yeah, “this seems morally good” is wildly insufficient as a way to structure a society! But you also can’t escape the necessity of doing it *sometimes* (especially if you’re a deracinated modern or otherwise in a context for which there isn’t a been-around approach, or multiple incompatible ones).
Primitive societies that have a suite of adaptive practices will probably develop into non-primitive societies. A primitive society you can observe today (or 100 or 1000 years ago) is probably not very adaptive.
Are there people who think Chesterson advised against all change? I don't think he did - his Fence story merely said "you should understand *why* the status quo is what it is before changing it".
(There are often good reasons for the status quo. If you don't know what the reasons are, you can't evaluate whether they're good ones or not.)
I read most of the Mr. & Mrs. Psmith review, and fact-checked six of the claims in that review that were excerpted from Edgerton's 1992 book. I urge people to read that review so they can get the full weight of the Smiths' and Edgerton's animus against primitive societies.
All six were wrong or misinterpreted or could be understood as an isolated case that a field worker observed once or misunderstood and too eagerly wrote down in their field notes. I used Gemini to fact-check these. Although I was previously familiar with most of these claims, I used Gemini to fact-check them, because anyone reading can go ahead and replicate what I did themselves.
1. is it true that in east african pastoral societies like the maasai, whose lives are centered around cattle; their children are discouraged from brushing away the flies that cluster around their eyes. flies mean dung, and dung means wealth --> completely false, made-up and called an unfortunate myth
2. Is it true that many hunter-gatherer societies allowed their children to sleep unattended beside campfires --> false; but traditional societies lacked the hyper-attention to safety of modern societies, so some practices may have looked unsafe to Western observers
3. Yes, reports on the Maring culture of New Guinea confirm that the widowed spouse and close relatives of a deceased person were traditionally required to reduce their food intake for an extended period of mourning. --> adaptive as a way to control women's power and sexual agency; also to make women afraid of husband's dying; thus supported and maintained patriarchy; patriarchy overall is "adaptive" because its practices increase population size
4. Inuit traditional hunting and camping strategies were indeed influenced by their spiritual beliefs, including the presence of spirits and malevolent beings, and thus the Inuit were foolish because they missed out on utilizing prime lakes and hunting grounds to obtain food --> technically true, but these spiritual beliefs supported wise resource management and avoided over-exploitation of natural resources, thus allowing maintenance of their population [much scholarship exists on the connection between spiritual beliefs about hunting grounds and resource management]
I'm happy to engage with you on the ethnographic literature, and I'm sure anthropologists disagree about the accuracy of the various reports (most of these societies have one or two "standard" ethnographies, and have changed so much since they were written in the mid-20th century that it's difficult or impossible to fact-check), but trusting LLM output on this is a big mistake.
I would also gently suggest that you are constructing the same sort of elaborate arguments for why particular practices are adaptive that Edgerton is trying to critique. (I do recommend the book to anyone interested in tracking down his citations -- many of the papers are on JSTOR, though I haven't been able to find digitized versions of most of the books.)
I wasn't "trusting AI". I was trusting my own knowledge of the ethnographic literature, but to share with an audience, I used a method that could be easily replicated by others. Google Gemini provides sources, and these could be checked. Anyone can ask google AI the same things I did and can find and read those sources.
And yet there was no need for that. Either we trust what you are saying hence won't check or we don't in which case the sources, via selection bias, are equally unreliable, i.e. the AI could hallucinate all the way down recursively including the original sources. Cost prohibitive in the days of paper, nowadays trivial.
Hi, Peter. You are teaching me. Back when LLMs first rolled out, I saw chatGPT hallucinate sources, and never used it again. But: I now daily use Gemini to look up topics in and around my areas of expertise. I have never encountered what you wrote: Google AI mode (Gemini) hallucinate all the way down recursively including the original sources. Are there specific prompts where you've seen Gemini do this? How often does it occur? I work on AI-related topics and have an AI research group and can ask my interns to try to replicate this.
I find your snark amusing but it misses the point and intentionally so. The AI owner COULD intentionally bias the results, as they do already, to do recursive hallucinated sources all the way down and you, or more accurately, 99.9..9% of people wouldn't know because like everyone, we got better shit to do that pull out microfiche from libraries to find out. Fabricating sources and censorship is as old as time, AI simply makes it nearly zero cost as the AI can be taught to do it itself recursively.
I can easily imagine the Chinese Gemini equivalent in China excluding Tiananmen from it's responses or when it does give them, fabricate the answers to include links to further fabricated answers including fabricated sources all within the Chinese Great Firewall ecosystem as it's CCP all the way down. If the good folk over in the USSR's Politburos could do it the same successfully by hand for decades, as it's currently also being done in North Korea, Turkmenistan, German, America, etc., it's doesn't take that large a leap of faith to imagine what an organizations AI can do as well.
It's "well that could be done by hand now" and you are right, it could but it's cost prohibitive hence only used for "sensitive" topics whereas a trained AI makes it effectively free hence can do on a mass scale for the most trivial of stuff.
I'm not worried about accident errors, people make those to, what I don't trust is the AI period to provide ANY accurate result with a high confidence because of build in constraints and biases by the owners. Basically all AI's are lobbyists working on behalf of a special interest group and as such, worthless.
See what you, and others like you are intentionally ignoring, is the concern isn't genuine hallucinations or errors, it's intentional ones which we know exist and can only guess at the depth and sophistication which leads to all it's information being suspect.
Hi. What you write makes sense, especially, since, I read that you are a political prisoner. That's tough. Well, at least wherever you are held, you are allowed to use the internet, but I can see why you would be suspicious of it.
Ok, dug around a bit. The consensus seems to be: "While Google has made improvements, it still can produce inaccurate information, especially with queries that are nonsensical, based on unreliable user-generated content, or require up-to-date information." I may not have experienced the recursive hallucination because I usually focus on finding speciifc information that I know already exists. I also have been a working scientist for 40 years and know a lot about the topics I ask about. So my use of AI is not the same as what someone else will experience.
One more thing: I wrote "anyone can read those sources." You then said AI can hallucinate the original sources. But how would people read those sources, then? Are you saying people may not bother to try to read the source, and won't learn it is hallucinated.
5. There is no reliable evidence from the work of Robert LeVine, or other anthropological sources on the Gusii, that describes a practice called ogotega in which a new bride keeps her vaginal muscles tense to resist intercourse. The search results indicate that this specific term and practice, as you described it do not appear in the ethnographic literature. ..... Gemini goes on to cite anthropological sources that teaching a new bride some skills to resist her husband's advances is part of giving her resources to negotiate an equitable sexual relationship with her new spouse.
6. I then asked about the practice that is included in Hanson's blog post. Gemini cited sources saying that these reports are in the anthropological record from the early 20th century and must be regarded skeptically. STDs were newly introduced with colonialism.
Gemini didn't mention this partitive paternity, so let me add it: There is also the practice called partitive paternity, which is a cultural practice of having married women mate with more than one male, to **cause** paternity uncertainty, so that multiple males will provide resources and the wife will have access to a range of backup husbands if hers is killed.
So the 6 examples I fact-checked or either false or do not support the claim of 'sick societies'
This type of fact-checking is complex because there is diverse scholarship. But, I can backup further, if anyone is interested, that these apparently horrendous practices were either completely fabricated or were not common or were part of larger cultural syndromes that were adaptive. For example, a practice might be locally maladaptive (widows having poor health) but don't matter in terms of fitness because the widow herself is post-reproductive, and not needed for grandmother care because her in-laws have taken over the childcare and want to exclude her to avoid inter-family conflict. And, controlling women via such harsh treatments is culturally adaptive because it maintains patriarchy. Patriarchal societies have high fertility and are successful in terms of being able to grow large populations. So please ask me for additional information on which you are skeptical or curious.
It is distressing that you have a parasocial relationship with a stochastic parrot. Your contribution here, I use the term archly, is worse than useless. Here’s Levine: https://www.jstor.org/stable/666776
Thanks for the source; there is a spelling difference in the word ogotega; Levine uses a different spelling than what is in Psmith. AI is usually good at spelling but missed this one. So let me grant you this one of the 6. What about the others? My contribution still worse than useless? Why ad hominem attack? Why not just say, the AI you consulted was wrong on this one.
Forget spelling difference, I had earlier fact-checked Psmith's report of ogotega, a practice in which a new bride keeps her vaginal muscles tense to resist intercourse (my point 5). AI correctly says that word, ogotega, is not mentioned in Levine's article. AI does accurately report on ritualized marriage night rape discussed in the Levine article that Sam Atman located, which I described in point 6.
To re-comment: The "sickness" is often the point in Malthusian societies. A culture caring much about girls (as newborns/ as teens / as child-bearing wifes) may end up with more girls, less miscarriages, more births - and repeat! - to end up rapidly unsustainable. As Marvin Harris said: "Yanomami are no pygmies, so why are they small? I eat my hat if they get a Big Mac worth of proteins a day." And he was right. (They also treat girls and wifes badly. Rape, miscarriages from work-overload et al. are quite normal. As is 'pointless' aggression among males.)
- One tribe in India that hit the sweet spot did brother-marriages. First step: you kill all but the first girl-baby. Then those girls are married off as the only wife to a bunch of brothers. Then the bros do ALL the work, except toddler-care, while their wife combs her hair. When one of her husbands "visits", he leaves his spear at the door, so his brothers know not to disturb. Looks great, just do not forget the first step.
Mark, I have no animus against you, but AI just makes this so easy.... Easier than turning to my own writing, I guess; writing comments on a blog is a great proscrastination device.
I asked in google ai mode:
Is this true: One tribe in India that hit the sweet spot did brother-marriages. First step: you kill all but the.....combs her hair.
This statement is a highly inaccurate and sensationalized distortion of complex tribal practices. While some groups in India have historically practiced fraternal polyandry (a woman marrying multiple brothers), the description of "brother-marriages" is a fabricated and offensive misrepresentation.
Here is a breakdown of what makes the statement false, based on ethnographic research on polyandrous communities in India:
The "killing all but the first girl-baby" claim
There is no evidence of a systematic practice of female infanticide linked to fraternal polyandry in Indian tribes. While female infanticide has sadly been an issue in some parts of India and has been recorded in certain historical contexts, the idea that it is methodically performed to support a polyandrous marriage system is a gross and unsupported fabrication.
The practice of polyandry is often linked to an economic desire to consolidate resources, especially land, rather than a desire to limit the female population. By sharing a wife, brothers prevent the division of a family's land and wealth, ensuring the family's stability.
The division of labor is exaggerated and insulting
The image of a wife simply "combing her hair" while the husbands do all the work is a crude stereotype and does not reflect reality. In societies practicing fraternal polyandry, the division of labor is complex and varies by culture. Wives in such unions are often responsible for domestic labor and are active participants in family life, including farming and other subsistence activities.
For example, among the Hatti tribe of Himachal Pradesh, where fraternal polyandry exists, wives participate in managing the household and family resources, in addition to raising children.
The statement is reductive and dehumanizing
The phrasing "one tribe in India that hit the sweet spot" is extremely insulting and strips away the rich cultural and social complexities of these communities. It presents a caricatured and dehumanizing view of a tribal community's way of life, erasing the social and economic reasons behind their traditions.
In reality, polyandrous societies, like the Todas of Southern India or the Paharis of Northern India, are not monolithic and have their own distinct customs and motivations. The practice was often an adaptation to specific environmental and economic pressures in their unique mountainous terrains.
Conclusion
The claim you described is false. It incorrectly sensationalizes and misrepresents the cultural practices of Indian tribes, combining elements of historical tradition with fabricated and offensive details. Fraternal polyandry in India, while a real phenomenon in certain communities, has a complex history and served practical economic functions, not the demeaning scenario presented.
No bad feelings here either. Obviously, my comment is an over-condensed summary (of a long-ago-read chapter I well remember from a book I forgot the title of); still, the hair-combing detail is a quote from the text I read (the author also mentioned their hair as very long). It is/was a pastoral tribe and all work connected with the herds was taboo for the females. The tribe did neither admit to baby-girl killing (ofc, that was before selective abortion which was so popular in India for some years) nor to their similar control of the herd-size; but they did put triangled collars on surplus-calves (making their mothers kick them away, as the collars hurt them) and no family ever had more than 1 daughter over a certain age ... . - When it comes to indigenous people, male/female differences (let alone HBD), AI tends to be less trustworthy.
My main point is: Hanson is right,It is trivially true that Malthusian societies will adapt to control the total population in a given area. War/deadly fights, famine, infanticide (esp of daughters!!), misogynie bordering on femicide - all possible "adaptions"; if one could pick, life in the tribe I described seems *much* preferable to life in the 'sick societies' depicted in the Psmiths's very fine review. Sure, an for-free-AI may describe it as "gross.... offensive.... exaggerated and insulting..." - but as a human do you disagree with my view?
Whole different point... I'm impressed that AI is so concerned with refuting stereotypes, myths, bias about non-Western cultures. The language used to push back against the sentiment in the question is very strong (e.g., "gross.... offensive.... exaggerated and insulting..." Just recently we were hearing that AI knows next to nothing about culture, itself makes numerous cultural stereotypes, confusing Japanese and Chinese traditions, etc. I infer the Tech Bros have been hard at work with their retraining and fine-tuning.
1)But we also know a lot about what makes something adaptive, which is its own set of heuristics. It will give me some confidence if I see actions or institutions that flagrantly breach those rules.
Taking your example of a culture which hurts its own fertility. Well that is prima facie maladaptive at the level of the society. Indeed one of the major reasons people go out of their way to fact check stories like the one quoted, is because hurting your own fertility seems to utterly self-defeating and maladaptive per the usual rules of natural selection. (Yes, there are epicycles where it can be optimal to limit reproduction for life, but there are a lot more situations where it isn't.)
2) Things can be adaptive on different levels, such that what is adaptive for individuals inside a group, is terminal for the group itself.
Such that saying "it's adaptive" needs qualification – what are we talking about? The gene? The individual? The culture? The species? It's very easy to talk at cross purposes here.
Certainly things that have been around for a long time are more likely to be adaptive than new things, just as most de novo mutations are bad for the bearer. Chesterton’s Fence is a useful heuristic when reasoning under uncertainty! But not everything traditional is actually adaptive, and not everything adaptive is morally good — my beef is with people mistaking a heuristic for a moral principle.
But the been-around heuristic might be stronger than the feels-moral heuristic, in terms of predicting adaptability. We only have heuristics about that.
Yeah, “this seems morally good” is wildly insufficient as a way to structure a society! But you also can’t escape the necessity of doing it *sometimes* (especially if you’re a deracinated modern or otherwise in a context for which there isn’t a been-around approach, or multiple incompatible ones).
But my society has a long tradition of deciding to do things based on moral judgements and not ideas about what is likely to be adaptive.
But of course, if moral intuitions weren't adaptive, we wouldn't have evolved them in the first place.
Primitive societies that have a suite of adaptive practices will probably develop into non-primitive societies. A primitive society you can observe today (or 100 or 1000 years ago) is probably not very adaptive.
Are there people who think Chesterson advised against all change? I don't think he did - his Fence story merely said "you should understand *why* the status quo is what it is before changing it".
(There are often good reasons for the status quo. If you don't know what the reasons are, you can't evaluate whether they're good ones or not.)
I read most of the Mr. & Mrs. Psmith review, and fact-checked six of the claims in that review that were excerpted from Edgerton's 1992 book. I urge people to read that review so they can get the full weight of the Smiths' and Edgerton's animus against primitive societies.
All six were wrong or misinterpreted or could be understood as an isolated case that a field worker observed once or misunderstood and too eagerly wrote down in their field notes. I used Gemini to fact-check these. Although I was previously familiar with most of these claims, I used Gemini to fact-check them, because anyone reading can go ahead and replicate what I did themselves.
1. is it true that in east african pastoral societies like the maasai, whose lives are centered around cattle; their children are discouraged from brushing away the flies that cluster around their eyes. flies mean dung, and dung means wealth --> completely false, made-up and called an unfortunate myth
2. Is it true that many hunter-gatherer societies allowed their children to sleep unattended beside campfires --> false; but traditional societies lacked the hyper-attention to safety of modern societies, so some practices may have looked unsafe to Western observers
3. Yes, reports on the Maring culture of New Guinea confirm that the widowed spouse and close relatives of a deceased person were traditionally required to reduce their food intake for an extended period of mourning. --> adaptive as a way to control women's power and sexual agency; also to make women afraid of husband's dying; thus supported and maintained patriarchy; patriarchy overall is "adaptive" because its practices increase population size
4. Inuit traditional hunting and camping strategies were indeed influenced by their spiritual beliefs, including the presence of spirits and malevolent beings, and thus the Inuit were foolish because they missed out on utilizing prime lakes and hunting grounds to obtain food --> technically true, but these spiritual beliefs supported wise resource management and avoided over-exploitation of natural resources, thus allowing maintenance of their population [much scholarship exists on the connection between spiritual beliefs about hunting grounds and resource management]
Thanks for your skeptical comments; I've added a pointer to them at the end of the post.
I'm happy to engage with you on the ethnographic literature, and I'm sure anthropologists disagree about the accuracy of the various reports (most of these societies have one or two "standard" ethnographies, and have changed so much since they were written in the mid-20th century that it's difficult or impossible to fact-check), but trusting LLM output on this is a big mistake.
I would also gently suggest that you are constructing the same sort of elaborate arguments for why particular practices are adaptive that Edgerton is trying to critique. (I do recommend the book to anyone interested in tracking down his citations -- many of the papers are on JSTOR, though I haven't been able to find digitized versions of most of the books.)
Sorry, I tuned out as soon as I heard "I asked an AI".
I wasn't "trusting AI". I was trusting my own knowledge of the ethnographic literature, but to share with an audience, I used a method that could be easily replicated by others. Google Gemini provides sources, and these could be checked. Anyone can ask google AI the same things I did and can find and read those sources.
And yet there was no need for that. Either we trust what you are saying hence won't check or we don't in which case the sources, via selection bias, are equally unreliable, i.e. the AI could hallucinate all the way down recursively including the original sources. Cost prohibitive in the days of paper, nowadays trivial.
Hi, Peter. You are teaching me. Back when LLMs first rolled out, I saw chatGPT hallucinate sources, and never used it again. But: I now daily use Gemini to look up topics in and around my areas of expertise. I have never encountered what you wrote: Google AI mode (Gemini) hallucinate all the way down recursively including the original sources. Are there specific prompts where you've seen Gemini do this? How often does it occur? I work on AI-related topics and have an AI research group and can ask my interns to try to replicate this.
I find your snark amusing but it misses the point and intentionally so. The AI owner COULD intentionally bias the results, as they do already, to do recursive hallucinated sources all the way down and you, or more accurately, 99.9..9% of people wouldn't know because like everyone, we got better shit to do that pull out microfiche from libraries to find out. Fabricating sources and censorship is as old as time, AI simply makes it nearly zero cost as the AI can be taught to do it itself recursively.
I can easily imagine the Chinese Gemini equivalent in China excluding Tiananmen from it's responses or when it does give them, fabricate the answers to include links to further fabricated answers including fabricated sources all within the Chinese Great Firewall ecosystem as it's CCP all the way down. If the good folk over in the USSR's Politburos could do it the same successfully by hand for decades, as it's currently also being done in North Korea, Turkmenistan, German, America, etc., it's doesn't take that large a leap of faith to imagine what an organizations AI can do as well.
It's "well that could be done by hand now" and you are right, it could but it's cost prohibitive hence only used for "sensitive" topics whereas a trained AI makes it effectively free hence can do on a mass scale for the most trivial of stuff.
I'm not worried about accident errors, people make those to, what I don't trust is the AI period to provide ANY accurate result with a high confidence because of build in constraints and biases by the owners. Basically all AI's are lobbyists working on behalf of a special interest group and as such, worthless.
See what you, and others like you are intentionally ignoring, is the concern isn't genuine hallucinations or errors, it's intentional ones which we know exist and can only guess at the depth and sophistication which leads to all it's information being suspect.
Hi. What you write makes sense, especially, since, I read that you are a political prisoner. That's tough. Well, at least wherever you are held, you are allowed to use the internet, but I can see why you would be suspicious of it.
Ok, dug around a bit. The consensus seems to be: "While Google has made improvements, it still can produce inaccurate information, especially with queries that are nonsensical, based on unreliable user-generated content, or require up-to-date information." I may not have experienced the recursive hallucination because I usually focus on finding speciifc information that I know already exists. I also have been a working scientist for 40 years and know a lot about the topics I ask about. So my use of AI is not the same as what someone else will experience.
One more thing: I wrote "anyone can read those sources." You then said AI can hallucinate the original sources. But how would people read those sources, then? Are you saying people may not bother to try to read the source, and won't learn it is hallucinated.
Remaining 2 items I fact-checked --
5. There is no reliable evidence from the work of Robert LeVine, or other anthropological sources on the Gusii, that describes a practice called ogotega in which a new bride keeps her vaginal muscles tense to resist intercourse. The search results indicate that this specific term and practice, as you described it do not appear in the ethnographic literature. ..... Gemini goes on to cite anthropological sources that teaching a new bride some skills to resist her husband's advances is part of giving her resources to negotiate an equitable sexual relationship with her new spouse.
6. I then asked about the practice that is included in Hanson's blog post. Gemini cited sources saying that these reports are in the anthropological record from the early 20th century and must be regarded skeptically. STDs were newly introduced with colonialism.
Gemini didn't mention this partitive paternity, so let me add it: There is also the practice called partitive paternity, which is a cultural practice of having married women mate with more than one male, to **cause** paternity uncertainty, so that multiple males will provide resources and the wife will have access to a range of backup husbands if hers is killed.
So the 6 examples I fact-checked or either false or do not support the claim of 'sick societies'
This type of fact-checking is complex because there is diverse scholarship. But, I can backup further, if anyone is interested, that these apparently horrendous practices were either completely fabricated or were not common or were part of larger cultural syndromes that were adaptive. For example, a practice might be locally maladaptive (widows having poor health) but don't matter in terms of fitness because the widow herself is post-reproductive, and not needed for grandmother care because her in-laws have taken over the childcare and want to exclude her to avoid inter-family conflict. And, controlling women via such harsh treatments is culturally adaptive because it maintains patriarchy. Patriarchal societies have high fertility and are successful in terms of being able to grow large populations. So please ask me for additional information on which you are skeptical or curious.
It is distressing that you have a parasocial relationship with a stochastic parrot. Your contribution here, I use the term archly, is worse than useless. Here’s Levine: https://www.jstor.org/stable/666776
Thanks for the source; there is a spelling difference in the word ogotega; Levine uses a different spelling than what is in Psmith. AI is usually good at spelling but missed this one. So let me grant you this one of the 6. What about the others? My contribution still worse than useless? Why ad hominem attack? Why not just say, the AI you consulted was wrong on this one.
Perhaps you didn’t understand the implication of “worse than useless”. I have no interest in replacing your slopbot droppings with something useful.
My entire goal is to signal to those who may be naive that your pile of word dung should be ignored in entirety. QED.
Win friends and influence people much?
Forget spelling difference, I had earlier fact-checked Psmith's report of ogotega, a practice in which a new bride keeps her vaginal muscles tense to resist intercourse (my point 5). AI correctly says that word, ogotega, is not mentioned in Levine's article. AI does accurately report on ritualized marriage night rape discussed in the Levine article that Sam Atman located, which I described in point 6.
To re-comment: The "sickness" is often the point in Malthusian societies. A culture caring much about girls (as newborns/ as teens / as child-bearing wifes) may end up with more girls, less miscarriages, more births - and repeat! - to end up rapidly unsustainable. As Marvin Harris said: "Yanomami are no pygmies, so why are they small? I eat my hat if they get a Big Mac worth of proteins a day." And he was right. (They also treat girls and wifes badly. Rape, miscarriages from work-overload et al. are quite normal. As is 'pointless' aggression among males.)
- One tribe in India that hit the sweet spot did brother-marriages. First step: you kill all but the first girl-baby. Then those girls are married off as the only wife to a bunch of brothers. Then the bros do ALL the work, except toddler-care, while their wife combs her hair. When one of her husbands "visits", he leaves his spear at the door, so his brothers know not to disturb. Looks great, just do not forget the first step.
Mark, I have no animus against you, but AI just makes this so easy.... Easier than turning to my own writing, I guess; writing comments on a blog is a great proscrastination device.
I asked in google ai mode:
Is this true: One tribe in India that hit the sweet spot did brother-marriages. First step: you kill all but the.....combs her hair.
This statement is a highly inaccurate and sensationalized distortion of complex tribal practices. While some groups in India have historically practiced fraternal polyandry (a woman marrying multiple brothers), the description of "brother-marriages" is a fabricated and offensive misrepresentation.
Here is a breakdown of what makes the statement false, based on ethnographic research on polyandrous communities in India:
The "killing all but the first girl-baby" claim
There is no evidence of a systematic practice of female infanticide linked to fraternal polyandry in Indian tribes. While female infanticide has sadly been an issue in some parts of India and has been recorded in certain historical contexts, the idea that it is methodically performed to support a polyandrous marriage system is a gross and unsupported fabrication.
The practice of polyandry is often linked to an economic desire to consolidate resources, especially land, rather than a desire to limit the female population. By sharing a wife, brothers prevent the division of a family's land and wealth, ensuring the family's stability.
The division of labor is exaggerated and insulting
The image of a wife simply "combing her hair" while the husbands do all the work is a crude stereotype and does not reflect reality. In societies practicing fraternal polyandry, the division of labor is complex and varies by culture. Wives in such unions are often responsible for domestic labor and are active participants in family life, including farming and other subsistence activities.
For example, among the Hatti tribe of Himachal Pradesh, where fraternal polyandry exists, wives participate in managing the household and family resources, in addition to raising children.
The statement is reductive and dehumanizing
The phrasing "one tribe in India that hit the sweet spot" is extremely insulting and strips away the rich cultural and social complexities of these communities. It presents a caricatured and dehumanizing view of a tribal community's way of life, erasing the social and economic reasons behind their traditions.
In reality, polyandrous societies, like the Todas of Southern India or the Paharis of Northern India, are not monolithic and have their own distinct customs and motivations. The practice was often an adaptation to specific environmental and economic pressures in their unique mountainous terrains.
Conclusion
The claim you described is false. It incorrectly sensationalizes and misrepresents the cultural practices of Indian tribes, combining elements of historical tradition with fabricated and offensive details. Fraternal polyandry in India, while a real phenomenon in certain communities, has a complex history and served practical economic functions, not the demeaning scenario presented.
No bad feelings here either. Obviously, my comment is an over-condensed summary (of a long-ago-read chapter I well remember from a book I forgot the title of); still, the hair-combing detail is a quote from the text I read (the author also mentioned their hair as very long). It is/was a pastoral tribe and all work connected with the herds was taboo for the females. The tribe did neither admit to baby-girl killing (ofc, that was before selective abortion which was so popular in India for some years) nor to their similar control of the herd-size; but they did put triangled collars on surplus-calves (making their mothers kick them away, as the collars hurt them) and no family ever had more than 1 daughter over a certain age ... . - When it comes to indigenous people, male/female differences (let alone HBD), AI tends to be less trustworthy.
My main point is: Hanson is right,It is trivially true that Malthusian societies will adapt to control the total population in a given area. War/deadly fights, famine, infanticide (esp of daughters!!), misogynie bordering on femicide - all possible "adaptions"; if one could pick, life in the tribe I described seems *much* preferable to life in the 'sick societies' depicted in the Psmiths's very fine review. Sure, an for-free-AI may describe it as "gross.... offensive.... exaggerated and insulting..." - but as a human do you disagree with my view?
Whole different point... I'm impressed that AI is so concerned with refuting stereotypes, myths, bias about non-Western cultures. The language used to push back against the sentiment in the question is very strong (e.g., "gross.... offensive.... exaggerated and insulting..." Just recently we were hearing that AI knows next to nothing about culture, itself makes numerous cultural stereotypes, confusing Japanese and Chinese traditions, etc. I infer the Tech Bros have been hard at work with their retraining and fine-tuning.
Please do not masturbate in public. It degrades the commons. Thanks.
Oh, you clever. Point to Sam. Except, defecating in public is worse than masturbating.
1)But we also know a lot about what makes something adaptive, which is its own set of heuristics. It will give me some confidence if I see actions or institutions that flagrantly breach those rules.
Taking your example of a culture which hurts its own fertility. Well that is prima facie maladaptive at the level of the society. Indeed one of the major reasons people go out of their way to fact check stories like the one quoted, is because hurting your own fertility seems to utterly self-defeating and maladaptive per the usual rules of natural selection. (Yes, there are epicycles where it can be optimal to limit reproduction for life, but there are a lot more situations where it isn't.)
2) Things can be adaptive on different levels, such that what is adaptive for individuals inside a group, is terminal for the group itself.
Such that saying "it's adaptive" needs qualification – what are we talking about? The gene? The individual? The culture? The species? It's very easy to talk at cross purposes here.