Ed Pedraza-Robles

¿Esto es real?

Jennifer Culbertson giving a keynote talk!

Over 200 cultures have a global flood myth? Pffft... COINCIDENCE. Moving on.

The kanjification of English. The stroke order and radicals may give hints but themselves are not enough to truly know the word...we're hundreds of years ahead of schedule

What opinion about Men do you have that makes people feel like this?

When in an earlier post I referred to the obliviousness of smart people in nonSTEM majors to what serious intellectual demands are like, I didn't mean that verbal demands cannot be as daunting as mathematical demands. Rather, the ordinary college curriculum lets an undergrad in a nonSTEM field breeze through, get a magna or summa, and never have to say to themselves, "I'm not smart enough to do that." NonSTEM courses no longer have that kind rigor. In contrast, any good math department at a major university has a few courses that do cause talented math majors to hit the wall. The wall is there for nonSTEM majors. Colleges just don't force their smartest students to run up against it.

Culture is genetic because behavior is genetic. This beaver never saw a dam in its life. No beavers or anything else ever taught it to build a dam. It wants to build a dam because it is a beaver. Many beavers together build a big dam. That is beaver culture. Humans are not different. Nothing is different. This is what life is. This is how life works. Your body is your mind. A caterpillar wants to build a chrysalis. A bee wants to build a hive. A lion wants to build a pride. You are not special. You are not above your nature. you are INSIDE of it. The thoughts that we think are genetic thoughts. The crimes we commit are genetic crimes. The art we create is genetic art. Just like this beaver, you can give the animal different sticks and it will build a different dam, but it will always build a dam. And you can give humans different "education," but the human will always use it to do what its genes tell it to do. This is the first big answer that you need. This is the biggest piece of the puzzle. This is how to understand people 90% of the way. You just... notice what they do, and get out of the way, and watch them do it. And if they need sticks, you give them sticks. And if you don't like what they do, you have to get away from them. You cannot train dam-building into them or out of them any more than you can with a beaver. A beaver wants to build a dam because it is a beaver. Whatever you see people build, that's what they wanted to build from the sticks they got in the river they were in. Stop pretending you can change it.

Inuit map of the spirit realm on seal hide