Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Anatomically modern humans occur exactly here. It’s the same moment. This is when they occur. The people who have skeletal features like ours, and Neanderthals, appear exactly then. This is when it all happens. There is this disconnect between anatomically modern humans in the skeletal record and behaviorally modern humans, which is 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Anatomically modern humans appear at this time, and recognizable Neanderthals appear roughly around this time, too. Interesting. But we don’t know what exactly happens, if anything, between 200,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago that goes from just anatomical modernity to behavioral modernity. My understanding is no. They’re busy making Levallois stone tools like Neanderthals for 200,000 years, and they are not more impressive than Neanderthals in any obvious way, as I understand it. Then there begins to be in the archaeological record a quickening of behavioral traits, which could be not genetic at all, or could be genetic. There are lots of arguments about this. We were obsessed with intelligence earlier in our conversation. People are obsessed with art and these things that seem important to us but who knows what’s important?…

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