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History is littered with stories of very well-trained, disciplined armies being defeated by opponents who were flexible, adaptive, unconventional and used resources, new technologies and intelligence effectively. Thebes against Sparta. Genghis Khan. The American Revolutionaries, etc.

It’s exceptionally relevant as it relates to Iran. We cannot defeat Iran militarily as it relates to the Strait. Hell, they clobbered us into abandoning our Middle East bases! Thus, we need to employ our soft skills to cajole them into compliance. “JCPOA is for pussies!” Yah, except it worked.

language is a key tool that unlocks a lot of it!

If you have never read his work I think you’d get a big kick out of Michael Tomasello’s _The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition_

me remembering the myth of peacock with hera and the first murder • ironically it has things to do with drones, panopticons, stories, and MURDER

That discourse doing the rounds about chimp fighting and how chimps always win is the clearest example, right? Physically superior on an individual level and the clear runner-up on organization. And as a species we decided philosophically that we shouldn’t let them be driven to extinction.

You don't need everyone to be a decent shot for hunting, everyone to know how to cut trees, everyone to know how to garden. You need a bunch of people with complementary skills. That's why experiments where a bunch of cryptobros try to make a floating city fail the first month.

Markets are one example of a way to organize and communicate, and they're very good at it. But there are of course others.

The entire history of warfare could arguably be described as a progressive loss of relevance of exceptional individual ability. Hegseth's ideas of war fighting would be seen as silly during Waterloo and probably even further back.

Without wanting to detract from the broad sweep of the argument which I agree with, bees really deserve the respect here

Yeah he’s both dumb as a rock and can‘t form a sophisticated underground society based around digging for tubers

That & we're the fastest distance runners (tied with horses). But that wouldn't have mattered if we weren't good at working together. You can stalk a giant animal to death, particularly if you form teams, & then bring it home to feed your neighborhood.

youtu.be/y3MTDFNf71I

You're American, are you not?

But I give your hungry lion about 30 seconds with a group of apex predators

There are a billion people in Africa and like 1000 lions or whatever lol

is literally created by the war bounty of said war (the Flavian Amphitheatre) remember Emperor Nero died without a heir so the civil war of 4 emperors and then the new dynasty is the general who did the campaign during the revolt. I say this as an agnostic / atheist who think humans can be

Have you noticed many lions concerned with keeping humanity from going extinct due to outcompeting us? Or any need for them to do so?

Does the lion also get a rifle

Humans are so dominant over lions, in fact, that the human v lion scenario is considered unfair to the lion and people who seek it out and hunt lions are considered losers for killing something in such a distinctly unfair fight.

One-on-one, with no weapons and no time-prep? Sure, lion, absolutely. But give intelligent humans the three above (numbers, weapons, and/or time-prep), and the lion becomes the underdog.

And that’s just the animal you know about, we also drove 20 foot monitor lizards and bears that stood twice as tall as a person

i collaborated with my fellow hominids to create and acquire a gun. what do you want me to do with the other 29 seconds

He's not even technically correct.

That's why lions have so many humans in their zoos.

We may have done, but it remains an incorrect use of the term.

And Lions didn't make it illegal to kill humans because they did it too much.

Saber tooth cats would agree if they were alive today.

Jesus wept. It's a biological term. George has used it incorrectly, but here's Chris to back him up.

*Psuedotuberculosis

Woooooosh

I mean, I'm a desk jockey, I wouldn't last a single second. But a Masai hunter?

Teamwork, rope, pointed sticks, and fire. Humans win. Again. When humans arrived in Australia, land-dwelling crocodiles, huge marsupial bears and marsupial lions perished. Social co-operation, pointed sticks, fire, and rope, extinguished megafauna in an eye-wateringly short period of time.

Biologically we evolved to operate in small tribal groups, many of whom are related & are homogenous. As such the majority of humanity can’t mentally broaden their tribe to ‘humanity’ to treat folks equitably. Most people fall back into tribal behaviours - family, ideology, sports team or nation.

Besides the ability to cooperate, human beings became the apex predator on this planet for exactly one (1) additional reason: ancient aliens.

Didn't make it past 2/7 before this one was spun off course and into a ditch by dumbasses

And smart as hell, possibly smarter than us (definitely smarter than Pete Hegseth).

Seems worth noting that the oceanic apex predator is Orcas, also known for complex social behaviors.

I’m not saying this was an admirable thing we did, we humans. but it was impressive

[regretfully] gotta jump you out of the gang now, Shamu

c'mon who am I supposed to believe, you or this legendary actor/filmmaker/martial artist/chemical engineer

We hunted every large mammal to extinction or near extinction on every continent except for Africa. Mostly because large mammals in Africa evolved next to us and were able to pass down knowledge about which humans were friendly and which humans were going to kill every single one of them.

We’re so good at it we’ve convinced several other species to work together with us.

I would classify "sophisticated tool use" as dependent on communication, broadly speaking (and maybe vice versa)

Cheetahs, despite their reputation for extreme speed, can't run for more than about a minute without resting for awhile. Humans can only run a small fraction of their speed, but if we're in shape, we can for *hours*. The fact we can run marathons is kind of absurd in context of other animals.

If she had stooped to do those 100 pushups, she’d’ve been dead before she got to double digits.

The best description of Hegseth I've seen is he's what a mediocre low to mid manager who get's promoted too high too quickly looks like. He's focused on all the wrong things because that's what he thought was important as a small picture manager. I.E. Looks and PT over Results and Functionality.

I’m not sure it’s even that modern? How would a bunch of steroid freaks do against Henry V’s archers at Agincourt?

they got a bunch of these guys on the Mormon landscaping crew in town and that seems like a good place. They can really move some brush

Humans are able to recognize and take advantage of competence and abilities. Unfortunately, they’re also able to select toadies who won’t question the boss’s lack of competence

Even the medieval Irish had stick-throwing technology and practice making scary faces, which is two steps up from current U.S. military readiness

Yeah it really says something that they keep talking about “alpha” males when the research that term was coined by was discredited decades ago. Lone wolf strongmen are weak, real ones work together