Comment by tpc on Absolute denial for atheists · 2010-08-09T05:34:29.915Z · LW · GW

From Paul Graham's essay:

How do we get at these ideas? By the following thought experiment. Imagine a kind of latter-day Conrad character who has worked for a time as a mercenary in Africa, for a time as a doctor in Nepal, for a time as the manager of a nightclub in Miami. The specifics don't matter-- just someone who has seen a lot. Now imagine comparing what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a well-behaved sixteen year old girl from the suburbs. What does he think that would shock her? He knows the world; she knows, or at least embodies, present taboos. Subtract one from the other, and the result is what we can't say.

Maybe there is something I am missing, but I don't understand his last sentence. How do you take two people, and "subtract one from the other" ?

Comment by tpc on Against the standard narrative of human sexual evolution · 2010-07-29T12:10:35.046Z · LW · GW

Wrongbot, I wanted to note a disparity between what you say here:

The most recent common ancestor [chimpanzees] share with humans lived somewhere between 3 million and 800,000 years ago.

and what that Wikipedia article on bonobos says twice:

The chimpanzee line split from the last common ancestor shared with humans approximately six to seven million years ago.