Homo habilis, one of the earliest known human ancestors, emerged around 2.3 million years ago with a brain size significantly larger than modern chimpanzees. By around 1.8 million years ago, they became the first species known to use toothpicks for dental hygiene, alongside their advanced tool use for specific tasks like skinning animals and cutting plants.
Wisdom Builder
Three Tidbit Stories
Topic:
Bacteria
Timeless ideas at the intersections of science, philosophy, critical thinking, and history.
MODE:
Bacteria.
3 random tidbit stories in about 3 minutes.
Idea 1.
A Bacteria Story.
1.8 million years ago
I wrote that Bacteria Story,
and posted it to TST 2 years ago.
Idea 2.
A Bacteria Story.
18 Million Years Ago, ± 3 million years
Causal reasoning, Early prefrontal integration
While speculative, it is reasonable to position the occasional use of proto-medicine as emerging in the great apes sometime around 18 million years ago. Modern orangutans, apes, and chimpanzees treat wounds, digestive issues, and even use insect repellant. The Great Apes LCA lived around 18 million years ago, so using the Occam Approach, this implies that’s around the time such traits emerged. This demonstration of chronoception, a sense of time, is interesting.
This, of course, is only a guess as dog’s and cat’s, which evolved much earlier, frequently eat specific plants to settle their stomach. Some insects, like Ants, use plant extracts to treat fungal infections in their colonies. While the dog and cat example is likely an example of convergent evolution, the ant example for sure is.
I wrote that Bacteria Story,
and posted it to TST 2 years ago.
Idea 3.
A Bacteria Vocabulary.
An irrational idea is an idea that is false in a logical setting.
In a footnote in 30 philosophers, it is defined like this.
Irrational Ideas are mental constructs that belong to a speculative framework, are logically inconsistent, or include non-falsifiable, unverified empirical elements or other irrational components.
An irrational idea is an idea that is not currently anchored in empirical evidence or rational proof. It might be speculative. It might be fictional. It might be symbolic, spiritual, creative, confused, or simply untested. The key is not mockery. The key is classification.
In TST, irrational is never negative and does not automatically mean false. It means the idea has not yet earned empirical or rational status. A unicorn is irrational if presented as a real animal without evidence. Valhalla is irrational if presented as an actual realm without evidence. A new scientific hunch may also begin as irrational before it is clarified, tested, and possibly moved into the rational or empirical category.
This is important because many good ideas begin as wild ideas. They start as hunches, guesses, dreams, questions, or strange possibilities. Most fail. Some become useful. A few become part of common knowledge.
The discipline is to hold irrational ideas properly. Enjoy them. Explore them. Use them in fiction, metaphor, art, spirituality, or speculation. But do not confuse them with tested truth until they survive the right kind of testing.
I wrote that Bacteria Vocabulary,
and posted it to TST 4 months ago.