X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Ffriendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md;h=c9cac45147a91c58ab3f18abf61beb2a98fc6a17;hp=0f36741c04dd297998a925f920d0f34b2d46286b;hb=86e4e6d2920941ac91bf3cf7cd6ba9585f481e9a;hpb=f18c2f0c41c6e19814baaa28236a96fe02d79a5b diff --git a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md index 0f36741..c9cac45 100644 --- a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md +++ b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ Title: Friendship Practices of the Secret-Sharing Plain Speech Valley Squirrels -Date: 2017-01-01 5:00 +Date: 2022-08-30 5:00 Category: fiction Tags: epistemic horror, deniably allegorical Status: draft @@ -16,21 +16,15 @@ A few students inquire further: but that's a _contingent_ fact about the distrib To which it is replied: yes, well, there's a reason the ascension of Earth-that-was would be sparked by the _H. sapiens_ line of hominids some millions of years later, rather than by the Plain Speech subspecies 9792 and 9794. -Another adaptive infromation-processing instinct in subspecies 9792 and 9794 was a taste for novelty. Not all information is equally valuable. A slight variation on a known secret was less valuable than a completely original secret the likes of which had never been hitherto suspected. (Among pre-intelligent creatures generally, novelty-seeking instincts are _more_ convergent than secrecy instincts, but with considerable variation in strength depending on the derivatives of the distribution of adaptive problems; Dripler's Pre-Intelligent Novelty-Seeking Scale puts subspecies 9792 and 9794 in the 76th percentile on this dimension.) +Another adaptive infromation-processing instinct in subspecies 9792 and 9794 was a taste for novelty. Not all information is equally valuable. A slight variation on a known secret was less valuable than a completely original secret the likes of which had never been hitherto suspected. Among pre-intelligent creatures generally, novelty-seeking instincts are _more_ convergent than secrecy instincts, but with considerable variation in strength depending on the derivatives of the landscape of adaptive problems; Dripler's Pre-Intelligent Novelty-Seeking Scale puts subspecies 9792 and 9794 in the 76th percentile on this dimension. The coincidental conjunction of a friendship-forming instinct, a novel-secret-seeking instinct, _and_ a nearby distinct subspecies with similar properties, led to some unusual behavior patterns. Given the different survival-relevant opportunities in their respective habitats, each subspecies predominantly hoarded _different_ secrets: the secret of how to jump and land on the thinner branches of the reedy pilot tree was of little relevance to the daily activity of a west-valley ground squirrel, but the secret of how to bury nuts without making it obvious that the ground had been upturned was of little import to an east-valley tree squirrel. -But the squirrels' _novelty-seeking instincts_ didn't track such distinctions. Secrets from one subspecies thus functioned as a superstimulus to the other subspecies, on account of being so exotic, thus making cross-species friendships +But the squirrels' _novelty-seeking instincts_ didn't track such distinctions. Secrets from one subspecies thus functioned as a superstimulus to the other subspecies, on account of being so exotic, thus making "special" cross-subspecies friendships particularly desirable and sought-after. -[TODO: but species differences also make them frustrating] +At the same time, subspecies differences in social instincts also made them particularly _frustrating_, as friendships. Particular squirrels had a subspace of their behavior that characterized them as different from other individuals of the same age and sex: _personality_ being the technical term (coined in Dunbar's volume on social systems). The friendship-forming instinct was most stimulated between squirrels with similar or at least compatible personalities, and the two subspecies had different personality distributions that resulted in frequent incompatibilities: for example, west-valley ground squirrels tended to have a more anxious disposition (reflecting the need to be alert to predators on open terrain), whereas east-valley tree squirrels tended to have a more rambunctious nature (as was useful for leaf fights, but which tended to put west-valley ground squirrels on edge). -At this, some extremely naïve novice students of historical mammology inquire: [TODO ...] - -To which it is replied: - -A few particularly naïve students inquire further: [TODO ...] - -To which it is replied: there's _no reason whatsoever_ for evolution to select for that, _dummy_. What's wrong with you? +Really, the typical west-valley ground squirrel and the typical east-valley tree squirrel wouldn't have been friends at all, if not for the tantalizing allure of exotic secrets. Thus, special cross-subspecies friendships tended to be successfully formed much less often than they were desired. And so, many, many times in the days of auld lang syne, a squirrel in a burrow or a tree would sadly settle down to rest for the night, lamenting, "I wish I had a special friend. Someone who understood me. Someone to share my secrets with."