About me: I'm a human Genomics PhD (U. of Barcelona, expertise in brain evolution) with some industry experience as a Big Data dev (~1.5 years). Experienced communicator used to dealing with unsolved problems. Just for a taste of what kind of person I am: I originally got a BA is in Linguistics, but my PhD is in a totally different field. I ended with 7 scientific publications and a hundred plus citations (which, I'd say, it's a fairly good outcome). Email me and I'll tell you all about how that happened!
My ideal positions would involve one of the following professional interests: data science, bioinformatics, anything science (science communication, science-adjacent technical positions or others), AI. The following topics all but guarantee a yes for me: health/life sciences, open source, music industry, climate change, social issues. If your position doesn't fit these categories, don't hesitate to reach out anyway. I'm always open to an informal chat anytime.
Looking forward to connecting with you!
Maybe I'd add to this the first engraving by erectus [1] (~500kya) because people tend to forget about it but I think it's quite significant. Other than that, it looks great! I also have a hard time keeping track of every new discovery, specially as I got out of academia. Amazing time to work in human evolution.
Strong differences: it's not so clear these are "strong", for a couple reasons:
1. The archaeological record has disputed some of those claims: spears are supposed to have been part of the hunting repertoire of Neanderthals [1], there are some claims regarding musical instruments (personally I'm skeptical) [3], and cave paintings [2] basically resemble what sapiens where doing about that time, which is just... not very impressive in general.
2- A much more interesting question is hiding in plain sight. It's not as much "did Neanderthals do X or Y relative to what sapiens are known to be capable of?", but rather: "given enough time, could Neanderthals or Denisovans have painted something like the Lascaux cave paintings?". Or, rather: did all these extinct humans species have the same capability for cultural ratcheting, ie transmitting and refining knowledge, that we have proven to have? Sapiens needed a lot of time to create some of our most representative "representative art", let alone other cultural innovations. On the other hand, if there were any differences in capability, what were their nature? What are the implications for language?
Re the basis: for sure! Some of the innate physical and neurological basis for language have been in place for a long time. Which pieces where co-opted, modified or appeared de novo when and for what is the interesting part. Having only the archaeological record and the DNA of these species, it's a hell of a problem.
As for the shrinking brain size: as far as I know there is some doubt about the universality or significance of this claim. It could be due to agricultural diet changes, or holocene climate fluctuations. It also coincides with population size increases, so mutations allowing more efficient brains or just regular old drift are possible. Honestly, I can't say I have a strong opinion on it.
Two notes on language and self-domestication:
- 77kya is very late for the emergence of language (though how far it can be traced is still object of heavy debate and nuance). The tenuous consensus nowadays is that the last common ancestor with the Neanderthal/Denisovan branch had at the very least a partial capability of language. 'Behavioral modernity' is also a bit of a red herring on its own, in light of discoveries like this and how similar Neanderthals were to us in terms of archaeological record.
- Re self-domestication... The concept is very messy and disputed (I've largely given up on its usefulness, in fact). But in any case 6kya is too late, simply because all modern humans are prosocial, as parent comment said.
Source: human evolution PhD, I have worked in faculty of language evolution, prosociality, genetic basis for self-domestication.
I found this discussion of AI from a philosopher of science & biologist really insightful. It speaks of AI hype and AGI in relationship with systems Biology.
There's a music teacher at NYU, Ethan Hein, that seems to be working on this exactly in the context of groove pedagogy. For example, he recently picked apart the amen break in a blog post [0] and tried to replicate it in ableton from scratch, methodically. He first lies out the basic pieces or the groove, then builds up the groove adding and removing elements, gradually complexifying it.
As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea.
I used some of the solutions listed here (like Pocket) for a time. Eventually, I decided I can just post them in my website [1], because why not : that way they are accessible from everywhere, easy to edit, categorize and comment, shareable with anyone in seconds.
Barcelona, I'd say. Foreign-friendly, ok tech culture, lots to do, plenty of cultural activities, great summers (if you can stand the tourists).
You'd have to learn at least spanish though, and ideally basic catalan: it's an internacional city and lots of people try to get away with speaking only english, but this is frowned upon as a lack of interest in local culture.
As others hace commented, tour written english looks pretty good, so don't worry on that front.
As a fellow Spaniard (hola!), I used to be in a similar situation. The way I remediated it was by getting to work with international teammates and no Spanish people around, so that you are forces to so no code-switching at all over working hours. Code-switching (changing languagea often) can make full immersion hard to achieve.
Some companies in Madrid and Barcelona are fully international, but not many - in my case I found myself in that situation in a research position, but I realize those are exceptional circumstances.
I don't think I've ever seen that specific post, but I've read Kevin Mitchell discuss the topic often (check his blog out: [1]) - maybe it could be him?
I could also imagine Daniel Dennett (philosopher of biology) or Christof Koch (neuroscientist) speaking about this. Regardless, they also have interesting takes on the problem.
If you speak spanish there's a really good book doing now the rounds by an skeptic of the long-term economical viability of renewables (and fossil fuels, nuclear, and more): Petrocalipsis, by Antonio Turiel. It's very clear, concise and data-driven, so it's one of those books where even when you disagree with a point it forces you to research why.
An ok alternative in english would be Facing the Anthropocene, by Ian Angus (but the scope of that book is way more limited, and it's markedly political, specifically ecosocialist)
Remote:Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Python/R, Bash, Pyspark, AWS cloud, PostgreSQL, several bioinformatics tools & applied statistics
Résumé/CV: https://linkedin.com/in/andirko
Email: [email protected]
About me: I'm a human Genomics PhD (U. of Barcelona, expertise in brain evolution) with some industry experience as a Big Data dev (~1.5 years). Experienced communicator used to dealing with unsolved problems. Just for a taste of what kind of person I am: I originally got a BA is in Linguistics, but my PhD is in a totally different field. I ended with 7 scientific publications and a hundred plus citations (which, I'd say, it's a fairly good outcome). Email me and I'll tell you all about how that happened!
My ideal positions would involve one of the following professional interests: data science, bioinformatics, anything science (science communication, science-adjacent technical positions or others), AI. The following topics all but guarantee a yes for me: health/life sciences, open source, music industry, climate change, social issues. If your position doesn't fit these categories, don't hesitate to reach out anyway. I'm always open to an informal chat anytime. Looking forward to connecting with you!