(Roughly) Daily

The Chimp-Pig Hypothesis is, to put it mildly, a revolutionary proposition. Uri Bram suggests that we use it– whether we believe it or not– to stretch ourselves…

In this post I’m going to explain, as best I can, an idea about evolution that many of my friends find (to say the least) outlandish.

I’m not very knowledgeable about genetics, and I can’t really vouch for how plausible the hypothesis is. (But note: on the same grounds, I can’t really vouch for how plausible Darwinian evolution is).

My interest is actually in something else: what does it feel like to have your beliefs overturned? You know the story: as was true for every previous generation, some of the things we believe today must be entirely wrong, and yet very few of us ever make a 180 on anything. It’s easier to accept we must be wrong about something than to actually admit we are wrong about anything. Which ought to worry us.

I’m frankly more interested in moral wrongs than scientific one. But the tricky thing is that successful moral revolutions are so complete that once they’re over we struggle to imagine how anyone ever believed X. (Kazuo Ishiguro is the only person I know to have actually captured what this probably feels like, but my co-blogger and I also made an attempt in this piece for WIRED).

Fear not: I’m coming back to the chimps and pigs. To me, the Chimp-Pig hypothesis is a rare theory that is 1) internally consistent and coherent enough not to be ridiculous, 2) overturns everything we think we know about a major area of knowledge, and 3) doesn’t have any meaningful implications for our current lives, so it won’t really hurt anyone if you give it some credence and it turns out to be false.

Which is all to say: to me, the most interesting interaction you can have with the Chimp-Pig hypothesis is to let yourself believe it, at least briefly, and then observe what it feels like to have your world overturned. The Chimp-Pig hypothesis may not be one of the great revolutions of your lifetime, but I think it’s one of the best practice cases I’ve ever seen. And when your real moment of truth comes, it’d be good to have some practice…

Fascinating– and challenging: “The Chimp-Pig Hypothesis,” from @UriBram.

* Konrad Lorenz

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As we rehearse, we might spare a thought for Rube Goldberg; he died on this date in 1970. A cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor, he is best remembered as a satirist of the American obsession with technology; his series of “Invention” cartoons used a string of outlandish tools, people, plants, and steps to accomplish simple, everyday tasks in the most complicated possible way. (His work has inspired a number of “Rube Goldberg competitions,” the best-known of which, readers may recall, has been profiled here.)

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Goldberg was a founder and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year.

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