Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? Page #9

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"Why are there so many?"

If you go back, say, 50,000 years,

both of those questions

were answered,

because that's when

our ancestors left Africa.

And there's been no relevant

cognitive change since,

so children everywhere in the world

have the same capacity

for language acquisition.

So the questions were finished

by about 50,000 years ago,

and if you go back

very shortly before that,

like, maybe 100,000 years ago,

the questions were answered,

'cause there weren't any languages.

From an evolutionary point of view,

that's the flick of an eye.

How do you have this record?

Well, that comes

from paleoanthropology.

Yeah, the tombs and...

Well, we know the fossil record.

We know the record of, you know,

creation of artifacts and so on,

and it's pretty well recognized

that there was a sudden explosion,

sometimes called

the Great Leap Forward,

roughly in that period...

you know, maybe 75,000 years ago.

You can argue

tens of thousands of years;

it doesn't matter much.

From an evolutionary

point of view, it's an instant.

So somewhere in that instant,

some small hunter-gatherer group...

you know, it could have been

a couple of thousand people...

you suddenly find a burst

of creative activity:

complex tools...

recording natural phenomena,

more complex family structures...

symbolic representation,

you know, art, and so on.

From an evolutionary

point of view, it's an instant.

Now, it's generally assumed

that it's hard to think

of an alternative,

that that instant must be the time

when language suddenly appeared,

because language is required

for all these things.

Before, there could have been,

you know,

primitive communication systems

like every animal has,

but human language with

the property I just mentioned,

the capacity

for thought constructing

in your head...

When you walk around,

you're talking to yourself.

You can't stop.

I mean, it takes a real act

of will not to talk to yourself,

and what you're doing

is thinking, basically,

recollecting,

or, you know, whatever it is.

But you're making use constantly

of this capacity

to construct an unbounded array

of structured expressions

which have a meaning and a sound.

Now, that's the core of our ability

to create, invent, you know,

plan, interpret, and so on.

Well, that must have happened

right about that time.

But if it happened suddenly,

it has to be simple.

There's no time.

In evolutionary time,

that's nothing, remember,

which means that some small

thing must have happened,

some small mutation, probably.

And a mutation is in one person;

it's not in a group.

Suddenly gave that person

the capacity to... this capacity.

Well, that person was unique

in the animal world.

It could plan, it could think,

it could interpret, and so on.

But if that happened...

And there's no pressures

on that system,

no selection or other pressures.

It just appeared.

Well, if it just appeared,

it's going to be perfect.

It's going to be like a snowflake.

You know, it just follows

from natural law.

That's what appears.

Like a snowflake is what it is.

You know, it doesn't evolve.

Well, you know, that capacity

would have been, in fact,

transmitted to offspring partially.

And after some time,

maybe a couple of generations,

this capacity might have

dispersed through the group.

And at that point, there becomes

a reason to externalize it,

to find a way to take

what's going on in your head

and turn it into sound

or gesture or something.

But does this capacity

give an advantage

to this person

or this group of people?

It does give an advantage

to the person,

because, look, if you have

the capacity to plan

and interpret and so on,

yeah, you have advantages

over others.

It's not such a trivial matter

for advantageous traits

to proliferate.

They often just die off.

So for all we know,

this might have happened many times

in the preceding

couple hundred thousand years.

But once it took,

we know that it took,

'cause we're here, you know.

So at one point, this took.

A number of people had it.

At some point, you start

getting externalization.

Then you can get communication.

But what that means

is that contrary to thousands

of years of speculation

and what's almost universally

assumed now,

communication couldn't have been

a significant factor

in evolution.

It's a secondary process.

Today during the lunch pause,

Noam went to see his doctor

and get some test results.

Are you worried about your health?

I'm not. Doctors are, but I'm not.

So you don't have anxiety?

I figure, three score and ten,

that's what we're supposed

to have, 70 years,

according to the Bible.

Anything else comes free.

When I was about ten years old,

I used to get frantic

about dying, you know.

What happens when that spark

of consciousness disappears?

And I would have nightmares

about it.

But by the time I was a teenager, I

figured, "That's ridiculous," you know.

My model is David Hume.

When he died, he had

his friends with him,

like Adam Smith.

He was very placid.

You know, he said,

"You know, this is the way

existence works.

And good-bye."

No afterlife, nothing.

Do you mind if I ask you

about your feeling

when your wife passed away?

I'd just as soon

not talk about that.

It's too soon?

I can't get over it, you know.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I gave you my home

I gave you my hope

It seems that you had

the perfect relationship

from the outside point of view.

It wasn't.

You know, nothings perfect.

But it was very intimate.

I think a lot of human beings

spend a lot of their life

trying to solve problems

of relationship

or find a relationship and...

We pretty much solved it

when we were children.

We were children

when we got married.

You know, she... Carol was 19,

and I was 20.

In my kitchen

Soup is on

Lover, lover

Come on over

And do you think it

helped you in your work?

It's hard to say.

I mean, Carol was kind

of a social butterfly.

You know, she was...

as a teenager, you know,

went to all kind parties,

dating, this and that.

And I was very solitary.

But... and for a couple of years,

we more or less lived

her style of life.

But, you know, I'd sit

in a corner at the parties.

But after a while,

we just drifted

into a very private life,

you know, saw a

couple friends and...

I mean, we weren't hermits.

Like, we have children,

grandchildren,

friends, and so on.

But mostly we lived...

we preferred to be alone,

you know, so...

We started to talk

about your education last time

but more about the school.

Can you tell me a bit more

about the relationship you had

with your parents?

Things were quite different

in those days.

I mean, the relationship

was fine, you know,

but not very close, really.

So, for example, there were

things happening in my childhood

that I never would have dreamt

of talking to them about.

We were the only Jewish family

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