In today’s episode of Radio Tortuga I speak with
, who writes here on Substack at Vectors of Mind.Andrew is a data scientist who writes primarily about the evolution of consciousness (particularly conceptual recursion) in early humans.
He is known primarily for his essays Snake Cult and Eve Theory of Consciousness, which posit that sapience / self-awareness first emerged in women as a result of exposure to hallucinogenic snake venom, and was gradually cultivated in our species via shamanic rituals that reinforced the primordial matriarchy of the Paleolithic Era.
Topics include:
The Paradox of Sapience—why does behavior modernity only go back 15kya when humans have been anatomically modern for much much longer?
Was the emergence of consciousness a technological / cultural innovation or the consequence of some deeper physiological change?
Was there an interim “uncanny value” of dreamlike schizo semi-sapience between primitive non-recursive man and fully self-aware modern man?
Debates within Linguistics as to the relationship between language and thought
Are cultures with non-recursive grammar even capable of abstract thought?
The inability of low IQ people to understand counterfactuals and hypotheticals
The inherently recursive nature of self concept (“I am”)
How the Biblical story of Adam and Eve serves as an allegory for Snake Cult
How Andrew’s upbringing in Mormonism (which takes a far more positive view of Eve) made him sympathetic to the view of Eve creating humanity
Historical Gnostic readings of the Adam and Eve story which view Eve as having given Adam a soul
Women are higher in emotional intelligence and would have developed self awareness first
The mythic significance of snakes
The psychedelic power of snake venom, its historic use in rituals, and the symbolic importance of antivenomous produce like apples / beer
How the Snake Cult would have spread via cultural diffusion
The bullroarer as a “Voice of God” that is used to enforce patriarchy
Women as the original creators as culture and the influence of this in having brought about a paleolithic “primordial matriarchy”
Snake Cult as memetic sex warfare—did women give us a soul to enslave us?
The more unconscious or “embodied” nature of feminine knowledge vs. the more formalist / explicit / systematic nature of masculine knowledge
Do women screw themselves over by giving us a soul by paving the way for spergy systematizer / optimizer tech bros?
Christianity as a Hegelian synthesis between stern cerebral Jewish patriarchy and embodied paleolithic serpentine matriarchy
How much variance exists in sapience among modern humans?
Are there orthogonal dimensions to sapience—e.g. capacity for recursive thought vs. integrated/consistent identity vs. self control and personal agency?
Amphetamine use as a means of deliberately amputating one’s unconscious mind to liberate himself from feminine manipulation
The relationship between AI art generated by LLMs and the Jungian collective unconscious
Is the use of tools like AI art an example of transhumanism?
Was the original use of snake venom an early example of transhumanism?
Is the conflict of Man vs. Self inherently tied to the tension of Man vs. Woman?
Willendorfian Longhousing vs. Theocratic Bimbofication as a Hegelian dialectic with Christianity as mediating impulse
Why Walt is a Right-Dworkinite
Why Andrew doesn’t care about sociological / political implications of his theory
Does uncertainty imply we should bet more on base rates or on volatility?
Esoteric mystery cults facilitated the transmission of spiritual technology but Andrew views the selection mechanism as having operated at the individual level and not the group level
Human sacrifice as mechanism to ritualize deferred gratification and innovations like circumcision, Jesus mythology, etc. as replacement tech
Chesterton’s Fence, the value of dialectic between innovation vs. tradition, and the necessity of painful iteration to advance society
Is Chesterton’s Fence an argument for traditional marriage?
Snake Cult, the Sapient Paradox, and Shamanic Eve