Index > What is God? > The second day

Humans might be in general tuned to help each other out and to created shared intentions. When two humans interact, each infers the other's intents, and then each melds zer intents with the other's.

See this video of toddlers and chimps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eU5xZW7cU).

In the one that starts at around 1:35, it's not clear but it seems like the toddler first is recruited into the experimenter's task, but then when the experimenter drifts away the toddler re-recruits the experimenter back into that task.

Humans modulate their actions so that other humans who are watching, e.g. little kids, can learn better. E.g. they might get out of the way so the other one can see, or they might exaggerate their motions or do them slowly. I think most or all other animals don't do that (even though plenty of animal offspring learn from parents).

Humans are unique in having full language, which is a way of sharing thoughts and co-creating shared thoughts.

Richard Alexander wrote about the need for ancestral humans to coordinate very well within small groups, in order to win inter-group violent conflict. One images that this situation put strong pressure for human ancestors to synch up with each other on mindset, attention, intention.

Intentionality is not just goals. It is a metonymy for all kinds of mental elements. Humans who interface deeply with each other naturally copy over algorithm-pieces between each other, of many kinds. Beliefs, concepts, skills, attention patterns, coalition identities, tastes, values, goals, stances.

This more general process points toward a more general process of merging. Not total merging, but deep substantive merging. In this way, the origins of humanity are tied up with the beginnings of theogenesis.

Ants evolved to recognize other members of their colony, and to reject members of other colonies. When an ant becomes an invasive species, the progenitor colony spreads near-clones all around. Since all the colonies are either clones or close siblings/cousins, ants from neighboring colonies have very similar markers. When ants in one colony go to another colony, the colony being visited can't distinguish the visiting ants from native ants. They recognize members of other colonies as members of their own colony. So you get a supercolony where queens and workers are shared between nests across sometimes vast stretches, with billions of ants.

This also sort of happened with humans, but in a much deeper (and tensionful) way.