Apparently, the monkeys are divided among heavy drinkers, occasional drinkers or teetootalers in proportions that are roughly equal to those among human beings.
Be passionate about the cultures of the countries that speak this language, and read the products of these cultures - articles and books about their peoples, histories, traditions, world views, current events - in that language. This is how I learned English - from the age of 17 onwards I've been passionate about Anglo-Saxon cultures, histories and societies (in particular about the United States) and have widely read about them, in english.
I'll grant you that this is easier if the language you want to learn is spoken in a large, complex country or countries - such as the English, Mandarin, or Spanish.
> I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war.
> for instance, following this logic, the most popular religion or dominant culture is not necessarily the most useful to the host genome, but the best viral "meme" that can replicate itself while balancing its own replication vs. the viability of the host (e.g., a malaria that allowed the host and its transmission vector to slightly evolve partial defenses against it so that it too can survive and replicate or the benign Herpes simplex virus that has 90% penetration rate).
Many religions (in particular Islam and Christianity) strike me as being just that. They have features that make them viral (through proselytising, and sometimes forced conversions), and make it hard for their hosts to get rid of them (due to social pressure and penalties against apostates). These features are integral to the success of the religion, and are hidden under mythological/theological disguise.
The myths act as a vector, and these "features", which are behaviours that can be very complex (running a religious court system, enforcing those laws, proselytising), are effectively the payload of the virus.
They turn society into a machine to spread the religion further and protect it, even if this comes at the cost of other achievements (technological progress, greater equality between demographic groups...).
While an opposable thumb is very useful, I don't think it's necessary for "practicing" intelligence. Cut a man's thumbs off and he'll be seriously impaired, but hardly so much that society couldn't develop tool use, agriculture and technology.
I feel opposable thumbs tend to be brought up on the logic of "this is one of many features unique to humans, therefore it must be related to the important feature unique to humans, which is intelligence". In this case it's not even unique to humans: all Old World monkeys and apes have opposable thumbs to one degree or another.
I remember reading an article about this in The Economist a few years ago.
The article stated that the tame fox specimen exhibited facial features that were slightly different from those of wild foxes, and that the tamer they were, the greater the differences were. Their jaws had become thinner, their chins less pronouned, and their eyes larger. The article noted that it was possible that these facial features were correlated with hormonal levels that made the foxes less aggressive and more tame, and that the same could be true in human beings.
Since human beings considers these facial features "attractive" in other human beings, it was possible to conclude that we're hardwired to be physically attracted to people whose facial features indicate a lower propensity to anger and aggression.
I've looked for the article on google but I can't find it unfortunately.
> Their jaws had become thinner, their chins less pronouned, and their eyes larger. The article noted that it was possible that these facial features were correlated with hormonal levels that made the foxes less aggressive and more tame,
This is probably neoteny, which is considered a key part of the domestication of dogs.
> Some common neotenous physical traits in domesticated animals (mainly dogs, pigs, ferrets, cats, and even foxes) include: floppy ears, changes in reproductive cycle, curly tails, piebald coloration, fewer or shortened vertebra, large eyes, rounded forehead, large ears, and shortened muzzle.
For humans, neoteny is generally considered attractive in women.
Instead of remembering/finding that article perhaps you should just read the posted article which mentions the same things about "cuter" facial features.
The owner of the profile of the person who answered your question (whoever he is) seems to have changed his username from "Craig S Wright" to Frank Blu on Dec 12th 2015.
He also seems to have deleted, on that same day, every post he made on Quora after Dec 11 2014.
The titles of the questions on which he posted revolved a lot around cryptocurrencies, cryptography and supercomputers, as well as finance and economics. Some example of questions to which he contributed are:
"How large will the Bitcoin blockchain be in November 2015?"
"How would I estimate the cost of setting up a 100 Tera-Flop server at my..."
"Why is gold considered so precious and why does it have such high prices..."
"Are there better uses of stimulus funds than others?"
His earliest activity on the site is the creation of a topic called CSCSS, on Jul 30th 2012.
It's not. There is some talk of a Sixth Republic during the presidential campaigns, generally from far-right or far-left parties, but the two main moderate parties do not want to hear about it.
French political life is characterized by a complete lack of impetus for change.
> ... without realizing that in usability studies, most computer using college graduates do not understand the idea of a file system with directories inside of directories, files at every level, and two files named the same thing in two different directories actually being different files.
That claim seems hard to believe. Would you have a link to one of these usability studies?
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chimpanzees-...
Here's also an extract from a BBC Nature documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk
Apparently, the monkeys are divided among heavy drinkers, occasional drinkers or teetootalers in proportions that are roughly equal to those among human beings.