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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3176 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 31, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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According to an askhistorians post, just going off of volume consumed significantly overestimates their alcohol consumption -

Most ancient wines probably had an alcohol content around 15% ... In most cases, however, the wine consumed at social gatherings was probably between two-thirds and three-fourths water, which would have reduced the alcoholic content to about that of modern beer.

Your study is probably cherrypicked / poorly conducted / something, just because it's a cool-sounding popular study about human psychology.

Any amount of alcohol temporarily reduces intelligence and precision in your physical movements - a tiny bit if buzzed, a lot if drunk. Having that all the time seems dumb.

Natural selection has tuned our ability to be glad and bond with others over millenia - it'd be weird if the baseline value was simply too low, and constant intake of fermented grain was ideal. Whatever effect alcohol has on various neurotransmitters would be quite 'easy' to evolve ... but it didn't, and you're going to knock all sorts of useful and functional relationships out of balance by being constantly buzzed.

(OP was a good post though!)

Any amount of alcohol temporarily reduces intelligence and precision in your physical movements - a tiny bit if buzzed, a lot if drunk.

Not true, alcohol is considered a PED and is banned in shooting competitions: http://www.faqs.org/sports-science/Sc-Sp/Shooting.html

I'd heard of that, but that's because (low confidence) shooting accuracy depends on incredibly precise positioning of extremities, and is harmed by nervousness and a strong heartbeat, and from your article

The best known of the drugs used by shooters to relax themselves and potentially slow their heart rate are alcohol

Relaxing and slowing heart rate aren't useful for the overwhelming majority of either sports or day-to-day activities of a roman i'd imagine

Your evolutionary argument is nonsensical. Western civilization evolved alongside alcohol from the very first semblance of high-level social order. So much so, that myths were created around the development of alcohol. Civilizations which used other naturally-derived pharmaceuticals, like saffron, had myths develop around that drug. (We evolved, additionally, alongside the unnatural acts of eating grains and collecting salt from distant places.) If teetotalism were evolutionarily beneficial, then the societies which never spent the enormous resources on alcohol would have triumphed. In fact, they were utterly dominated by the alcoholists. History grants us a sample of thousands of tribes and organizations of human society, and continually the ones who imbibed bubbled to the top of the chain.

Among the reasons why this may be, is that alcohol is a very inexpensive form of pleasure. Instead of having men fight other men or try to fuck all the women or jump off cliffs or whatever, you just give them alcohol and the enjoyment will be proximal. This is especially important when the labor is boring, like “non-evolutionary” farming, versus hunting which is more fun.

There are two ways to look at “evolving”. The one is we should only do what we evolved to do, in which case we just ditch farming. The other is that we evolved to dominate and spread our genes any way we can, in which case we must lay claim to farming and slcohol. Now, maybe it’s the case that the West has new forms of cheap pleasure that replace alcohol. But this doesn’t mean that alcohol wasn’t our reliable help for many thousands of years.

Western civilization evolved alongside alcohol from the very first semblance of high-level social order. So much so, that myths were created around the development of alcohol.

Ancient western civilizations varied a lot in their alcohol consumption. Myths about everything in day-to-day life existed, whether new or old.

If teetotalism were evolutionarily beneficial, then the societies which never spent the enormous resources on alcohol would have triumphed

? Evolution often preserves maladaptive traits, either because selection was too weak, it competed with another effect (for instance: alcohol is a source of calories and a way of preserving them), or some detail of the selection process (individual/genetic and society level selection is a lot slower than culture-spreading selection)

Surely the great Islamic empires were great civilizations, at least during the "Islamic Golden Age"?

Hm, for the wine AskHistorians post, the liter being undiluted does make the wine's later dilution irrelevant. My mistake.

Searching elsewhere for roman wine consumption, from wikipedia:

Phillips estimates that on average, each member of Rome's urban population (man, woman or child) consumed half a litre of undilute wine per capita daily.[1] Tchernia and Van Limbergen estimate the same average consumption levels per diem, per capita throughout the Greco-Roman world.[9]

"Man, woman, and child" at "half a litre per day" is comparable to 1L/day for an adult man, I think? But following that citation, they took estimated wine production for Rome divided by the Roman population - and my sense is that, combined with the % ethanol of ancient wines, isn't necessarily that accurate. But all accounts seem to agree that alcohol consumption was widespread, to the point that during the Empire drunkenness was an issue.

Does it really, though? For almost all social interactions, the ability to be more earnest, more long-suffering, and less constrained by cognitive ruts is an advantage

If you're drinking alcohol consistently, throughout the day, as the post describes, it'll harm your intelligence and physical capacity for the intellectual or physical work you have to do. Said intelligence and subtlety might also be useful for social interactions - which aren't just a way to bond with the bros, but often involve competition, subtlety, and antagonism. Every part of social interaction is 'cognitive', it doesn't really make sense that a general depressant would aid in social interaction.

Throughout human history, almost every civilization that a Westerner would recognize as a civilization has both relied upon grain and developed some form of ubiquitous alcoholic beverage from it.

Eh, according to wikipedia the high levels of alcohol consumption in Rome only took place during the empire - and the rate of consumption significantly differed - a number (that I didn't check) was 1.8L/day/10 men in egypt.

So, are you just going to completely ignore things like bar fights and other obvious examples of how alcohol consumption often substantially increases men’s propensity to interpersonal violence? “Promoting collective action, good will, and forgiveness between strangers” might be the way that some populations and individuals respond to alcohol consumption, but many others find that it exacerbates violence and dysfunction.

The problem, though, is that what for one man is a moderate amount of drinking might be, for another man, enough to get him drunk enough to be a problem for himself and for others. And it’s not always clear to any particular person what the effects of a particular round of drinking will be; I’ve had outings where I found myself significantly drunker than I expected, because of situationally-contingent factors - what I’d eaten that day, the beginnings of a cold/flu that hadn’t begun to manifest when I woke up that day, etc. - and additionally a great many people are terrible judges of their own current state of intoxication.

We’ve all met plenty of people who, while visibly and obviously intoxicated, insist that they are sober enough to drive, or sober enough to take another shot. Being intoxicated, since it is a euphoric sensation, naturally incentivizes the consumption of more of the intoxicant in order to prolong and amplify that sensation. Sure, very experienced drinkers with a strong sense of their own tolerance - in addition to a strong penchant for self-control - can recognize signs of drunkenness in real-time and abstain from further consumption; I think that you’re significantly over-estimating the percentage of the population that fits that description, and under-estimating the percentage that get drunk without intending to and cause all sorts of problems.

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