I wonder if they had meetings or 'design committees' to find the most optimal shape with respect to the ease of killing prey eventually.
One possibility on origin (totally made up by me) could be that there were large stones lying around already as debris from e.g. earthquakes, celestial events and such and some groups took advantage of this and later people iterated upon it.
As a supporting point, I think it's connected not only with mental functions, but also our senses.
I have a weak memory in general, but I always remember the most mundane things in my life that I had no idea I still contained in my brain, triggered by a specific smell.
Another example is that when I moved to a new street, while crossing one road, I stumbled upon the edge of tram road and almost fell. Two years and counting, my brain always brings this memory up while passing the same point on the road..
I was adamant on using one of those health/exercise tracking devices, mainly out of distaste of our modern habit to be constantly in the know of everything, but I gotta say, since I've started using one, it's just so satisfying seeing the accumulated numbers over N months or even years!
This discussion reminds me a beautiful sentence I read in 'The Power and the Glory' by Graham Greene: "Hope is an instinct that only the reasoning human mind can kill."
Or any time one dares to criticize Israel for their recent contributions to peace on Earth (wink wink) -- it has to be prefaced with "Let me say that I'm the biggest defender of the Jews and fight against anti-Semitism".
> Unrelated to the article, but related to the topic, the compliment that gives me the most dopamine is when somebody I respect and is above my level of knowledge tells me “that’s a great question”. It just makes me realize that I’m closer to their level if I’m asking questions that stumped them or that they are already thinking of but surprised I asked.
I don't know this for a fact, but, I'm thinking there must be a lot of books on public speaking that tout this "trick".
Once, I noticed that an exec started constantly prefixing her every answer with "Yeah that's a great question" and I said to myself, huh she must have just finished some leadership book!
Of course, it quickly becomes pretentious, if used on every mundane question.
I recently started using one of these. The other day, I was working out on a rowing machine and received an alert (twice!) that my heart rate was extremely high. I was surprised because I wasn't even pushing myself that hard, and I am a fit person in general.
Upon research and asking around, I understood that it's more of a false positive. A more paranoid person may have reacted differently in such a scenario. So, consistency alone may not always suffice.
You need the band on your tracker to be very snug or this is likely to happen. You're actually seeing the tracker move, not the heart rate.
I've seen substantial mismatches between wrist and chest strap if my tracker had any ability to wiggle. With an infinitely adjustable metal band set so there's no slack but no pressure I see a good correspondence, although I haven't put it a test as hard as rowing (my activity of choice is hiking.) But my wife absolutely doesn't like such a band, wearing a soft, loose band and using her arms her "heart rate" has gone above 200.
I have also seen an environmental effect--these days I use the chest strap sensor because if my wrist is cold (conditions just below when I would add another layer) the wrist data can go totally bonkers.
My parents and their generation suffers a lot from this, I feel. They grew up in a time (and in a country, I guess) where any information that they'd digest on TVs, newspapers, etc. came vetted officially or professionally. So, they kind of presume that everything they see online must be true because it's out there.
It's not like there was no garbage output before, but it's the scale at which it can be done nowadays that is the key, I think.
Is it really that much different than e.g. a cook preparing carrots while onions are being cooked? Nobody needed to invent this as far as my knowledge of history goes; so, maybe there really is nothing new under the sun :)
Joking aside, of course, the ingenuity lies in finding a fitting solution to problem at hand, as well as knowing how to apply it.
One possibility on origin (totally made up by me) could be that there were large stones lying around already as debris from e.g. earthquakes, celestial events and such and some groups took advantage of this and later people iterated upon it.