Becoming a Centaur

https://aeon.co/essays/horse-human-cooperation-is-a-neurobiological-miracle

by Vigier • 4 years ago

15 12 4 years ago

ggm• 4 years ago

I noted how the word "dance" is used in descriptive/metaphorical terms (cellular dance, nerve signal dance) but never do they actually compare the body-language dialogue between dancers, yet the clues: subtle pressures on legs, arms, back are the same: non-verbal, queues which lead to remarkably complex movements of two autonomous entities in unison.

The inter-species thing is strong. They emphases predator-prey, but mating rituals between same species demands expressions of agility and strength, and coordinated with the other party: you have (in my opinion) to go beyond "look at me" to make that outcome work in any species with higher functions. So I think the movements can't just be written down to a herd animals fear reaction.

syntaxfree• 4 years ago

This article is way too padded with neural neural neural neural gobbledygook. This comment is brought by the sharp feedback loop between my brain, my fingers and the neural neural neural of the article writer yadda yadda

todorus• 4 years ago

I agree with the point you're trying to make, but not your sentiment.

To quote the guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community"

wizardforhire• 4 years ago

Bummed the article was not about this:

https://www.myconfinedspace.com/2009/04/20/majestic-centurio...

em3rgent0rdr• 4 years ago

"shared trust", "cooperate freely". Umm...

enviclash• 4 years ago

"Neural dance". I really like science writers that stand in the border between (or touch the limits of) good prose and sci-com. I am curious about whether a shared sense of intuition is commonly perceived.

motohagiography2• 4 years ago

I ride more days than not, and this is an excellent laymans description of the the practice. I call it having a conversation where we spend years trying to understand one another, and it ebbs and flows with greater and lesser mutual understanding. A horse remembers everything it experiences, and it is very difficult to get them to unlearn the memory and expectation of something that they have set in their minds. The job of a rider is to bring the consistency and intention to relating with another being.

As riders, we use geometric figures as the empirical control we revert to, or the base message. Horses know nothing of straight lines or circles until we establish a basic language of "forward" or "around," and then faster, slower, and they begin to anticipate the figures - to where eventually, you are riding mainly by thought and the microexpressions in your body the thought causes. Beyond stimulus response training, as a rider you begin to interpret desire and intent from another being, and it anticipates and responds to your intents and desires as it experiences them.

Where it gets extra fascinating is that your emotional state and beleifs about yourself creates those micro body expressions the animal senses, and so you learn to discipline your mind so that distraction, fear, boldness, forwardness, aggression, urgency, calm are senses that you intentionally summon and express and transmit to another mind that is wielding 1200lbs of muscle across four tall legs. I think learning to cultivate the acceptance and willingness of another being in nature is the origin of human morality. It's a multi-millenia old relationship, and the beauty of it is that when we ride, we inculcate the minds of horses with our intentions and a way of relating by using non-verbal language, and we use geometry to encode the values for our intentions to them. Horses aren't machines or symbols, they are other beings who we relate to. So glad the author wrote this, re-assessing our relationship to horses in a moral and philosophical sense will help us all. Again.

sdwr2• 4 years ago

The way you're talking about riding sounds a lot like sex. I think any kind of live communication involves taking responsibility for (or at least awareness of) the other party's emotional state. There's a cost attached to that, can't gain a sense without losing something else.

Have you thought about writing a blog? I know counterpoint is easier than point a lot of the time, but your comment reads substantially better than the article.

motohagiography2• 4 years ago

A lot of riders will tell you it's as good or better, which when you think of some furtive or regretable drunk hookup vs. an epic and enlightening experience, they're not far off.

Re the blog, thank you, and counterpoint is very accurate. I don't know that winning at blogging would be satisfying, and I'm sort of holding out for a new online form that captures the good parts of the long format that books like Hitchens' "Arguably," Amis' "Einstein's Monsters," and short stories like Ted Chiang or Julian Barnes did. Doom scrolling an essay muddles the ideas, and e-readers don't do it for me. The things I'd like to write are from that time, where you would spend an afternoon with a book and then have a drunken row in a pub over it with an old friend afterwards. In dispensing with the object of a book, we have lost the objective point of discussion, where we used to talk about ideas as just things that were contained in other things full of pages, but now they are expereinces from a screen, and inextricably personal.

Ideas aren't things anymore, they're identities, and blogging just hasn't escaped that yet. I like a few bloggers' ideas, but I don't follow them. The only reason I read them is because their substacks show up in my inbox. I've spoken to editors, but everyone in publishing now is on reddit anyway, so there isn't a way for them add value the way they might once have. Publishing is broken, and maybe that's the real opportunity. Thanks, certainly food for thought.

29athrowaway• 4 years ago

We are all centaurs and shit until you fall from an actual horse and get a taste of how dangerous riding a horse is.

otikik• 4 years ago

Centaurs are ridiculous fantasy animals that make no sense.

This is exemplified perfectly by the reverse centaur: a regular human body with a horse torso, including front legs and head, attached to the human shoulder and neck.

Or a centicentaur: a millipede-like creature made out by attaching 100 horse bodies, with a single human torso at the front. If the centicentaur programs in C/C++ they only get 99 horse bodies.

Becoming a Centaur

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