evolution
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
August 23, 2010 - 06:49 — bhugaI changed my mind on some things while reading this book, but not because of this book. This book is terrible.
The book attempts to prove the idea that humans evolved in a more or less willy-nilly sexual environment, and that modern ideas of monogamy are basically ridiculous. The book is awful; I did not finish it. The first third or so that I read contains ad-hominem attacks on Darwin (a straw man attack for this topic if there ever was one), pointless, rambling surveys on other areas of evolutionary psychology with little relevance or effort to tie it to the topic at hand, and vague, unscientific jabs at various members of the self-proclaimed moral establishment. They make some points, but the methodology is so bad that it's entirely by accident.
At any rate, I would not trust the book's main point based on the book's examples of pre-agricultural tribes, because of the aforementioned methodology problems. But it's true that most pre-agricultural societies are organized around fierce egalitarianism, with lots of communal child rearing. The 'standard narrative' of a providing father and paternity-certainty-providing mother doesn't work there.
Now, we've had 10 thousand years or more to evolve cognitive responses to agriculture, so I do not agree with the premise that nobody is wired for monogamy. However, the book made me think about how we treat people who are not (and I would definitely grant that surely, some people are not).
It would be worse than being gay. Society views polyamorous folks as damaged and self destructive; courts routinely take their kids away. One needs a partner to self-actualize, as its put, and failing at marriage is a personal flaw. And I admit that I kind of held this view before, but in retrospect, it's profoundly unfair to people who are not cut out for, biologically or otherwise, taking relationships seriously.
Further, it made me think about how I feel about jealousy. Not that it's ever been an issue; I haven't had a 6 or 7 year relationship to itch over. But is monogamy like a 'hidden cost' economics problem? Namely, much like the government bailing out a car company saves a few jobs, creating an unseen cost of what that money could have done had it created new companies and hired new workers, perhaps that's what relationships are doing. Perhaps monogamy prevents the short-term cost of jealousy, but it's creating a long-term, hidden cost of folks feeling stifled. I'm not going to make sweeping generalizations like this book did, but its something to think about.
Moral Minds
June 25, 2009 - 09:35 — bhugaA very intriguing book, and very much along the topic of cognitive biases that I so love. Maybe a bit too dense to really recommend, though.
This book is rough to say is 'good'. It's pop science, the good kind that brings together a lot of different studies, but not quite as readable or approachable as, say, Pinker or even Dawkins, which is saying something. But the topic is phenomenal, and Hauser pulls together an incredible amount of data. If you're in to cognitive psychology--which I think is one of the most best-covered subjects in popular science today--this one's not to be missed. It's too important.
Hauser postulates, and provides significant evidence for, a basic moral grammar, akin to the universal linguistic grammar, a system of moral precepts from which moral systems can be built based on local societal norms, but which limits certain moral systems from existing. Much like no known language has OSV word order (I think, I am paraphrasing stuff I read a long time ago here), no moral system will allow the death penalty for a 6 year old fighting with their sibling.
The most important thing to me is the ample evidence that the reasoning we use to make moral decisions is not available to us. We cannot say why it's okay to divert a speeding train to kill 1 and save 5 but we can't kill 1 to harvest their organs for to save 5. We have a moral engine in our brains, chugging away at the problem, but the plans for the engine are not available to us. We try and capture them, but much of morality is jut rationalization.
This is very, very important for a lot of areas. Take public policy. We can rationalize that we help the needy, because helping an injured person in front of you is logically equivalent, in a way, to donating money to poor children across the world. But we have a lot of evidence that that kind of large-scale, institutional charity is actually harmful in the long run. Our attempts to extrapolate on moral reasoning result in public policy that is wildly ineffective, and we need to recognize that sometimes large-scale decisions cannot be made in a way that reconciles with our moral feelings.
It's also got a lot of important ramifications for animal rights. We grant human rights to mentally disabled folks, but it sure looks like a big part of what makes us moral is that we can put together certain kinds of information in our brains and apply them to base biological systems--i.e. we need to do logical processing on the history of our interactions with a person to perform the proper context analysis to come up with a modern, moral solution to a quandary. But an awful lot of animals--primates, dogs, dolphins, etc--display certain kinds of moral systems that might become all but equivalent to our own instantly with the addition of human-level information storage and processing. Lots of animals understand the concepts of teasing and unfairness. On the other hand, lots of animals do not seem to understand the concept of cruelty--in situations where violence is allowed (which is most of them, for most animals), there is little research to suggest that 'enough' violence is a concept animals understand. Submission poses seem to stimulate an end to violence, but not to actually engage moral reasoning.
The book was very worrisome for me. I have the moral ability to be a vegetarian because I don't think that any animals contain the intellectual processing required to be truly moral creatures. But it seems that a lot of moral processing is more or less hard-coded, including human morality. I had not considered that we might be working with more or less the same reflexive system but with the added ability to apply knowledge over long time spans.
What if I'm wrong and I have to give up vegetarianism? That would suck! Animals taste so goddamn good! Fortunately, I can already say that I would still be able to eat seafood if this is enough to make me re-think things.
Survival of the Sickest
October 31, 2008 - 00:58 — bhugaA quick, decent read.
This is a book about human diseases, particularly genetic diseases, and our adaptations to them, and them to us. We have a lot of diseases that are caused by genetic defenses to other diseases or to the environment, and it's not generally appreciated how significant the impact this kind of evolution has had on us. The book is well sourced and has a lot of evidence to show that, in addition to the usual, known adaptations like sickle cell anemia to combat malaria, we have a few other fun traits: type 2 diabetes may be related to the cold, and hemochromatosis may be an adaptation to the plague. Good trivia, but nothing new here.
There's a sparse chapter on human evolution, focusing on the aquatic ape side of things. This seems to be the pet topic of every science writer: it's all completely unprovable but very interesting to speculate about. I'm bored of it now. Leave it to the professionals!
There's some very interesting stuff about 'gene hopping'. We've basically got chunks of genes that act like viruses, but affect only ourselves, and there's good evidence that evolution picks up when an organism lives a stressed life. Which is saying that we're evolved to evolve when we need to, which seems so obvious to me that it should be self-evidently expected. It's good to see some evidence of it.
The last fourth of the book, however, was all new to me--epigenetics. Essentially, incredibly small changes can cause organisms--including complex mammals, including us--to *permanently* disable their own genes by attaching a methyl group to a particular gene. Zygotes--including human zygotes--are turning off genes--*permanently*--within *hours* of conception based on the mother's environment. This is just mind-blowing; we've long known genes can be expressed or not, but that the triggers should be so small and sudden is pretty nuts. Fortunately, we don't know many details yet, and it seems that 'turning on' many genes will result in 'turning off' many others, so it's impossible to tell expectant parents what they should do. If you could, with changes this big for such small changes...pregnancy is stressful enough. I'm glad I'm male.
The Third Chimpanzee
October 8, 2008 - 12:02 — bhugaA prequel to Collapse and one of my all-time favorites, Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond here focuses on the evolution of the human species.
While his later books go into greater detail of the evolution of human society, Diamond started at the basics a few years ago with this one. It's well written and easy to read, with Diamond's typical half-data, half-anecdote style. I used to have a real problem with this kind of style, but I'm starting to understand that, done right, this is the only way to apply historical perspective.
I'm not sure I would recommend this to be the top of any reading list, as I would GG&S. Diamond spends a lot of time talking about the evolution of language, for example, and that's a topic explored in much greater detail and with better supporting data by Pinker in The Language Insinct. Further, the book is already dated, more recent human evolutionary data has settled some arguments that Diamond spends several pages discussing.
The best parts are easily the first-hand experiences of stone-age tribes in New Guinea and how they interact with each other. Whenever I read Diamond's descriptions of tribes slaughtering each other for wives and hunting grounds, it makes me remember just how ridiculous some modern plans for large-scale social engagement really are, and the resilient community concept has a chance to succeed where other forms of sustainable social organization must inevitably fail.
Diamond writes well, and even recovering some old ground is fun. I got the book for 33% off and certainly feel like I got my money's worth.
