The Ancestor's Tale

I recently finished Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor's Tale. It is a readable opus on evolution back to the beginning of life. It looks at history backward; each species came from a certain past but there was no inevitability that any species would survive. Evolution is a story of who has survived and there were many possible ways the world could have been. The advantage of looking backward is that we can avoid the temptation to attribute to our ancestors any drive to progress or other teleological mechanism which suggests our destiny.

All apes share an geneological ancestor (concestor) who lived about 18 million years ago (18,000,000). All known life forms can be traced to a single ancestor (concestor) who lived more than 3 billion years ago (3,000,000,000). The continents were still joined together 150 million years ago. Human agriculture began about 10,000 years ago and human civilization (the Sumerians) about 7,000 years ago. I write the actual numbers because it is so hard for us to conceive geological time in its vastness. Tasmanian aboriginals, a form of homo sapien, were isolated from Australia about 13,000 years ago on the island of Tasmania, when land bridges were flooded by rising sea levels. This was the most recent isolation that lasted to modern times. They were discovered in about 1800 A.D., and exterminated by 1876 by agricultural settlers who viewed them as vermin.

What is the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all surviving humans today? It is quite clear that if we go sufficiently far back, everybody’s ancestors are shared. This makes geneology seem to me to be a bit parochial, although I have gotten sucked into the process at various times. Unfortunately, most of our family tree will remain unknown, so we need to estimate this by use of mathematics.

Assuming that population size is kept constant and mating is random, the surprising answer is only 12.3 generations ago. Assuming four generations per century, this is less than four centuries ago. It is even less if people reproduce younger than 25, which they probably did.

You can trace male genetic evolution through the Y chromosome and female genetic evolution through mitochondrial DNA. Once the last Tasmanian died, the most recent common ancestor of all of us alive today instantly jumped forward 10,000 years. By traveling up the tree father to father, the common male to all of us (Adam) dates back about 60,000 years while doing so mother-to-mother the common female (Eve) dates back 140,000 years. How can this be?

And here is another stunner: for particular genes, you are more closely related to some chimpanzees than to some humans.

Much of human knowledge defies “common sense,” or “conventional wisdom.” And I think these facts show that many of our moral or political stereotypes are based on very unscientific thinking. How can one claim a large division between races? Between religions? Between national identities? Between ourselves and other living creatures? It seems like you need to rely on some sort of creationism that marks humans or some kind of humans as a separate kind of thing. This is belied by DNA research and the fossil record. We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Get over it! You aren't that special.

That is just from the first 40 pages. Things get stranger and more interesting the further back you go.

On Being Certain

Neurologist's Robert Burton’s book, On Being Certain, addresses some questions I have been struggling to understand. How can people adamantly believe they are right even when it is clear they are not? How could such cognitive deficits survive? Could they have evolutionary value? How far can reason take us in a discussion considering various points of view? How can we know what we know?

An initial insight is that the feeling of knowing is a primary mental state like fear or anger. One can cause it by stimulating a particular area deep the oldest part of the brain, the limbic system. It is involuntary. It is pleasurable. When it follows some attempt at reasoning, we believe that reasons are the cause. The conviction that our conclusion is a conscious choice is illusory.

How could such a process arise? How could pleasurable feelings evoked by false beliefs further survival? Often reasoning takes time without immediate rewards and involving wrong turns. The feeling of knowing could have arisen as a reward for thinking, even where the thinking rests on false beliefs. The results of useful thinking are so beneficial that the process helps us survive. Thus, an unwarranted feeling of knowing might have a positive evolutionary role.

It also has the adaptive function of reducing the uncomfortable state produced by cognitive dissonance; when a person’s actions or beliefs are inconsistent with other beliefs. As Leon Festinger noted, the more committed we are to a belief, the harder it is to relinquish it, even in the fact of contradictory evidence. These belief systems become emotional or cognitive habits.

One interesting possibility that arises from this view concerns the know-it-all personality. Could he be addicted to the feeling of knowing, as this is pleasurable on a basic unconscious level? Indeed, for most people, recognizing and criticizing their beliefs is, if not impossible, unpleasant and difficult. As Burton says (p. 101), “the feeling of knowing, the reward for both proven and unproven thoughts, is learning’s best friend, and mental flexibility’s worst enemy.”

This helps us understand disputes between science and religion. A deeply felt sense of purpose and meaning is also a mental state. He considers Richard Dawkins’ arguments against religion. Dawkins can only believe that his powers of introspection and self-assessment allow him to understand why the world and we exist by assuming the myth of the autonomous rational mind. This misunderstands the biology of belief. Much of our cognitive processing goes on at an unconscious level and cannot be directly accessed. “Whether an idea originates in a feeling of faith or appears to be the result of pure reason, it arises out of a personal hidden layer that we can neither see nor control (p. 195).” “If most of us were forced to choose between a sense of purpose and reason, most would side with purpose (p. 221).”

Confirmation Bias

Some time ago I asked the question whether the proliferation of news sources (cable, internet, alternative networks) leads to polarization. Check out the post called Cable News from Jonah Lehrer's excellent blog The Frontal Cortex (author of How We Decide; the connection is at the bottom of this page). The answer seems to be yes. Also check out his post on chess intuition. Experts often are guided by their intuitions.

Below is a post from an interesting article on jury selection. Consider this piece of advice.

"Jurors decide cases based on their guts, then look for intellectual reasons to support their emotional decisions. As a result of confirmation bias they might not see, might disregard, or might discount all facts that don't support their (gut) preconceptions.

If you want a really hard job, try to win your case beginning with the presentation of evidence. It's not always impossible, but it's not nearly as easy as using the evidence to confirm what your jurors already believe.

Can you talk with (or to) the jury about ideas and things, and trigger a discussion of their emotions? Not likely. Can you talk with them about ideas and things, and influence their emotions? Sure, but it's an unnecessarily roundabout approach.

Here are some possible ways of finding out jurors' views on one of the issues in your case:

•Bad jury selection question: "[Proposition you'd like your jurors to accept.] Who disagrees?" (Followed, for the lawyerly coup de grace, by "I take it by your silence that you agree.")

•Better jury selection question: "What do you think about [issue]?"

•Even better jury selection question: "How do you feel about [issue]?"

If you want to know what people's guts say, you can't ask them what their brains say."

It seems that sometimes humans are better guided by intuition...when we are experts (or situations where we have to choose quickly). But most us of seem to follow intuition most of the time, even where we have little expertise.

Citizens United

It has been my view for some time that the vast wash of money in Washington D.C. has been a corrupting influence on our politics, but that the only way to really deal with this is through a Constitutional amendment because incumbents gain an advantage over potential competitors by keeping things the way they are. And as my Contituional law professor, Ed Firmage, persuasively argued, the time when Congress really addressed this issue effectively was post-Watergate, which the Supreme Court emasculated in Buckley v. Valeo. The recent Supreme Court case would appear to be a revisitation of the conflict between an interpretation of the Constitution by those who lack experience in politics vs. a more realistic perspective.

It is time I revisited some of these issues because they are complicated. Here is a interesting article by noted Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe on Scotusblog. And here is thoughtful article from the website Balkinization.

For a view from the apocalyptic left, here is Chris Hedges. And for the right, all I was able to come up with is this blog from the National Review. It is interesting that the right has now adopted an ACLU position. Anyway, the issue deserves some thought. One starting point is whether McCain-Feingold has really done any good.

Tucson

We arrived yesterday after four days in Tucson to a relatively balmy smog-free Salt Lake City. It was four days without watching the news or reading a newspaper or keeping track of events on the internet. I don't think I missed anything. The Massachusetts Senate election is interesting. I think it means that nothing gets done in Washington. So be it. The great mass herd of the public is angry about their situation.

Tucson itself has become a sprawling mess, although not as bad as Phoenix. Thankfully, politicians preserved the Saguaro National Park. The plant life of the Sonoran desert is fascinating; not only the cacti but the variety of trees. The Mesquite are particulary beautiful, although the Palo Verde are a nice complement. And I discovered Desert Mistletoe on this trip, a plant parasite on trees. The forms of life on the planet are varied and astonishing.

We did a couple nice hikes, hung out with my brother, and ate some good Mexican food. Reading mostly consisted of almost finishing Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale, a marvelous opus on evolution. I think I will continue to disregard noisy public debates for a more peaceful place in the near future. Go see Avatar in 3-D with an open mind and then be amused at all the shrill public commentary. It is a visual feast and an invitation to look at biology and botany more carefully. And humans place in the planet's history.

The Next Big Political Issue

Health care reform is pretty much done for the moment. There is a lot more to do, but it will have to wait for another time. We have other important issues to which we need to pay attention.

New regulations in the financial industry is the big current issue. The workings of that industry nearly led to a depression and have cost we taxpayers a lot of money. Many people have lost their jobs because the recession is much worse than it needed to be. And we know how Wall Street has come out of this.

From what I hear, Obama is not going far enough. Here is a good article with links to other articles on the issues.

And Robert Solow's review of John Cassidy's book, which I reviewed some time ago, makes some very good points. Here is one:

"Take an extreme example. I have read that a firm such as Goldman Sachs has made very large profits from having devised ways to spot and carry out favorable transactions minutes or even seconds before the next most clever competitor can make a move. Deep pockets in a large market can make a lot of money out of tiny advantages. (Of course, if you have any such advantage the temptation is irresistible to borrow a lot of money to enlarge your bets and your profits. Leverage is good for you, until it isn’t. It is not so good for the system.) A lot of high-class intellectual effort naturally goes into trying to invent ways to find those tiny advantages a few seconds before anyone else.

Now ask yourself: can it make any serious difference to the real economy whether one of those profitable anomalies is discovered now or a half-minute from now? It can be enormously profitable to the financial services industry, but that may represent just a transfer of wealth from one person or group to another. It remains hard to believe that it all adds anything much to the efficiency with which the real economy generates and improves our standard of living.

If that suspicion is valid--I emphasize that the necessary calculations have not been made and will be hard to make--the conclusion would be that our poorly regulated financial system is not only dangerously unstable, but also too big and too complex, absorbing talent and resources that could be better used doing something else. What is inadmissible is the assumption that, if the market creates a large and convoluted financial system, the market must be right. John Cassidy’s book should confer on a thoughtful reader a lasting immunity to erroneous free-market sloganeering, whether simpleminded or devious, while still conveying some feeling for what a well-functioning market system can actually do. Both ideas are important."

As Mark Thoma remarks, this circumstance makes a transactions tax look much better. At least it is time we started thinking about this issue. Excess leverage, poor regulation of lending practices, the massive derivatives market, lack of transparency, and many other factors combined to produce this mess. Are we going to go there again?

Europe v. U.S.

In the econblogosphere the Chait-Manzi debate (New Republic vs. National Affairs) is getting a lot of attention. Here is one of two Tyler Cowen posts on this. I particulary like this point:

"8. Countries have to start from where they're at. If you're constructing policy advice, you can either build on what a country is really good at or you can try to revise the internal culture of the country. If you're going to do the latter, come out and say so. Most of my policy recommendations are based on the former approach, namely strengthening what (the better-functioning) countries already are good at. I'm not suggesting that countries never change, but getting such changes right by deliberate policy interventions is very hard to do. I wish to stress this point applies to the pro-U.S. as much as the pro-Europe side.

I'd like everyone to have a sign, which they would hold up when appropriate: "My policies seek to revise the internal culture of my country." That's OK, but you're raising the bar for your own ideas and don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise."

He also makes the very obvious (to me) point that levels of prosperity are more important than growth rates. I see some of the fallacy of arguing otherwise when people compare the U.S. to China. Of course, they have much higher GDP growth rates. They are a very poor country. Let's look at per capita GDP, although I also think we need to really consider whether GDP is the most useful measure to use.

Who do you think won the debate?

Finally, Gwynne Dyer's column in the Tribune today reminded me of my thought that if the major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) realized that they were all worshipping the same God, we would all be a lot better off.

polarization

There is a good article on the minds of terrorists in the New York Times today. I am not going to provide the link because the link in the current paper always changes later, but here is a quote.

"Despite the lack of a single terrorist profile, researchers have largely agreed on the risk factors for involvement. They include what Jerrold M. Post, a professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs at George Washington University, calls “generational transmission” of extremist beliefs, which begins early in life; a strong sense of victimization and alienation; the belief that moral violations by the enemy justify violence in pursuit of a “higher moral condition;” the belief that the terrorists’ ethnic, religious or nationalist group is special and in danger of extinction, and that they lack the political power to effect change without violence.... Paradoxically, anxiety about death plays a significant role in the indoctrination of terrorists and suicide bombers — unconscious fear of mortality, of leaving no legacy, according to new research."

Of course, this is polarization in the extreme. But there are many more benign forms.

Here is a link to an article posted by a friend of mine which I think portrays some of the thinking of many on the left about polarization. Sorry, I don't have an illustrative one for the right, but maybe somebody can send me one. The title of Glen Beck's number three best-seller, Arguing With Idiots, might convey something of the character of what it would be like. Or maybe I need to go to Norman Podheretz' World War IV. By the way, Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is number one on the best-seller list.

Anyway, suppose I do not watch tv all the time or listen to radio prophets, but disagree with you about the character of the past, present and future (though not so much here because I am dubious about humans' ability to predict the future), and suppose I am not an idiot. Would Mr. Hedges still say that I am manipulated and would Mr. Beck say that I really am an idiot? If so, I would continue to be amazed at people's certainty that they know the truth and divide the world into us vs. them.

One other question the article raises comes from Mr. Sunstein on the role of the internet as the new media of choice. Does this lead to more polarization? Does the proliferation of other alternative news sites (on cable and other networks) competing for viewers lead to more polarization?

Fascism

UnderstandingSociety: Fascist movements

I am trying out something new. The above is supposed to be a link to Daniel Little's post on fascism. Of course, use of the word "fascist" today has degenerated into something like "you are bad." But it is interesting to consider the circumstances of these paradigm cases of fascism, particularly the centrality of nationalism, ethnic purity and hierarchy. He suggests we are seeing a similarity to the crazy stuff coming from the right these days. Here is a quote from one of the books he mentions:

"These crises were exacerbated by an ideological crisis. On the right, though only in one half of Europe, this became a sense that modernity was desirable but dangerous, that liberalism was corrupt or disorderly, that socialism meant chaos, that secularism threatened moral absolutes – and so cumulatively that civilization needed rescuing before modernization could proceed further. So there emerged a more authoritarian rightist view of modernity, emphasizing a more top-down populist nationalism, developmental statism, order, and hierarchy."

Signaling Terrorists

Steve Coll has an interesting blog entry reviewing a book on foreign policy. Here is a quote:
"He documents richly the consensus among Bush Administration decision-makers, outside of a few realists such as Richard Armitage, that among other purposes, it was necessary to invade Iraq in order to send a general deterrent signal to all terrorists in the Middle East."

The book goes on to point out that this sort of message is not only a message that would be directed at state actors, but state actors who resembled the U.S. Terrorists are not discouraged by such a message. Instead, the actions inspire more to become terrorists in response to the perceived threat of the U.S. to their group identities (which is not necessarily a nation, but a people or a religion).

Now, I think the neocons had more up their sleeves than this, but this is pretty stupid. I think oil was also a big part of the motivation. And has been a big part of the reason for our militaristic presence in such numbers in the Middle East since World War II.

Happy New Decade

Most of the current essays on the last decade have been pretty pessimistic, but here Tyler Cowen gives us a different take. I like his view, which is similar to Zakaria in that it takes the whole world into account, rather than just the U.S., and argues that we will be better off if the rest of the world is better off. Not that we will really know what kind of decade it was until much further in the future.

It is back to work today after 10 days of lounging. I can see that retirement is going to be a fun deal, but also that I will probably volunteer somewhere to feel like I am doing some good and for other social reasons. After reading Matt Ridley's book, I got quite energized about zoology, comparative evolution and evolutionary psychology. Am about halfway through Catching Fire; How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham and have started The Ancestor's Tale and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and The Agile Gene by Ridley. Every time I dip into one of these areas of science I realilze how much learning has been going on in the last 30 years and how little I really know. There are a lot of great mysteries out there. On the other hand, here is a great article on why just trying to keep up and challenging your beliefs is good for us oldsters.

I was thinking about auditing a Philosophy of Social Science class but I don't see how I can be up there three days a week. I got partly through one of the textbooks and it looked pretty interesting. But I wish professors would do a better job of getting the course descriptions up on-line. I am giving The Teaching Company another try although I have been disappointed so far. They need to do more with the media capabilities rather than have somebody standing at a lecturn most of the time. But I am going to try Brian Fagan's Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. I loved a couple of his books, The Great Warming and The Little Ice Age. These courses are best if you know nothing about the subject and so this one fits. They also might be quite good if you do a lot of traveling and just get the CD version.

Discovered a new internet filter called The Browser. They seem to select very good articles and have some new stuff up on Iran. This article was really good on the evolution of the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards now have a great self-interest in protecting the status quo, which I guess is what you get when any group has too much power for too long.

Addendum: Here is the entry on evolutionary psychology from the Stanford on-line Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an excellent resource. The evaluation of such theories gets pretty complicated.