#35. The Pilgrim and the Whale [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact.

12-26-17: Just as the whale must hold its breath to obtain its food from the sea, so must a human restrain his or her anger to obtain a paycheck from society. Don't laugh, for the analogy is exact.

The ecological niche occupied by the whale places two of its drives in contradiction: the drive to eat and the drive to breathe. In humans, the contradictory drives are eating and dispersal.

Dispersal is a biological process tending to expand the geographical range of a species. Left to itself, the range shrinks inexorably because of natural disasters such as fire, frost, famine, drought, and pestilence wiping out all members of a given species in a given habitat. When each habitat occupied by the species has had its disaster, the species will be extinct if it has not been dispersing all along. Dispersal re-populates the devastated habitats as they become able to support life again, thereby staving off extinction.

Unfortunately, human dispersal begins with fraught political contests. As soon as one side gets the upper hand, the other must flee. Result: mass migration, i.e., dispersal. Most human anger is really dispersal hunger. However, when people get mad, they break stuff. Stuff like buildings, airports, factories, railway lines, etc. This is the infrastructure on which we all depend for our survival. Because our ecological niche is in a fragile built environment, we are required to compromise between eating and dispersal. And there you have my analysis of the biological roots of our unhappiness.

This contradiction in drives is the ultimate reason why every able-bodied Muslim must make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime: it mellows them out by giving something to the dispersal drive. The same effect would explain the fact that first-generation immigrants are generally more law-abiding than the natives.

Other institutions that may exist to relieve dispersal hunger are: tourism, the fitness movement, Seeing the World, conference-going, joining the Navy, going away to university, visiting faraway relatives for the holidays, companies moving their employees around a lot, and others I'll think of tomorrow morning.

Happy trails.

2-14-2018: Catholicism is also famous for its tradition of pilgrimage, to such places as Jerusalem, Rome, Lourdes, and Santiago de Compostela, the latter still popular today. Protestantism has no such tradition, however.

3-12-2018: Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have strong traditions of pilgrimage, and the practice is so universal that it has been proposed as a Jungian archetype by Clift and Clift. I myself walk a lot, because I cannot afford a car or a downtown apartment close to all the amenities. But is that the ultimate reason? 

#34. Emotions [evolutionary psychology, genetics, neuroscience]

EP    NE    GE

Red, theory; black, fact.

12-17-2017: In previous posts, I theorized that humans, along with all other sexually-reproducing species, have a long-range guidance system that I called proxy natural selection, or preferably, post-zygotic gamete selection (PGS), that is basically a fast form of evolution in which individual cells, the gametes, are the units of selection, not individuals. Selection is conjectured to happen post-zygotically (i.e., sometime after the beginning of development, or even in adulthood) but is retroactive to the egg and sperm that came together to create the individual. Each gamete is potentially unique because of the crossing-over genetic rearrangements that happen during its maturation. This theory explains the biological purpose of this further layer of uniqueness beyond that due to the sexual mixing of chromosomes, which would otherwise appear to be redundant.

Our emotions are conjectured to be programmed by species-replacement group selection and to serve as proxies for increases and decreases in the fitness of our entire species.

A further correlate of an emotion beyond the cognitive and autonomic-nervous-system components would be the neurohumoral component, expressed as chemical releasing and inhibiting factors that enter the general circulation via the portal vessels of the hypothalamus, blood vessels which are conventionally described as affecting only the anterior pituitary gland. These factors are theorized to reach the stem-like cells that mature into egg and sperm, where they set reversible epigenetic controls on the level of crossing-over that will occur during differentiation. Large amounts of crossing-over are viewed as retroactively penalizing the gametes leading to the individual by obfuscating or overwriting with noise specifically the genetic uniqueness of said original gametes. In contrast, low levels of further crossing-over reward the original gametes with high penetrance into the next generation. Here, I believe you have all the essential ingredients of classical natural selection, and all the potential, in a process that solves problems on an historical timescale.

Crossing-over happens only between homologous chromosomes, which are the paternal and maternal copies of the same chromosome. Human cells have 46 chromosomes because they have 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. The homologous-chromosome-specificity of crossing-over suggests that the grand optimization problem that is human evolution has been broken down into 23 smaller sub-problems for the needs of the PGS process, each of which can be solved independently, without interactions with any of the other 22, and which involves a 23-fold reduction in the number of variables that must be simultaneously optimized. In computing, this problem-fragmentation strategy greatly increases the speed of optimization. I conjecture that it is one of the features that makes PGS faster than classical natural selection.

However, we now need 23 independent neurohumoral factors descending in the bloodstream from brain to testis or (fetal) ovary, each capable of setting the crossing-over propensity of one specific pair of homologous chromosomes. Each one will require its own specific receptor on the surface of the target oogonia or spermatogonia. Check this out in the literature, and you will already find a strange diversity of cell-surface receptors on the spermatogonia. (I haven't looked at oogonia yet.&&) I predict that the number of such receptors known to science will increase to at least 23. None of this is Lamarkism, because nervous-system control would be over the standard deviation of behavioral traits, not their averages.

1-09-2018: Naively, this theory also appears to require 23 second messengers to transfer the signals from cell surface to nucleus, which sounds excessive. Perhaps the second messengers form a combinatorial code, which would reduce the number required by humans to log2 (23) = 4.52, or 5 in round numbers. This is much better. Exactly five second-messenger systems are known, these being based on: cyclic AMP, inositol triphosphate, cyclic GMP, arachidonic acid, and small GTPases (e.g., ras). However, many mammalian species have many more than the 32 chromosome pairs needed to saturate a 5-bit address space.

1-10-2018: If we expand the above list of second messengers with the addition of the calcium/calmodulin complex, the address space expands to 64 pairs of homologous chromosomes, for a total ploidy of 128. This seems sufficient to accommodate all the mammals. Thus, a combinatorial second-messenger code representable as a five- or six-bit binary integer in most organisms would control the deposition of the epigenetic marks controlling crossing-over propensity.

If the above code works for transcription as well as epigenetic modification, then applying whatever stimuli it takes to produce a definite combinatorial second-messenger state inside the cell will activate one specific chromosome for transcription, so that the progeny of the affected cell will develop into whatever that chromosome specifies, be it an organ, a system, or something else. And there you may have the long-sought key to programming stem cells. You're welcome.

Each pair of homologous chromosomes may correspond to what in an earlier post was called a "PNS focus." The requirement that the evolution of each chromosome contribute independently to the total increase in fitness suggests that a chromosome specifies a system, like the nervous system or the digestive system. We seem to have only 11 systems, not 23, but more may be defined in the future.

A related concept is that a chromosome specifies an ancestral, generic cell type, like glial cells (4 subtypes known) or muscle cells (3 subtypes known). The great diversity of the neurons suggest that they must be reclassified into multiple basic types, perhaps along the lines suggested by the functional classification of the cranial nerves: general somatic, general visceral, and special somatic (i.e., specific senses).

1-09-2018: A third concept for function assignment to homologous pairs of chromosomes postulates a hypothetical maximally divided genome in which each cell type has its own chromosome pair, a state conjectured to seldom occur in nature. Co-evolution of clusters of cell types (e.g., neurons and glia; bone and cartilage) would create selection pressure for the underlying cell-type-specific chromosomes to become covalently linked into the larger chromosomes that we see in the actual karyotypes. Thus, each observed homologous pair would correspond to a few cell types that are currently co-evolving, which seems to return us to the system or organ concept. 

01-08-2019: The system specified by a chromosome may be called a cooperation system, and these may be organized in a hierarchy, following the general principles of spatial organization outlined in my post: "The Pictures in Your Head." Chromosomes activated earlier in development will specify system-like entities and those activated late in development will specify organ-like entities. Only the first-activated chromosome will apply to the entire organism.

Humans depend on complex social structures for their survival, and this comes out of our individual behavioral tendencies. Probably, most PGS adaptations to environmental fluctuations involve modifying these structures, which would come out of subtle modifications of individual behaviors. I think I am just repeating E.O. Wilson here. Our hard-wired species-fitness definitions would give rise to the primary emotions, perhaps in the hypothalamus or limbic system, by connecting specific stimuli to primary emotions in the manner of an if-then rule. 

Further out on the cortex, the specific stimuli being connected would get progressively more complex and learning-dependent, and progressively less concerned with the "what" of behavior (i.e., our species-specific taxes) and more with the "how" of behavior. In "how" mode, the complex stimuli become more like signposts to be consulted on a journey. PGS adaptations of our behavior would affect the hardwired aspects of this hypothetical transition zone. The primary emotions would then be like the highest hierarchical level of our motor program, or like the least-indented instructions of a conventional high-level computer program.

I conjecture that religion is important because it goes straight for this highest level. We all know that religion is kind of an emotional business, what with the organ music and the stained glass and all such as that, and this is why. I therefore conjecture that words spoken often from the pulpit, such as God, sin, forgiveness, devil, angel, soul, salvation, etc., all enclose a secret that writers such as Dawkins do not grasp: the emotions are the message. To illustrate this, let us attempt an emotional definition of the master symbol, "God."

God: feeling loved and secure to the point of invulnerability; feeling small in an agreeable way, as in the presence of mountains; feeling brotherly/sisterly towards one's fellow humans; blossoming in confidence into one's full potential; fearing nothing.

Perhaps that's enough to give the general idea. No doubt a whole dictionary could be compiled along these lines. When the priest strings these emotion-words together, he creates an experience for the congregation that could fairly be called a form letter from "God," assuming that the word "God" points to the PGS process itself. The job of the priest is to help the congregation relate on a deep level to the sacred texts and to see/feel how they apply to the challenges of the here and now.

7-05-2018: Another term for PGS would be "Yahwetion," from "Yahweh," the conventional modern spelling of the name of the god of ancient Israel, and the "tion" ending indicating a process, like evolution. This neologism advantageously steers people away from category errors like attempting to worship it, or appease it, or what have you.

The conventionally religious will complain that this would make prayer to God impossible, but not if prayer itself is re conceived as "auto socialization," following the educational theory of prayer. Then prayer becomes a fantasy conversation with anyone, living or dead, that you would like to have as a mentor, if it were possible.

#33. Big-electron Theory [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

Some of the paradoxes and weirdness of quantum mechanics can be dispelled if we assume that any particle that can be diffracted isn't really there: we are only looking at the center of spherical symmetry of a much larger, possibly cosmologically large, wave function. Furthermore, this center of symmetry is only an abstraction, like the north pole of the Earth. Like the fields that we impute to them, quantum particles would have a wave function amplitude that decreases asymptotically to zero with distance from the center, and thus would have no well defined outer boundary. I shall denote this lack of an outer boundary by calling particles or wave functions "expansive."

Elementary particles seem submicroscopic in size because the wavelength of the corresponding wave functions is often submicroscopic, which imposes a requirement for the centers of symmetry of two such "particles" to coincide with very great precision before an interaction can be observed. This would be the case if the default interaction were characterized by destructive interference almost everywhere, which only switches over into constructive interference when the centers nearly coincide. An assumption needed for further development of this theory is that interaction is contingent on the development of expansive constructive interference. (In this post, I confine my attention to scattering-type interactions.)

The common presence of  accelerations in our universe combined with a finite speed of light might suggest that expansive wave functions would quickly fill up with incoherence, destroying their usefulness as explanatory causes. However, if there are no non-expansive elementary particles, we just have expansive interacting with expansive to produce every acceleration. Once you get entirely away from the tiny-electron idea, it is not at all clear that any incoherence could ever develop. Such may well occur to a limited extent under some conditions, however, but it may take more detailed mathematical treatments than I am prepared to carry out to characterize these conditions. One naturally suspects that Relativity theory is based on such limited incoherencies.

Two baffling kinds of experiment seem amenable to the big-electron treatment: diffraction of "particles" of matter like electrons, and entanglement experiments.

Electrons fired in a vacuum at a pair of closely-spaced slits, with a photographic plate situated on the other side of the slits, will produce a diffraction pattern on the developed plate consisting of alternating exposed and unexposed bands. These are interpreted as locations of constructive and destructive interference between "matter waves" emanating from the two slits under the stimulation of the electron beam. If the intensity of the beam is lowered to the point where only one electron is "in the chamber" at a time, thereby eliminating the possibility of inter-electron interactions inside the chamber, the diffraction pattern develops just as before. It merely takes longer. Now here's the weird part: all this could happen only if each electron goes through both slits at once! This is truly weird if we try to use the traditional tiny-electron picture, but much easier to visualize using the big-electron picture.

Entanglement of two particles that persists over distances measured in kilometers is also easier to understand if we remember that the experimental apparatus is itself made up of expansive wave functions and is therefore mostly overlapped with the two particles being studied throughout the experiment.

If all this is true, we live in a vast web of inter-validating illusions called the particle model.

#32. Climate Change [engineering]

EN

Red, theory; black, fact.

Reading "Just Cool It!" by Suzuki and Hanington introduced me to the ancient terra preta agricultural technology, given as a possible solution, or part of the solution, to the global warming problem. The term is apparently Portuguese for "black earth" and the technology involves enriching the soil by ploughing it full of charcoal. Suzuki and Hanington make the point that this should sequester a lot of carbon in the soil, thereby taking it out of the atmosphere. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon. Moreover, charcoal, being indigestible to decay organisms, should stay in the soil for a very long time. The logical raw material for making the charcoal would be either wood from clearing the land for agriculture, or crop residues, the parts of the crop plant that people cannot eat.

I would add here that in modern pyrolysis plants, not only is charcoal produced, but also flammable off-gasses, which could be used for fuel directly in some future scenario, or catalytically reformed to a liquid fuel for running the tractors and combines. In gaseous form, the fuel could run a steam turbine to produce electricity to supplement that from wind farms, hydro, tidal, geothermal, thorium-nuclear, and photovoltaics.

However, the off-gasses are also used to fuel the pyrolysis plant itself. Whether any would be left over for other uses would depend on careful plant design for energy efficiency and on avoiding fuelled drying operations. Thus, the feedstock should be sun-dried.

Schemes like second-generation power ethanol are touted as carbon-neutral, but in terra preta with these additions, we have one that is actually carbon-negative.

However, the soil ends up black. No other color is as efficient at converting sunlight into heat, which we don't need more of at this point. This seems to be a problem with the terra preta solution. (The ideal color for avoiding heat production would be white.)

Note that the use of any terrestrial artificial mirror membrane has the drawback that the membrane will get dirty rapidly from dust, pollen, and plant parts, thereby reducing its efficiently. However, a living means of light reflection would renew itself, gratis, each year. Orbiting space mirrors have also been proposed as the solution to global warming. They wouldn't get covered in pollen anytime soon -- just shot full of holes by micrometeorites.

#31. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part II [physics]

PH
Red, theory; black, fact.

6-05-2017

Forget what I wrote last post about "thin dimensions"; leptons arise as electromagnetic wave functions originating in p2 that are transported into our p3 universe/condensate by ordinary diffusion and convection. Wave functions in p2 that are already leptons become our baryons when they are transported in. The only kind of wave functions that are "native" to a given frame of reference are electromagnetic (photonic) in that frame of reference. If they subsequently propagate towards increasing p (inwards) they gain mass as matter; if they propagate towards decreasing p (outwards), they first lose mass as matter until they are photonic (i.e., massless) and then gain mass as antimatter.

6-20-2017

This scenario gives rise to previously unconsidered solutions to outstanding problems in cosmology. For example, dark matter could be just excess electrons that lack protons with which to bind. You would have to argue that we don't see them because they would collectively appear as a potential that is smooth on all but galactic scales, and it is only variations in potential, aka electric fields, that cause scattering of probe particles. Such variations would be common only in neutral matter.

6-05-2017

To produce stable leptons from in-migrating photons, the first condensates, the p2s, would have had to be rotating simultaneously about three mutually perpendicular axes, by the assumptions of two posts ago. If this is impossible for p3 physics, we have to appeal to the possibility of a different physics in p1 for any of these ideas to make sense.

A "universe" is something like an artist's canvas with a painting in progress on it. First, nature makes the blank canvas, and then, in a second stage, puts the information content on it. Consider the moon. It formed out of orbiting molten spray from the collision of two similarly-sized planetesimals. In the molten state, its self-gravity could easily round it up into a perfect sphere which could have solidified with a mostly smooth surface. Call this smooth surface the "canvas." Subsequently, the very same force of gravity would have brought down meteors to cover the surface in an elaborate pattern of craters. Call this the "painting." 

Now consider the neutronium core of a neutron star, viewed as a p4, or small universe. The tremendous energy release of the catastrophic gravitational collapse in which it forms homogenizes all the matter into pure neutrons, thought to be a superfluid. This creates the "canvas." Subsequently, matter and energy from our p3 migrate into the super fluid without enough energy release to homogenize them, producing a "painting" of leptons (our photons), baryons (our leptons), and "uberbaryons" (our baryons). Indeed, the neutron-star core is actually thought to be not pure neutronium, but neutronium containing a sprinkling of free protons and electrons (as seen in p3, of course).

#30. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part I [physics]

Matryoshka/pupa

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

6-03-2017

I usually assume in these pages that the space we live in has an absolute frame of reference, as Newton taught, and which Einstein taught against. Not only that, but that this frame of reference is a condensate of some sort, rather like the water that a fish swims in.

I also assume that the divide-and-conquer strategy that has served science so well thus far can blithely continue with the (conceptual) dis assembly of this space into its constituent particles. At that point the question arises if these particles are situated in yet another space, older and larger than ours, or if you go direct to spacelessness, where entities have to be treated like Platonic forms. In the former case, one wonders if that older, larger space in turn comes apart into particles situated in a still older and larger, etc, etc, ad infinitum.

I am told that infinities are the death of theories. Nevertheless, let us hold our noses and continue with the Russian Dolls idea, merely assuming that the nesting sequence is not infinite and will not be infinite until the entire multi verse is infinitely old, because the "dolls" form one by one, by ordinary gravitational collapse, from the outside in.

What, exactly, is it that collapses? Call them wave functions, following quantum mechanics. In the previous post, we see that wave functions are slightly particle-like in having a centre of symmetry. In the outermost space, previously called #, the wave crests always move at exactly the speed of light.

7-14-2017

This speed is not necessarily our speed of light, c, but more likely some vastly greater value.

6-03-2017

The space-forming particles of # are themselves aggregates with enough internal entropy to represent integers and enough secondary valences to form links to a set of nearest neighbors to produce a network that is a space. This space acts like a cellular automaton, with signals passing over the links to change the values of the stored integers in some orderly way. The wave functions are the stereotyped, stable figures that spontaneously develop in the automaton out of the initial noise mass left over from catastrophic gravitational collapse, or some abstract, spaceless equivalent. 

Gravity would enter as a geometric effect; impossible at 1D, poorly developed at 2D, commonplace but commonly stalled at extended systems in 3D, and irresistible at 4D and higher (The latter conclusion is based on an anthropic argument in "The Universe in a Nutshell", by Steven Hawking). 

Finally, assume that the dimensionality of a space increases steadily over time, suggesting that the number of links emanating from each node in the underlying network increases slowly but surely. Macroscopically, this dimensionality increase could look something like protein folding. This does not yet explain gravity, a task for another day&&, but static nonlinearities in the automaton's representation system may be involved.*

To facilitate discussion, let us label the Russian-dolls universes from the outside in, in the sequence 1, 2, 3,...etc, and call this number the "pupacity" of a given frame of reference. (From the Latin "pupa," meaning "doll.") Let us further shorten "pupacity" to "p" for symbol-compounding purposes. Thus, the consecutively labelled spaces can be referred to as p1 (our former "#"), p2, p3,... etc.

A final, absolutely crucial assumption is that pn can exhibit global motions ("n" is some arbitrary pupacity), such as rotation, in the frame of reference of p(n-1). Yes, we are talking here about a whole, damned universe rotating as a rigid unit. Probably, it can drift and vibrate as well.

Now, by the assumptions of the previous post, these global motions must be subtracted from the true, outer, speed-of-light speed of the wave crest to produce its apparent speed and direction when seen from within pn. Thus, the universe's love of spinning and orbiting systems of all sizes is explained: a spinning, global-motion vector is being subtracted from the non-spinning, outermost one. As the0-pupacity of our frame of reference increases, more and more of these global vectors are being subtracted, causing the residual apparent motion to get progressively smaller. We would assume under current physics that the wave functions are acquiring more and more mass, to make them go slower and slower, but mass is just a fiction in the scenario presented above. However, the reliance of current physics on the mass construct is a golden opportunity to determine the pupacity of planet Earth.

It is three.

Three, because physics knows of three broad categories of particle mass: the photon, leptons, and baryons. The photon would be native to p1, leptons, such as electrons and positrons, would be native to p2, and baryons, such as protons and neutrons, would be native to p3, our own, dear home in the heavens. 

01-09-2019: it is an interesting coincidence that our pupacity equals the dimensionality of our space. Are dimensionality and pupacity linked during cosmological evolution?&&

6-03-2017

Some interpretations follow. The positron atom would be a standing-wave pattern made up of oppositely rotating wave functions, an electron and a positron, both native to p2. A neutron would be exactly the same thing, but native to p3. Note that both are unstable in isolation.

How is it that we observers in p3 can even detect electrons, say, if those are not native to p3? Because p2 is necessarily older than p3 and has had more time to develop extra dimensions. This will give p3 thin dimensions when seen in the frame of reference of p2, and it is along these thin dimensions that the electrons of p2 approach our own, native protons closely enough to participate in our p3 physics.

Neutron stars would be p4, but I haven't figured out black holes. Just big p4s?

*6-05-2017

or an amplitude-speed coupling.

#29. My Second Theory of Everything [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

This post comes from considering how wavelike, low-frequency light becomes particle-like, high-frequency light as frequency is smoothly increased. Waves are continuous, whereas particles are discontinuous; how, then, does the breakup occur?

You have to put the source in the picture. Recoil of the source atom sends the wave function off in a specific direction, but the wave function is known to expand (about its center of symmetry?) as it goes. Presumably, it is the vector sum of these two motions that must equal the speed of light; either one is presumably free to take on some lower speed, say, that of a pitched softball. I conjecture that as frequency increases, the particle-like drift of the center progressively dominates the mixture at the expense of the local, wave-like expansion of the wave function about its center. This is how I see waves morphing into particles as the frequency increases. 

These ideas suggest the existence of a unique, watershed frequency at which both motions are equal, and equal to one-half the speed of light when the vectors are aligned. I suspect that this frequency lies in the terahertz range, between radar frequencies and the far infrared, partly on the basis that this seems to be the last part of the electromagnetic spectrum to find technological use. The non-dominance of either the particle or the wave model in this range may translate into a perfect storm of undesirable properties. That comment about the softball, however, suggests the possible existence of easy, classroom experiments with these frequencies that illustrate wave-particle duality.

These considerations brought me to the following set of TOE assumptions, some from relativity theory, some in apparent contradiction of it, and some from quantum mechanics:

• There is an absolute frame-of-reference, which I shall call "#."
• All motions seen in this frame of reference will be observed to occur at the speed of light (c); no more, but no less, and only this frame of reference has this property.
• All speeds lower than c are illusions caused by the motion of the observer's frame of reference.
• That which moves always at c is not a wave function, but a phase marker of some sort within it, such as a zero crossing or a wave crest.
• The local wave function evolution relative to its center of symmetry combined with the drift of that center relative to # always travels at c relative to #.
• If local evolution is an expansion along all wave function radii, you have light; if it is a rotation about the center of symmetry (i.e., motion perpendicular to radii), you have matter.
• Light wave functions will be like nested spherical shells, whereas matter wave functions will have a lobar, angle-dependent structure like a p-, d-, or f-orbital in theoretical chemistry. The lobes are essential to provide a contrast pattern that could, in principle, be observed to spin.
• The presence of one axis of rotation produces the neutrino; two simultaneous axes of rotation produce the mesons; three produce the remaining stable particles, e, p, and n. If the three rotational rates are distinguishable, the resulting structure has a handedness.
• The matter/antimatter dichotomy arises from this handedness, when combined with a law of conservation of spin that would result from space initially being symmetrical. 
• The mesons should have an ability in 3-space to flip over into their corresponding antiparticles.

#28. The Origin of Consciousness [neuroscience]

NE

Red, theory; black, fact.

After perusing Gideon Rosenblatt's blog at the prompting of Google, I finally saw the need for this post.

I theorize that we begin life conscious only of our own emotions. Then the process of classical conditioning, first studied in animals, brings more and more of our environment into the circle of our consciousness, causing the contents of consciousness to become enriched in spatial and temporal detail. Thus, you are now able to be conscious of these words of mine on the screen. However, each stroke of each letter of each word of mine that now reaches your consciousness does so because, subjectively, it is "made of" pure emotion, and that emotion is yours.

Some analogies come to mind. Emotion as the molten tin that the typesetter pours into the mold, the casting process being classical conditioning and the copy the environmental data reported by our sense organs. Emotion as the bulk on one side of a fractal line and sensory data the bulk on the other side. Emotion as an intricately ramifying tree-like structure by which sensory details can send excitation down to the hypothalamus at the root and thus enter consciousness.

The status of "in consciousness" can in principle affect the cerebral cortex via the projections to cortex from the histaminergic tuberomamillary nucleus of the hypothalamus. Histamine is known to have an alerting effect on cortex, but to call it "alerting" may be to grossly undersell its significance. It may carry a consolidation signal  for declarative, episodic, and flash memory. Not for a second do I suppose all of that to be packed into the hippocampus, rather than being located in the only logical place for it: the vast expanse of the human cerebral cortex.

#27. Why Organized Religion? Theory Two [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact.

My last post about proxy natural selection (PNS) has directed me to emphasize emotion more in seeking explanations for human behavior. I now think of emotions as an "endophenotype," to use a term from functional magnetic resonance imaging, that provides a useful stepping stone from evolutionary arguments to explanations of our daily lives. I recently applied this insight to obtaining a second explanation of religion, alternative or parallel to the first one that I give in a previous post.

What is the mood or feel as you enter a place of worship and participate in the ceremonies conducted there? More than anything else, the mood is one of great reverence, as though one is in the presence of the world's most powerful king. Kings are supposed to "represent their race." However, I want to translate that statement into a sociobiological function assignment. My discussion "Proxy Natural Selection from the Inside" suggests a problem: if the emotional outlines of people's behavior is being partly randomized in each generation by recombination-type mutations, a consistent moral code seems impossible if we assume that morality comes mostly from peoples' inborn patterns of emotional reactivity, that is, the sum total of everyones' betes noir. The purpose of a king may be to find or at least coincide with societies' moral center of gravity, around which a formal, if temporary, moral code can be constructed. In a complex society, everyone must be "on the same page" for efficient interaction. 

The same problem no doubt recurs each time organisms come together to form a colony, or super-organism: the conflict between the need of a colony for coordination of colonists and the need of evolution for random variability. Such variability will inevitably affect the formulation and interpretation of the coordinating messages that the colonists exchange, like all their other inborn characteristics. 

Kingship comes the corrupting influence of personal power, leading to destructive, tyrannical governments. Replacing a real king with a pretend-king named "God" would seem to be the solution that accounts for organized religion, but then one loses all flexibility, the flexibility that goes with having a flesh-and-blood king who can change his predecessor's laws based on current popular sentiment.

However, human nature may well have a core-and-shell structure, with an "unchanging" core surrounded by a slowly changing shell. The former would be the species-specific objective function previously alluded to in post #16, and produced by species-replacement group selection within the genus, and the latter would be due to PNS, and would represent the stratagems hit upon by our ancestors to meet the demands of the objective function in our time and place. This shell part may account for cultural differences between countries. The core may be implemented in the hypothalamus of the brain, whereas the shell may be implemented in the limbic system. The core, being unchanging, could be taught by organized religion, whereas the shell could be codified by the more flexible institution of government. Though the core is unchanging overall, specific individuals will harbor variations in it due to point mutations (not part of PNS), necessitating the standardizing role of religion. Synaptic plasticity would then be used to cancel the point-mutational variation in the objective function.

This core  consists of four pillars, or themes: genetic diversity, memetic diversity, altruism, and dispersal. Our energetic investment in obtaining each item is to be optimized. To produce this, the church of my acquaintance is continually emphasizing, respectively, tolerance, creating beautiful things, charity, and justice. It's almost too neat, especially if we adopt the deeply cynical-sounding position that the demand for "justice" only polarizes groups to the point of schism and diaspora.

#26. The Phasiverse [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

3-29-2017

I will be arguing here that our reality, the world of appearances, is encoded in the relative phases of an ineffably large number of oscillators, each of which is a kind of primitive clock.

An early interpretation of the theory of quantum mechanics was that there is a harmonic oscillator somehow assigned to each point in space, and that these account for the matter fields of the universe. Examples of such oscillators (the definition is abstract and mathematical), unsuitable for easy, weekend universe creation, would be masses bouncing up and down on springs, and electronic devices called tank circuits, which are just one capacitor connected across the terminals of one inductor, plus taps on the inductor for getting the energy in. (I am thinking here of the Hartley oscillator, of which I built half a dozen as a teenager.)

If a bunch of such oscillators can communicate with each other (exchange oscillatory energy), this is called coupling, and it can make the oscillators tend to pull each other in to the same, common phase. The Huygens's clocks experiment begins with two old-school pendulum clocks in a case with their pendulums swinging in some random phase relationship. The next day,  mysteriously, the pendulums will always be found swinging in opposite directions. The coupling is evidently due to tiny, rhythmic forces travelling through the common case from clock to clock.

If the coupling is positive, as assumed here, (it's negative in the above experiment), the phase pull-in effect becomes stronger the closer the two phases approach each other, causing a positive feedback effect. This is very reminiscent of Hebb's rule in neuroscience and the tendency of natural attractive forces such as gravity to depend inversely on distance. I have already offered Hebb's rule in these pages as an abstract rule of attraction and binding in a scheme for polymerizing spaceless but noisy "time lines" into a three dimensional network that approximates the space we live in. However, oscillators make better space-forming entities than these "time lines" on a number of counts.

First of all, the phase pull-in effect alluded to above provides a simple answer to questions such as where the organizing principle comes from. All you need to explain is where the oscillators themselves all came from, how they oscillate, and why they are coupled. Since the oscillators begin life in spacelessness, it is hard to see how they could avoid interacting to produce a coupling effect. Second, oscillators need no past or future; they can arise as a succession of causally related nows that alternates between two contrasting forms. (Since we haven't gotten as far as space yet, these would have to be abstract, spaceless entities that smack of yin and yang.) Figures in Conway's game of Life would seem to be examples of this alternation.

What is the time required for such an alternation? The question is meaningless; they just do it. With no past or future, the special status of the present becomes self-explanatory, alleviating some of the cognitive dissonance that goes with the concept of a unified space-time. This space-time, and the even more bizarre idea that it is warped by mass-energy as if embedded in an even higher-dimensional space, starts to look like a device to visualize one's way to solutions to problems that have their origin in unvisualizable spacelessness.

A great many oscillators all with the same phase is not an interesting universe. However, suppose this is impossible because of "train wrecks" happening during the synchronization process that produce frustration of the synchronization analogous to spin frustration in spin glasses. An example would be a cyclic relationship of oscillators in which a wave goes around the loop endlessly. Such cycles may correspond to particles of matter in our universe, and the spiral waves that they would throw off into surrounding space may correspond to the fields around such particles.

A black hole or galaxy would be surrounded by a tremendous number of such radiating fields. The resulting desychronization of the oscillators making up the surrounding space would increase the average phase difference between phasically nearby oscillators, thereby inhibiting their coupling, thereby inhibiting the travel of signals generally through the region. Result: the speed of light is reduced in the vicinity, resulting in the bending of light rays, called gravitational lensing. Notice how easily we derive an effect that formerly required General Relativity.

The next level of description deals with where the oscillators come from.

4-23-2017

Let us jettison the particle model altogether at this point and assume the universe to be made of the waves themselves, with no need for generating objects. These waves might have a tendency to synchronize as a fundamental given. If it is not fundamental, maybe the explanation for it can safely be left to a future generation of physicists. (The image I get at this point is of a series of temporary camps struck during the ascent of some stupendous mountain, for step-wise consolidation of gains, with the grail of the TOE located at the summit.)

As a second thread of this argument, I note that some of the phenomena characteristic of quantum theory can be explained as due to the practicalities of representing functions like waves, practicalities that are always in your face when programming a computer, but never mentioned in the physics I have read so far. In programming, you have to define memory space for all variables, which is always, ultimately, an integer or a set of integers, with both a maximum and a minimum (nonzero) amount that can be represented.

Quantization could be due to the presence of small quantities comparable in size to the value of the least significant bit of an integer-like entity. (Deprecated, Part 4)

#25. Proxy Natural Selection from the Inside [evolutionary psychology, genetics]

EP    GE    

Red, theory; black, fact.

My first post on proxy natural selection (PNS) left open some questions, such as what it should feel like, if anything, when one is fulfilling the species objective function and being deemed "proxy-fit" by one's own hypothalamus.

I conclude that it's just what you would think: you feel joy and/or serenity. Joy is one of Ekman's six basic universal human emotions, the others being fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and surprise. I think that emotions collectively are the operations of the highest-level human behavioral program. (That is, the program in its broadest outlines.) The unpleasant emotions force you to get off the couch until they are taken care of, and joy lets you get back on. Thus, the unpleasant four are the starting emotions, and joy is the stopping emotion. 

Surprise may be a meta-emotion that tells you that your threshold for experiencing one of the other emotions is too high, and immediately lowers it. I also think that each activation of an emotion tends to lower the threshold for activating it next time, which implies a positive feedback loop capable of changing the personality to suit suddenly changed circumstances, especially if the emotion eventually begins issuing with no trigger at all.

To relate this to the mechanism of PNS, the crossing-over events that went into making the sperm cell that made you would theoretically affect brain development more than anything else, specifically connecting some random stimulus to one of the unpleasant primary emotions. This creates your temperament, and thus your personality, which is the unique quality which you have to offer the world, and on which you are being tested by history. If the actions to which your own, special bete noir propel you are what the species objective function is looking for, you succeed, feel joy and serenity, and experience an altered methylation status of the DNA in your spermatogonia, if you are male, which (I conjecture) suppresses further crossing over in the manufacture of your own sperm, so that your personality type breeds true, which is what the population needs. 

PNS is quickie evolution to respond to challenges that come and go on less than a multi-thousand generation timescale, and I conjecture that it explains the complexities of sexual reproduction. You may object that trees, for example, have no behavior, much less personalities, and yet they have sexual reproduction. However, trees probably adapt quickly not by behavioral change, but by changes in their chemistry. The chemistry in question would be the synthesis of pesticidal mixtures located in the central vacuole of each plant cell. In terms of such mixtures, each tree should be slightly unique, an easily testable prediction.

Here is my own self-analysis in terms of PNS theory. My special emotional novelty that is potentially my gift to the world is a morbid fear of social rejection. This has motivated much more than the usual self-criticism of my own creative productions before they are communicated to others, for fear of rejection, leading to the kind of thing you are now reading. Social rejection/criticism hits me like a wall of flame that burns for days, or like some kind of rays coming out of the other person's head. The rejection that goes with the dating game has made it intolerable to me, leading to a lifelong celibacy that has freed all my resources for scientific pursuits. 

My father was a general in the Canadian Armed Forces, and was most unlike this, but my older brother takes after him somewhat. What happened to sour my father's life so radically before my birth in 1953, so that his recombinotype (coined word) no longer bred true? I conjecture that it was the failure of the defeat of Nazi Germany to produce a true, lasting peace, only ushering in the nuclear cold war with the USSR. With this, "God" was telling us: "Don't study war no more."

Each of the four unpleasant "starting" emotions may sub serve one of the four pillars of the species objective function already listed in The intermind: Engine of History?. Thus: sadness, altruism; disgust, genetic diversity (due to point mutations; what is motivated here is the screening of such novelties, screening always being the expensive part); fear, memetic diversity (or motivating prescreening of memetic novelties); anger, dispersal. Each of these emotions seems to have another use, in preserving the life of the individual, as opposed to the entire species. Thus: sadness, unfavorable energy balance; disgust, steering one away from concentrations of harmful bacteria; fear, avoidance of injury and death; anger, driving away competitors for food and mates. 

#24. The Pictures in Your Head [neuroscience]

NE

Red, theory; black, fact.

My post on the thalamus suggests that in thinking about the brain, we should maintain a sharp distinction between temporal information (signals most usefully plotted against time) and spatial information (signals most usefully plotted against space). Remember that the theory of General Relativity, which posits a unified space-time, applies only to energy and distance scales far from the quotidian.

In the thalamus post, I theorized about how the brain could tremendously data-compress temporal information using the Laplace transform, by which a continuous time function, classically containing an infinite number of points, can be re-represented as a mere handful of summarizing points called poles and zeroes, scattered on a two-dimensional plot called the complex frequency plane. Infinity down to a handful. Pretty good data compression, I'd say. The brain will tend to evolve data-compression schemes if these reduce the number of neurons needed for processing (I hereby assume that they always do), because neurons are metabolically expensive to maintain and evolution favors parsimony in the use of metabolic energy.

Ultimately, the efficiency of the Laplace transform seems to come from the fact that naturally-occurring time functions tend to be pretty stereotyped and repetitious: a branch nodding in the wind, leaves on it oscillating independently and more rapidly, the whole performance decaying exponentially to stillness with each calming of the wind; an iceberg calving discontinuously into the sea; astronomical cycles of perfect regularity; and a bacterial population growing exponentially, then shifting gears to a regime of ever-slowing growth as resources become limiting, the whole sequence following what is called a logistic curve.

Nature is very often described by differential equations, such as Maxwell's equations, those of General Relativity, and Schrodinger's Equation, the three greats. Other differential equations describe growth and decay processes, oscillations, diffusion, and passive but non-chemically energy-storing electrical and mechanical systems. A differential equation is one that contains at least one symbol representing the rate of change of a first variable versus a second variable. Moreover, differential equations seem to be relatively easy to derive from theories. The challenge is to solve the equation, not for a single number, but for a whole function that gives the actual value of the first variable versus the second variable, for purposes of making quantitative, testable predictions, thereby allowing testing of the theory itself. The Laplace transform greatly facilitates the solution of many of science's temporal differential equations, and these solutions are remarkably few and stereotyped: oscillations, growth/decay curves, and simple sums, magnifications, and/or products of these. Clearly, the complexity of the world comes not from its temporal information, but from it's spatial information. However, spatial regularities that might be exploited for spatial data compression are weaker than in the temporal case.

The main regularity in the spatial domain seems to be hierarchical clustering. For an example of this, let's return to the nodding branch. Petioles, veins, and teeth cluster to form a leaf. Leaves and twigs cluster to form a branch. Branches and trunk cluster to form a tree. Trees cluster to form a forest. This spatially clustered aspect of reality is being exploited currently in an approach to machine intelligence called "deep learning," where the successive stages in the hierarchy of the data are learned by successive hidden layers of simulated neurons in a neural net. Data is processed as it passes through the stack of layers, with successive layers learning to recognize successively larger clusters, representing these to the next layer as symbols simplified to aid further cluster recognition. This technology is based on discoveries about how the mammalian visual system operates. (For the seminal paper in the latter field, see Hubel and Wiesel, Journal of Physiology, 1959, 148[3], pp 574-591.)

Visual information passes successively through visual areas Brodmann 17, 18, and 19, with receptive fields becoming progressively larger and more complex, as would be expected from a hierarchical process of cluster recognition. The latter two areas, 18 and 19, are classed as association cortex, of which humans have the greatest amount of any primate. However, cluster recognition requires the use of neuron specialist sub-types, each looking for a very particular stimulus. To even cover most of the cluster-type possibilities, a large number of different specialists must be trained up. This does not seem like very good data compression from the standpoint of metabolic cost savings. Thus, the evolution of better ability with spatial information should require many more new neurons than with the case of temporal information.

My hypothesis here is that what is conferred by the comparatively large human cerebral cortex, especially the association cortices, is not general intelligence, but facility with using spatial information. We take it on and disgorge it like water-bombers. Think of a rock-climber sizing up a cliff face. Think of an architect, engineer, tool-and-die maker, or trades person reading a blueprint. Now look around you. Do we not have all these nice buildings to live and work in? Can any other animal claim as much? My hypothesis seems obvious when you look at it this way.

Mere possession of a well developed sense of vision will not necessarily confer such ability with spatial information. The eyes of a predatory bird, for instance, could simply be gathering mainly temporal information modulated onto light, and used as a servo error for dynamically homing in on prey. To make a difference, the spatial information has to have someplace to go when it reaches the higher brain. Conversely, our sense of hearing is far from useless in providing spatial information. We possess an elaborate network of brain-stem auditory centers for accomplishing exactly this. Clearly, the spatial/temporal issue is largely dissociable from the issue of sensory modality.

You may argue that the uniquely human power of language suggests that our cortical advantage is used for processing temporal information, because speech is a spaceless phenomenon that unfolds only in time. However, the leading theory of speech seems to be the Wittgenstein picture theory of meaning, which postulates that a statement shows its meaning by its logical structure. Bottom line: language as currently understood is entirely consistent with my hypothesis that humans are specialized for processing spatial information.

Since fossil and comparative evidence suggests that our large brain is our most recently evolved attribute, it is safe to suppose that it may be evolving still, for all we know. There may still be a huge existential premium on possession of improved spatial ability. For example, Napoleon's strategy for winning the decisive Battle of Austerlitz while badly outnumbered seems to have involved a lot of visualization. The cultural face of the zeitgeist may reflect this in shows and movies where the hero prevails as a result of superior use of spatial information. (e.g., Star Wars, Back to the Future, and many Warner Bros. cartoons). Many if not most of our competitive games take place on fields, courts, or boards, showing that they test the spatial abilities of the contestants. By now, the enterprising reader will be thinking, "All I have to do is emphasize the spatial [whatever that means], and I'll be a winner! What a great take-home!"

Let me know how it goes, because all this is just theory.

#23. Proxy Natural Selection: The God-shaped Gap at the Heart of Biology [genetics, evolution]

EV    GE    

Red, theory; black, fact.

2-06-2017

As promised, here is my detailed and hypothetical description of the entity responsible for compensating for the fact that our microbial, insect, and rodent competitors evolve much faster than we do because of their shorter generation times. In these pages, I have been variously calling this entity the intermind, the collective unconscious, the mover of the zeitgeist, and the real, investigable system that the word "God" points to. I here recant my former belief that epigenetic marks are likely to be the basis of an information storage system sufficient to support an independent evolution-like process. I will assume that the new system, "proxy natural selection" (PNS) is DNA-based.

11-20-2017

The acronym PNS is liable to be confused with "peripheral nervous system," so a better acronym would be "PGS," meaning "post-zygotic gamete selection."

2-06-2017

First, a refresher on how standard natural selection works. DNA undergoes point mutations (I will deal with the other main type of mutation later) that add diversity to the genome. The developmental process translates the various genotypes into a somewhat diverse set of phenotypes. Existential selection then ensues from the interaction of these phenotypes with the environment, made chronically stringent by population pressure. Differential reproduction of phenotypes then occurs, leading to changes in gene frequencies in the population gene pool. Such changes are the essence of evolution.

PNS assumes that the genome contains special if-then rules, perhaps implemented as cis-control-element/structural gene partnerships, that collectively simulate the presence of an objective function that dictates the desiderata of survival and replaces or stands in for existential selection. A given objective function is species-specific but has a generic resemblance across the species of a genus. The genus-averaged objective function evolves by species-replacement group selection, and can thus theoretically produce altruism between individuals. The if-then rules instruct the wiring of the hypothalamus during development, which thereby comes to dictate the organism's likes and dislikes in a way leading to species survival as well as (usually) individual survival. Routinely, however, some specific individuals end up sacrificed for the benefit of the species.

Here is how PNS may work. Crossing-over mutations during meiosis to produce sperm increase the diversity of the recombinotypes making up the sperm population. During subsequent fertilization and brain development, each recombinotype instructs a particular behavioral temperament, or idiosyncratotype. Temperament is assumed to be a set of if-then rules connecting certain experiences with the triggering of specific emotions. An emotion is a high-level, but in some ways stereotyped, motor command, the details of which are to be fleshed out during conscious planning before anything emerges as overt behavior. Each idiosyncratotype interacts with the environment and the result is proxy-evaluated by the hypothalamus to produce a proxy-fitness (p-fitness) measurement. The measurement is translated into blood-borne factors that travel from the brain to the gonads where they activate cell-surface receptors on the spermatogonia. Good p-fitness results in the recombination hot spots of the spermatogonia being stabilized, whereas poor p-fitness results in their further destabilization. 

Thus, good p-fitness leads to good penetrance of the paternal recombinotype into viable sperm, whereas poor p-fitness leads to poor penetrance, because of many further crossing-over events. Changes in hotspot activity could possibly be due to changes in cytosine methylation status. The result is within-lifetime changes in idiosyncratotype frequencies in the population, leading to changes in the gross behavior of the population in a way that favors species survival in the face of environmental fluctuations on an oligogenerational timescale. On such a timescale, neither standard natural selection nor synapse-based learning systems are serviceable.

2-07-2017

The female version of crossing over may set up a slow, random process of recombination that works in the background to gradually erase any improbable statistical distribution of recombinotypes that is not being actively maintained by PNS.

7-29-2017

Here is a better theory of female PNS. First, we need a definition. PNS focus: a function that is the target of most PNS. Thus, in trees, the PNS focus is bio elaboration of natural pesticides. In human males, the PNS focus is brain development and the broad outlines of emotional reactivity, and thus behavior. In human females, the PNS focus is the digestive process. The effectiveness of the latter could be evaluated while the female fetus is still in the womb, when the eggs are developing. The proxy fitness measure would be how well nourished the fetus is, which requires no sensory experience. This explains the developmental timing difference between oogenesis and spermatogenesis. Digestion would be fine tuned by the females for whatever types of food happen to be available in a given time and place.

8-18-2017

Experimental evidence for my proposed recombination mechanism of proxy natural selection has been available since 2011, as follows:

Stress-induced recombination and the mechanism of evolvability

by Weihao Zhong; Nicholas K. Priest

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 03/2011, Volume 65, Issue 3

permalink:

http://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/#!/search?bookMark=ePnHCXMwfV1NS8QwEC2yBz9-gxL0JgTytUl7EUQU767nkDQJeCgu7uLv903SVlEQepx0pmky8yaTvJx3G-StuZsLiKLydSpLO8QEx8Ry3J3QgR9Nmx6t2tAivxGcaNhOFw9qZd-fdXcv9bQER26Kr0yMMsQJ6WK1mCHPZoBIbMp0QvbtMLH3wjKm9GfjtwbEen163D088_lSAT4i9js-xgi_DdSQBplcwQhXIQSggNjHVEpwUlIlK-uSyJI4JMRspZKKymyzTfqiu27vXVy3n__6wQO9GARIQVXsqyZEbt7TWDl-hNEj1wHg2A5EOiqbwBIM_b6xS_iVR7h2mxcNpTtPN7vf_NIcIq2HjEeotopifT_8L_XDwNsmtZR_V_2ECDxpxqOr6m9j_wpDiOrp_r6N82bqPhW0uWxt6i7PtYGRhgh9lP4C2uagLw

Abstract:

"The concept of evolvability is controversial. To some, it is simply a measure of the standing genetic variation in a population and can be captured by the narrow-sense heritability (h2). To others, evolvability refers to the capacity to generate heritable phenotypic variation. Many scientists, including Darwin, have argued that environmental variation can generate heritable phenotypic variation. However, their theories have been difficult to test.

 Recent theory on the evolution of sex and recombination provides a much simpler framework for evaluating evolvability. It shows that modifiers of recombination can increase in prevalence whenever low fitness individuals produce proportionately more recombinant offspring. Because recombination can generate heritable variation, stress-induced recombination might be a plausible mechanism of evolvability if populations exhibit a negative relationship between fitness and recombination. Here we use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to test for this relationship.

We exposed females to mating stress, heat shock or cold shock and measured the temporary changes that occurred in reproductive output and the rate of chromosomal recombination. We found that each stress treatment increased the rate of recombination and that heat shock, but not mating stress or cold shock, generated a negative relationship between reproductive output and recombination rate. The negative relationship was absent in the low-stress controls, which suggests that fitness and recombination may only be associated under stressful conditions. Taken together, these findings suggest that stress-induced recombination might be a mechanism of evolvability."

However, my theory also has a macro aspect, namely that the definition of what constitutes "stress," in terms of neuron interconnections or chemical signaling pathways, itself  evolves, by species-replacement group selection. Support for that idea is the next thing I must search for in the literature. &&