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

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Emotions are an "endophenotype," a term from functional magnetic resonance imaging, that provides a useful stepping stone from evolutionary arguments to explanations of our daily lives. 

Starting with the Emotion 

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." 

Problem

If the emotional outline of people's behaviour 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 everyone's preferences. The purpose of a king may be to find and 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. 

It Gets Bigger

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. 

A Social Solution 

With kingship comes the corrupting influence of personal power and  tyrannical government. 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 the flexibility that goes with having a flesh-and-blood king who can change his predecessor's laws based on current popular sentiment.

Mechanistic Interpretation 

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 and produced by species-replacement group selection within the genus, and the latter would be due to selection of smaller units, 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 very slow to change, could be managed 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, necessitating the standardizing role of religion. Synaptic plasticity would then be used to cancel the point-mutational variation in the objective function.

The Big Picture 

The core may consist of four pillars, or regulatory themes: regulation of genetic diversity, memetic diversity, altruism, and dispersal. Our energetic investment in obtaining each item is to be optimized.

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

EP   GE

Red, theory; black, fact

Morning hymn at Sebastian Bachs' By Toby Edward Rosenthal

What Does Darwinian Fitness Feel Like?

My first post on post-zygotic gamete selection (PGS) 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.

How Our Emotions Program Us

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. Each activation of an emotion may tend 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.

Where Our Emotions Come From

To relate this to the mechanism of PGS, the crossing-over events that went into making the sperm cell that made a given person would theoretically affect brain development more than anything else, specifically connecting some random stimulus to one of the unpleasant primary emotions. This creates temperament, and thus  personality, which is the unique quality which they have to offer the world, and on which they are being tested by history. If the actions to which their own, special preferences propel them are what the species objective function is looking for, they succeed, feel joy and serenity, and experience an altered methylation status of the DNA in the spermatogonia if male, which suppresses further crossing over in the manufacture of sperm, so that their personality type breeds true, which is what the population needs. Famous musical families, for example, may originate in this way.

PGS is quick evolution to respond to challenges that come and go on less than a multi-thousand generation timescale, and it explains the complexities of sexual reproduction.

A Flaw in the Argument, Addressed

However, trees 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.

The Big Picture 

Each of the four unpleasant "starting" emotions may sub-serve one of the four pillars of the species objective function. Thus: sadness, altruism; disgust, genetic diversity (due to point mutations; what is motivated here is the screening of such novelties during mate selection, screening always being the expensive part); fear, memetic diversity (or motivating prescreening of memetic novelties through fear of public speaking); 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.

Picture credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags/Country-specific_tags#United_States_of_America

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

EV   GE

Red, theory; black, fact

The Problem and My Solution 

Some entity must be 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, "post-zygotic gamete selection" (PGS) is DNA-based.

Background 

First, a refresher on how standard natural selection works. DNA undergoes various mutations 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.

My Solution, Big Picture 

PGS 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.

The PGS Mechanism 

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 oligo-generational timescale. On such a timescale, neither standard natural selection nor synapse-based learning systems are serviceable.

Female PGS Is Different 

However, egg cells mature in utero and therefore face a selection disconnect or delay. 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 PGS.

A Better Theory of Female PGS 

First, a definition. PGS focus: a function that is the target of most PGS. Thus, in trees, the PGS focus might be bio-elaboration of natural pesticides. In human males, the PGS focus might be brain development and the broad outlines of emotional reactivity, and thus behaviour. In human females, the PGS focus might be 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.

Experimental evidence for the proposed recombination mechanism of PGS 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

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 signalling pathways, itself  evolves, by species-replacement group selection.

#16. The Intermind, Engine of History? [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Statue of Samuel de Champlain, explorer

A Mechanism of Rapid Evolution 

A plausible reason for having a mechanism of rapid evolution is that it permits evolutionary enlargement of body size without loss of evolvability; larger size leads to more internal degrees of freedom and therefore access to previously impossible adaptations. For example, eukaryotes can phagocytose their food; prokaryotes cannot. However, larger body size comes at the expense of longer generation time, which reduces evolvability. A band of high frequencies in the spectrum of environmental fluctuations therefore develops where the large organism has relinquished evolvability, opening it to being out competed by its smaller rivals. 

What I call the intermind would be a proxy for classical evolution that fills the gap, but it needs an objective function to provide it with its ultimate gold standard of goodness of adaptations. Species-replacement group selection could ensure that the objective function is close to optimal. This group selection process takes place at enormously lower frequencies than those the intermind is tracking, because if the timescales were  too similar, chaos would result. For example, in model predictive control, the model is updated on a much longer cycle than are the predictions derived from it.

This genetic intelligence may construct our sociobiology in an ad hoc fashion, by rearranging a knowledge base, or construction kit, of rules of conduct into algorithm-like assemblages. This rearrangement would be blindingly fast by the standards of classical Darwinian evolution, which only provides the construction kit itself, and presumably some further, special rules equivalent to a definition of an objective function to be optimized. The ordinary rules translate experiences into the priming of certain emotions, not the emotions themselves, 

Its Properties 

The set of ordinary rules or intermind would be intermediate in speed between classical evolution and learning by operant conditioning. (All three depend on trial-and error.) The name is also appropriate in that the intermind would be a distributed intelligence, acting over continental, or a least national, areas. Its objective function, which is simply whatever produces survival, will be explicitly encoded into the genes specifying the intermind. (For more on multi-tier, biological control systems with division of labor according to time scale, see "Sociobiology: the New Synthesis," E. O. Wilson, 1975 & 2000, chapter 7.)

Evil Explained

The intermind may account for evil because it is only concerned with survival of the entire species and not with the welfare of individuals.

Evolutionary Mechanisms 

The intermind will have been created by group selection of species. Higher taxonomic units such as genus or family will scarcely evolve because the units that must die out to permit this are unlikely to do so, because they comprise relatively great genetic and geographical diversity. However, we can expect intermind-related adaptations that facilitate the creation of new species, the units of selection. Imprinted genes may be one such adaptation, which might enforce species barriers by a lock-and-key mechanism that kills the embryo if any imprinted gene is present in either two or zero active copies. Species-replacement group selection need act only on the objective function used by trial-and-error processes.

What Are Its Objectives?

In these times, we have come to know that species survival is imperiled by loss of range and by loss of genetic diversity. Thus, the objective function will tend to produce range expansion (exploration in humans) and optimization of genetic diversity. 

However, all this is insufficient to explain the creativity of humans, starting at the end of the last ice age with cave paintings, followed shortly thereafter by the momentous invention of agriculture. The hardships of the ice age must have selected genes for a third, novel component, or pillar, of the species objective function, namely optimization of memetic diversity. Controlled diversification of the species memeplex may have been the starting point for cultural creativity and the invention of all kinds of aids to survival. Art forms may represent the sensor of a feedback servomechanism by which a society measures its own memeplex diversity, measurement being necessary to control.

#15. The Insurance of the Heart [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Insurance-like Adaptations

We live in an uncertain world, the best reason to buy insurance while you can. Insurance is too good a trick for evolution to have missed. When food is plentiful, as it now is in my country, people get obese, as they are now doing here, so that they can live on their fat during possible future hard times. They don't do this consciously; it's in their genes.

However, eating foregone during hard times has only a subtractive effect on your footprint on society's demand for scarce resources; how many kids you have affects your footprint multiplicatively. Thus, the effectiveness of biological insurance taken out in children foregone during times of plenty would be greater than that taken out in food consumed in advance.

The Role of Reputation 

Building on the multiplicative mechanism, the existence of which I am simply assuming, a still more powerful insurance mechanism exists; how well and long remembered the family name is that you bequeath to your children affects your footprint exponentially. I assume that a good or bad "name" affects the reproductive success of all your descendants having that name until you are finally forgotten. Compared to exponential returns, everything else is chump change. ("Who steals my purse steals trash." - Shakespeare)

Advance Evolution 

There remains the problem of food going to waste during times of plenty because the social forces associated with the multiplicative mechanism prevent a quick population increase. I conjecture that the extra energy available is invested by society in contests of various sorts, for example, the Circus Maximus during the heyday of ancient Rome, that act as a proxy to evolutionary selection pressure, whereby the society accelerates it's own evolution. Although natural selection pressure is maximal during the hard times, relying on these to do all your evolving for you can make you extinct; better to do some "preventative evolution" ahead of time.

Since future environmental demands are partly unforeseeable, a good strategy would be to accelerate one's evolution in multiple directions, keeping many irons in the fire. Indeed, in the Olympics just concluded, thirty-nine sports were represented.

Evolutionary Psychology 

The power of these contests is maximized by using the outcomes as primary conditioned stimuli that are associated with the family names of the winners and losers: the secondary conditioned stimuli. In this way, one acquires a good or bad "name" that will affect the reproductive success of all who inherit it, an exponential effect. To ground this discussion biologically, it must be assumed that the contests are effective in isolating carriers of good or bad genes (technically, alleles), and that the resulting "name" is an effective proxy for natural selection in altering the frequency of said genes. To keep the population density stable during all this, winners must be balanced by losers. The winners are determined and branded in places like the tennis courts, and the losers are determined and branded in the legal courts.

Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash