#75. The Broad Context of Religion [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

[Quotes indicate metaphor.]

• Organized religion may have arisen as a counter-adaptation to the anti-invasion adaptations  of a neighbouring, powerful country that included sorties.  For the Abrahamic religions, that powerful but geographically vulnerable country would be ancient Egypt. For the Eastern religions, the powerful but vulnerable neighbor would be ancient China.

• People are "amphibians": each of us has a collectivist part existing in genetic superposition with an individualistic part. In systems that officially celebrate the former, the latter cannot be owned and must be pushed into the Jungian Shadow. And vice versa. In Freudian terms, the unacceptable wishes emerge in disguised form: religion in individual-celebrating systems, and hero worship in collective-celebrating systems.

• The longstanding debate in philosophy between rationalism and empiricism is a false dichotomy resulting from a narrow focus on one or the other of the two legs by which scientific knowledge advances: theory and experiment.

• If religion is the last protoscience, then the corresponding science that is to come could be called security science. 

• The incredible disunity of Protestantism could mean that Protestantism is the laboratory of Christianity.

• The crucial step in going from a protoscience to a science appears not to have been experimentation, but quantification. Examples of early quantifiers were Tycho Brae (astronomy) and Antoine Lavoisier (chemistry). If religion is a protoscience, what would its quantification look like? “Reminder: It’s time to bring up your prayer checklist, tick the boxes that apply under each heading (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication), and upload it to the diocesan office. The results of statistical analysis will be announced at Vestry, at which time parishioners may suggest further research questions. This activity parallels and does not replace traditional prayer. All submissions are protected by best-practice data security.”

• The first step in graduating to security science may be compiling a glossary of religious terms and their non-supernatural, parallel interpretations. For example, the Jewish ban on eating pork can be interpreted in this spirit as a measure to prevent trichinosis (a disease transmitted by eating under-cooked pork or wild game). As another example, the four prayer headings enumerated above could be identified in terms of a longitudinal study as control, exposure, favourable outcomes at followup, and adverse outcomes at followup. As a third example, the three persons of the Trinity could map onto the three sources of security science: study of the individual, the society, and the evolutionary history of both (Son, Holy spirit, and Father, respectively).

• Science has to be for everyone.

• We don't have free will in the big things; we have free will in the little things. However, one of the little things can be "planting a seed" that may one day grow into one of those big things and be more to our liking than the big things we see now.

• Should security science take on the task of predicting the unintended consequences of innovations, or is that task so large as to require another new science?

• On the answers to the big questions, the sources of authority are the size of the database and the degree of regulation of the original inquiry. Writing things down would be one rule of inquiry; using a set process would be another; making well defined measurements would be another; the experiment form would be yet another. The degree-of-regulation parameter takes us smoothly from protoscience to hard science via the qualitative study, which has legitimacy today.

#69. Role of Personalities in the Human Swarm Intelligence [population]

PO

Red, theory; black, fact

Each of the Big Five personality traits may be a dimension along which people differ in some socially important behavioral threshold. These are, respectively: openness > uptake of innovations; conscientiousness > uptake of taboos; extraversion >  committing to collectivism*; agreeableness (-) > becoming militant; neuroticism > engaging in/submitting to persecution. The personality trait is written on the left of the ">" and the putatively impacted social threshold is on the right.

These threshold spectra may enable social shifts that are noise-resistant, sensitive to triggers, and rapid. Noise resistance and sensitivity together are called good “receiver operating characteristics,” a concept often used in the scientific literature.

A metaphor that suggests itself is lighting a camp fire. The spark is first applied to the tinder. Ignition of the tinder ignites the kindling. Ignition of the kindling ignites the small sticks. Ignition of the small sticks ignites the big sticks, and everything is consumed.

Orderly fire-starting appears to require a spectrum of thresholds for ignition in the fuel, as may orderly social shifts. To further extend the metaphor, note that the fuel must be dry (i.e., situational factors must be permissive).

Social novelties may spread upward to higher-threshold social strata by meme propagation reinforced by emotional contagion. The emotional energy necessary for emotional contagion would come from the individual’s interaction with the novelty, which would feature a positive feedback.

The governing neuromodulators of personality may be as follows:

• Acetylcholine-Openness
• Noradrenalin-Neuroticism 
• Serotonin-Agreeableness 
• Histamine-Conscienciousness
• Dopamine-Extraversion 

Our capacities for all of the enumerated social shifts were selected in evolution and most can be assumed to be still adaptive when correctly triggered. In today’s world, shifts to persecution are probably the least likely to still be adaptive, and could be a holdover from our Homo erectus stage. Persecution leads to refugee production, and refugee production could have been the reason that guy was such a great disperser.

As the geologists say, “The present is the key to the past.”

* A possible anti-invasion adaptation and predictable from geography. The sociological term for the corresponding failure mode may be siege mentality.

#67. Extended Theory of Mind [evolution]

EV

Red, theory; black, fact

Where is human evolution going at the moment? That is a good question. Let’s look around, then. I am writing this in a submarine sandwich joint where one sandwich maker is serving two customers. The radio brings in a ballad by a lady vocalist at a tempo suggestive of sex. Now a DJ (Mauler or Rush) is amusing the listeners with some patter. The window shows that rush hour is over and only a few home-bound stragglers are in the street. If I crane my neck, I can see the green beacon on the new electric charging station. 

That will do for starters. Sandwich maker, pro singer, DJ, bureaucrat, electrician—I couldn’t do any of that. We are a society of specialists, and such societies feature differentiation with integration. So, how far back does this go? At most, nine millennia; about 450 generations. Time enough for evolution? It doesn’t matter; we want direction here, not distance.

Contemporary natural selection of humans will therefore reward differentiability and integratability.

Differentiability: vocational choices often begin in childhood with hobbies, and there is a certain frame of mind associated with hobbies called “flow.” I therefore suggest that we are being selected for a susceptibility to "flow state." 

Integratability: society is held together by our ability to coordinate with others, and the key ability here is thought to be theory of mind, or the ability to infer the mental states of those with whom we interact. Likewise, we are being selected for theory-of-mind ability.

There may be something higher than theory of mind, which not everyone possesses at this time, that could be called "extended theory of mind": inferring the mental states of those not present, and whose very existence is itself inferred. A society strong in this trait will appear to be communicating with one another through solid walls, as if by ESP. 

Who are these Chosen? Probably military generals, politicians, and the executive class. Go figure.

However, the human cranium is probably as voluminous as it can get and still allow childbirth, so the gray matter subserving the new ability will have to be included at the expense of some other, preferably obsolete ability, like accuracy in spearing game animals.

So challenge your mayor to a game of darts and see how he does. This theory is falsifiable.

#56. Stress and Schizophrenia [neuroscience]

NE

Red, theory; black, fact

Introduction

The main positive symptoms of schizophrenia, namely hallucinations, word salad, and loosening of associations, all seem to be variations of the latter, so loosening of associations will here be taken as the primary disorder. Stress and the brain's dopaminergic system are strongly implicated in the causation of schizophrenia. In connection with stress, psychologists speak of "the affective [emotional] pathway to schizophrenia." 

Organismal responses to stress

Stress is known to increase genetic variability in bacteria, a process known as transformation. Stress is likewise known to increase the meiotic recombination rate in sexually reproducing organisms such as fruit flies. (Stress-induced recombination and the mechanism of evolvability. Zhong W, Priest NK. Behavioral ecology and sociobiology. 2011;65:493-502.) It seems that when an organism is in trouble, it begins casting about ever more widely for solutions. If evolution is the only mode of adaptation available, this casting about will take the form of an increase in the size and frequency of mutations. In conscious humans, however, this casting about in search of solutions in the face of stress may well take the form of a loosening of associations during thought. Should the person find the solution he or she needs, then presumably the stress levels go down and the thought process tightens up again, so we have a negative feedback operating that eventually renormalizes the thought process and all is well. In optimization theory, this process is called "simulated annealing."

Disorder of a cognitive stress response

But what if the person does not find the solution they need? Then, presumably the loosening of associations gets more and more pronounced ("reverse annealing") until it begins to interfere with the activities of daily living and thus begins to contribute net stress, thus making matters worse, not better. Now we have a pernicious positive feedback operating, and it rapidly worsens the state of the sufferer in what is known as a psychotic break, resulting in hospitalization. That these psychotic breaks are associated with tremendous stress is made clear by the fact that post-traumatic stress disorder is a common sequel of a psychotic episode.

 

Stress: molecular aspects

Messenger substances (i.e., hormones and neuromodulators) known to carry the stress signal are: CRF, ACTH, cortisol, noradrenaline, adrenaline, dopamine, NGF, and prolactin. The well-known phenomenon of stress sensitization, which may be part of the disease mechanism of schizophrenia, probably inheres in long-term changes in protein expression and will not be apparent in a simple blood test for any of the above substances without a prior standardized stress challenge. (e.g., the process of getting the needle itself. In that case, you would install a catheter through the needle to permit repeated blood sampling and collect the baseline sample long after the intervention sample, not before, as is customary in research.)

Other mental illnesses

Bipolar disorder may result from an analogous positive feedback affecting another problem solving adaptation of the brain, which would be modelled by the alternation of brainstorming sessions (mania) with sessions in which the brainstormed productions are soberly critiqued (depression).

Brain mechanisms

How does the loosening of associations of schizophrenia arise? I conjecture that one activated sensory memory represented in the posterior cortex does not activate another directly, but indirectly via an anatomically lengthy but fast relay through the prefrontal cortex, which has a well known dopaminergic input from the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain. A higher vertebrate may have a free-will spectrum, with machine-like performance and high dopaminergic tone at one end, and at the other, a carefully considered performance verging on overthinking, with low dopaminergic tone. Persons with schizophrenia have pushed past the latter end of the spectrum into dysfunction. Dopamine could orchestrate movement along the free-will spectrum by a dual action on the prefrontal cortex: inhibiting associational reflexes passing back to posterior cortex while facilitating direct outputs to the motor system. Dual actions of neuromodulators are a neuroscientific commonplace (e.g., my PhD thesis) and dopamine is a neuromodulator. The NMDA receptor, which is also strongly implicated in schizophrenia, enters the picture as the source of excitation of the ventral tegmental area.

Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash

# 54. Disaster Biology [evolution, evolutionary psychology]

EP    EV 

Red, theory; black, fact

The habitat may have been a unit of selection in early hominins, leading to group selection, and much of our evolution may have proceeded by an accumulation of founder effects.

Opportunities for colonization of recently-emptied habitats are ephemeral. Under disaster-prone conditions, this plausibly leads to selection pressure for migrant production and evolvability (i.e., a high rate of evolution, especially founder-effect evolution).

Language diversification in humans may be an evolvability adaptation. Language diversity would work by preserving genetic founder effects from dilution by late-coming migrants, whose reproduction would be held back by the difficulties of learning a new language. Xenophobia and persistent ethnicity markers can be explained in the same way. The spread of linguistic and cultural novelties in a hominin population is predicted to be especially fast in newly colonized, previously empty habitats. Alternatively, the linguistic novelties may start as a thick patois developed by an oppressed group in the home habitat prior to becoming refugees, as a way to make plans "under the noses" of the oppressing group.

Refugee-producing adaptations sub-serving dispersal can be called "tough altruism." Populations producing more refugees are more likely to colonize further empty habitats, a selective advantage.

Disaster biology may be what is conceptually missing from theories of the origin of life (abiogenesis). i.e., the forerunners of the first cells may have been spores that formed by budding from the surface of bodies of water.

Photo by Purnomo Capunk on Unsplash

#53. Where are All the Space Aliens? [evolution, evolutionary psychology]

EP    EV

Red, theory; black, fact

Canada's remote Algonquin Radio Observatory,

which took over SETI duty between 1988-91.

Astronomical observations and the Fermi paradox

Contemporary exoplanet research keeps turning up extra-solar-system planets that seem to be promising abodes of life of the Earthly variety (never mind the completely weird biochemistries that may exist on other planets). In the habitable exoplanets catalogue (HEC), kept by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, the list of planets found orbiting in the conservative habitable zone now has 17 entries, and a 2013 paper by Petigura et al. ("Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars") placed the percentage of stars in our galaxy with potentially habitable planets at 22 ± 8. Accumulating evidence suggests that life is common in our galaxy, yet SETI research—the search for extraterrestrial civilizations that send out radio signals that bear some stamp of intelligence—has drawn a complete blank, as far as I know. And if it did find something, it would make such a sensation in the media that no-one could help knowing. So I ask you: where are all the space aliens? This question is generally attributed to 20th-century physicist Enrico Fermi and has since become known as the Fermi Paradox.

My hypothesis is this:

Life is one thing; intelligent life is quite another. This is a form of the Rare Earth hypothesis, which is one of the avenues that has been explored through the years in the search for a resolution of the Fermi Paradox.

Biospheres may not be permanent 

No doubt there are many, many planets in our part of the galaxy that have some form of primitive life, and many, many more "graveyard planets" that once had life but are now sterile. Mars may well be an example of this kind of planet in our own solar system.

Biochallenge!

I conjecture that if we seem to be alone in this part of the galaxy, based on the negative SETI evidence, it is because we are, and this is because we have evolved to the level of intelligence first in this galactic neighborhood, because evolution on the Earth is egregiously rapid. It has taken us four billion years to get this far, which doesn't sound so fast, but everything is relative. This rapid evolution is plausibly a response to challenges: all the various natural disasters we are subject to here on Earth, examples being bolide (meteor) crashes, continental glaciations, drifting continents, droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, long climatic warm spells, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanism, wild weather, wildfires, and winter.

Sept 23, 2018: Tornadoes knock out primary transformer station in my town.

Case in point: a large bolide strike is believed to have triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs, making way for the rise of the mammals, and we ourselves are the descendants of those mammals. The bolide may have killed the dinosaurs indirectly, by touching off a climate shift in our dangerously unstable world. This would explain the temporary presence of dinosaur fossils above the Cretaceous/Tertiary iridium anomaly, which has been a problem for the bolide hypothesis.

Case in point: the rise of modern humans seems to have coincided with the end of the last continental glaciation. The rigorous, cold-climate conditions prevailing then might have selected our ancestors for high ability in building shelters and sewing protective clothing. These skills might have required the rapid evolution of a high ability to process spatial information, which we then leveraged into the building of civilizations upon the return of temperate climatic conditions.

To contrive a planet that is so challenging and difficult, yet has not succeeded in destroying life altogether in four billion years, may require a very rare combination of parameters (e.g., our distance from the sun, the size and composition of the Earth, the presence of the asteroid belt, the presence of the Oort cloud), and this rarity has led to our emerging into intelligence before it happened anywhere else in this part of the galaxy.

These parameters may well have special values at which critical behavior occurs, such as the onset of positive feedbacks leading to heating or cooling. Earth may be simultaneously close to several of these critical points, a rare circumstance, but one that does not require extreme, atypical values of any given variable.

My take on the Rare Earth hypothesis therefore emphasizes what are called "evolutionary pumps" (e.g., glaciations, bolide crashes, etc.) in discussions of this hypothesis, as well as the anthropic principle. 

August 28, 2011: An Ottawa sunset inflamed by a recent hurricane in the USA.

Evolution

I further conjecture that the difficulties of our past have left their mark on us, and we call it "evil." Some will deny that this concept has any construct validity, saying, "It's not a thing," but I think that it is an approximate version of something that does, which I term "dispersalism" in this blog. This is because a basic strategy for surviving disasters is dispersal. 

Our planet's predilection for disaster has deeply ingrained dispersal tendencies into most species here, by the mechanism of natural selection. Humans now get their food from agriculture. However, agriculture requires a settled existence and is therefore in opposition to dispersal, so the plot thickens.

This characteristic of agriculture results in the psychological pressure for dispersal relentlessly building, pressure-cooker fashion, across time, until a destructive explosion occurs (war or revolution), thereby accomplishing the long-delayed dispersal.

Wildfire smoke seen in Ottawa, Jun. 2023

#50. A Theory of Christianity [evolutionary psychology, population]

PO    EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Continuing from Post #49, doubts about the completeness of my assessment began with this statement by Saint Paul:

“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”

1 Corinthians 15:14, KJV

I was struck by the clarity and insistence of this impossible claim. What is going on here? We as theoreticians need to drill down here.

“Risen” means having come back from the dead, which is still an impossibility for modern medicine. However, Paul explains that what dies is a “natural body,” whereas what rises, or is “resurrected,” is a “spirit body,” which is “incorruptible.” The word resurrection does not appear in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), making its first appearance in Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. All things considered, the concept is obviously central to Christianity.

Postulate 1: Resurrection theology is an approximate theory, and as such, is allowed to contain an impossibility.

An Alternative Theory 

The old, skeptical explanation of the resurrection, namely that the crucifixion was a fraud, deserves mention here. The New Testament mentions particular Romans and Pharisees sympathetic to Jesus. Extrapolating, I posit a pro-Jesus faction spanning all segments of that society and including many influential Romans and Pharisees, who would have had the resources necessary to pull off such a deception, but who could not openly interdict the crucifixion for lack of the necessary influence. Thus, the seeming miraculousness of the resurrection would in reality be a measure of the power of the illusion that groups identified as “The Enemy” are implacable and unitary.

Postulate 2: Christianity is focused on taming a third stage of depopulation that follows the anger cycle and the sadness cycle if neither of these has returned population density to the reset value after a certain time. 

An Evolutionary Interpretation 

This third stage is the total war stage, and it takes place on an international scale. Examples are WWI and WWII, which would be the international phases of national conflicts between a central-European majority and Serbs and Jews, respectively. Total war is arguably altruistic because each of two alliances or countries is helping the other with their population problem. The required signaling cycle seems to be that of the anger cycle but with the exchanged signals doing double duty as liquidation tactics. This is not just a fight, where the only consideration is what would be the shrewdest blow; there is a strong tendency to ape the opponent’s latest gambit, as expected in an exchange of signals "designed" to lock non-altruists out of the process. This psychology is called “sending back the bullet” in battlefield situations and “poetic justice” in everyday life. It is satisfying and it is a signal and it is illegal in peacetime, no matter that the other guy started it. In peacetime, you have to search elsewhere for your solutions than in mimicry and cooperation with a dangerous emotional program. Furthermore, if you allow yourself to be drawn into a vendetta, you just wrote an “ = “ between yourself and the person you take exception to. 

The total war program is well known for its destructiveness to the infrastructures of civilization, which suggests that the program evolved recently and is still being refined by natural selection. It may not even be older than agriculture, the last quantum leap in our ability to increase our numbers. That new ability may have generated the selection forces that brought forth the total war program.

Christian theology works a rational override on the anger cycle by reassuring believers that they will be resurrected and therefore need not fear death. Since anger is fear in disguise, this reassurance undercuts the anger-cycle-like dynamics of the total war program.

Postulate 3: the corresponding exact theory of Christianity is that depopulation events always leave survivors and Christianity enhances your probability of being one of them. When population density has declined to the reset value, this should trigger a dramatic turnaround in the Zeitgeist from death-producing attitudes to nurturing ones, to start the population-density curve on its next long, slow upward climb. The resurrection of “spirit bodies” may refer to the re-establishment of life-valuing attitudes in society.

It follows that the human race is being selected for a predisposition to Christianity, and probably other religions as well.

The book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, appears to describe the sudden depopulation event that ends the population-density cycle. This is identified as the end of time/history, but remember that we deal here with an approximate theory.

Practices

Christian worship activities revolve around the Eucharist, a communal sharing and consumption of bread and wine. Its purpose is to eradicate the deepest roots of the fear of death, a fear that leads to the hatreds of the total-war emotional program. How does it work?

The Eucharist pacifies people by exposing them to the halting signal of the total war program. So, it halts. How did the consumption of bread and wine come to be the halting signal? Because they are made by people playing with their food, maybe for the sake of variety. However, this comes at the cost of caloric content (not caloric density) because the yeast always takes its cut. This practice will only make sense under conditions of plenty, which return with sufficient depopulation. Thus, alcohol, which I assume to be the active signaling ingredient, and leavened bread now signal to the human limbic system the return of abundance. I conjecture that these signals have a subtle pacifying effect, making it easier to resist tit-for-tat total-war signaling.

Alternatively, Jesus may have been medicating the disciples with food and alcohol to keep their arousal level out of the panic zone at a time of peak emotion so that they could continue to function adaptively.

#49. A Naturalistic Theory of Worship [evolutionary psychology, population]

 PO    EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Anytown, Canada, Apr. 11

Religion has a theory part and an applied part. The latter are the modes of worship. Since our moral codes are held by at least the Abrahamic religions to be commands from God, it would follow that it’s pretty important to conform to them, and most of us have difficulty doing this all the time. To help us, religion has developed a behavior-modification role, the role of the modes of worship.

The behavior-mod role aims at mitigating the human form of the Calhoun Effect—a tendency to aggression linked to rising population density but not to actual want per se. See post #36. Population density would have been an issue even millennia in the past when the world population was a minuscule fraction of what it is today, when people began living continuously inside walled cities for protection from their enemies. Within the inflexible confines of such a city, you have the makings of a human Calhoun experiment. Not coincidentally, the city of Jerusalem, sacred to three world religions, was a walled city. Nowadays, at a world population of 7.5 billion, it can be said that the world is our walled city. What can religion now tell us about how to get along?

Jerusalem in 1972

I’ll focus on the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which developed in that order, all in the Middle East, each of the last two acknowledging its debt to the previous. I suggest that these three religions form a series of progressively increasing effectiveness in mitigating the Calhoun Effect, by an accumulation of folkloric knowledge. Thus, to see how modes of worship work, the purpose of this post, we need only examine Islam, likely to represent the most efficient solution. Form generally follows function most transparently at highest efficiency.

The Human Calhoun Effect

The natural human population density plot over time has a saw-tooth form, with linear increases alternating with abrupt decreases that return population density to some repeatable reset value. The linear segments are created by a negative-feedback controller in the limbic system that controls rate-of-change of population density to a constant positive value, not absolute density. At this writing, the world is probably coming to the crest of one of these linear segments, which began in 1950. The sudden population-density decrease that ends the cycle may have two phases: a first that produces population-density decrease by emigration, and a second that produces population-density decrease by mass murder, if the first phase does not take the system all the way to the reset value. The first phase accomplishes the biological function of dispersal, which is generally important for long-term species survival. The second guarantees overall stability on a multi-cycle time scale and wards off Malthusian catastrophes.

Both phases demand formally altruistic acts from individuals, but not of the warm-and-fuzzy kind. The first phase uses an exchange of anger signals to lock non-altruists out of the process so that the behaviour is stable over evolutionary time. The second phase locks out the non-altruists using an asymmetric exchange of signals: contempt signals going one way and sadness signals going the other way. The second phase culminates in the mass murder of the sadness signalers by the contempt signalers and the appropriation of all the resources of the sadness signalers by the contempt signalers. The last step guarantees that the contempt signalers will appear entitled to those outside the cycle.

Islam

Islam is conveniently summarized for our purposes as The Five Pillars of Islam, which are explained in the Quran, namely:

1) The Creed. 

(“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”)

2) Prayer.

3) Charity. 

(Concealed almsgiving is preferred.)

4) Fasting.

5) Pilgrimage.

The Theory

The creed is “The Great Why in the Sky” that people need for the control of their most difficult emotions. Strong emotion can be overridden by reason if that is required by a learned worldview, the validity of which the person is willing to bet their life on. Here, I attempt to supply a worldview based on evolutionary psychology. The creed, or “theory part” of a religion, also gets the rational mind cooperating with the behaviour-modification program, which acts on the emotional self. 

Rational override based on some creed may begin the work of extirpating someone's anger or sadness cycle, but behaviour modification may be necessary to finish it and produce a lasting improvement in the person's circumstances. These cycles may have deep roots inaccessible to consciousness and capable of perpetuating self-defeating behaviors if not treated appropriately.

Prayer superficially is a deliberate wasting of time, which is not free in metabolic terms because the worshipper has a basal metabolic rate that must be supplied whether he/she works or not. Regular inactivity is surely a luxury of only those enjoying abundance. This is implicitly saying to the anger and sadness/contempt programs: “Food is still plentiful, so it’s not time to get nasty.” These cycles may be triggered by signs of high population density, not actual want, but they should still be sensitive to metabolic signals that speak to whether actual scarcity exists. High population density acquired its potent psychological effects, after all, because it usually predicted scarcity in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Alternatively, prayer may work like meditation to turn off the internal voice and the unnecessary stress it causes if unscripted.

Charity, on the receiving end, that is, is for contempt signalers, who, as you will recall, are extremely entitled in the final stage of their emotional program. Accepting charity–goods that you did not work for–tells the contempt program that it has achieved its mission and can therefore halt. So, it does. In Islam, almsgiving is said to be best done in secret, an effect of which will be to spare the pride of the recipient. This will be an issue with contemptuous types.

Fasting–going without the necessities of life–is for sadness signalers and it tells their emotional program that they have given or lost all their resources to the contempt signalers, and therefore their program has achieved its mission and can halt. So, it does. On the other hand, based on my own experience with fasting, the practice may work by increasing the faster's energy level post-fast, and an increased energy level can solve a multitude of problems.

Pilgrimage is where you tell the anger-cycle program with your feet that you have been driven out of your homeland forever and must resettle elsewhere. Therefore, the program has achieved its mission and can halt. So, it does. 

Thus, the task of much religious behavior-modification can be likened to persuading a devil to depart by showing him false evidence that he has accomplished his purpose in coming, knowing that he is myopic. However, prayer tells him that he doesn’t even have to come in the first place.

#45. The Goddesses of the Glacier [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red: theory; black, fact

(Spirits are flying in bearing mukluks and a parka.)

This post is about long hair, and I will argue that humans evolved the trait to keep them warm during geologically recent continental glaciations. (The teleological phrasing is used for the sake of brevity.)

Can having long hair really confer such a benefit under cold conditions? The anecdotal evidence supporting this idea seems abundant. For example, go to the site shown below

for a near-unanimous list of affirmative replies to the question: ‘Does long hair keep you warm?’ One respondent (#32), from Sweden, seems to have exactly reproduced the method for ensuring this that must have been used in eras of glaciation, assuming that our distant forbears could at least make themselves simple parkas out of animal skins.

They would have supplemented this protection by tucking their long hair down inside the parka. Leaving it outside would have been good fashion but bad engineering, since the locks would have been quickly parted by the first gust of wind and precious, life-saving body heat lost.

I began this with mention of goddesses, but of course the males would have had long hair too, probably a meter long, in outrageous violation of mid century cultural mainstream gender expectations concerning hair length.

I find that this situation suddenly makes better aesthetic sense if you imagine this long hair as tousled in the males and smooth and perfect-looking in the females and perhaps only in the portion showing above the neckline. Seen this way, both males and females look gorgeous in the imagination and the aesthetic problem is solved. I call this the "rock-star solution." The females could have smoothed their hair by lubricating it with oil and brushing, and a brush is not hard to make. Meanwhile, the males would only need their fingers for cultivating a charming, insouciant look.

While moderns socially code gender as hair length, this parameter was unavailable to our glaciation-era forebears because they would have been unwilling to cut their hair, knowing at some level of insight that they needed it for survival and mating success. Therefore, they might have coded gender as hair smoothness as described above. 

While writing this, I was struck by the amount of detailed information I was able to retrieve from my own aesthetic preferences, some of which would have evolved under stringent, cold-climate conditions to produce mate choices favoring traits with survival value. 

The heart may have its reasons that reason knoweth not, but reason is learning*.

PS: I have not mentioned beards yet and the main question there is why women do not have them. The answer seems to be that a long beard would interfere with breastfeeding, whereas long scalp hair can be pushed back. Moreover, women have more subcutaneous fat than men, so their thermoregulation problem in a cold climate would not be as severe.

*Based on a famous saying by the philosopher Blaise Pascal.

#43. Sunshine in Covey's Gap [evolutionary psychology, neuroscience]

EP   NE

Red, theory; black, fact

It is difficult to make a disagreeable emotion go away before one weakens and act it out, to their detriment. Techniques of true emotional control, i.e., making the bad feelings disappear rather than white-knuckle, open-ended resistance to acting them out, are not impossible, just non obvious. You just have to persuade yourself that this bad is good and believe it.

For the modern person, that second part, the believing, is difficult to achieve robustly if one is using religious solutions to the problem, the domain of soteriology (being "saved"), easier with psychoanalytical solutions, and easiest of all with scientific solutions. "Believing," here means being prepared to bet your life on the truth of a proposition.

Steven Covey writes in "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" that between stimulus and [emotional] response, humans have a gap in the causal chain and animals do not. In the gap are  imagination, self-awareness, conscience, and self will. George Santayana seems to have grasped this truth when he wrote: "Our dignity is not in what we do but in what we understand. The whole world is doing things." [source, Wiki quotes, accessed 11-06-2018]

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has elucidated what could be the neural pathways that make Covey's gap possible. A direct pathway from the thalamus to the amygdala mediates the basic fear response, but an indirect pathway that leads from the thalamus up to the cerebral cortex and then down to the amygdala provides a more nuanced, intelligent amendment to the first response. Full cancellation of the direct pathway by the indirect would account for Covey's gap, and this could be done by a cortical relay through the inhibitory interstitial neurons of the amygdala that terminate on the amygdalar projection cells.

The doctrines of classical religion probably lead to such cancellation of emotions such as hate and fear by activating the same circuits that are used by a parent to reassure a needlessly fearful infant.

Apparently, classical religion is about getting people to do the right things for the wrong reasons. When the discipline of evolutionary psychology is sufficiently developed, we can look forward to the age when people do the right things for the right reasons.

#42. A Discovery of Hackers [population, evolutionary psychology]

PO   EP

Red, theory; black, fact

The hacker phenomenon may be psychologically and sociologically akin to what was once called witchcraft, and I think witchcraft is a scientifically accessible social phenomenon. 

The Past

However, the height of the witchcraft hysteria in Europe occurred during the Sixteenth century, when there were no computers. (I focus on Europe here because my ancestors came from there as did those of most people I know.) It was, however, a time of unprecedented scientific advance, and if science paced technology then as now, quite a few new technologies were coming into knowledge for the first time.

The Future

I suggest that the defining toxic ingredient in black-hat hacking is new technology per se. We should therefore expect that with time, computer hacking will spread to new-technology hacking in general and that the computer-centric version must be considered the embryonic form. This is bad news because there has never been so much new technology as now, but at what point in history has this not been true?

The Mystery of Witch Hysteria

Belief in and persecution of witches is so widespread across human cultures that it must be considered a cultural universal. Scholars focus on the persecution part, blithely assuming that there is absolutely nothing real driving it, and that the subject people of the study are, by implication, gullible and cruel. Is this stance elitist? Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Those people all have brains in their heads built to the exact same design as our own, and the role of education may be overrated when cultural universals are in play.

A Contemporary Interpretation 

The defining idea of the witches/technology hackers may be viewing new technology as a possible means to increase personal power. After siege mentality sets in, fear of apprehension and punishment leads to a mad-dog rejection of all morality, like a gambler chasing the money, or in this case, the indemnity. 

A Contemporary Interpretation of Black Magic

A technology ideal for hacking/witchcraft must be usable without the identity of the agent coming into general knowledge, and is thus  similar to the ring of Gyges mentioned in Plato's Republic. The anonymity conferred by the Internet makes it one of our worst rings of Gyges.  More will be discovered in other realms of technology as the hackers branch out, perhaps in alliance with the currently popular Maker movement. 

How common are Gygean technologies? Hard to say, but it may help to list some.

• Ionizing radiation was known from the work of Roentgen in 1895 (x-rays) and Villard in 1900 (gamma rays) and for the first time, a means to destroy healthy, living tissue silently and through walls solid enough to conceal all signs of the agent, had become available. 
• The lead pencil, introduced in the Sixteenth century already alluded to, was originally made with actual lead metal instead of graphite and clay mixtures, which we now know to be insidiously neurotoxic, especially to children--knowledge to warm the heart of any proper witch.
• In the time of Christ in the Middle East, the Roman occupiers knew of ten or so plant-derived poisons, including opium. The very concept of a poison could have been new in those days, and poisons are the classical hard-to-detect weapons. If the weapon is hard to detect, so is the agent. A crypto-technological explanation for some of the events of the New Testament seems possible.

Gygean weapons are doubly "invisible" when based on new technology because these modus operandi are not yet on anybody's radar, so the first x number of people who spot them are likely to be disbelieved and their sanity questioned.

Witches have always operated in the zone of perceptual blindness to abuses that transiently opens up after the introduction of any new technology. The psychological invisibility of weapons based on new technology is probably the factor that led witches to become associated with magic. 

Psychological Aspects 

Moreover, since the technology is unprecedented in human evolution, the levels of resentment that become inducible in the victims are potentially unprecedented and unphysiologically intense, leading to grotesquely disproportionate punishments being meted out to discovered witches, and this for strings of crimes that would have been extremely serious even considering strictly proportionate punishments. The historical accounts of witch-burnings may have all been cleaned up for a squeamish readership.

Why were a majority of European accused witches female? It is probably relevant that the female-specific scold’s bridle was in use at this time. At the height of the anti-witch hysteria, the Catholic Church was pushing back against the Protestant Reformation, and yet Catholicism was relatively tolerant of witchcraft. The most witch trials per capita were in high-latitude or high-altitude countries (e.g., Norway, Scotland, Switzerland) that would have been most affected by the  “little ice age” of the 1600s. Other crimes like theft and murder surged when witchcraft did. I’m not sure what all this adds up to beyond a society under stress.

The Present

Today, the hackers are mostly male and the demographic challenge is too many people, not too few. Calhoun's overpopulation experiments on rodents imply that people will become more aggressive if forced to live at higher population densities, and such a relentless increase in aggressiveness may be driving the current reemergence of the witch/hacker. 

It doesn't help that organized religion, the traditional enemy of witchcraft, is withering on the vine in this country, probably due to the intellectual fallout from Darwin's theory of evolution combined with the failure of the public to understand that a scientific world-view is never finished and may some day substantially validate the claims of religion after some reinterpretation of terms.

Photo by Daphné Be Frenchie on Unsplash

#41. Corporate Sin [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

Not all of humanly willed destruction is due to two persons interacting, either in a sadness cycle or an anger cycle. Wars of depopulation and wars of dispersal represent these interactions promoted to the level of entire societies. This promotion theory assumes that the same hard-wired wetware is being used for both levels, but with the addition of a few more bits of code to support the social level.

Theologians such as Bishop Baycroft, writing in "The Anglican Way," are well aware of this extra dimension of human misery, referring to it as "corporate sin," and admit that it is a more difficult problem than individual sin. The advice I give in "Signaletics for Salvation" will not help you efficiently if your unhappiness has its roots in corporate sin (for example, if you are caught up in a military draft or are a slave), but it may be better than nothing. What about those extra bits of code?

The basic code design seems to be to transform a tiff between two individuals into a tiff between two leaders, then copy the emotions of the leaders into the heads of all the followers on both sides. Thus, a political leader is a kind of emotional conductor. This is why we have leaders.

By this theory, World War II was a tiff between Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, both famous for their speeches in which they inspired passions in their followers.

How do you get to be leader? The simplest answer seems to be that you just get famous and you are also someone who doesn't see a way to end his pain without involving the whole world. 

An attractive theory about fame, in turn, is that fame is 90% being-famous-for-being-famous, and 10% is being famous for something else, the predisposing factor. Human intergroup interactions have the form we observe because these predisposing factors are not random but are due to natural selection. Moreover, they are conditional upon prevailing conditions, such as the price of bread relative to wages. Finally, they already exist at the individual level. The process of garnering the absurd 90% of fame is the by-now familiar phenomenon of going viral, and its earlier historical equivalents. 

I imagine that this process is a positive feedback loop in the brain that involves the attentional system and Hebbian plasticity, the latter well known for having a built-in positive feedback. We also know that emotions are contagious (See: Hatfield E, Cacioppo JT, Rapson RL. Emotional Contagion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).