# 59. Disaster Biology [evolution, evolutionary psychology]

EV     EP     

Red, theory; black, fact.

• The habitat is a unit of selection, leading to group selection.
• Much of evolution proceeds by an accumulation of founder effects, especially altruism in sexually reproducing species.
• Opportunities for colonization of recently-emptied habitats are ephemeral.
• Under disaster-prone conditions, this leads to selection pressure for migrant production and evolvability (i.e., a high rate of evolution, especially founder-effect evolution).
• Language diversification in humans is an evolvability adaptation.
• It works by preserving genetic founder effects from dilution by late-coming migrants, whose reproduction is held back by the difficulties of learning a new language. 
• Xenophobia and persistent ethnicity markers (PEMs) can be explained in the same way.
• The spread of linguistic and  PEM novelties in a population is predicted to be especially fast in newly colonized, previously empty habitats. <09-17-2020: 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). 01-02-2020: i.e., the forerunners of the first cells may have been spores.>
• Photo by Purnomo Capunk on Unsplash

#58. The Rising Tide of Refugees [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact.

Paradigm: dispersal

Population pressure and dispersal

Currently, we are seeing a troubling increase in refugee numbers globally. I link this to ever-rising human population numbers, which will be loosely correlated with rising population densities. (Loosely, because population density also depends on area.) Population density, in turn, will be the governing psychological factor, because it can be appraised on the basis of local sensory signals (probably multimodal) whereas absolute global numbers cannot. The basis of this hypothesis is the results of Calhoun's rodent experiments on overpopulation that he carried out in the fifties and sixties, which I am here extrapolating to humans, probably as Calhoun himself intended. I postulate that refugeehood sub serves in humans the ecological function of dispersal. The underlying mechanism would be what was called "instinct" back in the day, a term that I think may still be useful in getting into one's argument quickly.

Do we have an instinct to disperse?

"Instinct-" governed behaviors are understood to owe nothing to learning and to be solely determined by the genes, and thus by evolution. In humans, of course, this position lacks credibility, so I am here speaking of that portion of the causation of our behavior that is due to evolution and can be assumed to play a biasing role rather than a determining one.

In refugee stories, there always seems to be a dichotomy between the nasty, evil bad buys and the hapless, innocent displaced persons, but, of course, this is naive. The most likely situation is that the refugee-producing adaptation has an aggressor subroutine and a victim subroutine, both in the same genetically determined program, and we all have a copy of both hard wired into our brains. Essentially by chance, one is activated in some people, and the other in others, when population density rises, and the ancient drama begins anew.

Now here's my plan

Because therapy can be expected to be more easily delivered to the victims than to the aggressors, I suggest that we start with them in seeking solutions. Their part of the dispersal program is likely to make them overly reactive to harassment and overly apt to conclude that they have no option but to flee, when this is simply not true. A related phenomenon that I have observed could be called "defensive overreaction," in which the person jumps to the false conclusion that an elaborate, expensive solution to their problem is required. A reasonable person, however, will try all the simple solutions first, one by one, evaluate the effectiveness of each, and proceed to the next more complex solution only if the less complex solution fails. I suggest that persons considering flight should be counseled and supported in this strategy, in the hopes of stemming the global tide of refugees.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

#57. Where are All the Space Aliens? [evolution]

EV

Red, theory; black, fact.

KIRK MUST DIE! (cut to commercial.)

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) at 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 physicsmeister 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 Ottawa.

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. <03-21-2020: 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. (See: #24, "The Pictures in Your Head," this blog.)

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.

01-08-2020: 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.

Evil-ution

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, which I have previously linked to evil in these pages (See: #35, "The Pilgrim and the Whale," and #37, "Two Kinds of War," this blog).

To recapitulate, 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.

May 21, 2022 derecho-storm damage in Ottawa.

Wildfire smoke seen in Ottawa, Jun 2023.

#54. Reality is Virtual but the Host Computer is Analog. [physics, chemistry, neuroscience]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

Here is my idea of what lies behind the veil of space time: something like a Turing machine, but with a multiplicity of tapes and a multiplicity of processors. Each tape corresponds to one elementary particle in space time and the processors implement only Hebb’s rule, a rule of learning first discovered in neuroscience, and that governs correlations among signal sources. The tapes are polymer-like, and their ongoing elongation by polymerization at the ends causes the passage of time. This elongation is associated with a white-noise signal unique to each particle/tape/strand because the monomers are sampled from a population with a Gaussian size distribution.

06-26-2019: A theoretical schema showing the basic strand-processor interaction. The theory borrows from the Turing machine concept, Hebb's rule of learning, and the chemistry of polymerization. Black, one information-bearing polymer strand; blue, processor; red, monomers.

07-03-2019: A more complex, two-strand scheme. The monomer cloud has been omitted for clarity.

07-09-2019: A still more complex, three-strand

scheme. Assumption: at a given point, multiple strands can adhere to the same processor, and vice-versa.

06-26-2019: The first illustration is my current best guess as to what a "Hebb processor" is like, but as we say, "Many questions remain." The short, black lines are the catalyzed ligation points between "monomers," and these are the points of attraction to the processor. If the rear pull-off point encounters a big gap between ligation points, the processor will advance an unusually great distance in one step, creating an unusually long catalytic pocket at the front, which will have a selectivity for longer monomers, thereby implementing a copying mechanism. (Causally, this is backwards, but the alternative seems to involve a messy discussion of chemical equilibria.)

This “machine” is presumed to be naturally occurring and to belong to a particular stage in the physical evolution of the universe. (i.e., I make no appeal to arguments of intelligent design, even by space aliens.) By the anthropic principle, the machine is not necessarily typical of all structures extant at that stage. <06-04-2020: In other words, we are living in a natural subworld that is simulation-like in that the view from within is entirely unlike the view from without, but the two views are lawfully related by something that could be called the "subworld law," an example of which is given below, i.e., "d = K/rxy." (This concept is nothing new because it could also serve in outline as a description of human conscious experience, which is most unlike a mass of neurons signaling to each other in the dark.) Thus, the Theory of Everything could turn out to be a series of nested subworld laws.>

The length of a strand relative to some interior point is a Gaussian white-noise time-series signal with an upward trend just steep enough to eliminate negative slopes. I will deal here with the detrended version of this signal because, on the laboratory distance scale, both the observed system and the observer will share the same trend, preventing its direct observation. Moreover, the polymerization process is postulated to preserve a permanent record of the detrended signal. Therefore, while the future does not exist in this model of time, the past is perfectly preserved. A set of distinguishable time series is called “panel data” and is a Euclidean space by the mathematical definition and can therefore map onto and explain physical space, at least on the laboratory scale.

Imagine some panel data consisting of two time series, X and Y, representing two elementary particles. Take a slice of this data ten samples long and plot them as two ten-dimensional vectors, X and Y. The dot product of these vectors is then easily computed as x₁y₁ + x₂y₂ + … x₁₀y₁₀. A Euclidean space is defined as an affine space (i.e., containing no special points like the origin) where the vector dot product is defined. Recall that this dot product is equal to the length of X times the length of Y times cosθ, where θ is the angle between the vectors. Moreover, cosθ is here equal to rₓy, aka Pearson’s r, a measure of correlation between signal sources. Pearson's r is commonly used in the sciences, including neuroscience, and ranges from -1 for negative correlations to +1 for positive correlations; zero indicates no correlation.

I conjecture that rxy represents distance in space time, and vector length represents mass-energy in space time. An rxy of 0 would represent infinite distance and an rxy of 1 would represent 0 distance, a state found only in black-hole singularities or the big bang singularity. Processes would be experienced as close together because they are correlated  (Previously suggested in Post #4.), not correlated because they are close together. The latter is the usual assumption, usually rationalized as being due to the easy exchange of synchronizing photons or virtual photons at close range. However, we seem to be moving here toward the elimination of the light/photon construct from physics. Good riddance; it was always pretty dicey.

(Deprecated, Part 6)

07-25-2015 to 07-27-2019: A simpler possibility is d = K/rxy and rxy = K/d. This change advantageously limits how small space-time distances can become, thereby eliminating infinities from gravity calculations. K is this minimum length. With this revision, the dot product of two vectors in the simulation becomes equal to gravitational binding energy.

No Flying Spaghetti Monster would be complete without meatballs, and these would be the Hebb processors alluded to in the opening paragraph. Each strand would have a processor on each end that may catalyze the polymerization process. Each processor would also be connected to a random point within the mass of strands. This connection moves along the associated strand like a phonograph needle,  reading the recorded signal while keeping pace with the growing end. The processor also has a front read-point in the present. The two read points may or may not be on the same strand. If a correlation is detected between the two read points, the correlation is permanently enhanced by a modification of the polymerization process, per Hebb’s rule. All the orderliness of the universe is supposed to emerge from this one type of calculation.

07-9-2019: At this point, we have not eliminated "space" from physics; we have merely replaced Euclidean space by another kind of space that is less structured, in which the "spaghetti machine" has its being. The new space is a "metric space" but has neither norm nor dot product axiomatically, although they can be present in simulation.The metric is bijective with the counting (natural) numbers and is equal to the number of "primordial time elements" (PTEs) in a polymer of same.

Degrees of correlation less than maximal are encoded in the processor as the number of strands adhering to the processor above the minimum for inter strand copying, namely two. One of these "middle strands," as I shall call them, is illustrated in the sketch of the three-strand scheme, and they putatively degrade the fidelity of the copying process and reduce Pearson's r in proportion to their numbers, while also introducing a time delay into the copying process, due to changes in the length of the processor. A reduction in Pearson's r, which increases the encoded space time distance, simultaneous with an increase in the copying time delay is responsible for the finite speed of light.

7-15-2019: If N is the number of middle strands on a processor, then a reasonable guess as to its effect on Pearson’s r would be r = 1/(N + 1). (Deprecated, Part 6) 07-22-2019: slight problem: the units analysis doesn't work out, so this paragraph is a work in progress.

07-25-2019: The problem is solved if we set the electron binding energy equal to the length of the projection of the electron vector on the proton vector. This is not the dot product and it has the correct units, namely mass-energy. The revised attempt to reproduce Rydberg's formula is:

ΔE = ||e||*(1/n₁ – 1/n₂), n₂ > n₁. (1)

The default interaction implemented by Hebb’s rule would be gravitational attraction. Black hole formation illustrates that gravitation has a built-in positive feedback, and this would derive from the positive feedback built into simple forms of Hebb’s rule.

07-9-2019: To provide my hypothetical Hebb processors with such a positive feedback, I postulate the following: Middle strands come and go in an energy-dependent excision/reintegration process and have a small loop of processor adhering to them when free, which explains how the processor length changes occur. A high-fidelity copying process releases more energy than does a low-fidelity copying process, and excision requires energy input. These ingredients, together with the fidelity-degrading property of a middle strand, should be sufficient for a positive feedback.

If the two read points are on the same strand, the result will be an oscillation. Electromagnetism could be the set of interactions peculiar to oscillating strands. The variance needed to express the oscillation would be deducted from a fixed total, resulting in less variance available to represent distances by its correlations. A smaller distance signal will be more rapidly modified by the Hebb processors, resulting in faster responses to forces and a smaller mass according to Newton’s a = F/m. Thus, we expect neutral particles to be more massive than charged particles, and this tendency is indeed found among the mesons and when comparing the proton and neutron. The relatively great mass of the proton and neutron and the nuclear strong force itself may emerge from a cyclic pattern of three strands (the quarks) connected by three processors. The example of the benzene molecule teaches us to expect novel results from cyclization. (07-31-2019: This will be a huge idea when asking what underlies the metric space alluded to above. 01-17-2020: The metric space may itself be a simulation running on a processor situated in a still simpler space, namely a topological space, in which only a few distinctions matter, such as inside-outside and closed-open. 01-17-2020: The great mass of the baryons may come from the chaos inevitable in the celestial-mechanics version of the three-body problem, but the three bodies would be the three quarks. Recall that in the present theory, noise amplitude corresponds to mass-energy, and fast chaos looks like noise. The three-fold nature of these particles may also create the three-dimensionality of space, but I am having trouble picturing this.

05-22-2020: An extension of this idea would be that chaos is the source of all mass and the properties of a timeline depend on how many highly-correlated others there are ("intimates") and the degree of this correlation. One intimate produces an oscillation but no mass; two or more produce chaos and some amount of mass. Intimacy can be understood as relative, leading to a hierarchy of relationships. The fact that three bodies are the minimum for chaos remains an attractive explanation for the three-dimensionality of space. Details remain elusive, but I am now trying for a holistic vision and no longer focusing narrowly on baryons.

05-22-2020: There may be an alternative kind of middle strand or mode of adhesion that enhances copying fidelity upon adhesion rather than degrading it. This amendment to the theory may be required to model interactions that appear repulsive.

Hebb processors with their rear read points in the distant past would open up long-distance communication channels in space time, giving us the by-now familiar experience of looking millions of years into the past through powerful telescopes, to see galaxies as they were when the universe was young. The communication would be instantaneous, but from an old source; not slow from a new source.

06-18-2019: The big bang:

I conjecture that the universe began in a singularity for a trivial reason: it initially had no way to represent information, let alone correlations, because all the incoming monomers were PTEs, identical in size and having the smallest possible size. A slow direct condensation reaction in the monomer pool then gradually built up larger blocks of PTEs, causing the average size of the items adding to the strands by polymerization to increase progressively. The standard deviation of the size distribution would likewise have increased. Space would have expanded rapidly at first, as predicted by the inflationary hypothesis, because the first little bit of polymerization entropy to develop would have had a disproportionate effect on the system's ability to represent information. The mass-energy of all particles has also been increasing ever since the big bang.

07-25-2019: Therefore, by equation (1), we expect that spectral lines from ancient luminous matter will be redder than comparable lines from contemporary matter, as found by Hubble, which explains the cosmological red shift.

01-17-2020: Another perspective would be that the future is a false vacuum, the past is a true vacuum, and the present is the ever-expanding boundary between. The false-vacuum decay would be driven by entropy increase, not enthalpy (i.e., heat content) decrease (which is allowed by the second law of thermodynamics), because only the interior of the true-vacuum bubble would be occupied by information (i.e., the timelines).

"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." Hamlet, II.ii

#53. Advanced Human Depopulation Model [Population, Evolutionary Psychology]

Picture 1: A four-stage model of a human depopulation event. C = cycle; growth = growth phase; depop = depopulation

PO     EP     

Red, theory; black, fact

I present in Picture 1 a four-stage model of human depopulation events that is intended to account for more data. The same two emotional programs, the anger cycle and the sadness cycle (see post #41), occur in two "generations," with the second generation having greater violence and using modified signals.

• Stage 1: depopulation by emigration; accomplishes dispersal of the human species; coordinated by an exchange of anger signals;
• Stages 2-4: depopulation by mass murder: accomplishes long-term population density confinement within limits;
• Stage 2: coordinated by an asymmetric exchange of contempt and sadness signals; has similarities with cannibalism;
• Stage 3: total war program; coordinated by an exchange of anger signals with mimicry added;
• Stage 4: loss of civilization; triggered by a repudiation of the social contract by trusted elites with grudges: coordinated by increasing paralysis on the part of victims and increasing cynicism on the part of perpetrators. May be too recent an evolutionary development to have an efficient halting signal.

Nevertheless, the modes of worship of Islam are the best place to look for such a signal (06-02-2019: or other remedy) if it exists. 

In this connection, the Islamic prayer discipline has extraordinary potential to alter brain physiology, based on variations in blood flow to this organ, known to be highly sensitive to same. The variations would come about as a result of the highly regimented posture changes occurring during Islamic prayer. I have coded these postures according to the probable effect on blood pressure measured at the brain, and the result looks like this:

Picture 2. The inferred brain physiology of Islamic prayer. Source of data: YouTube, "Time to pray with Zacky," accessed 05-23-2019.

 Shown are my inferred variations in brain oxygenation during two rakat, or units of prayer. Bowing is coded the same as sitting, namely 1. Prostration is coded as 2 and standing is coded as 0. Some forms of Islam prescribe up to 19 rakat per day. Special procedures (Sujud Sahwi) exist for fixing prayers performed erroneously due to "forgetfulness" but this "forgetfulness" I find suggestive of temporary brain dysfunction due to lack of oxygen from getting up too quickly, possibly at about minute 2, above.

06-02-2019: Unprompted revision for clarity and sensitivity: The above observation is to help establish that Islamic prayer manipulates a variable that matters, always an important issue at the outset of a research project. You don't want to waste taxpayer money blindly researching variable after variable and concluding at great expense merely that none of them was relevant.

#51. A Theory of Christianity [Evolutionary Psychology, Population]

EP     PO     

Red, theory; black, fact.

My gut told me that there is more to be said about Christianity than what I wrote or implied in Post #50. My doubts about the completeness of my work 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.

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 (See Post #50 for explanations of these terms.). This 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.

05-06-2022: 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. 

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 (See Post #41) 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.

03-25-2019: 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 wrongly identified as the end of time/history, but remember that we deal here with an approximate theory.

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,” for the sake of variety, one imagines. 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 signalling.

03-02-2024: 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.

#50. A Naturalistic Theory of Worship [Evolutionary Psychology, Population]

Anytown, Canada, Apr. 11.

EP     PO     

Red, theory; black, fact.

Preamble

As discussed in Post #48, religion has a theory part and an applied part. I have termed the latter the ‘pragma’ of religion, which is basically 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 pragma.

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. (For an introduction to Calhoun's research, see paragraph 7, Post #37.) 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?

I focus here 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 pragma works, 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

In Post #40 I surmise that 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. In Post #2, I surmise that 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 is conjectured to have two phases: a first phase that produces population-density decrease by emigration, and a second phase 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 phase 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 (The “anger cycle,” see Post #41) to lock non-altruists out of the process so that the behavior 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. (See “The Sadness Cycle,” Post #41). 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 atrociously 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 behavior-modification program, which acts on the emotional self. 

04-03-2019: Rational override based on some creed may begin the work of extirpating someone's anger or sadness cycle, but behavior modification by pragma 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. <06-14-2021: 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. One tends to think that this will be an issue with contemptuous types. Clearly, we are dealing here with someone whose contempt-signaler role has caused them to become downwardly mobile.

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. <11-21-2020: 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. This idea was expressed as “giving something to the dispersal drive” in Post #35.

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.

 (05-23-2024: The tree is gone, apparently a victim of urban buildup. The nearest present-day address may be 179 Clarence, Ottawa.)