#39. The 1950 Ramp [population, evolutionary psychology, engineering, neuroscience]

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Red, theory; black, fact

A schematic of a simple rate-of-increase controller mechanism

Historical 

Since about 1950, the world population has been increasing along a remarkably steady ramp function with no slackening in the rate of increase yet apparent, although one cycle of oscillation in the slope occurred during the Sixties. Malthusian reasoning predicts an exponential increase, which this is not. Several lines of evidence point to the idea that humans have a subconscious population controller in their heads, and yet such a controller would have leveled out the increase by now. Until now, no theory has sufficed to explain the facts.

Human Population is Being Controlled for Endless Trouble

The natural population curve for humans in good times may be a saw-tooth waveform, with population ramps alternating with political convulsions that result in a large group being expelled permanently, resulting in the precipitous but limited drop in local population density that ends the saw-tooth cycle. This cycle accomplishes the ecological dispersal function. The population must ramp up for a time to sustainably create the numbers needed for the expulsions. The WHO population curve shows only a ramp because it is a worldwide figure and therefore population losses in expelling regions are balanced by population increases in welcoming regions. This also implies that human population has been increasing in a way unrestrained by food or resource availability or any other external constraint since 1950, to now.

Clearly, human population is being controlled; not to a constant absolute density, but to a constant rate of increase. Population density would go up along the much faster, steeper, and more disastrous exponential curve of Malthus if there were actually no controller.

Neuroscience Aspects

Researchers should look first for such a controller in the hypothalamus, already known to control other variables, such as temperature, by feedback principles.

"Nature does not reinvent the wheel" [quote from my old Professor], which I understand to mean that once a brain structure evolves to serve a particular computational function, it will be tapped for all future needs for such a calculation. This process may make it grow larger or develop sub-nuclei, but additional, independent nuclei for the same computation will never evolve.

Engineering Aspects 

The population controller may contain a conventional PID controller. To make it control rate of increase rather than absolute population density, you put a differentiator in the feedback pathway. If you are of the opinion that human population control is urgent, then you must knock out this differentiator and replace it with a simple feed-through connection. 

Back to Neuroscience 

Fortunately, one common way for evolution to implement differentiation in mammals is to begin with such a feed-through connection and supplement it with an inhibitory, slow, parallel feed-forward connection. If this is the case here, then you  inhibit the feed-forward pathway pharmacologically with sufficient specificity and the job is done. Subjectively, the effect of such a drug would be to take away people's ability to get used to higher population density in deciding how many children to have. An increased propensity to riot should not occur.

The political convulsions that produce dispersal would be triggered by the value on the integrator of the PID controller rising above a threshold. The amygdala of the brain may mediate this. Consistent with this, bilateral removal of the amygdala and hippocampus in monkeys is known to have a profound taming effect accompanied by hypersexuality, known as the Kluver-Bucy syndrome.

#38. Can Irreducible Complexity Evolve? [genetics, evolution]

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Red, theory; black, fact

2 x 2

The Key Insight

Sexual reproduction may allow the evolution of irreducible complexity by increasing the intrinsic complexity of the basic building block of change, the mutation.

Irreducible Complexity 

Influential biologist Richard Dawkins wrote in "The God Delusion" that a genuine case of irreducible complexity will never be found in biology. A case of irreducible complexity would be some adaptation that would require an intelligent designer because it could never evolve one mutation at a time, and Dawkins believes there is no such intelligent designer in biology.

In classic natural selection, each mutation must be individually beneficial to its possessor in order for selection to increase its prevalence in the population to the point where the next incremental, one-mutation improvement becomes statistically possible. In this way, all manner of wondrous things are supposed to evolve bit by tiny bit. You have irreducible complexity if an advantageous evolutionary innovation requires two mutations,  but neither confers any advantage in isolation and so cannot be selected up to a sufficiently high frequency that the second mutation is likely to happen in the background of the first.

However, I am seeing irreducible complexity everywhere these days. 

Possible Cases of Irreducible Complexity

For example, your upper-jaw dentition must mesh accurately with that of your lower jaw or you can't eat. Thus, the process of evolutionary foreshortening of the muzzle of the great apes to the flat human face could never have happened, assuming that a single mutation affects only the upper or lower jaw. 

Furthermore, how can any biological signaling system evolve one mutation at a time? At a minimum, you always need both the transmitter adaptation and the receiver adaptation, not to mention further mutations to connect the receiver circuit to something useful.

The evolution of altruism presents a similar problem. The lonely first altruist in the population is always at a disadvantage in competition with the more selfish non-mutants unless it also has a signaling system that lets it recognize fellow altruists (initially, close relatives) and a further mutation that places the altruistic behavior under the control of the receiver part of this system. Thus, altruists would only be altruistic to their own kind, the requirement for altruism to be selected in the presence of selfishness. Finally, the various parts of this system must be indissolubly linked in a way that the non-altruists cannot fake.

A Solution   

Consider the crossing-over events that occur during meiosis as complex mutations: two changes to the genome from a single event, each corresponding to one end of the DNA segment that translocates. In crossing over, two homologous chromosomes pair up along their length and swap a long segment of DNA, a process requiring two double-chain breaks on each end, and their corresponding repairs. A very far-reaching change to the genetic information can occur during crossing-over that is termed unequal crossing-over. This form of the process arises because of inaccuracies, sometimes major, in the initial alignment of the homologous chromosomes prior to crossing-over. When the process is finished, one chromosome has been shortened and the other has been lengthened. This is the major source of gene duplication, which, in turn, is a major source of junk DNA, the part that is classified as broken genes.

A Mechanism for the Evolution of Complexity 

Anatomical features such as jaw length and axon targets may be controlled by variations in gene dose that originate in unequal crossing-over.

In this way, a concerted change affecting multiple distinct sites becomes possible. The two ends of the recombinant segment can in principle be functionally unrelated initially. They become related if both are affected by the same complex mutation and the entire change increases fitness and is thus selected.

A single complex mutation could in principle produce a communication channel at one stroke because of the number of simultaneous changes involved. 

Statistical Issues

The probability of a combination of simultaneous local changes being beneficial to the organism is much smaller on mathematical grounds than is the probability of a given single-nucleotide change being beneficial. However, these unfavourable statistics are at least partly offset by the existence of a dedicated system for producing complex mutations in large numbers, namely meiosis, part of the process of maturation of egg and sperm cells.

The Big Picture 

Complex mutations provide a way for a species to discontinuously jump into new niches as they open up, possibly explaining how a capacity for this kind of mutation could spread and become characteristic of surviving species over time. This idea also provides another explanation for the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record.

#37. The Fallacy of Justice [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

The Biology of Badness

Evil and criminality may sub-serve either dispersal or preemptive population reduction, both valuable biological processes that tend to prolong the survival of species. 

The algorithms for achieving these ends would have been created over time by some form of evolution.

Evolution and the Role of Emotion

The genetically inherited parts of our behavior enter consciousness as emotions, and can therefore be easily identified. The main outlines of civilization are probably due to the inherited behavior component, and not to the reasoning, conscious mind, which is often just a detail-handler. How could civilization rest on a process that can't even remember what happened last weekend?

Thus, humans have a dual input to behavior, emotion and reason. The above arguments show that evil and criminality come from the emotional input. Yet the entire deterrence theory of justice assumes the opposite, by giving the person a logical choice: "You do this, we do that, and you won't like it. So you don't do this, right?"

However, I think that people commit crimes for emotional reasons. As usual, the criminal's reasoning faculties are just an after-the-decision detail handler. The direction that this detail handler then takes is fascinatingly monstrous, but this does not mean that crime begins in reason.

Conclusion: the deterrence theory of justice is based on a category error.

Past and Future Responses to Badness

Religion, with its emphasis on emotion, was all the formal "law enforcement system" anyone needed up until only about 200 years ago, at the industrial revolution. We may be able to go beyond where religion takes us by means of a disease model of criminality.

It does make some sense to lock criminals up, because with less freedom they cannot physically commit as many crimes. Many prisons become dungeons, however, because of the public's desire for revenge. However, all revenge-seeking belongs to the dispersal/depopulation dynamic and is thus part of the problem. A desire for revenge may follow a crime very predictably, but logically, it is a non-sequitur.

A more nuanced theory of crime prevention is possible, where logical and technological constraints on behavior complement efforts to reduce the motivation for committing crimes at the source: the individual's perception of the fairness of society, which will be due to a combination of objective realities and the filters through which they are viewed. However, I originally wrote as I did because I don't think that logical and technological constraints are the squeaky wheel at the moment.

#36. Two Kinds of War [evolutionary psychology, engineering, neuroscience]

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Red, theory; black, fact

A Nazi Enigma code machine (Canadian War Museum)

There are probably two basic biological uses for human anger: dispersal, and providing an emergency brake on population increase that avoids Malthusian disasters by triggering wars. The second kind of war ends life without being notably efficient in producing mass migration. 

The Past

I have long wondered why the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to include two gentlemen in charge of warlike matters. Why the apparent duplication? The above may give the reason: one (with the bow) represents wars of depopulation and the other (with the sword) represents wars of displacement.

The Coventry Blitz produced so much mass migration into the countryside surrounding that city that it was an embarrassment for the British government, calling into question Britain’s willingness to fight. Was Coventry some kind of watershed, before which the conflict was of the displacement type, and afterward, of the depopulation type?

The facts bear this out, considering Nazi treatment of the Jews as a litmus test of the zeitgeist of that time. After coming to power in 1933, the Nazis aimed at forcing the Jews to emigrate, and by the outbreak of hostilities in September, 1939, 250,000 of Germany’s 437,000 Jews had done so. The Coventry Blitz was in November, 1940. The Holocaust began, in terms of men, women, and children all being targeted for execution, in August, 1941, nine months later. The German zeitgeist seems to have shifted gears in the fall of 1940, aiming at depopulation rather than displacement. I am obviously assuming that the evolutionary, selectionist justification of the Holocaust given at the time, in forums such as the 1942 Wannsee conference, was a rationalization.

A Sociological Theory

Wars brought on by population pressure may begin as the displacement type, and if this does not result in sufficient local reduction in population pressure after a certain time, the hostilities shift gears to the depopulation type of conflict. 

If human population is under PID [proportional-integral-derivative] control by the subconscious, the event causing the shift could be the amount of signal accumulated on the integrator rising above some threshold. This may actually be a second threshold, with the first and lower threshold controlling the outbreak of a war of displacement.

A paradoxical outcome of Calhoun's overpopulation experiments on rodents can be explained in terms of such an integrator. 

Calhoun’s Classical Experiment 

By providing unlimited food and water to a founder population of rats or mice, with regular bedding changes and exclusion of predators and parasites, the rodents were allowed to increase their population to fabulous numbers. However, the rodents were given no extra space. As the population soared to incredible densities, all kinds of pathological behaviors appeared along with a great deal of violence. Birth rates plummeted after a "behavioral sink" developed, and remained low, never recovering, as the population decreased all the way to zero.

An Engineering-inspired Theory 

My interpretation of the behavioral sink is that it is integrator windup, a pathology of humanly engineered PID controllers, and possibly natural ones too. The signal accumulated on the integrator has been building for so long, and the population crash is so sudden, that not enough time is spent at population densities below set point to cancel the "control debt" on the integrator, so it continues to insanely command a zero birth rate even as the population is heading for zero.

Philosophers May Have Noticed This

George Santayana wrote that "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." [source, Wiki quotes, accessed 06-11-2018] Which sounds like integrator windup to me.

The Future 

A third and highest threshold of the control debt may exist, which, if crossed, leads to the human behavioral sink and the possible destruction of the human race due to essentially psychological causes. In the behavioral sink, I postulate that everyone would be a ZPG (Zero Population Growth) fanatic and unable to change without pharmacological help. (Good old booze? It may not be that simple.)

#35. The Thought Process Through the Ages [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

In the beginning, there was theology. At some point, intellectual endeavor split into wrestling with reality questions vs. morality questions. Then people had to figure out when to go with your gut and when not to.

_________________

Thought sources	Inputs	Output insights
		Reality (What is)	Blend	Morality (Thus…)
PGSd+senses	Emotion	politicsc		religionc
	Blend	astrologyb ↕	← theologya →	Jewish lawb ↕
Education+senses	Reason	sciencec		lawc

a. primordial condition

b. output distinction added

c. input distinction added

d. evolution; see post 22

If politics and science seem like strange bedfellows, consider that ancient rulers used to consult astrologers before making major decisions.

Just as emotion must not be allowed to contaminate scientific thought, is it equally true that reason must not be allowed to contaminate religious thought? Is failure to observe this restriction the cause of religious schisms?

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

EP

Red, theory; black, fact

The Cabot Trail, where you might see a whale

Just as the whale must hold its breath to obtain its food from the sea, so must a human restrain his or her anger to obtain a paycheck from society. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy trails.

Photo by Elyse Turton on Unsplash

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

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Red, theory; black, fact

A Genetics Theory 

All sexually reproducing species may have a long-range guidance system that that could be called proxy natural selection, or preferably, post-zygotic gamete selection (PGS). This is basically a fast form of evolution in which particular body cells, the gametes, are the units of selection, not individuals. Selection is conjectured to happen post-zygotically (i.e., sometime after the beginning of development, or even in adulthood) but is retroactive to the egg and sperm that came together to create the individual. 

Each gamete is potentially unique because of the crossing-over genetic rearrangements that happen during its maturation. This theory explains the biological purpose of this further layer of uniqueness beyond that due to the sexual mixing of chromosomes, which would otherwise appear to be redundant.

Emotions Represent Fitness 

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

The Corresponding Mechanistic Theory 

A further correlate of an emotion beyond the cognitive and autonomic-nervous-system components would be the neurohumoral component, expressed as chemical releasing and inhibiting factors that enter the general circulation via the portal vessels of the hypothalamus, blood vessels which are conventionally described as affecting only the anterior pituitary gland. These factors may reach the stem-like cells that mature into egg and sperm, where they set reversible epigenetic controls on the level of crossing-over that will occur during differentiation. 

Large amounts of crossing-over are viewed as retroactively penalizing the gametes leading to the individual by obfuscating or overwriting with noise specifically the genetic uniqueness of said original gametes. In contrast, low levels of further crossing-over reward the original gametes with high penetrance into the next generation. 

Here we have all the essential ingredients of classical natural selection, and all the potential, in a process that solves problems on an historical timescale.

The Limited Scope of Crossing-over

Crossing-over happens only between homologous chromosomes, which are the paternal and maternal copies of the same chromosome. Human cells have 46 chromosomes because they have 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. 

The homologous-chromosome-specificity of crossing-over suggests that the grand optimization problem that is human evolution has been broken down into 23 smaller sub-problems for the needs of the PGS process, each of which can be solved independently, without interactions with any of the other 22, and which involves a 23-fold reduction in the number of variables that must be simultaneously optimized. 

In computing, this problem-fragmentation strategy greatly increases the speed of optimization. I conjecture that it is one of the features that makes PGS faster than classical natural selection.

Do Chromosome-specific Signaling Pathways Exist?

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

Naively, this theory also appears to require 23 second messengers to transfer the signals from cell surface to nucleus, which sounds excessive. Perhaps the second messengers form a combinatorial code, which would reduce the number required by humans to log₂ (23) = 4.52, or 5 in round numbers. This is much better. Five second-messenger systems are known, these being based on: cyclic AMP, inositol triphosphate, cyclic GMP, arachidonic acid, and small GTPases (e.g., ras). The AND-element that would be required for decoding could be implemented straightforwardly as a linear sequence of transcription-factor binding sites along the DNA strand. However, many mammalian species have many more than the 32 chromosome pairs needed to saturate a 5-bit address space. If we expand the above list of second messengers with the addition of the calcium/calmodulin complex, the address space expands to 64 pairs of homologous chromosomes, for a total ploidy of 128. This seems sufficient to accommodate all the mammals. Thus, a combinatorial second-messenger code representable as a five- or six-bit binary integer in most organisms would control the deposition of the epigenetic marks controlling crossing-over propensity.

It Gets Bigger

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

The requirement that the evolution of each chromosome contribute independently to the total increase in fitness suggests that a chromosome specifies a system, like the nervous system or the digestive system. We seem to have only 11 systems, not 23, but more may be defined in the future.

Illustration credit: By Edmund Beecher Wilson - Figure 2 of: Wilson, Edmund B. (1900) The cell in Development and Inheritance (2nd ed.), Category:New York: The Macmillan Company, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3155599