The Purple Koolaid Playtime Show!

Richard Dawkins: "Nice Guys Finish First"

This film explains that "survival of the fittest" does not necessarily mean "...of the strongest", but of the perpetuation of the most successful reproductive strategies.

Versus

Mental JPEGS and the Evolution of the False Dichotomy

Al Sharpton was in the news yet again, this time for his defense of the stripper who accused several Duke University lacrosse players of rape.

Why were the Duke lacrosse players so widely presumed guilty before being proven innocent? Is it because many automatically equate "white, male" with "oppressor" and "black, female" with "oppressed"? Is it because "lynch mob mentality" really knows no color?

So many others are commenting on this case that yet another entry in the blogosphere would be redundant. So let's move on to a more thematic topic.

For any reader who assumes these past two entries have been about defending white guys while criticizing blacks, or have been making any presumptions about my race, sex, place in the political spectrum, etc. then you probably haven't been thinking outside your personal Crayola box.

In the book "Blink", Malcolm Gladwell discusses how the human mind has been programmed to make "snap judgments"; which are often based on earlier learning experiences. Our minds grasp a learned concept; it is compressed into a kind of shorthand form of information and then stored in memory for quick reference. I'll refer to these here as "mental jpegs". As with jpegs, complexity, nuance and details often get lost, and in addition are usually contaminated with personal bias of some sort. This is the brain's way of economizing energy, which really came in handy back in the days when snap judgments were more of a matter of life or death.

Mental jpegs are roughly defined as a subset of ideas, assumptions, traits or characteristics. Conversely, a partial or incomplete set of ideas or characteristics can elicit a mental jpeg label with the assumption that all other ideas, characteristics, etc. are associated with them. (For instance, assuming that someone who discusses evolution also votes Democratic.)

One of the shortest shorthand forms of thinking is "us vs. them". Either something is "on our side", or it's "against us". Judging from the universal popularity of sports, video games and other forms of competitive behavior, we are seemingly programmed to react in such a manner so we can enjoy combat or sparring of some sort. Or perhaps, too, this is rooted in our social/tribal makeup, based on an instinctual need for group solidarity. ...In fact, neuroscientists more recently performed a study that demonstrated that partisan thought is rooted in the unconscious. Note this particularly glaring example of "affiliation over idea".

The power of this kind of reflexive mental jpeg has been demonstrated time and time again throughout the course of human history. It appears to be an innate part of our nature and nobody seems to be immune to it no matter what political party, nationality, race, sex, educational background or affiliation. It appears to arouse a certain irrational combative mode of behavior and often gets in the way of problem-solving.

If we really need to harbor any particular dichotomies, perhaps they should be: "is this thinking, or is this reacting?"

For Shame, You People

Every so often, as do most webmasters, I check my Referring Stats page to view the kind traffic I get on this site.* Most of the viewers who found this blog via search engines should be commended for their relatively intelligent queries, such as searching for images associated with "nationalism" or "hasty generalization".

Occasionally , however, viewers discover this blog via Sedition.com -- a respectable blog in itself, but the disturbing part is that more often than not they've arrived via this page, which was designed as a search query trap by using the keywords "young nude girls". In other words, the viewers found *that* page while doing a search for "young nude girls". (Take a look at Sedition's page to read some very interesting "statistics".**)

A few dryly objective words I'd like to say on the subject and how it relates to certain themes of this blog. First, search engines are proving to be a neat little sociological tool into probing the behavior of our supposedly technologically advanced society. Never underestimate the power of the inner monkey, folks.***

Second, sexual attraction to pubescent (and younger) females is unfortunately more common than we'd like to think, and most likely rooted in our primal ancestry -- back in the day when hominids worried more about cave bears and marauding tribes than school and mortgage payments. **** With higher mortality rates and a lifespan of only 40-odd years or so, the species couldn't afford for its females to wait 25 years to become fertile. ...In fact, it was only fairly recently in human history that the teen years have been considered subadult (weren't Romeo and Juliet only 13?) Civilization was a bit less complex a few hundred years ago.

Moreover, among social/ tribal/ heirarchical primates, it is the male's quest to elevate his rank and acquire mates. ...Now, among many different species, it is the females who ultimately decide which males will mate with them. But males of certain primate species have learned to circumvent being left out of the mating game. Lower-ranking male Hamadryas baboons, for instance, may kidnap juvenile females in order to start their own harem. Kidnapping juvenile females fulfills both the male's desire to be higher-ranking, the desire for control and the desire for mates.

So anyhow, it must be one of those "unevolved" things, because personally, I can't fathom the thought of having an intimate relationship with someone who isn't on a similar emotional/intellectual level. Which leads to the alternate explanation that those with a sexual attraction to children are themselves emotionally at a more childlike level -- or need to have absolute control in relationships so prefer something easier to control. Or just plain old f--ed up.

Either way, if you found this page while actually doing a search for "young nude girls" (or "little lolitas", "young nymphets", "preteen nudists", etc.), you're probably more than likely rather low on the social totem pole; a reject; a control freak and in any case, a potential lawbreaker. And be thankful this site isn't using a site tracker that ID's your IP number, like I'm sure law enforcement officials have figured out using in order to really identify potential offenders.

What -- so you think those MySpace pages you stalk around through are all for real? Don't you losers have a clue as to what kind of surveillance technology they have these days?

(This post kind of relates to the previous post about birds. Stay tuned to find out how!)

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*The Stats page provides no information about the viewers other than the address they found this blog through.

**Can you identify the logical flaw in the interpretation?

***I suppose I ought to toss out a few words and phrases myself just to see if it'll drive up traffic so I can put some ads n' stuff on here and make some pocket change: Wikipedia, American Idol, Project Runway, Sanjaya Malakar, XBox, Paris Hilton, Harry Potter, Orlando Bloom, Iraq, cephalopods, global warming, oil peak, polar bears, Britney Spears no underwear, flat screen TV, ring tones, file your taxes, bankruptcy, radioblog, bebo, penis, pierced, clitoris, nfl, wwf, nokia, xanax, hezbollah, Banksy, Borat, EU, refinancing, Iraq, North Korea, Pope Benedict, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, little lolitas, foot fetish... ...if the results prove interesting I'll post them in the future.

****I'd like to see the IDers explain this one better than evolution can.

Friday Entertainment Picks

"What's going on in the world of today's marketers and advertisers? What are the new and surprising methods they're using to decipher who we are and what we want? And, where is this taking us?"The Persuaders", a Frontline presentation and another video on the PurpleKoolaid.com must-see list.

The New York Dolls live! Click the link to see the video Dance Like a Monkey! (I know, the YouTube upload had been featured on P.Z. Myers' blog earlier, but this link leads to the record label site and a crisper, cleaner version. Can you spot the Flying Spaghetti Monster?)

The Russian Fox Experiment (and its implications)

Are Humans Just Chibi Apes?

Back in the 1950s, Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev initiated a breeding experiment with silver foxes, selecting only the most tame individuals for breeding.  After several generations of this selecting for tameness, the resulting offspring showed not only behavioral, but morphological changes associated with a state of "arrested development".  These changes are echoed in all other types of domestic animals. 

The popular press has recently picked up on this story, concluding with implications regarding human evolution.  This theory has been proposed by the science community for years -- but only now has technology become available to study and compare the genes associated with this process.

For readers unschooled in evolutionary theory, this entry is not to imply that the "domestication" process immediately creates brand-new species.  What it does imply is how physiological and behavioral traits are altered within a species (and fits in with certain themes of this blog).  The implications here are that past hominids might have lived a wilder and more primitive existence and have since been supplanted with their brainier and more creative counterparts -- and we are continuing to move more towards that direction. 

And considering that economic success in modern society has depended more and more on cooperation, subordination, and other traits of "tameness", does this imply that populations in more advanced nations are evolving more in the direction of a state of "arrested development?"  Hmmm... :-) 

Regardless of the answer, I'm betting those tame Russian foxes will be on the wish list of many Americans willing to shell out some major capital for the next big pet fad. 

Further reading:

Neoteny and Human Evolution

Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication

Genetic Effects of Domestication

[update]:

Video clips:

Belyaev Experiment:  Docile Foxes

NOVA clip from "Dogs and More Dogs"

Evolution of the Hasty Generalization

What's your sign? I'm a Virgo. That means I'm hypercritical, a perfectionist, an elitist, super-neat and... well... acquaintances might tell you otherwise.*** :)

I'm also half Italian. This implies I'm temperamental, clannish, and vengeful if wronged. The other half is German, which adds a dash ofoverbearing seriousness; Scots-Irish which makes me feisty and stubborn; and French -- which explains why I often feel self-defeated. :-P

Thanks to pop "news" blurbs we can now learn about other "classifications" as well. I'm a firstborn sibling, which mean I'm more achievement-oriented and feel my proper place is higher in the pecking order.

(That was the "nature" part. Now for the "nurture" part:) I was also born and raised an American, which means I'm kind of privileged and obnoxious with a sense of entitlement a mile wide.

Classification (and stereotyping) is nothing new. People have an inborn tendency to classify -- not only others, but themselves as well. It's an economized way of info-processing: place X number of attributes in a folder for easy reference. This meme-receptor most likely originated back in the days when no individual could really afford the time to stop and analyze a situation. In our distant past, to hesitate could have very well meant the difference between life and death. Fight or flight? Friend or foe? (This is probably the origin of dichotomous "thinking" as well, which I'll address in a later essay.) :-)

Some of the classification-ability -- especially with regard to basic mechanisms such as avoiding danger, finding food and reproduction -- seem to be so time-honored and ancient as to have become instinctual. As the brain and environment became more complex, greater memory capacity enabled more association between attributes and potential consequences, and learning certain associations was often useful in terms of survival strategy. (e.g. "yellow and black stripes = stings, so must avoid")

Humans -- having the most memory and processing capacity of any other creature, so to speak -- have advanced their categorization-ability to include abstract concepts --including the development of language. This ability to create more complex categorizations has enabled our highly advanced and complex social realm. Paradoxically, the ability to economize thought may be a time-saving means of efficiency, but it can also lead to non-thinking if left unchecked and unchallenged.

For the readers who don't know me, I won't reveal too much more about myself for the time being. Should it matter? This blog is about ideas, but the perception of the ideas themselves can often become tainted by the perceiver's own prejudices towards those who originate them. It can be a two way street: people will often assign attributes based on someone's appearance, gender, race, age, etc. or conversely, they will assume something about a person unseen, based on the ideas they've expressed.

Back in the days when I posted to newsgroups, tossing out ideas just for the hell of it, there were a few certain other posters who didn't understand my motives, instead interpreting them on a more subjective and personal level. It was actually kind of funny, as I was attacked by some as being "right wing conservative" and by others as a "left-wing sympathizer". My gender was even called into question. (Of course the logical fallacy in these instances would be the ad hominem [placing focus on the person instead of the idea or argument]).

On the other hand, there have been those in the "real life" realm who are only familiar with my superficial appearance, making assumptions based on stereotypes presumably associated with said superficialities. ...Or, they make preconceived judgments based on their experiences with other, different individuals who happen to share similar attributes (e.g. age, gender, race, etc.) And often they're flat-out wrong, too. As the saying goes, "cliches [and stereotypes] represent lazy thinking." (Although much of the time, I wouldn't even classify this as "thinking", but feeling or "conditioned response".)

For all our crowing over our advanced brain capacity, the "ancient" is still with us: as primates, we are a highly visual species, we still tend to judge individuals based on more on the physical and the superficial.

This is all intuitive, no-brainer stuff, of course, and we're all guilty of it to a degree. But remember that this is one of the favorite tools of the mediocrats -- be they pundits, advertisers or politicians -- who use stereotyping to good effect -- selling their ideas through manipulation
of the mind's untrained weaknesses. What is especially ironic is that, despite our living in a more advanced and technological world, the amount of information, the overwhelming numbers of other people we might encounter each day and the fact that our lives are busier in general make us all more susceptible to reverting to this "mental shorthand." When we're overwhelmed with too many other tasks, it's easier to be drawn to the products, pundits, people and slogans who use the quickest and most appealing shortcuts that aren't going to put a strain on the brain too much. (See my earlier essay on McMemes).

The critical thinker, on the other hand, knows how to recognize the difference between thinking and conditioned response.

Further reading:

The Symbolic Species by Terrence Deacon
The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science by Steven Mithen
How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
List of Cognitive Biases (Wikipedia)
Do First Impressions Matter?
Can A Dog Be Racist?
Stereotyping (Wikipedia)
Carl Jung (Wikipedia)

***( For the record I don't believe in astrology at all (I see it as a silly relic of the late '60's), and I'm amazed that newspapers, magazines, etc. still devote substantial space to it.)

The Triumph of Cute

...Or, the Evolutionary Secret of Cats, Women and Homo Sapiens

About a week and a half ago, this little fleabitten kitten showed up in my front yard, so emaciated you could see his backbone protruding. As he trotted up to me, my immediate thought was to rescue him from an imminent fate of starvation.

He was given a temporary home on my front porch as my tenants and I provided him with food and shelter. Signs were posted around town and at my workplace -- and within days, a Good Samaritan took him away to a vet appointment and a new home.

Imagine a race of giant beings who will provide you with free food, shelter and backrubs simply for looking pretty and being friendly. ...For no practical or logical reason. Never underestimate the visual power (and subsequent behavior manipulation) of Cute.

Makes me think of humans in terms of symbiotic enablers. Would anyone have been as charitable towards a starving rat or opossum? All pets have to do is look and act cute, and we feed and shelter them. Because of certain qualities we find endearing, humans help perpetuate their kind -- enabling the survival of even the ones that may have lost skills their ancestors needed to survive in the wild. ...After all, how many packs of Pomeranians have you seen chasing after their prey in the woods?

The late Stephen Jay Gould wrote of the power of Cute in his essay, "A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse" pointing to biologist Konrad Lorenz who "...argues that humans use the characteristic differences in form between babies and adults as important behavioral cues. He believes that features of juvenility trigger 'innate releasing mechanisms' for affection and nurturing in adult humans. When we see a living creature with babyish features, we feel an automatic surge of disarming tenderness. The adaptive value of this response can scarcely be questioned, for we must nurture our babies."

Cute is what helps enable cats and dogs to share homes with humans . It's also why babies and children can get away with being irrational and demanding; why women can get away with being irrational and demanding; why Brad Pitt can get away with being a jerk; why Disney became a multi-billion-dollar corporate and cultural empire and why Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter think they can get away with what they say.

The attraction to Cute has such a hold on the human race it has perhaps even shaped our evolution. A current favorite theory is the trend towards neoteny;, possibly due to a masculine preference for more youthful features and compliant nature in females, gradually resulting in the entire species evolving into a state of arrested development -- and subsequent larger brain size and learning capacity.

There was an ongoing debate on a newsgroup I sometimes read regarding evolution and sex differences. One of the posters took issue with the idea that most women are less rational, more needy and not as competitive and hardworking (career-wise) as men are. It may not be politically correct to say this, but if superficial features are all that is needed to get one's DNA reproduced, certain other attributes may eventually fall by the wayside. In fact, it's possible to see parallels between modern human women and the domestication of animals. I'll be discussing this topic more in depth in a future essay.

Of course, having a good personality helps, too. If that kitten hadn't been so personable, chances are, he'd have been dismissed as just another feral cat.

Devolution!

Drinking The Beer...

This commercial for Guinness Beer could be the theme video for this blog. Wouldn't be surprised if this was meant as a tweak or nod to memeticists.

Other than its stated tagline, the ad suggests that the beer satisfies something deeply primal... but then, so do many of the other things that we're being sold.

[Pedantic quibble: some of the critters in the devolution sequence have absolutely nothing to do with human evolution, but I'm assuming that the flying and jumping going on were included to make the rhythm and flow of the motion sequence more interesting. ...Well, we get the basic point, anyways.]