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A Beginner’s Guide to Supervised and Unsupervised Learning

1 minute read

Published: August 17, 2022

Read this to gain some intuition about the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning.

A Beginner’s Guide to Generative Adversarial Networks

5 minute read

Published: October 22, 2021

Read this to gain some intuition on how generative adversarial networks solve problems.

booknotes

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Published: December 01, 2022

This book explores the question of why some regions of the world developed and expanded faster than others.

The continent of Eurasia had a significant advantage relative to others, that being a east-west principal axis. Longitudinaly, lengths of days and general climate vary slightly, allowing for propogation of domesticable plants, which later enabled trade. Continents with north-south axes (Africa, the Americas) saw climate differences and varying lengths of days, making it difficult for abundandant crops to spread
Eurasia had the largest abundance of nutritionally rich cereals (wheat and barley) and pulses (peas, lentils, chickpeas), which have great protein contents and are simple to farm
Eurasia had the most choice in large domesticable animals (cow, sheep, horses), in part due to the abundance of nutritional fauna
- Certain criteria have to be met for an animal to be domesticable. For example, in Africa there exist zebras, quite similar to horses. Yet, zebras are assholes and bite humans. Humans also attempted to domesticate gazelles, but in confined areas gazelles start wil’in out to the point of death
Agriculture allowed populations to flourish, due to the sedentary lifestyle one could have children roughly every 2 years. In nomadic hunter gatherer societies one had to wait until the previous child could walk (roughly 4 years) before having another, as the mother could only handle a single child at once while on the move. This was enforced via lactational amenorrhea, abstinence, infanticide, or abortion
Domesticated crops and animals led to farms, farms led to the abundance of food and larger populations, leading to more potential for specialization, followed by technological developments such as writing, transport (the wheel), and guns
Densely populated areas also proved fertile ground for viral development. Over generations, those living in dense regions developed immunity to certain viruses, however when this viruses were exposed to a group for the first time, the group would be decimated. This is how much of the Americas were conquered by the Europeans
In short, advantages arose due to luck of the draw in terms of the environment that people resided in, it had nothing to do with the colour of their skin

Elephant in the Brain

Published: December 01, 2022

A book about psychological truths that we tend to pretend don’t exist but are more or less obvious, much like the saying “the elephant in the room”. Hence the title, the elephant in the brain.

Body Language and Laughter

Body language is inherently more honest than verbal language. Words are somewhat arbitrary, but physical actions carry meaning since they are enacted
Studies have shown that women prefer the scent of males who have complimentary immune systems and more symmetric features. Same with men towards women, although women have slightly better olfactory abilities. Interestingly, homosexual men tend to prefer the scent of homosexual men as opposed to straight men when blind tested with scents from both groups
We change the tone of our voice in the response to the status of our conversation partners. An analysis of 25 Larry King interviews showed that when a guest was of higher status, Larry would match their tone, and when of lower status, the guest would match Larry’s tone
One of the best predictors of dominance is the dominance ratio: eye contact while speaking over eye contact while listening. Making less eye contact while speaking makes one less dominant. In a study, undergraduates talking to someone they thought was a high school senior had a ratio of 0.92, but when talking to college honour accepted into med school it was 0.59
Laughter is used to reinforce that “I’m just playing” attitude when circumstances arise which might, if not for the laughter, be mistaken as too serious or dangerous. This helps explain why an element of danger is often required for getting a laugh
Humour involves inviting people in playfully, carefully dialing the knob towards seriousness, and quickly falling back into play. That formula is normally what is required to open the “laughter safe”, unlocking the laughter locked inside
A danger of laughter and humour is that we don’t all share the same norms to the same degree. When we laugh at norm violations, it often serves to weaken the norms that others may wish to uphold
Two variables important to whether we find the misfortune of another funny: the degree of pain (a pin prick is funnier than death) and psychological distance (something bad happening to me isn’t funny, but to an enemy it can be)
- How hard we laugh at such edge cases says a lot about our relationship to the person experiencing pain
  Conversation, News, and Gossip
Conversation often contains text and subtext: text contains the literal information, subtext says “Look at me, I know about this information! Aren’t you impressed?”
Speaking is a way in which to advertise your knowledge and strengths to others, such that they can gauge whether you’re an ally/mate worth having
In the 4th century BCE, Demosthenes portrayed his fellow Athenians as preoccupied with the exchange of news, “… remarking on the fierce concern with news that is found in preliterate or semiliterate peoples”
Consumption
When individuals buy green products, part of their motive is to signal to others their pro-social attitude. It signals “I’m willing to forego luxury in order to help the planet.” This is known as conspicuous altruism
- One reason the Prius has a distinct shape (being a hatchback, when most popular cars at the time were sedans) is to make it distinct and enhance the advertisement that their drivers are responsible, good-willed citizens
In advertising, lifestyle advertising is the type of advertising that attempts to link a brand or product with a particular set of cultural associations
- The third person effect: when Corona runs a “find your beach” ad, you think you’re too savvy to be manipulated by that ad. You would never fall for that! But you, the high and mighty know it all, think everyone else can be manipulated, and that they will like Corona, and this pitiful ad. So next time you’re invited to a backyard party, you bring Corona since it’s a beer that is more for chilling out (like at the beach) and you believe everyone loves it
  Art
Art is a fitness signal: it displays technical and creative skill, ingenuity, but also that you have time to waste
Art has intrinsic qualities (how beautiful/captivating it is to the eye), but also extrinsic qualities (technique used, who it was created by, the era in which it was made). We tend to judge art more on its extrinsic properties. Imagine if we were to create a gallery full of replicas. Intrinsically it would look the same, but we care most that the works are original and authentic (an extrinsic quality)
Charity
Effective altruism: ensuring largest ROI on a charitable donation. Most don’t tend to research the charities they donate to, or how effectively their money will be managed by the charity
Scope neglect/insensitivity: when told that a donation will save 100/1000/10000 lives/organisms/habitats, people will not meaningfully change their donation amounts despite the changes in outcomes
Visibility: by helping donors advertise their generosity, charities incentivize more donations (i.e “I just donated blood band aids” from blood donation clinics, or selfie stations at Covid vaccination sites). Conversely, people prefer not to donate when their donation remains anonymous. Charities normally bracket donation amounts, (i.e $500-999 is a friend, $1000-1499 is a patron. Donors almost always donate to the lower bound. in other words, donors rarely give more than what they’ll be recognized for
Mating motives: when primed with mating cues, subjects of a study were found to be more willing to engage in altruistic tasks. However, these were found to be conspicuous tasks (teaching underprivileged kids, volunteering, etc) but for inconspicuous tasks (i.e take shorter showers) they showed no difference to the control group
Charity is a signal of excess wealth (or time in the case of volunteering), and an advertisement of pro-social behaviour. While conspicuous consumption and charity are both signals of excess wealth, consumption is inherently selfish while charity helps the group. This helps to explain why leaders tend to be more charitable, to help the team
Education
School advocates often argue that school teaches students how to think critically, however educational psychologists have discovered that education is narrow, and students only learn material you specifically teach them
Students learn worse when they’re graded, especially on a curve. Homework helps in math, not in English or history. Practice that is spaced out, varied, and interleaved with other learning produces more versatility, longer retention, and better mastery. It feels slower and more challenging, but works better
- Teenagers perform better when classes start later
The value in college education lies in giving students a chance to advertise the attractive qualities they already have (i.e that A in biology doesn’t mean that you’ve retained that biology knowledge)
Education is a factor of improvement (traditional view) and certification (signalling model)
Medicine
More medicine doesn’t correlate with better health. For each extra day in the ICU, patients live 40 fewer days. One study showed that an additional $1000 spent on a patient resulted [-20,5] days of life gained
Randomized control study, the RAND experiment: thousands were given either fully subsidized medical visits and treatments, some 75% discounts, some 5%. Health outcomes were found to be the same in each group, despite the fully subsidized group consuming 45% more medical aid than others
Roughly 11% of medical spending goes to patients in their final year of life, yet it’s one of the least effective kinds of medicine. It rarely succeeds in improve quality of life; heroic end of life care is rarely pleasant for the patient. Sadly, few family members are willing to advocate for lesser care, fearing it will be seen as tantamount to abandoning their beloved relative
One study tracked 3600 people over 7.5 years: non-smokers live 3 years longer than smokers, and those who exercised regularly lived 15 years longer than those who exercised a little. Diet and sleep are also likely significant factors. Medicine fails to provide any significant effect
We want the best medicine (especially when others can see it’s the best), and we want to be cared for/want to help people in need (and maximize the credit we get for it). These are the two reasons to consume and provide medicine - health and conspicuous care - and the reason we end up overtreated
Religion
Religious sacrifice sends a signal you’re willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the group and that you can be trusted (sacrificing food, money, time, status and energy)
Used as a trust mechanism. Before contracts, credit scores, and letters of reference, a good way to gauge trustworthy members in a community would be to see if they are willing to sacrifice their time to pray with the group
Orthodox beliefs (i.e exact nature of the trinity, whether cracker turns into gods flesh during communion) serve as a badge to indicate one’s tribe. If the belief happens to be a little weird, stigmatizing to non-believers, it also serves as a sacrifice
- Sports teams work the same way. The more you show support for the team, including stigmatizing behaviours like wearing face paint to a game, the more support you’ll gain from fellow fans
Absurdity of religious beliefs = strength of religious community (see strength of the Mormon community, rewards for showing loyalty in the face of common sense)
Celibacy/martyrdom are sacrifices in order to earn status within the religious community. This is called hill-climbing in biology. People will keep trying to go “up” on the social ladder, and in the religious context this eventually leads to celibacy/martyrdom. This is overindulgence to primitive urges, ironically hindering the propagation of genes. This also happens with eating fats and sugars these days, showing bravery in the military, addicts taking drugs until overdose, etc.
Politics
Apparatchik: a very loyal member of an organization who always obeys orders. Example: during Stalin’s rule, a tribute to Stalin was called for at a conference, and everyone was to applaud. Applauding went on for over 10 minutes, until the first person stopped, and some others stopped shortly after the first. These people were then killed/sent to labor camps.
Individual political behaviours are more of a performance. We want to appear loyal to the groups around us, rather than attempting to do what’s right or try to influence outcomes. The audience of the performance are our peers, local community, friends and family, and potential romantic partners
All or nothing with respect to a political organization’s views signals loyalty to that group

Happiness Hypothesis

Published: December 01, 2022

Neurological System Basics

The mind can be viewed as an elephant and a rider. The rider (our conscious thought) can direct the elephant (our more primitive neurological systems) to turn, stop, or go. But, when the elephant has a desire of its own, the rider is no match to control it
Limbic system (limbus means border/margin) wraps around rest of the brain, forming a border
- Hypothalamus: coordinates basic drives and motivations
- Hippocampus: specialized for memory
- Amygdala: specialized for emotional learning and responding
The neocortex (meaning new covering in Latin) developed later as the grey matter characteristic of the brain, providing functions such as impulse control, planning ahead, thinking, and decision making
- Individuals with a compromised prefrontal cortex normally see increases in sexual aggression, inability to control impulses
The bottom third of the prefrontal cortex is the orbitofrontal cortex, just above the eyes, and is related to emotional responses (i.e feelings of pleasure and pain)
The elephant is like the limbic system (reptilian brain), and the rider is like the neocortex. The rider evolved to serve to the elephant
Stimuli are first passed through the amygdala (part of the limbic system) prior to reaching the neocortex. Amygdala has direct connection to flight or fight response, and detects patterns associated with previous fear episodes. Therefore neural impulses tend to be negative, because we react before we can even process them, and rightfully so, since in some situations we need as immediate a reaction as possible (i.e jump scares in horror movies) • Cognitive triad of depression: I’m no good, my world is bleak, and my future is hopeless
Reciprocity
Other ultra social species (ants, bees) evolved such that all offspring are siblings, due to a single shared queen, with most offspring being sterile. Thus, the group had no problem sacrificing themselves for each other as it optimizes the continuation of genes
Humans in large societies, on the other hand, need a different strategy, as they are not all siblings and live outside the hive. Hence, reciprocity emerges - scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours
Gossip evolved to keep track of bad actors in society, gain trust of others, and gauge allegiances
A common sales tactic is to use reciprocity against you, offer something for free and people will feel an urge to return the favour
Hypocrisy
Moral hypocrisy: many studies have shown people that think they are particularly moral believe they are more likely to “do the right thing”. But, when the coin flip comes up against them (and to the benefit of someone else), they find a way to ignore what is right and follow self interest
Motivated reasoning: a one-sided search for supporting evidence only
When asked relative contributions to housework, couples combined perceived contributions come out to an average of 120%. Same with MBA students, who when asked for their contributions to a group project the total came to be 139%
Pursuit of Happiness
Progress principle: pleasure comes more from making progress towards goals than from achieving them
Adaptation principle: people’s judgements about their present state are based on whether it is better or worse than the state to which they have become accustomed
- Nerve property: nerve cells respond vigorously to new stimuli, but eventually “habituate, firing less to stimuli that they have become accustomed to”. Change contains vital information, not steady states
Genetics have a strong level on one’s average level of happiness
A good marriage is one of the life factors most strongly associated with happiness. An inverse correlation is that happiness causes marriage (happier people are more appealing as partners and easier to live with)
Happiness has a weak relationship to environment: as long as someone has basic needs satisfied, attractive people aren’t as happy as less attractive, people in warm places aren’t as happy as cold places, younger people aren’t as happy as older, etc.
Happiness Formula: (H)appiness = S(baseline genetic) + (C)onditions + (V)oluntary activities
Conditions have little effect for the most part (i.e race, sex, disability, wealth, marital status, where you live). The conditions that do matter are:
- Noise
- Commute (traffic)
- Lack of control (providing workers, students, patients with a sense of control increases happiness)
- Shame (breast augmentation surgeries on average report increases in quality of life and decreases in depression and anxiety. It helps to alleviate the shame associated with a daily burden of feeling less than others, though I imagine one must be careful such that cosmetic surgeries do not become a primary source of personal well-being
- Relationships
Voluntary activities include pleasures (food, sex) and gratifications (challenging tasks that match one’s abilities)
The key to finding your own gratifications is to know your strengths
Why do people spend money on luxuries, to which they adapt completely, rather than on things that would make them lastingly happier?
- Conspicuous consumption: things that are visible to others that advertise elevated status (bigger house, nicer watch, better purse)
- Inconspicuous consumption: things/activities consumed privately, not bought for the purpose of achieving status (long vacations, short commutes)
- Inconspicuous consumption leads to more happiness. But the elephant cares about prestige (what others think of me), not happiness
Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without
Love and Attachment
Attachment theory: two basic goals guide a child’s behaviour: safety and exploration. A child who stays safe survives, a child who explores and plays develops the skills and intelligence needed for adult life
Mammal babies play, the larger the frontal cortex the more the need to play
Secure, avoidant, resistant behavioural patterns are developed genetically and from parental/environmental influence
- Happier babies (genetic) could make mothers more loving
- More loving mothers (behavioural) could make happier babies
These patterns follow us throughout romantic relationships as well, more secure adults enjoy happier, longer relationships with lower rates of divorce
Most other mammalian babies’ brains are mostly developed at birth. Hence, there is less of a long burden for the mother, and the father can go and mate with other females. Human brains continue to develop years after birth. The mother incurs a longer burden, therefore male support is required for longer, helping to explain why pair bonding was required to best pass on genes
Origin of “my other half”: Aristophanes said that people started off with four legs, arms, and 2 faces. But, one day the gods cut them in half. Ever since, people have been looking for their other half. As this was a Greek story, some people originally had 2 males faces, 2 female, male/female, showing the diversity in sexual orientation of that time
Adversity
Coping with trauma:
- If you have more pessimistic inclinations, try meditation/cognitive behavioural therapy/medication to help guide the elephant in the right direction
- Have a few social attachments you can go to talk to
- At some point afterwards, write about what happened. Make sense of it in your mind, it will help you move on. Why did this happen? What good might I derive from it?
For adversity to be maximally beneficial, it should happen at the right time (young adulthood), to the right people (secure attachment, social resources, etc.) and to the right degree (not so severe that it causes PTSD)
Virtues
Trying to make children behave ethically by teaching them to reason (i.e giving scenarios and telling them what the right thing to do is) is like trying to make a dog happy by wagging its tail for him. The child learns how (not what) to think. This teaches the rider, but the elephant learns nothing
- You can be morally against factory farming, but unless you are faced with the horrors (see it in action) you will likely still eat meat

Meaning of Life

People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence (physical, psychological, and sociocultural)
Happiness comes from between, from coherence between internal experiences (mind and body) and external experiences (work, relationships, community)
There was initial puzzlement on why humans have altruistic tendencies, an initial explanation was that we are guided by group selection as well as individual selection
- Bees and ants have no issue with altruism, sacrificing themselves for the pack, as they all share genes. The queen bee is the ovary, the bees are the body
- But bees share genes, so why are humans altruistic? Early simulations showed that group selection, when one chooses the good of the group over themselves, was bound to be taken advantage of by selfish players (free rider problem)
- These simulations lacked a cultural component though, and it seems like religions developed with culture to reduce the influence of free riders so that group selection could flourish (e.g marriage prevented gigachads from taking all the women)
Liberals and conservatives use the myth of pure evil to demonize the other side and unite their own
- Liberals are experts in thinking about issues of victimization, equality, autonomy, and the rights of individuals
- Conservatives are experts in thinking about loyalty to the group, respect for authority and tradition, and sacredness
- Both are necessary, individual and group motives are needed. A society without liberals would be harsh and oppressive to many individuals. A society without conservatives would lose beneficial social structures and constraints. The Ying and Yang are necessary
A good place to find wisdom is in the minds of your opponents. If you can take off the blinders of the myth of pure evil, you might see some good ideas for the first time

The Coddling of the American Mind

Published: December 01, 2022

This book touches on the recent developments in some American universities, and try to identify some of the causal mechanisms that give rise to the “… new problems on campus, [which] have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.”

Properties of the Great Untruths:
1. It contradicts ancient wisdom
2. It contradicts modern psychological research on well-being
3. It harms the individuals and communities who embrace it
Coddling: overprotecting, to treat with excessive care or kindness. Coddling is normally well-intended on the surface. Yet, once care is given past the point of necessity it starts to become more about the care giver, and how they wish to be perceived or the momentary praise they receive, than it is the subject receiving the care. For example, a mother who shields her child from social experiences, allowing the child to stay home from school or a sports game, because they express concern about it, does so more for the love of herself (it feels good for my kid to like me now) than love for her child (who’s future self will suffer due to hindered development)
Part 1: The three bad ideas
The untruth of fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
In the 1990s, schools banned peanut products to protect the (4/1000) students that had peanut allergies, however it was later found that exposure to peanuts reduced the likelihood of developing a peanut allergy
“Regular eating of peanut containing products, when started during infancy, will elicit a protective immune response instead of an allergic immune reaction” from the 2015 LEAP study. In the protected children group, 17% developed a peanut allergy. In the regularly exposed group, only 3% developed an allergy
Hygiene hypothesis: thanks to hygiene, antibiotics, and too little outdoor play, children don’t get exposed to as many microbes as they once did. This may lead them to develop immune systems that overreact to substances that aren’t actually threatening - causing allergies. In the same way by shielding children from every possible risk, we may lead them to react with exaggerated fear to situations that aren’t risky at all
Antifragility: we require stressors to develop properly – like how muscles need to be used or they atrophy. Rather than being like a candle, and thus fearful of the wind, you want to develop to be a fire and wish for the wind
Safe spaces: in a rape culture debate at Brown university, students advocated against letting a rape survivor speak who was against the idea that America has a rape culture (and argues that places like Afghanistan have a real rape culture). The president stepped in and allowed a competing talk supporting the rape culture side without debate so that students could listen in without being triggered. The university administration also set up a safe space with cookies, colouring books, bubbles, play dough cookies, pillows and blankets, etc.
Trigger warnings are counter therapeutic, they encourage avoidance of reminders of trauma, and avoidance maintains PTSD. Severe emotional reactions triggered by course material are a signal that students need to prioritize their mental health through treatment via therapies. These therapies involve gradual systematic exposure to traumatic memories until their capacity to trigger distress diminishes
Children must be exposed to stressors (within limits and in age-appropriate ways), or they will fail to mature into strong and capable adults who are able to engage productively with people and ideas that challenge their moral convictions and beliefs
The untruth of emotional reasoning: Always trust your feelings
Rider and elephant metaphor: the rider (conscious thought) is extremely skilled at producing post-hoc justifications for whatever the elephant (primordial brain) does or believes (press-secretary/lawyer)
9 most common cognitive distortions that people learn to recognize in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT):
1. Emotional reasoning: letting feelings guide your interpretation of reality (I feel depressed, therefore my marriage isn’t working out)
2. Catastrophizing: focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely
3. Overgeneralizing: perceiving a global pattern based on a single incident
4. Dichotomous thinking: viewing events or people on all or nothing terms (I get rejected by everyone, it was a complete waste of time)
5. Mind reading: assuming you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts (he thinks I’m a loser)
6. Labeling: assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (I suck, he’s a rotten person)
7. Negative filtering: focusing exclusively on negatives
8. Discounting positives: claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial so you can maintain negative judgement (those wins were easy, so they don’t matter)
9. Blaming: focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, refusing to take responsibility for changing yourself
Catastrophizing (if I fail this quiz, I fail the class, I get kicked out of school, then I’ll never get a job) and negative filtering (only paying attention to negative feedback) are hallmarks of depression and anxiety
We can all be more thoughtful about our own speech, but it is unjust to treat people as if they’re bigots when they harbour no ill will. Doing so can discourage them from being receptive to valuable feedback, it may also make them less interested in engaging across different lines of thinking
What really frightens or dismays us are not the external events themselves, but how we perceive them
By encouraging students to interpret others in the least generous way possible, schools that teach students about micro-aggressions teach may encourage students to engage in emotional reasoning and other distortions, fostering high levels of distrust and conflict
Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think
The untruth of us vs them: Life is a battle between good and evil people
A UofT philosophy professor teaches about the axis of privilege and oppression. They also suggest that women are a colonized population, since despite encompassing the majority of college students, they are being taught in institutions built by white men
Since privilege implies the power to dominate the oppressed, this axis is guided towards moral dimensions - implying that one group is good (the oppressed) and one group is bad (the privileged). This fosters an us versus them mentality
One example of this was at Brown university, where the president (female) and provost (white male) were stormed by students who were outraged that a white woman and a cis white male headed the university. When the provost asked to have a conversation, they denied him because he was a typical heterosexual white man in power. When he explained that he was in fact homosexual, a student stuttered and said it didn’t matter since he was a white male anyways
Virtue signalling: things people do or say to display that they are virtuous. This is done to stay within the good graces of their group
Call out culture rewards those doing the calling out with status. If they were to call them out and handle things in private, they wouldn’t receive status for it, and it could be perceived as colluding with the enemy. Social media amplifies this, as there is always an audience who are eager to shame
Part 2: Bad ideas in action
Intimidation and violence
One argument for words being violent is that “words can lead to stress, prolonged stress can lead to physical harm, thus certain types of speech invoking that stress can be a form of violence.” Here’s the issue, just because words may lead to physical harm doesn’t mean it’s a violent act. When breaking up with someone, it leads to elevated cortisol levels and a horrible experience, but we don’t consider the act of breaking up with someone a violent act
Far left protesters (antifa) justify violent protests, to prevent campus speakers with different ideologies from speaking, as self defence, since allowing those speakers to speak will lead to further violence against the oppressed. These protesters engage in dichotomous thinking, adopting an us versus them attitude, labeling the speakers as evil, and claiming to know what the speaker would say and why it must be prevented at any cost
“I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. Put on some boots and learn to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym.
Witch hunts
“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil
Common features of with hunts:
1. They arise quickly
2. Crimes are perceived as being committed against the collective
3. Charges are often trivial or fabricated
4. There is a fear of defending the accused
Politically homogeneous communities are more susceptible to witch hunts, especially when they feel threatened from the outside. University viewpoint diversity has been decreasing as of late, resulting in an increase in campus protests and ideological groupthink
Part 3: How we got here
The polarization cycle
There has been growing political divide in the US, affective polarization has been increasing, meaning people on one side increasingly hate or fear the other parts and the people in it
As university student and faculty have shifted left, universities have begun to receive less trust and more hostility from the right
Increases in racial and political provocation from the right is an essential part of the story of why behaviour is beginning to change on campuses
Anxiety and depression
Lowering the bar in applying mental health labels may increase the number of people who suffer, as applying labels can lead to changes in behaviour of those being labeled and cause a self-fulfilling prophecy
2 activities correlate strongly with anxiety and depression: social media use and watching TV. 5 activities that have an inverse correlation with anxiety/depression: exercise, religious services, reading books, in-person social interactions, and doing homework
Anxiety tends to cause threats to jump out at the person, even in ambiguous or harmless circumstances. Anxious people are more likely to perceive harm in innocent questions (so they’re more embracing of microaggressions) or in a passage in a novel (hence wanting more trigger warnings) or in a lecture given by a guest speaker (leading them to want them disinvited or wanting a safe space to attend to during)
On average, 18 year olds today have spent less time unsupervised and have hit fewer developmental milestones (first kiss, obtaining driving licence, etc.) in the path to autonomy, compared to previous generations
Anxiety and depression rates are increasing for gen z, for girls more so than boys. This could be due to more sensitivity to social comparison, by signals of being left out, and by relational aggression, which are amplified by social media
Both depression and anxiety increase the tendency to see the world as more dangerous and hostile than it really is, making students in gen z especially attracted to overprotection
Paranoid parenting
Children in GenZ have been deprived of unsupervised time for play and exploration, missing out on many of the challenges, negative experiences, and minor risks that help children develop into strong competent adults
When children are repeatedly led to believe that the world is dangerous and they cannot be left alone, we should not be surprised if many of them believe it
There exist large social class differences in parenting styles, the upper class uses concerted cultivation, precisely structuring the child’s life and providing constant supervision. The lower class uses natural growth parenting, more of a hands-off approach, but children in these households are more prone to toxic stress (e.g broken homes, more desperate behaviour, etc.)
Paranoid parenting teaches the three great untruths, priming children for a culture of safetyism at college
The decline of play
Children deprived of free play are less likely to be physically and socially competent as adults, and are less tolerant of risk and more prone to anxiety disorders
Decline in free play is likely driven by unrealistic fears of strangers, rising competitiveness for admission to top universities, and rising emphasis on testing and homework. Rising availability of smartphones and social media also have an impact
Free play helps children develop skills of cooperation and dispute resolution. When citizens are not skilled at this, they are less able to work out the ordinary conflicts of daily life, and will be more likely to call for authorities to apply coercive force to their opponents - inviting a bureaucracy of safetyism
The bureaucracy of safetyism
As universities expand, so does the need for administrative growth. However, administrative expansion is several times higher than the rate of faculty hiring
As administration has grown, so has the power to play a role in university governance. Administrators are more likely than professors to think that the way to solve a new campus problem is to create a new office to solve the problem
Corporatization has followed, in which admin cater to the students, as they pay a lot of money to attend school, and adopt a “customer is always right” approach
Administrations adopt a “cover your ass” approach, adopting regulations to prevent future lawsuits related to harms of their students - promoting the Untruth of Fragility
Some of the regulations restrict freedom of speech, often with highly subjective definitions of key concepts. This teaches students that speech should be restricted to avoid emotional discomfort, encouraging catastrophizing and mind reading, promoting the Untruth of emotional reasoning
Bias response teams are leading to an erosion of trust in campus communities, as it makes it always to anonymously report one another based on subjective claims
The quest for justice
Intuitive justice is a combination of distributive justice (the perception that people get what they deserve) and procedural justice (the perception that the process by which rules are enforced is fair and trustworthy)
Developmental psychologists concluded that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality
If institutionalized disconfirmation breaks down, such that professors and students become hesitant to raise alternative explanations for outcome gaps, then theories about those gaps may harden into orthodoxy
Ideas may be accepted not because they are true but because the politically dominant group wants them to be true in order to prompt its preferred narrative and set of remedies
When social justice efforts aim to achieve equality of outcomes by the group, and when they are willing to violate distributive or procedural fairness for some individuals along the way, these efforts violate many peoples’ senses of intuitive justice
The correlation of a demographic trait or identity group membership with an outcome gap is often taken as evidence that discrimination (structural or individual) caused the outcome gap - whether this is true needs to be open for debate so that the community can arrive to an accurate understanding of the problem

The Lonely Century

Published: December 01, 2022

Chapter 2: Loneliness kills

Some elderly in Japan are purposefully committing petty crimes to get sent to prison, so that they can socialize with other inmates and be taken care of
Lonely people are 30% more likely to develop heart disease, 64% more likely to develop dementia, and 30% more likely to die prematurely
Being lonely prolongs cortisol production, leading to inflammation and reduced defence against illness
The stress response triggered by loneliness is like driving a car in first gear: at first, it’s the most efficient way to get you moving, but staying in first gear for your entire journey puts your engine through more wear and tear. A car isn’t designed to stay in first gear, and your body isn’t designed to be stay lonely
Chapter 3: The lonely mouse
The longer that lab mice are isolated, the more aggressive they are to newcomers
Lonely people tend to have a harder time empathizing with others. They have less brain activity in the parts of the brain associated with empathy, and more activity in alertness processes. Rather than seeing things from the affected persons point of view, their response operates in self-preservation mode and scans their surroundings for threats
The socially and economically marginalized are turning out in disproportionally high numbers for parties at the political extremes, under promises that they are seen and heard
Neoliberal capitalism and deindustrialization took an asymmetric economic toll, with lower-skilled men among those who felt they were suffering most—the target market for right wing populists
To manage the decaying and less secure importance of their identities (class, employment, religion), those who feel left behind, excluded, or unimportant to will likely gravitate towards nationality, ethnicity, language and gender as attractive sources for meaning and self-esteem
Right wing populists exploit the lonely brain, which has lesser capacity to feel empathy, rev up the anxiety and insecurity of their followers and manipulate ethnic and religious differences to garner support
Lonely people (those socially excluded or ostracized) are more likely to see threats, and their environments as frightening and hostile (“see snakes instead of sticks”), thus they latch on to conspiracy theories—which are commonly promulgated by far-right populists
Those who expressed the most extreme anti-immigrant views are distinguished not by basic demographics (e.g., gender or age) but by financial insecurity, social isolation, and lack of trust in fellow citizens/government
Chapter 4: The solitary city
The rise in paid parasocial relationships, in which you can donate to be recognized (e.g., Mukbangs have been rising in popularity as lonely people watch and eat alongside the mukbangers) requires less effort in order to satisfy social cravings. However, it encourages lack of effort, and we get less practice of skills that are required to build meaningful friendships and community. Humans will gravitate towards paths requiring the least effort, hence the rise in unidirectional, donor relationships
Ironically, large urban centres are lonelier for inhabitants than smaller rural centres. The hustle and bustle and sheer population of the cities makes it difficult for people to connect with each other
Chapter 5: The contactless age
Services have become more contactless, as limiting human labor translates to more profit. Removing human interaction can be convenient, and most people find it so; however, it removes opportunities for social interaction
Cities over the years have been implementing antisocial measures to dissuade loitering, homeless sleeping, etc. via hostile architecture. Examples include uncomfortable benches, mosquitoes (high pitched noises) and pink lights (emphasize blemishes) to dissuade children
Class segregation in cities like London and Vancouver has been seen by way of private playgrounds that are closed off to poorer regions of a district. Division this early on in child development will only exacerbate social division
Chapter 6: Our screens, ourselves
Landmark studies have shown that reducing social media use to 10 minutes per day per major platform results in a significant reduction in loneliness. Those who deleted Facebook didn’t fill that void with another platform but rather spent more time socializing in person. In terms of subjective well-being, deleting Facebook was up to 40% as effective as therapy
There has been a 42% increase in plastic surgeons having at least one patient bringing in a photoshopped selfie and asking them to recreate it, with 55% of plastic surgeons reporting this occurrence
Chapter 7: Alone at the office
Global average of office workers reporting feeling lonely at work is 40%. Over 50% in China, 60% in the UK, 54% of GenZ feel emotionally distant from their colleagues
People who don’t have a friend at work are 7X more likely to disengage with their job emotionally and intellectually
Open office plans have been detrimental in some regards. Noise disruptions reduces efficiency by occupying neural real estate, and the lack of privacy keeps people from being authentic and putting on a charade, which can be exhausting
Head of HR at Google found optimal work from home time to be around 1.5 days a week. Setting up institutionalized regular and structured opportunities for employees to meet up and socialize in person is important as well (in office pizza Thursdays, conferences, etc.). This is where bonds and community are created, and where moments of serendipity arise
Shared lunch times increase team cohesion, from firefighters to call centre employees, those who ate together performed better
Chapter 8: The digital whip
HireVue digital screenings offer companies a means to scale recruiting without the need to hire human interviewers. The HireVue algorithms scan for desirable traits of past successful candidates—vocal patterns (uhms and ahs) and how inviting your face is, among others. The issue with this is that some people have speech impediments, and some cultures smile less; as such, these algorithms impart a bias that could discriminate. Human interviewers aren’t immune to these biases; however, the online screening is generic, impersonal, and offers no natural feedback throughout the process
A high school English teacher in West Virginia had to download a workplace wellness app, Go365, as their employer wanted to reduce their health insurance costs. The app monitored their exercise and health, granting points for good behaviours such as steps and charging fines (up to $500) for failing to accrue enough wellness points
The gig economy rating systems alienate workers (think black mirror episode with public rating systems). In onboarding, workers are told to avoid talking about religion, politics, or sports in case the rider in the back is offended. You surely can’t risk offending someone as it can affect your rating
It’s also reductionist - reducing someone to a number is dehumanizing. It is too coarse a metric, there’s no way of knowing whether a rating is genuine or because someone was having a bad day
People are also prone to anchoring someone’s rating on the published rating already attributed to them. If someone has a low score, a rater will likely provide a low score regardless of outcome
The greater the level of automation exposure in an area, the greater the probability that the people located there would vote for a nationalist or far-right party Chapter 9: Love, sex, and robots
A brief caress triggers a flurry of activity in the vagus nerve, which slows down heart rate, quells anxiety, and releases oxytocin
Japan has the worlds oldest population, 25% of its citizens are older than 65, by 2050 this is expected to increase to 50%. 15% of elderly Japanese men go 2 weeks without speaking to a soul, 33% feel that they have no one to turn to for simple help. The number of elderly people living with one of their children dropped by 50% in the past two decades, even as elderly populations increased
60% of Japanese 18-34 year old’s are not in any sort of romantic relationship, a 20% increase from 2005
Chapter 10: The loneliness economy
Co-living/co-working spaces have risen in popularity over the years, a commercial response to alleviate loneliness. These spaces, however, want to sell the benefits of living or working in close proximity with others, but with none of the social commitment (i.e., hard work) that building a community requires
Domestic tasks are done by staff; therefore, no delegating of tasks among members needs to be done, encouraging the neoliberal “me” stance rather than a “we” stance. If the co-living company organizes everything for you, providing free ale and treats, your obligation to commit to that community is likely weakened
These co-living arrangements that boast private grocery stores, bars, and so on are segregated from the actual local community. Requiring a premium price to get in, only the privileged have access to this loneliness “cure” and it separates them from the actually local community in the process
Chapter 11: Coming together in a world that’s pulling apart
The political approaches to loneliness fall into two camps at the extremes. The right cast blame on the breakdown of the traditional family, with declining church attendance and excessive welfare that avoids personal responsibility and responsibility towards others. The left depicts individuals as victims of circumstance, giving them a free pass, and stress that the state should be responsible for fixing community and healing social ills

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Published: December 01, 2022

Part 1: Two systems

Chapter 1: The characters of the story

There are two mental agents, System 1 (intuitions, impressions, feelings that require little focus and are automatic) and System 2 (systematic thought that requires deliberate attention). Most of what is eventually thought or done originates in System 1, but System 2 gets the final say
This book is about recognizing situations in which System 1 errors are likely and avoid them accordingly. It is easier to recognize the mistakes of other rather than our own, due to the illusion of self and the associated self-serving biases
Chapter 2: Attention and effort
“Law of least effort” asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate towards the least demanding course of action
Task switching and increased temporal/spatial frequency of mental tasks induces strenuous mental effort, engaging System 2, dilating pupils and elevating heart rate
Chapter 3: The lazy controller
Self control and cognitive effort are forms of mental work, and studies have shown that when people are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation, they are more likely to give in to the temptation. System 1 has more influence on behaviour when System 2 is busy
People who are cognitively busy are more likely to make selfish choices and make superficial judgements in social situations. This too happens to drunk people, or those who are sleep deprived
The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and when engaged in a challenging cognitive task, blood glucose levels have been found to drop
Studies engaged participants in self control tasks that depleted their ego and provided half with lemonade with glucose and the other with splenda. Those who drank the glucose lemonade performed better on subsequent tasks
Parole judges are more likely to grant parole requests after meals, and more likely to default to rejecting parole a few hours after meals when they are hungry and fatigued
Oreo test: 4 year old children were given the option to ring a bell to receive 1 oreo, or wait 15 minutes to get 2 oreos. Those who resisted the temptation and waited were found, 10-15 years later, to perform better on cognitive tasks, were less likely to take drugs, and were generally more succesful
Chapter 4: The associative machine
Psychological priming: voters voting at polls located in schools are more likely to support pro-education policies. People primed with words associated to money tend to portray more individualistic traits (less likely to help others, less likely to ask for help, more likely to distance themselves from others [literally, people would place chairs further from each other when asked to set up seating arrangements])
“The lady Macbeth effect”: people who think about actions they are ashamed of are more likely to buy soap, disinfectant, or detergent, some would (dramatically) say to cleanse their body due to their stained soul
Chapter 5: Cognitive ease
A happy mood loses control of System 2: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and creative, but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. A good mood is a signal that the environment is safe, so you can let your guard down, whereas a bad mood indicates things are not going well, there may be a threat, and vigilance is required
Chapter 6: Norns, surprises, and causes
Norms settle due to repeated exposure to things in our environment, even one exposure settles a norm foundation. Norms are just statistical representations of environmental data - when told “the large mouse climbs over the small elephant’s trunk” we can retrieve the expected values (mean) of the respective animal shapes, as well as their variability in size (i.e the first and second moments of their size distributions)
Chapter 7: A machine for jumping to conclusions
When System 2 is engaged elsewhere, or energy is sufficiently depleted as to hinder System 2, we are more susceptible to believe things that are untrue: our System 1 jumps to conclusions. Things like commercials are more effective when watchers are tired and depleted
The halo effect gives preferential weighting to first impressions. When grading, for example, if you grade one person’s test all at once and they give a good answer on the first question, you’ll be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt on later mistakes. A better way to address this issue is to do one question at a time, as to decorrelate the grading - this way the grading instances are independent, and errors in grading will average out to zero over enough samples if they are indeed independent
Chapter 8: How judgments happen
We evaluate others from the shape of their face, a strong jaw indicates dominance, and a smile indicates friendliness. Political candidates can be meaningfully predicted of success based on their facial features alone
Those who are politically uninformed and that watch lots of TV tend to be more likely to succumb to System 1 judgements about political candidate based on their facial features
When given a task, our mind may perform excess computations. For example, when asked to say when vote and note rhyme, participants answered faster than when given the words vote and goat. Though only the audio of the words were provided, people considered the spelling and it slowed down the response - this is known as the mental shotgun
Chapter 9: Answering an easier question
A heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. It comes from the same root as eureka!
An experiment was done where students were asked how happy they were these day, and how many dates they had in the last month. The answers in this order were uncorrelated, however when the order of the questions are swapped the answers are significantly correlated. This is because the emotional state with respect to the date question primes the brain, and the answer related to happiness uses a heuristic based on the happiness with respect to the date answer. The present state of mind looms very large when people evaluate their happiness
Example: Question: how much would you contribute to save an endangered species? Heuristic question: How much emotion do I feel when I think of dying dolphins? Or: Am I happy with my life? -> Am I happy right now?
Part 2: Heuristics and biases
Chapter 10: The law of small numbers
The law of small numbers is when people trust statistical results from small sample sizes, however, small sample sizes result in larger variability and more noise. Transitional researchers in psychology often don’t compute the minimum required sample size to have sufficiently small errors in their studies
A study by the gates and Melinda foundation found that smaller schools tended to perform better in the top 50, so they funded the creation of smaller schools. What they failed to realize is the variability associated with smaller schools made for some exceptionally strong performers, but small schools also populated the bottom of the list. They fell for the law of small numbers
We pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and end up with a view of the world that is simpler and more coherent than the data suggest
Chapter 11: Anchors
The question: is a redwood more or less than 1200 feet tall? Followed by: what is the average height of a redwood? Results in larger estimates of the average height than if we were to ask if an average redwood is more or less than 180 feet. This is because the user anchors to the value in the first question, and this influences the response of the second
Real estate agents given house portfolios with either under-valued or over-valued prices were told to come up with a price based on their analyses: the anchoring of the initial price significantly effected their estimates - even though they were confident that they didn’t consider the initial price
Marketers use the anchoring phenomena. When a sale is labeled, as well as an arbitrary limit to the amount of products you can buy, the average number of purchases of this product will be larger than if the limit was removed (e.g While supplies last!)
Home sellers take advantage of the anchor effect by setting high prices, it provides the upper hand in negotiations. This effect can be countered, however, by deliberate engagement of System 2 *People are confident that anchors do not affect their judgement, however, anchors prime memory and make information related to it easier to retrieve. System 2 pulls data from this space, unaware it has been affected by the anchoring agent
Chapter 12: The science of availability
The availability heuristic is influenced by the following factors:
- The salience of events adds more weight of them to your memory making them more easily retrievable (e.g divorce among celebrities may seem more common than it actually is since it is reported on so much)
- Dramatic events add a primacy bias, e.g a recent plane crash will make planes seem unsafe
- Personal experiences with events will be valued higher on future memory retrieval than had it been, say, reported in the news instead
Asking someone to name 6 things that they’re competent in or 12 things that they’re competent in leads to different judgements in competence: the more cognitive strain required to retrieve (due to available memory) instances yields a weakened measure in self-competence (if I have to work so hard to get this information, I must not be as competent as I thought)
Chapter 13: Availability, emotion, and risk
People with positive views on a subject tend to be able to list more benefits, and those with negative views tend to list more risks. Once they are told the thing that they dislike has more benefits, they perceive it as less risky, if told that the risks are negligible, they develop a more favourable view of the benefits. “The emotional tail wags the rational dog”
The availability cascade is when a salient event, normally of low risk, catches attention of the public, and thus the attention of the media. This creates a feedback loop between the public and the media, which artificially amplifies the risk of the event. This can result in wasted resources and can be detrimental in some cases (e.g the apple chemical case, where a pesticide was labeled as a low-risk carcinogen and people stopped buying apples and actors testified to congress to remove it - public health was likely impacted negatively as fewer good apples were consumed as a result)
The combination of probability neglect (giving more weight to numerator (bad events) than the denominator (good events)) with the social mechanisms of availability cascades inevitably leads to exaggeration of minor threats, sometimes with important consequences Chapter 14: Tom W’s speciality
People tend to neglect base rates when provided specific details about someone. For example, when asking whether it is more likely for someone to be a farmer or librarian, farmers are more common, so we select that as per the base rates. When told whether a timid, organized, quiet loving individual is more likely to be a farmer or librarian, we guess librarian - neglecting the population base rate!
When System 2 is engaged (induced via frowning), people tend to be more analytical and thus account for the base rates more
Keys to disciplined Bayesian reasoning:
- Anchor your judgement of the probability of an outcome on a plausible base rate
- Question the diagnosticity of your evidence (intuitive impressions tend to exaggerate via the evidence)
  Chapter 15: Linda: less is more
Linda is 31, majored in philosophy, has a passion for social justice and is deeply concerned with discrimination. What is more likely: that Linda is a bank teller, or that Linda is a bank teller who is also active in the feminist movement?
The second choice is less probable, since feminist bank tellers are a subset of bank tellers, so the probability of feminist bank teller has to be less, yet our intuition tells us otherwise
Chapter 17: Regression to the mean
Military flight instructors challenged the idea that rewards are more effective in improving behaviour than punishment. A chief challenged this idea: he argued that after he praised someone, they tended to do worse, and when he yelled at someone for doing something bad they tended to do better after. Due to fluctuations around a mean, unusually bad performances tend to be followed by better performances, and unusually good performances tend to be followed by worse performances. The chief just attributed these results to his punishment, rather to general statistical outcomes
A business commentator who correctly announces that “the business did better this year because it had done poorly last year” is likely to have short tenure on air, so they attempt to come up with causal stories to explain the results
Part 3: Overconfidence
Chapter 19: The illusion of understanding
Outcome bias: when the outcomes are bad, clients often blame their agents for not seeing the writing on the wall - forgetting that it was written in invisible ink that became legible only after. Actions that seemed prudent in foresight can look irresponsibly negligent in hindsight
Physicians, financial advisers, and politicians are prone to blame for good decisions that work out badly and are given little credit for successful moves that appear obvious only after the fact
Stories of success and failure, in the context of business, consistently exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices in firm outcomes – hence, their messages are rarely useful
These stories offer what the human mind needs: a simple message of triumph and failure that identifies clear causes and ignores the determinative power of luck and the inevitability of regression to the mean
Chapter 20: The illusion of validity
Confidence is a feeling, which reflects coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in their mind, not necessarily that the story is true
In the paper “Trading is hazardous to your wealth”, it was shown that on average the most active traders had the poorest results, whereas the investors with the least trading actions earned the highest results
In the paper “Boys will be boys”, it was shown that men act on their useless ideas significantly more than women (more risk-taking behaviour in males induced by more testosterone), and as a result women achieve better investment results than men
At an investment advisement firm, the author was provided with investment outcomes over 8 years for the firm’s advisers. What he found was that there was nearly zero correlation on average between year-to-year performance
The illusion of skill is deeply engrained in the culture of the investment industry. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions threaten to devalue peoples’ livelihoods and self-esteem and are thus not absorbed. When met with statistical proof that their results are due to chance, advisers choose to ignore it as it clashes with their personal impressions from experience
Chapter 20: Intuitions vs. formulas
• Statistical models consistently outperform - and are much more consistent - than experts in low validity environments. Example: for medical school admissions, adding interviews at the end and giving interviewers the final say of who’s accepted injects bias and uncertainties into the process, and the quality of candidates generally suffers as a result • Questions in an interview should be as objective as possible. It has been shown that scores accumulated from these more objective results can make useful predictions, whereas results based purely on somewhat unstructured interviews aren’t predictive of future success. Objective questions are also better guides for intuitive judgements - which perform on par with the scoring mechanism
Chapter 22: Expert intuition: when can we trust it?
Intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment. A chess player’s intuition is valid, due to the predictable environment, whereas a stock picker’s intuition is likely false, due to the high dimensionality and unpredictability of the market
Experts who receive short term feedback are also more likely to develop intuitions, however with long term forecasts the feedback comes further away from the actions, and thus mapping that back to decision making is more difficult
Chapter 23: The outside view
Planning fallacy: when plans and forecasts are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios, and could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases
To avoid the planning fallacy in a new project:
- First find your reference class to compare against
- Obtain the statistics of outcomes from the reference class. Use this as a base rate for success
- Slightly adjust the base rate based on your projects circumstances
  Chapter 24: The engine of capitalism
From the finance industry to the medical industry, it is a sign of weakness and vulnerability for experts to appear unsure. Confidence is valued over uncertainty.
Clinicians who were completely certain of their diagnoses are wrong 40% of the time. Confidence intervals from CFOs on stock performance are more than 3 times likely for outcomes to lie outside their 80% confidence intervals (i.e surprises)
Part 4: Choices
Chapter 26: Prospect theory
Losses hurt more than gains, and gambles we are willing to take depend on our reference point. Losing 100$ when you have 100$ hurts a lot more than losing 100$ when you have 1000$.

Chapter 27: The endowment effect

People who buy products “for use”, rather than “for exchange”, tend to value losing the product as higher than if they were to buy it, e.g willing to pay $500 for a sold out concert ticket, but willing to sell it only for much more. This is an example of loss aversion, as the product holds sentimental value as well
Chapter 28: Bad events
Emotionally loaded words quickly attract attention, and bad words (war, crime) attract attention faster than happy words (peace, love)
Professional golfers rate of success for putts for par and birdies differs by nearly 4%: golfers perform slightly better on par putts to avoid the loss ensued by a bogey
Chapter 29: The fourfold pattern
The decision weights that people assign to outcomes are not identical to the probabilities of those outcomes: improbable outcomes are overweighted (the possibility effect), and near certain outcomes are underweighted relative to absolute certainty (the certainty effect)
A 0 to 5% chance of winning a million dollars is valued higher than a 5 to 10% chance (possibility effect). Likewise, a 95-100% chance is valued higher than a 65-70% chance of winning - certainty is valued more
Chapter 30: Rare events
Denominator neglect: for low probabilities, people tend to over emphasize the numerator and neglect the denominator. A vaccine that has a 0.001% chance to disable someone feels different than 1 in 100,000 children will be permanently disabled, because now we anchor to the 1 child and overemphasize the likelihood due to the emotional provocation
Researchers have leveraged this fact, one study stated “1000 homicides a year are committed by seriously mentally ill individuals”, which corresponds to a 0.00036% likelihood (1000/273mill). The researchers use the former to elicit a fear response to receive more funding for mental health research and services
Chapter 32: Keeping score
There exists a preference for selling winners rather than losers in the stock market - this is a bias towards feeling pleasure and the avoidance of feeling the pain of a loss. Yet, studies show it is slightly better to hold on to winners and let go of losers, selling winners is pleasurable but there is a cost to that pleasure
The sunk-cost fallacy is investing additional resources into a losing account because you have already committed to the account, when better investments are available elsewhere
In the context of gambling: people expect to be happier if they gamble and win, than if they refrained from gambling and got the same amount
People generally anticipate more regret than they will actually experience. You should not put too much weight on regret; even if you have some, it will hurt less than you now think
Chapter 34: Frames and reality
Individuals were provided a scenario in which they were given $50, and told they could either keep 20$, or lose 30$ - equivalent statements. There was a tendency to choose to keep 20$, as loss aversion makes the keeping frame more attractive
There was more amygdala (associated with emotional arousal) activation in subjects who produced an immediate tendency to approach the sure gain (keep 20) or avoid the sure loss (lose 30)
Those who resisted the keep 20, had more activity in the anterior cingulate, which is associated with conflict and self-control
Those who showed no preference in outcome, thus being more rational, showed enhanced activity in a frontal area of the brain that is implicated in combining emotion and reasoning to guide decisions
Medical professionals were more likely to suggest a surgery with a 90% survival rate than a surgery with a 10% mortality rate, even though these are equivalent statements
Part 5: Two selves
Chapter 35: Two selves
When rating the subjective pain experienced during an experience, rating done in the present don’t equate to the retrospective rating. Experiences with a prolonged painful duration, yet that gradually decrease in pain over time, are reported to be less painful than a quick experience that ends poorly
We can have a vastly net positive experience, but, if it ends on a poor note we’re quick to say that the experience was ruined, discounting all the positive experiences prior. This is confusing our experiences with the memory of them, and weighting the experience in our memory higher than the actual experience itself
Our memories do not remember based on a collective sum of our experience (i.e where duration of an experience would increase our perceived pain/pleasure), but rather a skewed average of the experience, where the most recent peak of pleasure and pain are over-valued.
Our memory neglects the duration of episodes, and thus does not serve our preferences for long pleasure and short pains
Chapter 36: Life as a story
When on vacation, our remembering self is more engaged, for example by taking pictures to engage with in the future (normally putting too much weight on the future self at the expense of the present self)
When asked how much you would pay for your last vacation if you hadn’t remembered it (i.e you got to experience it in the present but remembering self forgets), people would likely value the vacation less
Now imagine you undergo painful surgery in which you will be in pain and conscious, but you can take an amnesia pill to forget the experience - how does that sound? The preference goes to the remembering self. It’s odd, the present experience self is undervalued and somewhat a stranger, and we are our remembering selves
Chapter 37: Experienced well-being
To get pleasure from eating, you need to notice that you are doing it. It was found that women in France perceive eating as more pleasurable due to eating being twice as focal, despite eating for the same amount of time, than American women do (likely since American women spend time doing other things while eating which dilutes the pleasure)
Chapter 38: Thinking about life
The focusing illusion: nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it. Any aspect of life to which attention is directed will loom large in a global evaluation
Miswanting describes bad choices that arise from errors of affective forecasting. It makes us prone to exaggerate the effect of significant purchases or changed circumstances on our future well-being (e.g moving to this warmer place will make me happier)

The Evolution of God

Published: December 01, 2022

This book sees how religion evolved alongside humans, from hunter gatherer tribes to civilizations. More emphasis on the monotheist Abrahamic religions.

The Birth and Growth of Gods

Primordial Faith

Animinism is the attribution of life to the inanimate, which is thought to be inhabited by a soul or spirit. This was primordial religion, where the soul hypothesis handidly answered difficult questions, such as why we dream
Animism is though to have evolved into polytheism, as if one believes that a tree has a soul, trees were to be collectively governed by a forest god
Shamans
Shamans developed as religious experts in hunter gatherer tribes. Credibility was gained through sheer luck or predictable outcomes (i.e saving the sun from an eclipse), and when their interventions failed they would lose support
- Similar to how a series of bad bets by a stock market analyst leads to the conclusion that the analyst is out of touch, not that he was lucky in the first place
Shamans were likely to be among the first politicians, serving as counsel on matters of inter-tribal conflict. If something was going wrong within the tribe, the shaman would blame a shaman from a neighbouring tribe, much like a modern politician blames the other party
While more egalitarian than modern society, power imbalances could form where a shaman could amass gifts by instilling irrational fear in others. A common tactic would be to convince women that the way to please gods was to have sex with the shaman.
Religion in Ancient Chiefdoms
Religion in chiefdoms introduced a moral component, discouraging anti-social behaviour. With increasing population came less familiarity with your neighbours and more opportunity for exploitation.
Religion, serving as a means to maintain social cohesion, also made commoners prone to exploiatation by rulers. If rulers abused their power too much, they risked being overthrown internally (i.e a coupe) or from a neighbouring chiefdom due to weakened social moral
There exist early hisorical records of Polynesian specialists predicting wind patterns from star observations due to seasonal paatterns associated with astrological positions. This is an early example of science, where a correlation was found and a causal mechanism was attributed to the gods above
Gods of Ancient States
As chiefdoms grew into states, states that adopted religions gained a comptetive edge over others due to improved social cohesion. Religion provided citizens with a moral compass (i.e Egyptian gods would punish you for urinating in a public well)
Early conquerors were theologically flexible, absorbing the gods of the conquered into their theology to avoid needless squabbles within empires
The earliest hint of monotheism came in roughly 2000BCE in Bablyonia, where the supreme god Marduk essentially engulfed all other gods (i.e the old god of rain became Marduk’s hand). This was a simpler approach and improved theological flexibility
The Emergence of Abrahamic Monotheism
Polytheism, the Religion of Ancient Israel
In the first millenium BCE, the biblical god Yahweh was not yet omniscient. He planted the garden of Eden and walked around as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit
Prior to monotheism, Israel went through a phase of granting existence to other gods, but condemning their worship
The book of Joshua recounts a swift defeat of Canaanites and a subsequent widespread adoption of Yahweh. However, archeological evidence shows that there was likely a slow transition from Canaanite to Israelite encouraged by a nomadic to agricultural transition
Different parts of the Bible reference god as El (the Canaanite god), and others as Yahweh, suggesting that there was likely a theological merger to keep both sides (Canaanites and Israelites) happy
The demythologization from mid century BCE bible editors was less to remove mythic tales and more to remove possibility of evidence of polytheism. Later translators removed the mythic narratives, likely because mythic tales fell out of fashion and epic tales were more believable
From Polytheism to Monolatry
The shift from embracing multiple gods to one god seems to be encouraged by foreign policy; Israel once participated in international trade with the powers around it (Egypt and Assyria) with the notion that immersion would make Israel richer. Hosea had a more xenophobic opinion that it was making Israel poorer, and they were being exploited, which encouraged embracing monolatry (worship of one god without denial of existence of others)
Class imbalances likely also fuelled the isolationist perspective, as multiple prophets objected the wealthy and their trade. “All who dress themselves in foreign attire” will be punished by Yahweh. International trade primarily benefited the mega rich, as their goods were the only goods that made long distance trade worthwhile
Domestic policy also encouraged monolatry. Israel has hundreds of prophets, thus supernatural pluralism. To consolidate political power, the Kings had to consolidate supernatural power. By weeding out the domestic pantheon, the king had a chance to expand his domestic power
“Rally round the flag” effect: when a nation faces a crisis, support for a nations leader grows. At the time Yahweh was the Israel’s god of foreign affairs. Israel, a small nation surrounded by great powers, often had to choose between war or peace that many Israelites found humiliating. The resultant hostility towards foreign powers made fertile grounds to reject other gods. Domestically, other indigenous Israelite gods were killed off, and a central area for prayer was established in Jerusalem so that king Josiah could keep a close watch on things
King Josiah used hyper nationalism to fuel the Yahweh only ideology and justify the slaughtering of nearby nations by suggesting that their victims suffered from theological confusion
From Monolatry to Monotheism
The momentous defeat of Israel by the Babylonian conquest, and the depth of the ensuing psychological trauma (being exiled and living in a place where the conquerors gods are worshipped) led to two options: either accept your god has lost or that your god allowed it at his will (which would make him even stronger than realized)
- “Israel stands at the bottom of its political power, and it exalts its deity inversely as ruler of the whole universe.”
First Babylonia conquered Israel (7th century BCE), then Persia conquered Babylonia and thus Israel (6-4th century BCE), then the Greeks conquered Persia and thus Israel (mid 3rd century BCE)
The Israelites suffered for their infidelity to Yahweh, and now they try to keep the worlds other people from repeating their mistake. Yet, their methods for preventing other from making those mistakes are gruesome and vengeful, at least for the closer regions that once crossed them (bloodshed, slaughtering, etc. in the name of God)
One way humans cope with extended stress is to anticipate a better time ahead, the more intense the stress and more hopeless the situation, the more fabulous the coming times that are anticipated. The extreme form of this is apocalypticism: revelations of a day of salvation
Fast forwarding slightly, the final book of the New Testament, Revelation, is apocalyptic and looks toward a coming day of salvation. On that day the antichrist is vanquished, bearing the emblem of 666, which cryptically translates to Nero, a Roman emperor who spectacularly persecuted Christians. At this low point, Christians dreamed of vengeance and enshrined that dream in theology
Philo Story
During Philo’s time (~1st century BCE) in Alexandria (Egypt), he was a Jewish minority that lived in a Roman ruled city. In his scriptures, there is a theme of tolerance of other gods Had he been intolerant, the Emperor would have him killed
In the book of Jonah, God forgives the Ninevens (likely because they were too powerful at the time) and pities them for not knowing good from evil (i.e worshipping the wrong god). However, in other scriptures God encouraged and supported the slaughtering of Assyria and that they got what they deserved
The Priestly source has texts that encourage multi-nationalism and affirmation of other nations’ gods. This is likely due to the writers at this time living during the rule of the Persian empire, so to survive and have your texts see the light of day one had to follow the empiric narrative
However, that acceptance falls short when it comes to Egypt, who was an enemy to Persia at the time. Thus, the Priestly source recounts how Yahweh turned Egypt’s water supply into blood, had the frogs from the water swarm the Egyptians, then swarmed them with bugs (lice, gnats, mosquitos), then he inflicts festering boils on the skin of all humans and animals in Egypt. Then he kills every firstborn human and animal in Egypt. Then the Priestly source prescribes the Passover feast so that Israelites forever commemorate that night. The voice of the Persian empire conveniently had a way to ensure hostility towards Egypt by engraining it in the ritual calendar of Judaism
Logos: the Divine Algorithm
Philo interpreted god in terms of a “logos”, which essentially means god had a divine algorithm laid out for life on earth. He believed that the Torah, the Jewish law given to Moses, gave Jews a head start, as some of the rules laid out in the Torah were part of the logos (like dharma in Buddhism; it is the truth about how the universe works and the way we should live our lives)
Proverbs (and other Jewish wisdom books) were part of a large wisdom tradition in the ancient Middle East, from Egypt to Mesopotamia, initially for upper class boys as they approach manhood
- Taking the moral advice on faith was a time-saver, advice such as “the rich man’s sleeplessness wastes away his flesh, and his anxiety drives away sleep” and “jealousy and anger shorten life, and worry ages a man prematurely” (these hold up in terms of todays scientific knowledge)
In the Gospel of John (New Testament), the English version (among other European versions) mistranslated “Logos” to “Word”. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” And Logos (peak wisdom, enlightenment) had assumed the form of Jesus Christ
The Invention of Christianity
What did Jesus do?
The bible’s gospel about Jesus’ life and words - the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - were written in 65-100 CE, roughly 35-75 years after his death. As the decades go by, the stories of Jesus get less constrained by historical memory and more impressive and fantastical
- In the book of mark (earliest book) Jesus’ last words are “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, as though it was a terrible surprise. But, in the book of Luke he expresses no signs of doubt or surprise (as he knows god’s plan all along)
- In the book of Mark, when some Pharisees ask for a sign from heaven from Jesus, he gets in a boat and huffs away, saying “Why does this generation ask for a sing? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” In later books, he gives more elaborate answer (i.e predicting his death and subsequent resurrection)
- The latest book of John has Jesus performing spectacular miracles such as resurrecting Lazarus, whereas in the earlier books he was more reserved with them
Jesus’ small town of Nazareth (300 people) rejected him. The bible offers justifications for this of course. This would have been a town where most would have known Jesus personally, peculiar for them to reject him
“Love thy neighbour as yourself” likely referred to fellow Israelites, close neighbours. It is a recipe for Israelite social cohesion, not for interests in bonding. In the book of Mark, a Canaanite woman asks Jesus to exorcise her daughter, he responds with “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”. The woman acknowledges her inferior status and only then Jesus performs the service
The Good Samaritan story is in the later book Luke, but in the book of Matthew, Jesus has this to say about Samaritans: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no tower of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. (Samaria has once been part of northern Israel, but successive imperial conquests caused Judaism to fail to take root)
The Apostle of Love
Apostle Paul was responsible for injecting Christianity with the notion of interethnic brotherly love - he was not one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. Quite the opposite, as he used to persecute followers of Jesus until he had a revelation (i.e a change of heart)
There was a lot of uprooted people in the Roman Empire around the 1st century, and a lot of people without kin gravitated towards social organizations that could substitute for the lack of family. This brought in many different people, and encouraged the notion of brotherly love to accrue more followers
The Roman Empire brought with it interconnected cities, and Paul harnessed the opportunity to ride the commercial currents that had been generated. Encouraging brotherly love helped the word spread, and encouraged the upper class to open their homes, enabling preachers to travel as they had a sort of hotel to stay at (with their “brothers”) while they moved around
As Paul traveled to spread the word of god, the churches broke into factionalism around different apostles. Paul wanted to dissuade this. As well, there were individuals who believed they were near spiritual perfection and would disrupt sermons by showing off their gifts (e.g. speaking in tongues) and Paul wanted to mitigate these as it was selfish, disruptive, and intimidated the common follower
How Jesus Became Saviour
The idea of followers following Jesus up to heaven after death came around 50 years after his death. In Mark, Jesus references a “kingdom of god”, where angel come down to earth and weed out bad people. Later in Matthew, this changes to “kingdom of heaven”, in which the souls of the good people ascend to heaven. For Jesus, judgement day was about the living, not the dead
The idea of eternal life after death likely came about to compete with other religions at the time (i.e the Egyptian god Osiris would hand out divine judgement after death). The “kingdom of god promise” on earth lost its magic, as Christians began to see loved ones dying. Christianity needed to provide a plausible explanation of how followers’ faiths would benefit them; what better way than to promise eternal bliss after death if you follow the rules
Some of these moral contingencies were about personal sins, like overindulgence. As society moved from hunter gather to civilization, they moved from outside of the natural habitat that natural selection optimized them for. Food was abundant, and humans are designed to consume calories; so, people would engage in self harming behaviour and religion helped to curve that behaviour
The Triumph of Islam
The Koran
Mecca’s famous shrine, the Kaba, was in pre-Islamic times surrounded by idols of gods of various clans as to lubricate commerce. Apparently, a Christian had been allowed to paint Jesus and Mary on an inner wall in the Kaba. Before Muhammad came along, Christian Arabs made pilgrimage to the Kaba, honouring Allah as their god and saviour
Mecca
Mecca was a trade city, and thus multiethnic, supporting multiple gods of different trade partners. When Muhammad started preaching against polytheism, he was a threat to the Meccan elite and therefore had to lay low
Mohammed was a typical apocalyptic preacher, preaching against the rich (he had come up as a poor orphan) so that he could amass a decent following. It wasn’t until he moved to Medina and amassed a larger following where he could really preach about the punishment of the nonbelievers
Medina
As Mohammed gained a following in Medina, he was eventually able to overpower Mecca and convert the Kaba into a monotheist shrine for the Abrahamic god. This also attempted to persuade Christians and Jews as it remained an Abrahamic shrine
“Break the Jews” story: Jews resisted Muhammad’s messages, noting contradictions between their bible and his teachings. Muhammad gave up on Jewish conversion, leading him to direct Muslims to pray towards the Mecca instead of Jerusalem. One by one he expelled Jewish tribes from Medina with a final bloody execution
Jihad
“Jihad” means strive/struggle, “Islam/Muslim” means surrender (i.e surrender to god)
The commonly referred to Koran verse by western conservatives “kill the infidels wherever you find them” is mistranslated, infidels is supposed to refer to those who join other gods with God (polytheists) . Still horrible, but not as a target to Jews and Christians. In the next (commonly omitted) verse however, polytheists are offered a chance to seek asylum, hear the word of god, and reach a place of safety
The Islamic empire would use religious intolerance to conquer other states, and once conquered would tolerate those of different religions to ensure peace within the empire. Those other than Muslims were to pay taxes and likely had a harder time making it up the social ladder. Over time as Christians converted to Islam to avoid taxation and incur the social benefit, and Christian numbers dwindled, the reduced threat of Christians allowed the Islamic state to be less tolerant of them
The Moral Imagination
Antipathy towards Muslims from the west is not in the interest of westerners, painting a broad offensive brush to all Muslims may tilt some moderate supporters to radical. Hatred blocks compassion, making it difficult to understand others well enough to keep them from joining the radical ranks
Moral imagination was designed by natural selection. We are better able to empathize with allies, as we both have something to gain through doing so. Empathizing with enemies, however, is designed to be difficult, as there could be a zero-sum relationship where resources/status are lost
Religions that have failed to align individual salvation with social salvation have not fared well. Any religion that doesn’t conduce to the salvation of the whole world, due to globalization, is a religion whose time has (hopefully) passed
Today, the negative-sum side (nukes, scale of regions) of the world’s non-zero-sumness is too large to be compatible with social salvation, hence religion as a means to conquer is no longer feasible
Buddhism under the influence of Indian emperor Ashoka (3rd century BCE) insisted on respecting other religions in the empire and never demanded conversion. He renounced conquest (after witnessing what one of his had done). The most import conquest was the moral conquest, to find the path of moral truth (Dharma)
While scientific inquiry has brought material and scientific progress, religion has served to provide a moral inquiry that has brought moral progress. While atheists would counter the fact that a God is needed to sustain moral progress, there could be some people who require a higher order moral being - needing to feel that if they behave poorly they’ll be disappointing someone and if they behave well they’ll be pleasing someone
Perhaps God lies in the moral guides that evolved alongside human and cultural evolution, the pursuit to do the right thing for the group (in order to survive), the Logos. The feeling of letting others down and making others feel good could be in a sense God - in the form of the law of natural selection

Why Buddhism is True

Published: December 01, 2022

Chapter 1: Taking the red pill

Three basic principles of design for natural selection to ensure gene proliferation:
1. Achieving goals should bring pleasure so that they’re pursued
2. The pleasure shouldn’t last forever—if people had eternal pleasure after one round of sex, genes wouldn’t proliferate as much
3. The animal’s brain should focus more on (1) than on (2), otherwise they may start asking what the point of fiercely pursuing pleasure is to just see it wane shortly after
The way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting
Dopamine is involved in the anticipation of a reward. The first time you eat a donut you receive a large dopamine spike; the next time you see a donut, your brain starts firing dopamine and baits you into eating more, however, this time the dopamine drops after eating it again. This is the delusion, or misleading nature, of your brain overpromising a reward
Chapter 2: Paradoxes of meditation
To be a successful meditator you can’t think of meditation in terms of success
The people that meditation has the most potential of helping normally have the traits that make meditation more difficult (attention deficit, hot headedness, etc.)
Chapter 3: When are feeling illusions?
Feelings are designed to encode judgements about things in our environment. Due to evolutionary mismatches between ancient and modern life, feelings that were once optimized for our survival aren’t so
The powdered donut we crave is not good for our health. Road rage, although momentarily satisfying doesn’t serve the same purpose (anger ≡ the arrow with a poisoned root and a honeyed tip). In a hunter gatherer tribe if someone took advantage of you, you would be right to lash back so you don’t get taken advantage of, and so that others don’t see you as exploitable. This is no longer the case with automobiles and large cities
False positives are intentionally illusory, i.e., if a bush rustles next to you in rattlesnake country, you’re best to jump away in fear regardless of whether it’s an actual rattlesnake or not. This is your brain setting up the illusion before you can even process it in order to take care of your genes
A social psychology experiment from the 1980s had people go out and talk to people, but with realistic scars puts on the faces of the subjects. Half the group had their scars removed, unbeknownst to the subjects, yet when they went and spoke to people, they still perceived others as judging them for the scars
Our emotional intuitions were less often illusory in our evolutionary environment—making a fool of ourselves to our tribe that we saw everyday had consequences—but making a fool of ourselves on the bus in front of people we’ll never see again shouldn’t make us groan in despair for the next few days
“Our feelings weren’t designed to depict reality accurately even in our natural environment; the fact that we’re not living in a natural environment makes our feelings even less reliable guides to reality; underlying it all is the happiness delusion”
One thing all feelings have in common is that they were originally designed to convince you to follow them, they feel right and true almost by definition. They actively discourage you from viewing them objectively
Chapter 4: Bliss, ecstasy, and more important reasons to meditate
The “default mode network” is the network in which our mind wanders when it’s wandering, and it normally wanders into the past or future
Retreats help as they deprive the default mode network of fresh fuel, so it’s easier to eat in experiential mode
Enlightenment is ridding yourself of the twin illusions from which people tend to suffer: what’s inside your mind and what’s out in the rest of the world. Mindfulness involves observing the world inside you and outside you with inordinate care
Vipassana is also known as insight meditation, which tries to illuminate the three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering/unsatisfactoriness, and the not-self. To see reality with true clarity is to develop a high enough resolution of insight into these three marks
Chapter 5: The alleged nonexistence of your self
Buddha’s early seminal teaching in the notself involved a systematic search of the self in the five aggregates: the body, basic feelings, perceptions (i.e sights and sounds), mental formations (i.e thoughts), and consciousness (the awareness of the other aggregates)
Buddha mentions that if any of these aggregates were the self, we would be able to control them to avoid affliction, i.e., future suffering. We can’t modify the body, our feelings, and so on to avoid suffering—there is a lack of control which implies we’re more so along for the ride rather than a true CEO of ourselves
One idea is that consciousness holds more self weight than the other aggregates, and letting go of all five aggregates disentangles consciousness from the other four
In this sense, realizing the content of consciousness—thoughts, feelings, etc.—are not-self, then leads to a more contemplative than engaging relationship with the not-self
- Side thought: as we have broken away from our evolutionary environment, we must also break away from the feelings that no longer serve us, that had once served us well during those times
The ability to disengage from thoughts and impulses and perceptions provides the power to disown them, to redefine the bounds of yourself in a way that excludes them
Chapter 6: Your CEO is MIA
From natural selection’s POV, it’s good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself; to depict a rational and self-aware character. So, whenever your actual motivations aren’t accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation
The two misconceptions of the self involve illusions about our selves and about ourselves: we think our conscious is more in control than it is, and we think we are more morally good and capable than we are
The meditation process can be thought of as taking the conscious mind from speaker of the house to president, providing it an increased availing influence on behaviour
Chapter 7: The mental modules that run your life
An experiment was done where some men were shown pictures of beautiful women and some weren’t, and then tested on their willingness to delay gratification. The men whose mate acquisition modules were primed were found to be less willing to delay gratification—evolutionarily, men who saw signs of near-term courtship take advantage of any near-term resource acquisition. Though the men were conscious that it was just a photo and experiment, the underlying modules of the mind still influenced behaviour
Men when placed in the presence of women rather than men, were found to be more inclined to rate accumulation of wealth as an important career goal
Chapter 8: How thoughts think themselves
Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists. Vipassana emphasizes mindfulness, Tibetan often steers the mind toward visual imagery, and Zen sometimes involves pondering those cryptic lines known as koans (a paradoxical anecdote or riddle)
Most of the thoughts that wander during breath work involve mental modules relating to mate-acquisition, status enhancement, taking care of kin, tending to friendships, modules that have been designed by natural selection to encourage survival. Another default module is imagining an escape in the future (i.e., enjoying a cold beer, playing video games, etc.) which are inventions that circumvent evolution’s logic, as they hack in directly to the reward centre
Thoughts arise due to a game being played between different mental modules, where eventually a winner takes hold of the conscious mind and presents the thought to your mind. Because these modules do the work outside of consciousness, the thoughts kind of surface out of nowhere
Thoughts analogy: thoughts are like watching a movie, we get pulled into the story and feel so many emotions—excitement, fear, love—and then we can sit back and see these are just pixels of light projects on a screen. It’s the same with our thoughts, we get caught up in the story and the drama of them, forgetting that they are like a movie: they are not really happening
- This analogy can help provide power to choose which thoughts are healthy and productive, and which unhealthy thoughts we can let go of
One speculation is that the mental module that receives the honour of display to consciousness is the thought with the strongest associated feeling—whether it be pleasure, jealousy, regret, and so on. Feelings could be the labels to thoughts, labeled “high priority”, “low priority”, etc., and natural selection will determine that importance. If you’re a day away from an important presentation, preparation related thoughts are high priority, hence the high associated anxiety
Chapter 9: “Self” control
Decision making is less rational than we think, and more so based on feeling. Studies from Stanford/MIT showed that when people were shown products to buy, their brain activity mapped to emotional centre—in the nucleus accumbens for attraction, and the insula for aversion. Information is transformed into feelings before decisions are made
Prior to thoughts, animals were primarily driven by feelings—the brain provided positive feedback for things like eating, and negative feedback for things like being eaten. As animals and societies evolved, thoughts came to provide a way in which to navigate decision making in more complex environments
When practicing self control, we are not necessarily being more rational, but rather fortifying the feelings against the temptation. Natural selection wants us to live a long and healthy life and wants us to eat foods with certain kinds of tastes. Struggling for self control is a clash between these values of natural selection
Since all these deliberations are done subconsciously, why does the conscious participate? One theory is that if anyone challenges you or asks you why you did x, you’ll be able to cite a plausible rationale. It also helps to share reasons with others to get their feedback prior to decision making
Initial battles between mental modules end up disproportionately strengthening the winning module. In the case of self discipline, if we give in to a temptation, and are rewarded, our resistance to that temptation will atrophy over time. This is because in our ancestral environment, when, for example, a questionable sexual advance was rewarded, it would make sense to encourage it more. If it failed and you were ridiculed, it would encourage inaction in the future to avoid becoming a laughingstock
- In other words, natural selection designed modules that get stronger with repeated success, and uses gratification as it’s working definition of success
The RAIN technique (Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Nonattachment) is a mindfulness technique used to treat impulses and addiction. When distracted during work, you might think: No, don’t think about that—back to work! The mindful approach is to say: Go ahead, engage in that thought. Close your eyes and imagine how it would feel to open YouTube, examine the feeling of wanting to go to YouTube. Examine it until it loses power, then…back to work!
Weaken impulses by not fighting it; instead, let it form and observe carefully. Hatred is also an impulse; it tempts us to engage in it because historically it was beneficial to undermine our enemies—and that would be rewarded with a good feeling. Treating it mindfully also provides a way to reduce the power of that impulse lever
Chapter 10: Encounters with the formless
Our perceptions are constructions of the world around us. Our perception systems sense light particles to see and sound waves to hear, to infer about our environment from afar. For example, our visual fields have a 2D basis, which combine to construct an inference of our 3D field. Optical illusions find loopholes in this inference to trick the mind into seeing something unusual
A sound by itself is passive, not active, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So, to make it unpleasant, you must attach a judgement or feeling to it
Everything meaningful about the world is something we impose on it. We build our perceptions on stories, and mindfulness meditation is a tool for examining our stories carefully, from the ground up, so that we can separate truth from fabrication
Chapter 11: The upside of emptiness
The Capgras delusion is when someone assumes that a loved one has been replaced with a replica when it’s the real person. The emotions, or essence, normally associated with the perceptual information of that person have suddenly lost their value and the delusional person goes “crazy”
We ascribe value to things based on the emotions they evoke, this is “essentialism”. A tape measured once owned by a famous person is inherently more valuable than an ordinary tape measurer, despite the objects being materialistically identical
An experiment with professional wine tasters showed that when labeling the same wine as premium bordeaux and standard, the premium was thought to taste better. We value things based on the stories behind them, but this in turn masks the truth about what we’re experiencing. Had these wine tasters not been deluded, they would have experienced the truer taste of the wine, i.e., that they were identical
Some describe the emptiness idea as “full emptiness”, where sometimes not seeing the essence, or story, of things allows you to be drawn into the richness of things, their raw beauty
Brain scan studies, where subjects responded to the taste of the same wine labeled as $90 and $10, found that the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) was more active in the $90 drink. This region’s activity correlates with pleasurable experience. However, regions associated with sense tasting were not affected differently. The mOFC seems to be where the story, and hence expectation, mixes in with the raw sensory data to provide the “hedonic” experience of flavour
Chapter 12: A weedless world
Fundamental attribution error is attributing others behaviour to disposition, not situation; we locate the badness in others, not in their environmental factors
It makes sense that in a self-serving way, we attribute behaviours we see to people’s dispositions—seeing them as possessing a good or bad essence that is most in our interest to see them possessing. We neglect that their behaviour could be different around others. Conveniently, our allies have essence-of-good and rivals an essence-of-bad.
We have an essence-preservation mechanism that makes our enemies more readily blameworthy for bad behaviour than our allies. This makes it easy to witness the suffering of our enemies with indifference or even satisfaction, as natural selection has implanted a sense of justice into our brains
Experiencing your feelings with care and clarity allows you to choose which ones to follow—like joy, delight, and love. This selective engagement with feelings, this weakened obedience to them, can include the feelings that shape the essence we see in things and people
The ultimate aim of Buddhism is not to become completely unemotional, i.e., emotionally flat. It rather enriches emotional life, so that one becomes more emotionally sensitive, more happy and joyful. One can respond to things in the world in a freer, more happy, more delightful way
Chapter 13: Everything is one (at most)
In the four noble truths, Buddha lays out that the basic cause of dukkha (suffering) is tanha (thirst, craving, desire) and that tanha is unquenchable and leaves of thirsting for more of the same or for something new
The more tanha one has, the more distinct the bounds between the self and the object of the tanha. Emotions involving tanha seem to point to an unspoken boundary between the self and the desired or undesired scenario; thus, tanha will not only indicate but also create and drive the sense of self-other boundedness
The interior perspective of not-self involves inspecting feelings and detaching from them. The external component of not-self can be thought of as follows: as the grip of desires—tanha—wanes, so does the sense of self that distinguishes you from the rest of your environment, so that the not-self experience extends outwards
A refrain appearing in Buddhist texts is that of the three poisons: greed (general thirst for pleasant experience), hatred (aversion toward anything), and delusion. The two sides of tanha are a craving for pleasant and an aversion to the unpleasant. This in turn emphasizes the sense of self, which in the Buddhist sense is a delusion
Chapter 14: Nirvana in a nutshell
Mindfulness meditation enables the liberation from conditions, i.e., the chains of causation that otherwise shackle you. The things in your environment—the sights, sounds, smells, people, news, videos—push buttons and activate feelings that set in motion trains of thought and reactions that govern your behaviour, sometimes in ways that are unfortunate
Enlightenment in the Buddhist sense has something in common with enlightenment in the western scientific sense: it involves becoming more aware of what causes what. Mindfulness is more introspective, with lessened ability of rigorous proofs, but invokes rational inquiry of the thoughts and feelings arriving to consciousness via external stimuli
Chapter 15: Is enlightenment enlightening?
A rebellion against an oppressive enemy focuses the mind and steels you for the struggle ahead. In the context of Buddhism, this enemy can be seen as natural selection, the engineer of the delusions that control us, it built those delusions into our brains
We have a right to decide, like Neo of the Matrix, that our values differ from the force that controls us, and that we want liberation from it
One element of enlightenment, the exterior version of the not-self experience (in which bounds between internal and external experience dissolve), involves abandoning one of the most basic precepts built into us by natural selection: that I am special by virtue of being me
Working towards enlightenment involves loosening the grip of natural selection over you. In the exterior sense, everyone on the planet thinking that they are more special than everyone else is absurd; it can’t be that everybody is more important than everybody else: rejecting this notion must move us closer to the truth
Identifying with these thoughts and feelings, which are used to proliferate genes, is another way of asserting our specialness. In the interior self case, cease self-identifying with your thoughts and feelings, reject natural selection’s values
The view from nowhere—impartiality (not thinking one’s perspective is as important as anyone else’s)—still involves concern for the well-being of all sentient beings. This concern would be evenly distributed such that no one’s welfare is more important than anyone else’s (equanimity)

The Coddling of the American Mind

Published: December 31, 2022

The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, 2018

This book touches on the recent developments in some American universities, and tries to identify some of the causal mechanisms that give rise to the “… new problems on campus, [which] have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.”

Elephant in the Brain

Published: December 31, 2022

Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson

A book about psychological truths that we tend to pretend don’t exist but are more or less obvious, much like the saying “the elephant in the room”. Hence the title, the elephant in the brain.

The Evolution of God

Published: December 31, 2022

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

This book sees how religion evolved alongside humans, from hunter gatherer tribes to civilizations. More emphasis on the monotheist Abrahamic religions.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Published: December 31, 2022

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Published: December 31, 2022

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

This book explores the question of why some regions of the world developed and expanded faster than others.

Happiness Hypothesis

Published: December 31, 2022

Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

A book about happiness that uses a clever metaphor to describe the conflict between primitive motives and conscious thought.

The Lonely Century

Published: December 31, 2022

The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz

Why Buddhism is True

Published: December 31, 2022

Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright

Cosmos

Published: January 01, 2023

Introduction

Science is delightful; evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding—those who better understand are more likely to survive.
Chapter 1: The shore of the cosmic ocean
Chapter 2: One voice in cosmic fugue
On the plant and animal relationship: “What a marvellous cooperative arrangement—plants and animals each inhaling each other’s exhalations, a kind of planet wide mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometres away.”
DNA knows what to do, RNA conveys the instructions of the DNA to the rest of the cell (to make proteins?)
If the mutation rate is too high, we lose the inheritance of four billion years of painstaking evolution. If too low, variation may be too low to adapt to a changing environment. Life requires a precious balance between mutation and selection
In all life, nucleic acid is used for heredity (DNA), proteins are used for the enzymes that control cell chemistry (as per messenger RNA instructions received from DNA).
- Nucleic acid information is translated into protein information
  Chapter 3: The harmony of worlds
Martin Luther described Copernicus as “an upstart astrologer…[who] wishes to reverse the science of astronomy. But sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.”
Chapter 4: Heaven and Hell
Planets in our solar system have near circular orbits—not as elliptical as comets, say—because of a sort of planetary selection. Elliptical orbits would have had higher likelihood of collision, stymying the formation of planets. Wider, more circular orbits allowed amalgamation of matter with lower likelihood of collision.
“Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits.”
“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but is not the path to knowledge.”
Chapter 5: Blues for a red planet
Strong passions fray the tolerance for ambiguity, which is essential for science
“The twin human passions for Euclidean geometry and territoriality.”
Chapter 6: Travelers’ tales
Leuwenhook and Huygens, products of Netherlands explorative and entrepreneurial era, were early discoverers of microscopic organisms (animalcules). Their work grandfathered germ theory and much of modern medicine, but their motives were merely related to tinkering with recently developed technology
- The benefits a technology brings need not be realized upon the technology’s discovery. Technology can bring about unforeseen downstream effects, which can be beneficial or harmful.
Jupiter is nearly a star and may as well be considered one if we consider its infrared radiation. Jupiter generates 2x more energy than it receives from the sun.
- If there were two stars in our solar system, we could have had no night-time. In this kind of world, would sleep be required? Would sleep-states be rationed throughout “days”? The notion of day would change to whatever salient energy patterns arise due to our planet’s rotation and translation. How would evolution unfurl without night-time?
  Chapter 7: The backbone of night
“When…he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon…does he, in fact, do anything more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?” - Paul Heinrich Dietrich
Early Greeks believed the first being was Chaos (corresponding to the phrase in Genesis “without form”). Then, Ionians argued Nature exhibits order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be unveiled. This ordered character of the universe was called Cosmos.
“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.” -Hippocrates, ~500BC
Chapter 8: Travels in space and time
“Space and time are interwoven. We cannot look out into space without looking back into time.”
Chapter 9: The lives of the stars
Supernovae occur at the end of a star’s life, where stellar mass is violently ejected into space. During this ejection, thermonuclear reactions in the stellar interior fuse smaller atoms into larger atoms—this is where hydrogen combines into helium, then carbon, then oxygen, and so on until silicon and iron. We are formed by these atoms as well—we were birthed by the death of a star once located somewhere in our galaxy.
Heavier atoms, like gold and uranium, are formed in the violent explosions of supernova. This high local pressure and temperature can fuse heavier atoms together. Embedded in uranium is the energy of a distant supernova that birthed the matter that forms Earth. Incredible.
Almost all life is solar powered. Even mutation itself is solar powered—cosmic rays create mutations which cause hereditary variation
Normally atoms in kind are repelled by their electron fields and protons. Why don’t the protons in their nucleus repel each other? Neutrons apparently serve to bind the protons together, like a nuclear clamp
When temperatures and pressures are high enough, enough energy is provided to overcome the nuclear aversion between atoms and fuse them together, creating larger atoms
Larger stars (3-5x) than the sun experience higher pressure and temperatures, thus consuming nuclear fuel at a higher rate. The lifetimes of larger stars tend to be much shorter (order of a few million years) until they die, explode, and fraction into smaller solar systems with smaller stars. Our sun is one of those smaller stars, and its long life is one of the reasons life has been able to evolve to a point where we can understand the stars themselves.
When even larger stars (>10x sun) die, their implosion generates a black hole, whose gravity is so immense that even light cannot escape. The gravity causes three-dimensional space time to sink within itself, generating a fourth dimension unbeknownst to us.
Chapter 10: The edge of forever
If the universe is expanding, as observed by prevalent elongated—red—spectra, then why aren’t we the center about which everything is expanding? The answer may lie in a fourth dimension.
Say the three dimensions observable to us are akin to a two-dimensional plane on a sphere, observable to two-dimensional folk. We may occupy a surface of a four-dimensional hypersphere, unaware of the fourth dimension as the 2D folk are unaware of the third. And if our hypersphere is expanding, the surface fabric of space time we occupy would be expanding in all directions.
Chapter 11: The persistence of memory
The brain is a very big place in a very small space. It has the informational equivalent of 10^14 bits, information which could fill some twenty million volumes, as many as the world’s largest libraries
Chapter 12: Encyclopedia galactica
Chapter 13: Who speaks for earth?
Subtle consequences of nuclear war (beyond immediate blast and radiation)
- Ozone depletion in high atmosphere due to combustion of nitrogen, increasing solar UV radiation. Skin cancer risk increase, crops decimated, and microorganisms killed—some of which could sit at the base of the ecological pyramid
- Dust and ash would reflect sunlight, cooling the planet and disrupting agricultural crops
- Birds are more vulnerable to radiation than insects. With less insectivores, plagues would be imminent as insect populations explode
- Immunological function is hindered by radiation, making the few survivors more vulnerable to diseases
When our well-being is threatened and our illusions challenge, some of us fly into a murderous rage. Sagan suggests the same thing happens at the nation scale, and that conflict is coerced by a few power/profit hungry entities
Some estimate that roughly half of scientists and high technologists are employed full or part time on military matters. They’re offered power, money, accolades, and secrecy, which obviously attracts
This secrecy is a challenge, however, because not even civilians can monitor the going-ons of their militaries. If we do not know what our militaries do, how can we stop them? “And with the rewards so substantial, with the hostile military establishments beholden to each other in some ghastly mutual embrace, the world finds itself drifting toward the ultimate undoing of the human enterprise.”
Every major power has a justification for its production and stockpiling of weapons. These justifications often presume cultural defects of enemies (as opposed to us fine fellows) or the intentions of others (but never ourselves) to conquer the world.
“Superstition is cowardice in the face of the Divine.” - Theophrastus
To not confuse what things are with how we wish they’d be
Only here, on this planet, do humans likely exist. We are a raw as well as an endangered (due to ourselves) species. In the cosmic perspective, humans are precious. So, if a human disagrees with you, let them live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened to include the entire global human community. Many nations will find this unpleasant, fearing the loss of power. But it is this or extinction.

The Brothers Karamazov

Published: January 14, 2023

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It sometimes happens that [the odd man] bears within himself the heart of the whole, while the other people of his epoch have all for some reason been torn away from it for a time by some kind of flooding wind.”
Fyodor’s first wife was well-off, while he was not. Narrator suggests Adelaida was an echo of foreign influence, a mind imprisoned, wanting to assert her feminine independence and go against social conventions, despite the despotism of her relatives. Fyodor latched on for the potential of social status. Neither loved each other, both using each other to satiate their respective desires for anti-conformity (Adelaida) and status (Fyodor)
When Adelaida left him, Fyodor gleefully recounted his woes to all. “One would think you had been promoted, you’re so pleased despite all your woes!”
In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
- Wickedness stems from banal ignorance
Fyodor abandoned his first son, not out of malice, but simply because he totally forgot about him
“Who was apparently not wicked but had become a most insufferable crank from sheer idleness.”
“…that eternally needy and miserable mass of our students of both sexes who…habitually haunt the doorways of various newspapers and magazines…to invent anything better than the eternal repetition of one and the same plea for copying work or translations from the French.”
“The question of atheism…of the Tower of Babel built precisely without God, not to go from earth to heaven but to bring heaven down to earth.”
- The issue with bringing heaven to earth, is that it runs counter to the theme of delayed gratification that the concept of heaven attempts to instil in followers. Heaven is like a macro-level delayed gratification mechanism, urging people to forego selfish urges in promise of blissful paradise—yet this paradise realistically lies within the future generations of the social group. When we try to bring blissful paradise to earth with no faith, the future risks crumbling in the wake of hedonic indulgence—hell. Faith is our ability to look ahead, and if we don’t look ahead, we get nowhere.
“Perhaps…this tested and already thousand year old instrument for the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfection may turn into a double edged weapon, which may lead a person not to humility and ultimate self-control but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride—that is, to chains and not freedom.”
- Like Buddhas story of self-indulgence to self-mortification
“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies…does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.”
“It sometimes feels very good to take offense…he likes feeling offended…and thus he teaches the point of real hostility.”
About a doctor: “the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular.”
“And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie.”
- A precondition to fear is uncertainty, and we sometimes fill in that uncertainty with a more certain and fearsome outcome. This is the lie.
- Are there honest fear responses? If I see a venomous snake, is being fearful of that signal honest?…the fear is still predicated on a projection into the future, I suppose, that the snake could harm me, but it hasn’t harmed me yet. Even if it bites me, I may become scared of the consequences, but that’s because I don’t know what will happen (uncertainty). Fear depends on a projection, and that projection is always a lie, an abstraction, a fiction.
Ivan proposes against separation of church and state. Suggests that the state should end by being accounted worth of becoming the church, from a lower to higher type.
At the time in Russia, criminals were punished mechanically, cut off like an infected limb for the preservation of society. Ivan suggests the state should strive towards the idea of regeneration of man anew, of their restoration and salvation.
The elder claims the mechanical punishment option is not punishment, it only chafes the heart. The real punishment lies in the acknowledgment of one’s own conscience.
You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow you will be happy…seek happiness in sorrow.
Mitri to Alyosha: “the terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.”
- Selfish urges battling with communal urges — both urges exist, selfish being more rewarding in the present (tangible and familiar), communal being more rewarding in the future (less tangible, feels more godly and ethereal)
Do they truly love? Or do they simply love their own virtue?
“In our great intelligence, we’ve stopped flogging our peasants, but they go on whipping themselves.”
Father Paissy in a remark about growing scientific interest: “…after hard analysis, the learned ones…have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined the parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole [Christianity] stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Fyodor Pavlovich: “wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they do it on the sly and I do it openly. And for this sincerity of mine, the wicked ones all attack me”
“But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride…”
“Schoolchildren are merciless people: separately they’re God’s angels, but together, especially in school, they’re quite often merciless.”
“For the daughter—love, and for the mother—death.” o In reference to Madame Khokhlakov’s greed for her daughter, and unwillingness to let her crippled daughter marry Alyosha. Her daughter depends on her, and once she no longer depends on her mother, for where can the mother find her worth?
“The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest.”
- Reason involves nuance, making it complex and elusive. Stupidity takes shortcuts, slashing away at nuance, making things easier to understand but often less true.
“It is precisely the defencelessness of these creatures the tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.”
“If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact…”
“For nothing has ever been more insufferable for man than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching dessert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them…”
“No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us.’ They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves.”
There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable [to all of man] …for it must happen all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword.”
“Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him.”
“There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either…There are three powers…capable of conquering and holding captive forever these feeble rebels, for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority.”
“If in the name of heavenly bread thousands follow you, what will become of the millions of creatures not strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly?…the weak too are dear to us…depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us…because we…have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them [ouch]—so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free!”
“Since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create miracles for himself, his own miracles of quacks, or women’s magic, though he be rebellious, heretical, and godless a hundred times over.” o Modern examples are astrology, tarot cards, and politics
“You [Jesus] did not come down [from the cross] because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for a love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified.”
“Mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal. There have been many great nations…but the higher these nations stood, the unhappier they were, for they were more strongly aware than others for the need for a universal union of mankind.”
“Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves [because they only have the power to bring themselves down]; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: ‘Yes, you were right…save us from ourselves.’”
“For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and acquired privileges perish.”
“Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.”
“For the world says: ‘You have needs, therefore satisfy them…Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them’—this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder.”
“We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united…by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people. Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves. They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display…I ask you: is such a man free?”
“The idea of serving mankind, of the…oneness of people, is fading…for how can one drop one’s habits, where will this slave go now that he is so accustomed to satisfying the innumerable needs he himself has invented?…They have succeeded in amassing more and more things, but have less and less joy.”
“If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more each day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love.”
- Being present and attentive about life’s intricacies. There lies an eternity in every grain of sand, every bird’s chirp, every gentle smile. If you can’t see the eternity, you aren’t looking deeply enough
“My young brother asked forgiveness of the birds: it seems senseless, yet it is right, for all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”
“Let it be madness to ask forgiveness of the birds, still it would be easier for the birds, and for a child, and for any animal near you, if you yourself were more gracious than you are now, if only by a drop, still it would be easier.”
- When those ridicule the practice of non-harm by the Buddhists, who refuse to even harm an insect, this is what I think of. If we can learn to love even pesky insects, reducing our disgust and hatred of them, we reduce the chances of that hatred and disgust being directed toward fellow humans
“By shifting your own laziness and powerlessness into others, you will end by sharing in Satan’s pride and murmuring against god.”
- Radiate selflessness, not selfishness.
“If the wickedness of people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all.”
“The righteous man departs, but his light remains…Your work is for the whole, your deed is for the future.”
- This light that he leaves behind is heaven—a better place to live.
“What is hell? The suffering of being no longer able to love.”
“But Rakitin, who could be quite sensitive in understanding everything that concerned himself, was quite crude in understanding the feelings and sensations of his neighbours—partly because of his youthful inexperience, and partly because of his great egoism.”
“One should forgive pathetic phrases, one must. Pathetic phrases ease the soul, without them men’s grief would be too heavy.”
When Mitya is being questioned and has to remove his clothes: “If everyone is undressed, it’s not shameful, but when only one is undressed and the others are all looking—it’s a disgrace!”
- How I felt on a bus ride in Seattle, near the end of the pandemic, when I forgot a mask (regardless, the mandate had recently lifted) and everyone had still worn a mask, so that I was the only maskless—“undressed”—person on the bus. The social pressure I felt was unbearably crushing. Lol
To suffer and be purified by suffering
“Because what is virtue?—answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another—so it’s a relative thing. Or not?..I just keep wondering how people can live and think nothing about these things.” - Mitya to Alyosha
The same people who naively neglect forces larger than themselves are most prone to being thrust around by those forces. Ivan is a man of science, striving towards objective truth and ridiculing the unknown. But his naive rejection of the unknown leaves him vulnerable to his passions, which ironically makes the journey to truth much more difficult
“You’re too intelligent, sir. You love money…you also love respect, because you’re very proud, you love women’s charms exceedingly, and most of all you love loving in peaceful prosperity, without bowing to anyone.”
“If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen.”
“Without suffering, what pleasure would there be in [life]—everything would turn into an endless prayer service: holy, but a bit dull.”
Mentions of a legend in which a philosopher doubtful of the afterlife, who mentions the lights will simply go out at death, is sentenced in the afterlife to walk in the dark for a quadrillion kilometres.
- Metaphorically, those who are dismissive about sin, not fearful of consequences beyond their own life, are leaving society in the dark, bound to walk aimlessly for a quadrillion kilometres. Faith in something larger provides the guiding light; lack of faith leaves us aimless. Note that this does not imply that we must believe in a supernatural afterlife, rather we must recognize that life continues after us, and we can provide to that afterlife rather than burden it.
Ivan’s spiritual ambivalence eats away at him. He yearns for the certainty of faith found in the devout, seemingly ignorant, and spiritually blissful followers (like the plump wife of a merchant)
“Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire.”
- Each of our lives may be momentary, but they are part of a larger symphony. Seeing it as momentary—divorced from prior or future generations—is a mistake, an oversimplification. You couldn’t exist without your ancestors, and the future couldn’t exist without you, and if you believe in making the world better, you have a duty to serve the past, present, and future.
“God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit…He will either rise into the light of truth, or…perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in.”
Regarding Dmitri’s trial turnout: “Hysterical, greedy, almost morbid curiosity could be read on [the ladies’] faces.” Dostoevsky does a great job at highlighting the comical yet concerning female urge for gossip and drama.
“The contemptuously curious eyes fixed upon her by our scandal-loving public.”
“For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment.”
We were no different in the late 1800s. Gobbling up stories of suffering with relish and a hint of concern and forgetting them shortly after.
“Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right.’”
“There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will…expand and show how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are.”

Cosmos

Published: January 14, 2023

Cosmos, Carl Sagan

Introduction

Science is delightful; evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding—those who better understand are more likely to survive.
Chapter 1: The shore of the cosmic ocean
Chapter 2: One voice in cosmic fugue
On the plant and animal relationship: “What a marvellous cooperative arrangement—plants and animals each inhaling each other’s exhalations, a kind of planet wide mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometres away.”
DNA knows what to do, RNA conveys the instructions of the DNA to the rest of the cell (to make proteins?)
If the mutation rate is too high, we lose the inheritance of four billion years of painstaking evolution. If too low, variation may be too low to adapt to a changing environment. Life requires a precious balance between mutation and selection
In all life, nucleic acid is used for heredity (DNA), proteins are used for the enzymes that control cell chemistry (as per messenger RNA instructions received from DNA).
- Nucleic acid information is translated into protein information
  Chapter 3: The harmony of worlds
Martin Luther described Copernicus as “an upstart astrologer…[who] wishes to reverse the science of astronomy. But sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.”
Chapter 4: Heaven and Hell
Planets in our solar system have near circular orbits—not as elliptical as comets, say—because of a sort of planetary selection. Elliptical orbits would have had higher likelihood of collision, stymying the formation of planets. Wider, more circular orbits allowed amalgamation of matter with lower likelihood of collision.
“Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits.”
“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but is not the path to knowledge.”
Chapter 5: Blues for a red planet
Strong passions fray the tolerance for ambiguity, which is essential for science
“The twin human passions for Euclidean geometry and territoriality.”
Chapter 6: Travelers’ tales
Leuwenhook and Huygens, products of Netherlands explorative and entrepreneurial era, were early discoverers of microscopic organisms (animalcules). Their work grandfathered germ theory and much of modern medicine, but their motives were merely related to tinkering with recently developed technology
- The benefits a technology brings need not be realized upon the technology’s discovery. Technology can bring about unforeseen downstream effects, which can be beneficial or harmful.
Jupiter is nearly a star and may as well be considered one if we consider its infrared radiation. Jupiter generates 2x more energy than it receives from the sun.
- If there were two stars in our solar system, we could have had no night-time. In this kind of world, would sleep be required? Would sleep-states be rationed throughout “days”? The notion of day would change to whatever salient energy patterns arise due to our planet’s rotation and translation. How would evolution unfurl without night-time?
  Chapter 7: The backbone of night
“When…he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon…does he, in fact, do anything more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?” - Paul Heinrich Dietrich
Early Greeks believed the first being was Chaos (corresponding to the phrase in Genesis “without form”). Then, Ionians argued Nature exhibits order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be unveiled. This ordered character of the universe was called Cosmos.
“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.” -Hippocrates, ~500BC
Chapter 8: Travels in space and time
“Space and time are interwoven. We cannot look out into space without looking back into time.”
Chapter 9: The lives of the stars
Supernovae occur at the end of a star’s life, where stellar mass is violently ejected into space. During this ejection, thermonuclear reactions in the stellar interior fuse smaller atoms into larger atoms—this is where hydrogen combines into helium, then carbon, then oxygen, and so on until silicon and iron. We are formed by these atoms as well—we were birthed by the death of a star once located somewhere in our galaxy.
Heavier atoms, like gold and uranium, are formed in the violent explosions of supernova. This high local pressure and temperature can fuse heavier atoms together. Embedded in uranium is the energy of a distant supernova that birthed the matter that forms Earth. Incredible.
Almost all life is solar powered. Even mutation itself is solar powered—cosmic rays create mutations which cause hereditary variation
Normally atoms in kind are repelled by their electron fields and protons. Why don’t the protons in their nucleus repel each other? Neutrons apparently serve to bind the protons together, like a nuclear clamp
When temperatures and pressures are high enough, enough energy is provided to overcome the nuclear aversion between atoms and fuse them together, creating larger atoms
Larger stars (3-5x) than the sun experience higher pressure and temperatures, thus consuming nuclear fuel at a higher rate. The lifetimes of larger stars tend to be much shorter (order of a few million years) until they die, explode, and fraction into smaller solar systems with smaller stars. Our sun is one of those smaller stars, and its long life is one of the reasons life has been able to evolve to a point where we can understand the stars themselves.
When even larger stars (>10x sun) die, their implosion generates a black hole, whose gravity is so immense that even light cannot escape. The gravity causes three-dimensional space time to sink within itself, generating a fourth dimension unbeknownst to us.
Chapter 10: The edge of forever
If the universe is expanding, as observed by prevalent elongated—red—spectra, then why aren’t we the center about which everything is expanding? The answer may lie in a fourth dimension.
Say the three dimensions observable to us are akin to a two-dimensional plane on a sphere, observable to two-dimensional folk. We may occupy a surface of a four-dimensional hypersphere, unaware of the fourth dimension as the 2D folk are unaware of the third. And if our hypersphere is expanding, the surface fabric of space time we occupy would be expanding in all directions.
Chapter 11: The persistence of memory
The brain is a very big place in a very small space. It has the informational equivalent of 10^14 bits, information which could fill some twenty million volumes, as many as the world’s largest libraries
Chapter 12: Encyclopedia galactica
Chapter 13: Who speaks for earth?
Subtle consequences of nuclear war (beyond immediate blast and radiation)
- Ozone depletion in high atmosphere due to combustion of nitrogen, increasing solar UV radiation. Skin cancer risk increase, crops decimated, and microorganisms killed—some of which could sit at the base of the ecological pyramid
- Dust and ash would reflect sunlight, cooling the planet and disrupting agricultural crops
- Birds are more vulnerable to radiation than insects. With less insectivores, plagues would be imminent as insect populations explode
- Immunological function is hindered by radiation, making the few survivors more vulnerable to diseases
When our well-being is threatened and our illusions challenge, some of us fly into a murderous rage. Sagan suggests the same thing happens at the nation scale, and that conflict is coerced by a few power/profit hungry entities
Some estimate that roughly half of scientists and high technologists are employed full or part time on military matters. They’re offered power, money, accolades, and secrecy, which obviously attracts
This secrecy is a challenge, however, because not even civilians can monitor the going-ons of their militaries. If we do not know what our militaries do, how can we stop them? “And with the rewards so substantial, with the hostile military establishments beholden to each other in some ghastly mutual embrace, the world finds itself drifting toward the ultimate undoing of the human enterprise.”
Every major power has a justification for its production and stockpiling of weapons. These justifications often presume cultural defects of enemies (as opposed to us fine fellows) or the intentions of others (but never ourselves) to conquer the world.
“Superstition is cowardice in the face of the Divine.” - Theophrastus
To not confuse what things are with how we wish they’d be
Only here, on this planet, do humans likely exist. We are a raw as well as an endangered (due to ourselves) species. In the cosmic perspective, humans are precious. So, if a human disagrees with you, let them live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened to include the entire global human community. Many nations will find this unpleasant, fearing the loss of power. But it is this or extinction.

The Great Leveler

Published: May 01, 2023

Introduction: The challenge of inequality

The four horsemen of leveling: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics
Ways in which to measure inequality:
- Gini coefficient: measures extent to which the distribution of income or material assets deviate from perfect equality. Perfect equality: Gini=0, one person controls everything: Gini=1
- Percentage share of total income or wealth: i.e top 1% share higher incomes or assets than other 99% * Gini computes overall degree of equality, percentage shares describe the shape of the distribution
Income prior to taxes and public transfers is known as “market” income, income after transfers is called “gross” income, and income net of all taxes and transfers is defined as “disposable” income
Most of this book refers to “market” income, taxes and transfers are hard to trace depending on the society
Why does economic inequality matter?
It can hinder economic growth; lower disposable income inequality has been found to lead to faster economic growth and longer growth phases
The credit bubble that helped trigger the 2008 recession was in part due to low income households drawing on readily available credit, from the wealthy at the top, to borrow for the sake of keeping up with consumption patterns of more affluent groups
Under conditions where lending is more restrictive, wealth inequality also disadvantages low income groups as it blocks their access to credit
In developed countries, higher inequality is associated with less economic mobility across generations. Higher income families get access to better education, residential segregation sees public services disproportionally attracted to affluent areas
High levels of inequality are correlated with lower levels of self-reported happiness, but not so much health. This makes sense, as happiness can be hindered by discouraging social comparison
Part 1: A brief history of inequality
Chapter 1: The rise of inequality
Our ancestors, Australopithecus, from 3 to 4 million years ago were more sexually dimorphic, with male body mass advantages of over 50%. Evolution attenuated this sexual inequality both among males and between the sexes
As our brains and physiology changed, physical differences made less of an impact on inequality. As lower status men could form coalitions and make weapons to battle from afar (rocks, spears, bows), which played an equalizing role in the physical sense, but privileging knowledge/skill over size
In a site north of Moscow, dated from about 30000-40000 years go, the remains of a man and two children were found buried with loads of ivory beads and more, with estimates of the time required to make all these objects at 2-5 years. Despite this, social and economic inequality in the paleolithic era likely remained sporadic and transient
The Holocene era brought with it temperate conditions, allowing for the thriving of humans and most life in general. This allowed Homo sapiens to rely on local concentrations of resources, occupational specialization grew, strictly defined asset ownership developed as well as the perimeter defence of territory, and intense competition between groups that led to enslavement of captives (the Chumash of the California coast in year 500-700 were found to do this)—all fostering social hierarchy and inequality
Two crucial determinants of inequality: ownership rights in land and livestock, and the ability to transmit wealth from one generation to the next
The different types of wealth: embodied (genetic), relational (partners in labor), and material. In foragers, embodied wealth is more important; whereas in herders and farmers material wealth is most important
Transmissibility of wealth is about twice as high for farmers and herders than for foragers, and the material possessions available to them were more suitable for transmission
Inequality and its persistence over time is the result of 3 factors:
- The relative importance of different classes of assets
- How suitable they are for passing on to others
- The actual rates of transmission
If wealth is passed on between generations, random shocks related to health, parity, and returns on capital that would typically rebalance resource distribution is instead dampened. Resources accumulate over time rather than redistributing elsewhere
Agricultural development in societies, i.e., ways in which to develop and maintain wealth surplus, foster political inequality in these societies. A historical survey found that 86 percent of Native American societies (out of 258) surveyed found that those lacking significant surplus production also lacked signs of political inequality
80% of hunter gatherer societies had no ruling class, whereas 75% of agrarian societies do. Agrarian societies with wheat, rather than, say, roots, are more conducive to political rule as grain is more suitable for long term storage
In early societies/chiefdoms, state-directed allocation of material resources converted political inequality into income and wealth inequality, as political elite and administrators were allocated more materials (land, labor (slaves), etc.)
Chapter 2: Empires of inequality
The Han dynasty (200BCE-200CE) and Roman Empire (200BCE-200CE) feature historical accounts of inequality.
In the Han dynasty, the elite, aristocrats, government officials, and war officials normally earned status and resources via land ownership. They would regularly employ tactics to evade taxes (e.g., falsifying census records, creating fake names, collect taxes from tenants and pay less than received and pocket and pocket the difference).
Attempts to equalize power from elite to lower class were attempted throughout the dynasty, however, these attempts waned over time and discontinuities in leadership would disrupt them as well
- There would sometimes be a change of elite rule, due to warfare or internal politics, but the wealth at the top would mostly be redistributed to those next in line
In the Roman Empire, wealthy elites and retired war senators would accumulate properties—normally at the expense of the middle class, shoving them downwards towards the lower class. Property and material assets would concentrate towards these few over time, serving to increase polarity between the lower and upper rungs of the wealth ladder
Within these examples, imperial income inequality could be hindered only through conquest, state failure, or wholesale systems collapse—all violent upheavals. Despite some attempts, peaceful ways of combatting inequality have not made a meaningful impact in these historical accounts
In premodern societies, very large fortunes regularly owed more to political power than to economic prowess. This could be somewhat managed by the state rulers’ abilities and willingness to engage in tyrannical intervention
Chapter 3: Up and down
After the fall of the Roman rule, state collapse served to redistribute wealth throughout Europe and counter-act inequality
Prior to the Black Death, a millennia later, Europe was more developed and unequal than it had been since the Roman Empire. General stability and development lay fertile ground for increased inequality
This changed when the Black Death struck in 1347, which is estimated to have killed more than 25% of the European population by 1400. As a result, labor became scarce and unskilled labor and farm wages increased 2X. Commoners, from England to Egypt, enjoyed better diets and grew taller bodies
In late medieval-early modern Europe, urban regions suffered from more inequality (compared to rural regions) due to: greater division of labor, differentiation in skills and incomes, spatial concentration of elite households, and the inflow of poorer migrant workers
According to a Florentine census of 1427, wealth inequality correlated with the scale of urbanism—the larger the city the larger the wealth inequality
Part 2: War
Chapter 4: Total war
After defeat in World War Two, Japan underwent significant wealth leveling. Throughout the war the Japanese government directed resources (labor and capital) towards war efforts, impacting the top 1% the most. After the war, hyper-inflation devalued the capital owned by the top 1%, and exterior forces attempted to maintain a wider distribution of wealth
Post war, American occupation enforced the democratization of Japanese economic institutions. They postulated that low distributions of wealth to Japanese industrial workers and farmers hindered domestic consumption and led to overseas economic expansionism. Massive taxes were imposed on the affluent, where the assets themselves were taxed rather than income.
Unionization that was absent pre-war returned post war, providing improved benefits and a general consensus on wage structures for employees
Chapter 5: The great compression
Fiscal leveling constitutes of three main ingredients during war time: military mass mobilization, progressive enhancement of tax rates, and targeting of elite wealth of top income
While mass conscription applied to most, the wealthy normally got off due to age or privilege and stood to profit from commercial involvement in the war industry. Thus, countries like the UK, United States, and Canada imposed significant taxes on the incomes and estates of the rich as a means to keep things fair and ensure national cohesion
More autocratic nations like Germany and Russia opted to borrow or print money to sustain war efforts, this however led to hyperinflation, which eventually ended up compressing inflation by reducing the value of the capital of the elites (?)

Meditations

Published: May 01, 2023

Three disciplines: perception, action, and will
- Perception: requires that we maintain objectivity of thought—that we see things dispassionately
  - This involves avoidance of inappropriate value judgements, such as designating things as good or evil. The things aren’t the problem, but the interpretations we place on them are. This is similar to emptiness in Buddhism. We assign an essence to things and thus interpret them as attractive or unattractive
- Action: active cooperation with the world, with fate, and above all with other human beings. We were made not for ourselves but for others (agree), and our nature is fundamentally unselfish* (I don’t completely agree with this)
- Will: we control our actions and are responsible for them—if we act wrongly, we harm ourselves. Likewise, if someone or something else harms us, they are harming themselves and not us, the victim. Acts of nature such as fire or illness, can only harm us if we see them as harmful
Seeing things for what they are and accepting them, is something Epictetus calls “the art of acquiescence”
Objective judgement, unselfish action, and willing acceptance of all external events. These three points are a recurring theme in Marcus’ writings
“The best revenge is not to be like that”
“To accept without arrogance, and let go with indifference”
“The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it”
- This is similar to the dog running alongside the wagon rather than being dragged by it, the wagon being logos. Those who feel helpless about life and settle into this mode get the sense that there’s no point in trying if the cards are stacked against them. There’s more room for growth than what they can see and limits they can reach. Giving up removes the possibility of seeing where those limits can take you
Mentions that wrongdoing done over pleasure is worse than that over anger. The angry wrongdoer is a victim of his anger, but the man doing it for pleasure is motivated by desire
- Don’t quite agree with this. Anger is also motivated by desire, an attraction towards an angry state. Both are motivated by desire, and thus both are victims. Buddha once said that anger is like an arrow with a poisoned root with a honeyed tip
Emphasis on being honest and present in one’s thoughts. If the mind is preoccupied with something you wouldn’t be comfortable speaking about, when those ask what you’re thinking about you will answer dishonestly—so be disciplined with your thoughts
Be ready to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. Conversion should always rest on a conviction that it’s right, or benefits others. Not because it’s more appealing or more popular
When something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself is no misfortune at all, to endure it and prevail is good fortune
If you resist the temptation to feel victimized—to feel harmed—then harmful things can’t happen to you, only things
Be tolerant of others, but strict with yourself
The best revenge is not to be like that
When asked to write out a name, would you clench your teeth and groan as you write it? When faced with responsibilities, approach them as you would writing a name, methodically and one letter at a time. Don’t get dissuaded by the text itself—complete it one task at a time
We tend not to waste much time concerning ourselves with our height or width, spatial dimensions of our bodies (these days a little more so, with weight issues associated with caloric abundance). So why should we concern ourselves with the temporal dimension of our body, i.e., how long we live? Accept the limits placed on the body.
The importance of detaching from our body’s urges, to resist impulses and sensations. Thoughts seek to be their master, not their subject. Thoughts were created for this use.
- Interesting. Frontal lobe development, contributing to logical calculus and delayed gratification, evolved such that our survival wouldn’t be impinged by short term gratification—i.e., indulgence in impulsive behaviour
Actions and perceptions need to aim at:
- Accomplishing practical ends
- The exercise of thought
- Maintaining a confidence found on understanding *in Buddhism action is understood as having three aspects: thinking, speaking, and acting (doing something). Some similarities here
When bothered by those behaving poorly in pursuit of pleasure, money, or status—reflect on when you thought like that. Recognize that they are acting out of compulsion, and attempt to remove the compulsion if you can

The Enchiridion

Published: May 01, 2023

Confine aversion only to objects which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties (i.e., to injury, to malnutrition, etc.) and which you have in your control. If you are averse to things outside of your control (i.e., sickness, death, and poverty), you will be wretched.
Suppress desire, for if you desire what is not in your control you must necessarily be disappointed; and if you desire what is in your control, by nature of it being a desire, it is not yet in your possession
Use only the actions of pursuit and avoidance; yet use them gently and with reservation
When you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature the action is; e.g., if you go to bathe, keep your mind in a state conformable to nature, then if any hindrance arises during bathing you can say “I not only wanted to bathe, but to keep my mind in a state conformable to nature, and I will not keep it if I am bothered at things that happen.”
- This coincides with Buddhist philosophy, where a large emphasis is placed on being present (similar to this notion of conformance to nature). If you get annoyed when something doesn’t go your way, it is because you are attached to a particular outcome—or in the Greek case you desire what is not in your control, which is destined for disappointment
The uninstructed will lay the fault of their bad condition upon others, the novice instructed will lay the blame on themselves, the perfectly instructed will place the place blame on nobody
When you are prideful, and say “I have a handsome horse”, know that what you are proud of is only the good of the horse. What then, is your own?
- The modern equivalent of this is people being prideful of their luxurious possessions, i.e., their cars, their properties, etc. If one exerts meaningful effort into constructing these things, it is laudable and is worth praise; yet if they simply route money earned from elsewhere it seems less worthy of praise…should it be?
“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
Don’t think of things as lost (in the context of losing something you love, i.e, a loved one or your youth), think of them instead as returned. You don’t own what you can’t control; be grateful for it while it’s there but accept it when it goes.

When encountered with inevitable “loss” (a loved one, youth, etc.), think of it instead as returned. It was never yours in the first place; you don’t own what you can’t control. Be grateful for it while it’s there; accept it when it goes.

Book notes 2022/2023 P1

Understanding Our Mind

Published: May 01, 2023

Store consciousness stores and preserves all the seeds of our experiences, where seeds represent everything we have ever done, experienced, or perceived. These are “subjects” of consciousness
The seeds make up store consciousness and can be distinguished from the store, but the store is dependant on the seeds, thus the seeds are also “objects” of consciousness
The ways in which we act plant seeds for how we behave in the future. If you plant wheat, wheat will grow. If you act in a wholesome way, you will be happy. If you act in an unwholesome way, you will water seeds of craving, anger, and violence in yourself and others
When we perceive an object, we see its “sign” (I like signature more). As per Buddhism there are 3 pairs of signs of phenomena:
- Universal and particular: universal signatures are generic labels (e.g., a house) and particular signatures are more specific (e.g., the brick, wood, nails, etc. that make up individual houses)
- Unity and diversity: all houses are part of the designation “house”, but there are countless variations between the collection of individual houses
- Formation and disintegration: a house could be in the process of being built (formation), but is also already in the process of decay, being weathered by its surroundings (disintegration)
  - Seeing these signatures are the basis of the teachings of interbeing
It is easy to confuse our mental image, our signature of something, with its reality. The way to avoid misperceptions is through mindfulness: deliberate investigation of our perceptions, poking and prodding until we approach the true nature of a perception
When we have a false perception and continue to maintain it, we hurt ourselves and others. In fact, people kill one another over their competing perceptions of the same reality
Individual and collective seeds: the collective consciousness is made up of individual consciousnesses, and an individual conscious is formed by the collective conscious. This is the nature of interbeing
Looking deeply into an atom, we bow our heads in awe. And yet with our friend/significant other sitting next to us we think we already know everything about them
Walking at dusk, we see a long stringy object, and thinking it’s a snake we get scared. Upon shining a light on the object, we realize it was just rope. Our fear was the product of a misperception, not seeing something for what it truly was. We do this in life as well, misperceiving constructed perceptions as truth, avoiding deep deliberation of what we’re assuming
Impermanence and nonself are essentially the same thing, both meaning the absence of a separate, fixed self. Impermanence looks at this temporally, nonself looks at this spatially. The idea of a discrete self is incompatible with a continuous world
The true nature of consciousness is neither individual nor collective. We are simultaneously individual and collective. I am a unique biological pattern, that was formed by the collective consciousness of my family, the earth, and the cosmos. This collective consciousness is produced by many individuals. Interdependence.
Manas provides energy for ignorance, thirst, and craving. It also serves as the “survival instinct”, providing reflexive reactions to stimuli. It operates in the realm of representations, and thus cannot touch the realm of things-in-themselves (truth). The attachment of manas in a self is based on an image it has created.

Atomic Habits

Published: May 01, 2023

Chapter 1: The fundamentals: why tiny changes make a big difference

Good, and bad, habits compound. Good habits gain exponentially, though there is a period of ramp up where little improvements can be seen. Persistency is required to reach the larger gradient, i.e., when your marginal habits start to pay off
Systems are more important than goals. Focusing on lifting a specific weight is less important than improving technique and making sure you don’t miss a day at the gym. Use goals for setting a general direction and use systems for making progress
You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems
Chapter 2: How your habits shape your identity
Focus on changing your identity rather than your outcomes, e.g., the goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader
“I’m terrible with directions; I’m not a morning person; I’m always late” are all repeated stories we tell ourselves that act as barriers to positive change. This is identity conflict, where attachment to a particular version of your identity hinders change. Identity is transient, not static.
“Each action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become”
“Are you becoming the person you want to become?”
Chapter 3: Build better habits in 4 steps
Habits proceed in 4 steps: cue, craving, response, and reward
If a behaviour is insufficient in any of these stages, it will not become a habit. No cue means the habit never starts. No craving means no motivation to act. A difficult behaviour means you won’t be able to respond to it. No satisfaction of desire, i.e., reward, then there’s no reason to do it again
How to create a good habit:
- Make it obvious (cue)
- Make it attractive (craving)
- Make it easy (response)
- Make it satisfying (reward)
How to break a bad habit:
- Make it invisible (cue)
- Make it unattractive (craving)
- Make it difficult (response)
- Make it unsatisfying (reward)
  P1. Make it obvious
  Chaper 5: The best way to start a new habit
People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. This is known as implementation intention
I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]. The most important cues are time and location.
Diderot effect: obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. Diderot was a French philosopher that suddenly became rich due to a generous donation. He bought a elegant robe, but nothing else matched it so he had to spend more and more money upgrading the rest of his belongings
Habit stacking is a positive version of the Diderot effect: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
Be specific with your habit stacking directions, e.g., “After I finish my morning tea, I will meditate.”
Chapter 6: Motivation is overrated; environment often matters more
It is easier to build new habits in new environments where you don’t have to fight against old cues
Make good cues obvious in your environment, and hide bad cues
Delegate specific spaces in your home to specific habits. This chair for reading, the kitchen for cooking, the bed for sleeping, etc.
Chapter 7: The secret of self control
Self control is a short term strategy, not a long one. Modify your environment such that you don’t need to exercise self control in the first place
To break bad habits, reduce your exposure to their cues. Remove the cues from your environment

How to create a good habit The 1st Law: Make It Obvious 1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. 1.2: Use implementation intentions: “I will (BEHAVIOR] at TIME] in [LOCATION].’ 1.3: Use habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT. 1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.

The 2nd law: Make it attractive

Chapter 8: How to make a habit irresistible

We have the brains of our ancestors but temptations they never had to face
We are faced with supernormal stimuli that sends us into a frenzy, whether it be processed foods, colourful and over-edited advertisements, and more. Like a goose that rolls a volleyball back to its nest because it is a big round object, we are doing much the same with consumerist products
Temptation bundling: pair a habit you “need” to do with a habit you “want” to do, e.g., only drink hot cocoa when you’re reading
The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is: 1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. 2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Chapter 9: The role of family and friends in shaping your habits
We tend to initiate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige)
Join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour and you have something in common with the group
We’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves. Studies have found that a chimpanzee with a superior but cracking method resorts to an inferior method used by a new group that he’s joining
Behaviours that get us approval, respect, and praise are attractive
Chapter 10: How to find and fix the causes of your bad habits
Identify the causes of your bad habits (what ancient fundamental desire is this behaviour satisfying?), and highlight the benefits of stopping it. Likewise, with difficult habits, highlight the benefits of them, e.g., instead of “I need to run today” say “I get to improve my speed and endurance today”
The 3rd law: Make it easy
Chapter 11: Walk slowly, but never backward
When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing
The key to start mastering a habit is with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit, you just need to practice it
How long does it take to form a habit? A new habit is more dependent on the frequency of attempts than the time, the brain requires enough repetitions to develop automaticity
Chapter 13: How to stop procrastinating using the two minute rule
When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. Standardize before you optimize, you can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist
The 4th law: Make it satisfying
Chapter 15: The cardinal rule of behaviour change
The more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your future goals
Find a way to incorporate a rewarding feeling of immediate success when completing a habit, e.g., allocating the money saved by not eating out to a vacation fund
Chapter 16: How to stick with good habits everyday
Habit tracking:
- Creates an obvious visual cue and keeps you honest with yourself by quantifying your progress
- Creates a signal that you’re moving forward and motivates you to continue that streak
- It’s satisfying to cross off an item on the to do list, and focuses you on the process rather than the result
  Advanced tactics
  Chapter 18: The truth about talent (when genes matter and when they don’t)
Genes do not determine your destiny, they determine your areas of opportunity. “Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine.”
Choose a game that favours your strengths; if you can’t find one, create one
Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work, they clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on
Chapter 19: The goldilocks rule: how to stay motivated in life and work
Maximum motivation occurs when working on tasks that are right at the edge of one’s current abilities; if it’s too easy you get bored, if it’s too hard you get anxious
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom
Chapter 20: The downside of creating good habits
Take an annual review, tallying up habits for the year by counting achievements, gym frequency, meditation frequency, etc.
Modes of reflection and review for end of year (December): 1. What went well this year? 2. What didn’t go so well this year? 3. What did I learn?
To reflect on core values, identity, and how to work on being the person you wish to become, take an integrity report (June) 1. What are the core values that drive my life and work? 2. How am I living and working with integrity right now? 3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?
Don’t cling to habits and their associated identity. Be adaptable. Be soft and pliable, like a disciple of life; not brittle and inflexible, like a disciple of death.

Make it stick - the science of successful learning

Published: May 01, 2023

Chapter 1: Learning is misunderstood

“Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
We are poor judges of when we are learning well or not. When we’re undergoing a challenge it doesn’t feel productive, so we’re drawn to strategies that feel better, unaware that they may be less effective
Rereading text and massed practice are not productive, i.e., rapid fire repetition of something you’re trying to learn or cramming for exams. They give rise to feelings of fluency but are largely a waste of time
Retrieval practice - recalling facts or concepts from memory - is much more effective than review by rereading
Spacing out practice or interleaving it with other subjects makes it feel more challenging to recall, yet produces longer lasting learning and more versatile application of what is learned in later settings
Trying to solve a problem prior to being told the solution leads to better learning
The notion that you learn better according to your learning style, e.g., a visual or auditory learner, is not supported by empirical research. You learn better when you draw on all of your aptitudes and resourcefulness, rather than just the style you find most amenable
Extracting and understanding the underlying principles or rules of problem makes one more successful at picking the right solution in unfamiliar situations
People who learn to extract key ideas from new material, organize them into a mental model, and connect that model to prior knowledge show an advantage in learning complex mastery
Chapter 2: To learn, retrieve
The stronger one’s knowledge about the subject at hand, the more nuanced one’s creativity can be in addressing a new problem
Knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination; as creativity absent of a stable foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house
A 1978 study showed that cramming leads to higher scores on an immediate test but results in faster forgetting compared to practicing retrieval
Testing immediately after exposure enhances knowledge retention, one study found an 11% increase on test scores on a topic learned a week prior between a group that was tested immediately after and one who had not been tested prior
Multiple spaced out tests immediately after content is learned serves as an immunization against forgetting the material, the mental strain induced by testing solidifies a foundation of knowledge
Students who have been quizzed have a dual advantage: a more accurate sense of what they do and don’t know, and the strengthening of accrued learning from retrieval practice
Chapter 3: Mix up your practice
Massed practice is prevalent; whether it be summer language boot camps, colleges teaching a single subject promising fast learning, or continuing education seminars with material condensed to a single weekend. It feels productive, yet the material is forgotten as fast as it is learned. Spacing out practice feels less productive as it’s more effortful, yet it generates fertile ground for knowledge to grow out of and flourish
“The myths of massed practice are hard to exorcise, even when you’re experiencing the evidence yourself.” Massed practice feels better, because as you study you feel as though you’re learning faster and that feels good and more seamless. Yet when compared against the more cognitively challenging varied and interleaved practice, massed practice generally underperforms on later tests.
Providing a quiz at the end of a conference can help the audience retain some of what they learned. Normally they just listen and walk out, forgetting the material shortly after
Reflection is a form of retrieval practice, essential to bridging the gap in the learning practice (“What did I do? What happened? How did it work out? What would I do differently next time?”)
Chapter 5: Avoid illusions of knowing
A good way to engage in self-insight is to ask yourself: is the world giving me positive feedback? Is the world rewarding me in a way that I would expect a competent person to be rewarded? Is there something I can work on to reduce the delta? “Think of the kids lining up to join the softball team—would you be picked?”
Chapter 6: Get beyond learning styles
Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason, see relationships, think abstractly, and hold information in the mind while working on a problem
Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge of the works, the pattern recognition models one has developed from past learning and experience
Chapter 7: Increase your abilities
Myelin coating of axons generally starts at the back of our brain and works it’s way towards our frontal lobes as we grow into adulthood. Myelin coating thickness correlates with ability, and with increased practice, leading to thicker coats that improve the strength and speed of electrical signals
Automatic actions or responses to stimula, i.e., habits, tend to be directed from a region deep in the brain called the basal ganglia
Learning to remember the relationship between unrelated items, such as names and faces, stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampus. This neurogenesis starts in anticipation of the learning event, and persists after it has been completed
Some individuals aim for performance goals, working to validate their ability. These individuals unconsciously limit their ability, picking challenges that they are confident they can meet so as to validate their ability
Some individuals strive toward learning goals, working to acquire new knowledge or skills. With a goal to increase ability, they pick ever-increasing challenges, and interpret setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve
“Emphasizing effort gives a child a rare variable they can control, but emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of a child’s control, providing no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Range

Published: May 01, 2023

Breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. The more breadth within learned content, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to situation they had never seen before—which is in essence creativity
A study found that typical children tend to be raised in families with an average of six household rules, compared to one rule for extremely creative children. After a wrongdoing parents would let the child know, rather than proscribing it beforehand
The “hypercorrection” effect: the more confident a learn is of their wrong answer, the better the information sticks when they subsequently learn the right answer. Tolerating big mistakes can create the best learning opportunities
- This effect was even reproduced in primates (rhesus macaques)
Teachers who drive overachievement in their current courses (by providing easier content) tend to undermine student performance in the long run (US Air Force study). Those who had more challenging math courses, and thus had lower student satisfaction, saw their students overachieve in future math courses (i.e., short term their grades would suffer, but long term their grades flourished)
Interleaving problems, i.e., mixing them up when practicing, has been found to be more effective than approaching problems in blocks. Shuffle the problems beforehand to improve learning via rules differentiation rather than learning structured patterns
According to a Yale study, more scientifically literate adults are surprisingly more likely to become dogmatic about politically polarizing topics in science. One theory is that they are better equipped to find evidence that confirms their beliefs
A personality feature that fights back against this propensity is scientific curiosity, not scientific knowledge. Roam freely, listen carefully, and consume indiscriminately. Be open-minded.
Scientific work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge (i.e., atypical citations with respect to the discipline) are less likely to be funded, more likely to be ignored upon publication, but more likely in the long run to gain traction and succeed

The Moral Animal

Published: May 01, 2023

Part 1: Sex, romance, and love

Chapter 2: Male and Female

Due to reproductive organ asymmetries, it’s in the male’s advantage to pretend to be highly fit, and in the female’s advantage to spot false advertising
Females of most species are coy, somewhat resistant to mating with males, whereas men are more liberal with sexual partners. Coyness is rewarding in the Darwinian sense, because the males that surpass that resistance, either verbally or physically, are more likely to have more fit offspring
Chapter 3: Men and Women
Flowers and other tokens of affection are more prized by women as it signals generosity, trustworthiness, and most importantly an enduring commitment
High male parental investment has made males evolve to compete for scarce female eggs, but females have also evolved to compete for scarce male investment
85% (~900/1100) societies around the world have been polygamous—that is, they have permitted men to have multiple wives. The majority of men, however, were likely monogamous as they couldn’t afford multiple wives, but the high-status males are allowed to if they can provide for the families
Chapter 4: The marriage market
Marriage favours lower class men. Women, who would otherwise marry up the hierarchy and split resources of a high-status male with other women, are forced to stick with a male mate at a similar spot in the hierarchy
Institutionalized marriage thus doesn’t serve women near the bottom of the hierarchy. They may have to stay with a bum rather than obtain resources from a well-off man. Low status males in this case may have more to benefit from marriage
Without institutionalized marriage, many low status males will be alone, upset, and likely become violent. Married men are less likely to commit crime—this could be because men who wouldn’t commit crime in the first place tend to get married, but marriage also settles the man down
Western culture now has a serial monogamous nature, where divorce is prevalent. This leaves children without their natural parents, and step-parents often care little for step-children, hindering development and lowering the quality of guidance for children from broken families
Unstratification of social status could help curb the decrease in monogamy; if resources are allocated more equally, women are less likely to have their eye on men up the echelon, as the echelon will be more balanced. Political and social inequality leads to allocation of multiple women to a high-status man, and more upset, low status males as a result
Chapter 6: The Darwin plan for marital bliss
Male sexual fantasies tend to be mostly visual in nature, whereas females tend to include tender touching, soft murmurs, and other hints of future investment
Some approach divorce with the mindset that they married the “wrong” person and next time they’ll get it right, but divorce statistics say otherwise. “The triumph of hope over experience”
How moral codes arise: people tend to pass moral judgements that help move their genes to the next generation. Thus, a moral code is a compromise among competing spheres of self-interest, each acting to mold the code to its own ends
Part 2: Social cement
Chapter 7: Families
Some parent-offspring conflict arises since children share 50% of genes with siblings, so put simply its in their best interest to favour themselves at 2-to-1 odds than their siblings. Whereas parents share genes equally with all offspring, so it could be in their best interest to treat each child equally. These broad differences in self interest could be the source of some child-parent conflict
Parents may have reasons to prefer some offspring over others, a pretty daughter in a poor family likely has a better chance of moving up socioeconomically than a handsome boy, whereas in an already rich family a man is more likely to maintain the resources and attract an attractive female, converting those resources into genetic proliferation
Studies on rats have shown that mothers starved of resources are more likely to provide milk to daughters, and wean off sons
In the middle-east/Asia as well as medieval Europe, infanticide of females was most common upon upper class families
In a study done in America, it was found that sons of high-class families were more likely to be breast fed, and less likely in low class families, i.e., breast-feeding frequency of boys changed with socio-economic status. Women who had a female child in low-class families were more likely to wait to have another child than if they had first had a male. The opposite trend was found for high class families
Magnitude of grief of a parent from a lost child seems to correlate near perfectly with fertility metrics of hunter-gatherer societies. That is, parents tend to grieve more for a child that is closer to their peak fertility potential. Grievance for an adolescent will be much stronger than that of an infant or older relative
First born siblings tend to be less exceptional. Studies of academics and political greats are found to rarely be first born amongst their siblings. Younger siblings tend to have to compete with older siblings for parental affection or attention, and the older sibling has had more time to develop a relationship with the parent, and likely wins favour through sacrifice of taking care of younger siblings. Thus, the younger sibling seeks another niche, say excellence in school, to gain parental favor
Chapter 9: Friends
In game theory, the TIT FOR TAT strategy wins out. Cooperate on the first go, and match the other player’s move from there on
If everyone at the start doesn’t cooperate, the TIT FOR TAT strategy doesn’t work. It’s likely cooperation started out due to kin-selection and gradually spread out, allowing TIT FOR TAT to dominate, and thus society to grow
Reciprocal altruism thus likely evolved selfishly, since unlike with kin-selection where genes are shared, altruism with outside-kin is likely just an optimal strategy for personal benefit—everybody wins. It also isn’t a surprise that betrayals are common as well, if people can cheat without repercussion, they will. Gossip and punishment deter this behaviour.
Chapter 10: Darwin’s conscience
In the Victorian environment, in which there were small quaint towns, it paid to be good, act with integrity, and be altruistic, as the towns were small, and it was the optimal strategy for small groups
However, in todays large cities, where nobody really knows anybody, it can pay to be dishonest and to be a cheat, hence the societal shift in norms from the Victorian times from having a strong “character” to having a nice “personality”
Those who lack a secure environment when growing up, either without parents to instill values of integrity and kindness, or in a disparate environment where these values aren’t necessary, often grow up to be criminals. They are generally not evil people, just products of their environment
Part 3: Social strife
Chapter 12: Social Status
In the Ache, though skillful hunters share their food with the tribe, they in turn enjoy more extramarital affairs, have more illegitimate children, and their children get special treatment
As more and more societies are re-evaluated in a Darwinian light, it becomes doubtful that any truly egalitarian society has ever existed
In a study, those given artificially low test scores to lower self esteem, were more likely to subsequently cheat in a game of cards. Another study found that people with lower serotonin levels are more likely to commit impulsive crimes
The common stereotype of a wife complaining that a husband can’t bring himself to admit he’s wrong may be because males who too readily sought reconciliation after a fight, or needlessly submitted to others, saw their status drop and thus their inclusive fitness
- Women fall prey to this as well, but if folk wisdom can be trusted, the average woman is less reluctant than the average man—which makes sense as the fitness of females depend less on status maintenance than does males
The ultimate aim for politicians is status, and thus they will say things that appeal to the group of voters most likely to get them into power or keep them there
Chapter 13: Deception and self-deception
“The best liar is the one who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.” Lies that are slight, and hard to discredit, are more difficult to get tangled up in, making them easy to hide behind
It may be in the genetic interest of someone at the low rungs of the status hierarchy to display their low status, as to advertise that they aren’t a threat to those above them. This is one possible explanation for individuals with low self-esteem
We could have a built-in tendency to refrain from bestowing status enhancement benefits on people whose status threatens our own. Darwin would often acknowledge minor researchers whose empirical observations aided him, but not those who’s ideas had influenced his thought (i.e., competitors near-above him in the status hierarchy)
When in a negotiation, say when buying a car, the first person to make a voluntary but irreversible sacrifice of freedom of choice is that who governs the negotiation. If a dealer believes you’re walking away for good, he’ll cave. If the dealer says he can’t accept less than X and appears as if his pride wouldn’t let him go lower, then he wins.
Studies show that when shown plausible/implausible arguments to a social issue you care about, people were most likely to remember the plausible arguments that supported their views, and implausible arguments of the opposition. The net effect drives home the correctness of our position, and the silliest of the alternative
Chapter 14: Darwin’s triumph
When dealing with non-kin, natural selection wants us to look like we’re being nice; the perception of altruism, not altruism itself, is what brings reciprocation. One aim of the conscience is to cultivate a reputation of generosity and decency, whatever the underlying motives of those actions are
Part 4: Morals of the story
Chapter 15: Darwinian (and Freudian) cynicism
Freud’s basic insight of the mind: it is a place of conflict between animal impulses and social reality
Chapter 16: Evolutionary ethics
A utilitarian mandate, in which behaviour that increases people’s happiness is considered good and thus encouraged, and behaviour that leads to peoples suffering is bad and thus discouraged, is thought to lead to a better off society (via non-zero sumness)
- In essence, considering the welfare of others as importantly as you would your own
Utilitarianism strives for maximum societal happiness: the greatest good for the greatest number
Some underlying reasons as to why we don’t like someone: liking them won’t elevate our social status, aid our acquisition of material or sexual resources, help our kin, or do any of the other things that during evolution had made our genes proliferate
Chapter 17: Blaming the victim
Determinism view: it seems likely that behaviour is determined in part due to genetic factors and environmental factors—our next move is decided by genetic interest and environmental circumstance
Robust moral codes rest not only on norms but on “metanorms”: society disapproves not only of the code’s violators but also on those who tolerate violators by failing to disapprove
Chapter 18: Darwin gets religion
Like how religions preach for brotherly love, politicians self-servingly preach for nationalism, i.e., brotherly love on a national scale Book Notes 2022 P3

Flights of Fancy

Published: May 01, 2023

Bats evolved with echolocation to locate flying prey, increasing their sampling frequency of clicks as they home in on a target. Moths evolved ears tuned to just the right pitch to hear bat shrieks
Moths may be furry to dampen the acoustics sent out by bats. Likewise, moths have small fork-like scales on their wings that resonate with bath ultrasound in such a way to disappear off the bat radar
Insects move their wings via a hinge-like mechanism on the upstroke, pulling the hinge down so that the wing moves up. To generate the downstroke, a muscle erects the thorax, lifting the thorax up so that the wing pulls down
Within a bat’s webbing are rows of thin thread-like muscles, thought to be derived from the same muscles that all mamas have in their skin for erecting hairs, such as when we get goosebumps. Goosebumps are a remnant feature from when our ancestors had more hair, erecting hairs when we got cold to trap warm air within the layer of hair. Getting goosebumps has also been shown to stimulate more hair growth in mice, acting as a signal to generate thicker coats to protect from the cold

Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight - Complexity Theory

Published: May 01, 2023

“Convenient idealizations that throw the complex baby out with the merely complicated bathwater” — idealizations approach complex systems by removal of complex features, but the magic and realism of the system is lost in the process
In a biological organism’s life, they learn and adapt to their environment, attempting to maximize fitness (or equivalently minimize losses) given the complex array of components making up that environment. During this learning process, it’s challenging for the player to know whether once a peak is reached, if it is the global optimum for that organism or whether they can maximize further. Much like if I own a stock and it levels out, I don’t know whether it’s peaking or not so I may decide to sell
Generalizing in life involves sampling many outcomes, resulting in a longer training process, more error, improving the possibility of reaching higher peaks. This is a crude process and reaching the absolute peak in any domain is unlikely due to the coarseness of the learning rate. Specializing involves sampling less outcomes and diving deeper into a local optimum and realizing its fullest local potential. Due to the granularity of the learning rate, this is possible, but it’s more likely to leave you at a local optimum of fitness
- Specializers: small learning rate, more likely to penetrate deeper towards a local optimum, but also more likely to get stuck at a local optimum
- Generalists: large learning rate, less likely to penetrate deep into a optimum, but more likely to escape a local optimum
- The optimal strategy likely lies in the middle, where an adaptive learning rate is used
Observations from the natural world are mapped by humans into mathematical formulations. Patterns observed in the real world get encoded into symbols and strings of formal logical structure. Meaning is restricted to the natural world, formal systems have no way of synthesizing meaning, they just represent it symbolically.
Complexity is subjective, a random rock to an observer can be thrown, broken, or moved—that’s about it. But a rock to a geologist can be carbon dated and analyzed materialistically. What was simple to one was complex to another.
Developing a complexity theory requires formalizing intuitive notions about complexity into symbols and syntax. The subjective nature of complexity makes this challenging, thus the search for a general model that connects and equates subjective formulations is needed

Learning how to control complex systems

To solve problems of control and stability, one needs a picture of the qualitative behaviour of the system—control requires insight into the nature of a system’s dynamics
To characterize and control our surroundings, we seek to minimize the total information of a system (info = predictable + unpredictable). Addition of extra rules to describe regularities reduces apparent randomness, which makes arriving at a minimum of total information, i.e., an optimum: expressing the system in the most compact form to describe predictable system features

Beyond extinction: rethinking biodiversity

Biodiversity is valuable because systems develop redundancies, maintaining function when stressed. Not all species/groups are the same and may have varying degrees of importance with respect to system health
Some ecosystems may have a keystone species (e.g., starfish) or a functional group (e.g., rhizobium bacteria). Erasing of this keystone results in the collapse of an ecosystem
This helps explain why gut biodiversity correlates with anti-inflammatory markers and good health metrics in general—more redundancies are introduced to address ecological issues

In insect colonies, how do specific roles get selected for? Worker ants are born sterile, and thus can’t directly reproduce.
How do social organizations in insect colonies arise? Are specific roles pre-programmed into individuals since birth?
Studies have shown that insects that live solitary lives already have all the necessary behavioural components for organized social living. One insect will have a lower response threshold to a stimulus and assume the role relevant to that stimulus
Some colonies survive and reproduce more than others because they have a social organization that is better adapted to a particular environment. Mutations take place in populations for genes that affect the behaviour of colonial members

Searching for the laws of life

The four billion year history of life on earth can likely be divided into two parts:
- For the first 2 million years, life likely got its energy not from the sun but from energy-rich molecules bubbling up from suboceanic volcanoes—as colonies of deep-ocean bacteria have been found to do this
- Molecules bubbling up from magma are a limited source, such that photosynthesis. Photosynthesis. Photosynthesis eventually emerged to store and use the sun’s abundant energy. Bacteria stored energy from light in the form of sugars, producing oxygen. Oxygen could later be used by other organisms to burn the same sugars to extract stored energy. Large scale adoption of this process transformed earth’s atmosphere into the oxygen abundant form we know today—powered by eating sugars and metabolizing them with atmospheric oxygen
  - In other words, photosynthesis enabled primitive volcanic metabolism to expand and fill the world by wrapping it in a chemical spacesuit, that allowed for the generation of food molecules via light
In life there exists a hierarchical structure in which higher regulatory structures sharpen or direct lower level constructive processes. When this direction enhances the processes by which they are created, they are favoured by selection and become stable innovations in evolution.
This emerging hierarchical structure serves to optimize metabolism, the process by which energy is used to source cellular processes, build more biomass (proteins, lipids, nucleic acids…) and the elimination of waste. This emergent optimization is not necessarily a global optimum but depends on the environment and other competing organisms

Metaphors: Ladders of innovation

Essential feature of the metaphor: it intrudes from one domain to another. It borrows language, symbols, logic, and associations from one fields and imposes them upon another in which they do not properly belong. “War on drugs” maps from the military domain to the social domain
Metaphors can be used as a discovery device, allowing one to see something (target) from a different perspective (source), or as a communication tool, allowing one to describe complex phenomena with a well-known analogy
Metaphors can be a kind of de-slipping mechanism to give us grip on a slippery subject
On time and risk
When considering a gamble: would you take a 1/6 chance to 100x your net worth, where if you fail you lose it all? The expected value of this gamble is 1531%, yet one’s intuition would avert them from this gamble
One thing to consider for risks is the time dimension - if given 100 attempts at this gamble, one might expect to come out on top due to the expected value. But the time dimension is irreversible - if you lose it all you can’t continue. A time average isn’t the same as an ensemble average in this case - making the risk especially more risky

What biology can teach us about banking

Systems in which each bank handles a single asset class are more robust to risk as a whole, but individual banks are more risk prone, as failure of an asset means failure of that bank
Systems in which every bank handles a bit of every asset are more risk prone - if one bank fails due to the class distribution, they all fail as they hold the same assets. The individual banks, however, are more robust to risk as the assets are more diverse
Thus exists a push-pull relationship between system diversity and individual diversity, where selfish individual players will want to minimize their risk at the expense of the health of their system
With respect to a biological system, if an ecosystem comprises of many different species with specific niche specializations, some will undoubtedly fail and become extinct, but the system as a whole will thrive. Whereas, in an ecosystem comprised of many different species with similarly broad yet shallow niche specialization, individual species are less at risk individually, but if one species fails - they all fail, and the ecosystem collapses

Imagining complex societies

Emergence of larger, more complex societies lies mostly on greater social cohesion. Larger populations in time have evolved to require fewer resources per person, and produce more per person
More recent, larger populations have smaller traditional timespans, whereas older, smaller populations maintain traditions longer
This lies is the fact that what is good for groups is not always good for the individuals comprising them. Social insect colonies are hierarchically organized and highly effective in maintains and transmitting genetic instructions, because the fate of most insects are disregarded (and the insects comply as they share genetic material)
This is the same for cells within your body, they all share genetic material and are thus willing to sacrifice themselves for the system
Interestingly, the median health of individuals decline as societies grow more complex - suggesting that social complexity emerges from mechanisms that promote coordinated behaviour even if it is not in the best interest of each individual

Life’s information hierarchy

Hierarchical systems in biology, such as RNA—>proteins—>cells have increasing spatial and temporal scales, where each level of the hierarchy represents the summed output of the previous level
Proteins and cells represent some average measure of the noisier activity of their constituents, and are encoded as slow variables
Slow variables provide better predictors of the local future configuration of a system than the fluctuating microscopic components. This order facilitates adaptation: it allows components to fine-tune their behaviour, and it free components to search, at low cost, a larger space of strategies for extracting resources from the environment
For RNA folding, structure is a slow variable relative to the folding sequences, permitting sequences to explore many configurations under selection while the structure stays relatively stable
High degrees of complexity result from regularity in the environment. This regularity comes from hierarchical development, which allows complexity at lower levels to thrive and form new regularities, and thus new hierarchical levels

Complexity: Worlds hidden in plain sight

Society has a tendency to treat challenges as if they emerged from a single factor in a rather straightforward way; hence, we blame war on a single aggressor, starvation on the scarcity of a single product, or poverty on the concentration of wealth

A planet of cities

If you double the size of a city, you only need 80-90 percent more street surfaces, gas stations, etc. This is the concept of economies of scale
The increase in population is nevertheless faster than the increase in land area, hence underground transportation and more congestion/construction in dense cities
Increasing returns to scale is the fact that denser cities tend to be more productive—things cost most but people earn and produce more. Higher wages, faster innovation, more traffic, more crime
Cities form a stable social hierarchy that allows individuals to connect and interact at much faster timescales. Though, while as a whole the social system becomes more productive and efficient, many individuals suffer and are sacrificed, similar to a beehive. Increasing success of the group and cohesion comes at the cost of the individual
Are humans truly unique? How do we know
Energy is the fundamental currency of life, all species use energy to grow, survive, and reproduce
Human’s basic metabolic rate is about 100 watts, yet the average human in the United States consumes about 11000 watts (3000 global average) to do things such as construct infrastructure, fly planes, drive cars, and refrigerate foods
As such, the effective global population from an energetic point of view is closer to 210 billion rather than the current 7 billion
With respect to food networks, hunter-gatherer humans have been found to be super-generalists, eating hundreds of species, whereas a general species eats around 10 others. There are generally only a hand full of super generalists in the food web (i.e., raccoons)
The extreme scope and variability of our diet is unique, though in the industrialized modern world there exists a problem: when we over fish a bluefin tuna, the population of the diminished fish becomes more prized in value, incentivizing more fishing. Whereas, in the pre-modern world tuna would have the opportunity to re-populate ###Why people become terrorists
3 characteristics common to perpetrators of terror in the West:
- Young (~early 20s)
- Resentment towards mainstream society because of perceived or real injustices they have experienced
- Before violence, much time spent in contact with like-minded peers or charismatic leaders
All of us are defined by those around us in 3 ways:
- We use our own social milieu to make inferences about how people we don’t know live their lives. Those in richer neighbourhood perceive the income distribution as fairer than it really is and are thus less likely to support policies addressing the wealth gap
- Social circles strongly influence our beliefs and behaviours. People will ignore objective facts if everyone else around them opposes them
- We feel good when others agree with us and bad when they disagree, motivating us to try to influence disagreeing others, and if that fails to stop communicating with them altogether
A combination of exposure to dangerous ideas, either by the media or social contacts (think excessive nationalism or denigrating entire ethnic groups), belief updating in the form of accepting a dangerous idea if it aligns with personal experiences and is supported by those we value, and network updating in the form of ceasing socialization with those of differing views—lead to the threat of terrorism

What can Mother Nature teach us about managing financial systems?

Life’s remarkable robustness is in large part dependent on variation; systems that suppress or lose their diversity are prone to collapse

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

The Righteous Mind

Published: May 01, 2023

Part 1: Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning comes second

Chapter 1: Where does morality come from?

One of Haidt’s early cross-cultural studies on moral judgement found that between rural Brazil, a city in Brazil, and a city in the USA, those in the more disadvantaged areas tended to moralize more
Within each city, lower social status individuals tended to moralize more than those in high status. This effect of status was stronger than the differences in location
Kids tended to moralize more than adults
Those in rural Brazil still tended to deem something morally unacceptable even if they didn’t find anyone was harmed by the proposed scenario, whereas in the USA they would say it violates a social convention—showing that moral intuitions are not solely innate but absorbed via environmental influence
Gut feelings about disgust and disrespect can sometimes drive reasoning, normally fabricated post-hoc. People may have a moral intuition about a certain circumstance, and struggle to come up with a distinct reason as to why they believe it’s bad/good
Chapter 2: The intuitive dog and its rational tail
“Desire and reason pull in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong”-Ovid, Roman poet
There is a difference between personal preference and moral judgements. With personal preferences, it’s perfectly ok to decline a situation because you don’t want to, based on your subjective preference
Moral judgements, however, are not subjective statements; they are claims that somebody did something wrong. I can’t gather support to punish you just because I don’t like what you’re doing. I must point to something outside my personal preferences, that pointing is our moral reasoning
We reason morally not to see how we came to a judgement; but to find the best reasons why others ought to join us in our judgment
Moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail; you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments
Empathy is an antidote to righteousness and divisiveness, yet it’s challenging to empathize across a moral divide
The mere exposure effect: An experiment showed that repeated exposure to arbitrary objects made people like them more; the brain tags familiar things as good things. This is a basic principle in advertising
When exposed to a bad smell, subjects of a study were more likely to give harsher moral judgments. When reflecting on a past moral transgression, we are more likely to want to clean ourselves (Lady Macbeth effect). Even when something as simple as a hand-sanitizer is nearby, we become more morally conservative
Animals first evolved to attract and averse to smells and tastes, i.e., biochemical senses. This could be one reason why a bad/good smell effects our moral judgments—if I’m sensing something pleasant, this is probably something that’s good for me
An experiment gave its subjects a moral quandary and provided half of them with a weak justification and half with a strong justification. When asked their stance on the situation directly after reading the justification, most stuck to their intuitions and condemned the situation. When given 2 minutes to reflect afterwards, most who were shown the strong justification were much more likely to change their minds
After ingesting information that provokes an affective response, letting it mellow for a few minutes, such that our initial brain stem response dies down, allows us to judge things with more reason and openness
Chapter 4: Vote for me (here’s why)
People are more likely to engage in exploratory thought (truth seeking) than confirmatory thought (one-sided attempt to rationalize a particular point) when:
- Prior to forming an opinion, they are told they will be accountable to an audience
- The views of the audience are unknown
- The audience are well-informed and seek accuracy
One of thought’s central functions is to allow one to justifiably and persuasively describe why one acted in a particular way, and to search for reasons to convince oneself that they have made the “right” choice of action
Schools don’t teach people to reason thoroughly; they select the applicants with higher IQs, and people with higher IQs are able to generate more reasons (normally supporting their side and discounting the opposition)
When we want to believe something, we ask ourselves “Can I believe it?” and search for supporting evidence; when we don’t want to believe something, we ask ourselves “Must I believe it?” and search for contrary evidence
Part 2: There’s more to morality than harm and fairness
Chapter 5: Beyond WEIRD morality
When asked to write statements beginning with the words “I am…”, westerners are more likely to reference internal psychological states (I am happy, I am outgoing, etc.) and East Asians are more likely to reference roles and relationships (I am a father, I am a husband, etc.)
The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive things as separate objects rather than relationships
Other than ethics around harm and fairness, the ethic of autonomy is prevalent in western societies. Not as prominent in WEIRD societies are the ethics of community and divinity, though in more conservative and religious factions of western society these ethics are more prevalent
“We are multiple from the start.” The foundation for each of these moral ethics lies within us, latent, from the start. It is possible to view them all, to improve understanding of why others take moral positions, and to reduce ignorance towards why they feel that type of way
Chapter 6: Taste buds of the righteous mind
Five good candidates for being the “taste receptors” of the righteous mind are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity
Chapter 7: The moral foundations of politics
The brain of a newborn is one that is best seen as prewired—flexible and subject to change—rather than hardwired, i.e., fixed and immutable
“Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises…built-in does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.”
The moral matrix of liberals falls more heavily on the Care foundation than does that of the conservatives, though conservatives do still have some (e.g., save our troops… respect those who sacrifice for the group). The care foundation for the conservatives is aimed more locally, liberals tend to be a bit more universalist (e.g., human eating practices)
Regarding the foundation of fairness, on the left, fairness often implies equality, whereas on the right it implies proportionality (i.e., get paid in proportion to one’s contributions)
The loyalty foundation comes stronger for conservatives, who lean into loyalty by pledging loyalty their nation (nationalism) and to sports teams. Liberals have a harder time with this one as they tend to be universalists
We are the descendants of individuals who were best able to play the game of authority/subversion—to rise in status while cultivating protection from superiors and the allegiance of subordinates
The omnivore’s dilemma is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. They thus go through life with two competing motives: neophilia and neophobia
Liberals tend to be more neophilic (open to new experiences); conservatives tend to be more neophobic (preferring what’s tried and true)
There is some evidence that liberal and welcoming attitudes to immigrants are more common in times and places where risks of disease are lower (the recent pandemic made this apparent)
Chapter 8: The conservative advantage
The liberty/oppression foundation makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination, triggering an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies
- This manifests as egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism on the left, and “don’t-tread-on-me” and anti-government attitudes on the right
The fairness foundation focuses mostly on proportionality. Most people have a few intuitive concern for the law of karma, we want to see cheaters punished and good citizens rewarded in proportion to their deeds
Part 3: Morality binds and blinds
Chapter 9: Why are we so groupish?
Shared intentionality, i.e., when groups of humans share a common representation of a task they are pursuing, could have been the keystone step in the development in human morality. Once people began sharing a common understanding of how things were supposed to be done, and someone violated it, the group would feel a twinge of negativity towards the violator
Morality is like the matrix, it’s a shared, consensual hallucination within a group
A set of selection pressures operated within groups, e.g., via punishment of nonconformists; and between groups, e.g., via the most cohesive groups surviving and taking resources from less cohesive, smaller groups
The human love of using symbolic markers to demonstrate a group membership likely adapted because it provided a way for our ancestors to develop a sense of “we” beyond kinship. The more permanent the symbol (e.g., piercings and tattoos) the more permanent the membership. We trust and cooperate better with people who look and sound like us, we expect them to share our values and norms
We have a psychology which “expects” the social world to be divided into symbolically marked groups
Humans “self-domesticated” themselves when they began selecting for partners and friends based on their ability to live within the tribe’s moral matrix
Changes in our genes accelerated greatly during the Holocene era, once humans started becoming more social, agriculture development began, and humans expanded across the globe into novel environments. Genes and culture coevolve, and once culture starts picking up the pace, genetic evolution picks up the pace as well
Early population bottlenecks can also contribute to rapid genetic evolution. If we suddenly lose 95% of all food, the humans that survive are going to be the ones that work best together to monopolize the remaining resources. The small number of people that are left and the genes they carry have an immense impact on the generations that follow. Some suspect this happened 70000-140000 years ago during large global temperature fluctuations and volcanic eruptions that disrupted the environment
Groupishness tends to be focused on improving the well-being of the in-group, instead of harming the out-group (although this does happen, e.g., warfare)
Human nature is mostly shaped by individual selection. However, there is certainly a case to be made that group selection has played a role in shaping human nature, particularly in shaping our righteous minds
Chapter 10: The hive switch
There exists a “switch” in us that, when engaged, dissolves selfish interests and prioritizes the collective. The peak of this is collective effervescence, a state achieved when a large group acts in synchrony, generating a sort of electricity that reverberates throughout the group
We are homo-duplex, we live most of our lives in our individual, ordinary worlds, but achieve some of our greatest joys in brief moments of connection to the “sacred” world, where the self dissolves and we become part of the whole
Oxytocin bonds people to their groups. It increases intra-group love, but not love towards all humans as a whole
Mirror neurons enable empathy, but studies show that they activate more for those that share their moral matrix (i.e., for those on their good side)
Ch11. Religion is a team sport
Often our beliefs are post hoc constructions designed to justify what we’ve just done, or to support the groups we belong to
New atheists dismiss religion as costly, ineffective, and irrational—a product of cognitive misfirings (e.g., agent-detection module). However, it turns out religion is a solution to one of the hardest challenges humanity faces: cooperation without kinship
Communes (i.e., groups of people who reject the moral matrix of general society) in the United States tend to persist longer when they adopt a religion. More within group demands for sacrifice also correlated with group longevity. The longevity of secular communes was much shorter, though this doesn’t necessarily mean the people in these communes were more or less happy. It just means religious communes may be more effective groups
In the human population as a whole, genes that promoted religious behaviour were likely to become more common in each generation as the less cohesive societies perished and the more united ones thrived
If human minds and human religions coevolved, shaping one another, we can not expect people to abandon religion so easily. Of course, one can still reject organized religion, a more recent cultural phenomena. But someone who rejects all religion will have a hard time shaking off their religious psychology
Particular religious beliefs and practices don’t correlate much with how altruistic a religious person is. How enmeshed with their co-religious community is the strongest correlate to how generous and charitable they are in general. Friendship and group activities carried out in a shared moral matrix enhance selflessness.
“It is religious belongingness that supports neighbourliness, not particular religious beliefs.”
Chapter 12: Can’t we all disagree more constructively?
Genes collectively give some people brains that are more (or less) reactive to threats, and that produce less (or more) pleasure when exposed to novelty, change, and new experiences. Genetics play a role in one’s tendency to be conservative or liberal
A study which asked thousands of American to fill out a moral foundation questionnaire, where a third answered as themselves, a third pretended to be a typical conservative, and a third pretended to be a typical liberal, found that moderates and conservatives were able to most accurately predict what the other sides would answer in the questionnaire. Liberals were the least accurate, with those who were “very liberal” having abysmal ability to predict the morals of conservatives
This is likely due in part to the emphasis on two moral pillars (care/harm and fairness) that liberals stand on, and the six pillars that conservatives stand on (even though, ironically, conservatives tend to be a bit less empathetic)
Can you convince yourself that the following statements hold merit?
- People are inherently imperfect and prone to act poorly when all constraints of accountability are removed
- Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, making it dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason (i.e., rationality), unconstrained by intuition and historical experience
- Institutions gradually emerge, shaped by society, which we then respect and sometimes even sacralise; if we strip institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary and artificial, we render them less effective, exposing ourselves to social disorder and potentially a lack of meaning (anomie)
“Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for traditions, and dissolution/subjection to foreign conquest through the growth of individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible.”
Liberal programs with good intentions can sometimes have unintended consequences, e.g., the urge to help Hispanic immigrants in 1989 led to multicultural education programs that emphasizes the differences among Americans, rather than their shared values and identity
“Emphasizing differences between one another makes many people more racist, not less.”
“We think the other side is blind to the truth, science, reason, and common sense, yet everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects (i.e., beliefs).”

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet

Published: May 01, 2023

We live in a civilization of borrowing. When we want something we can’t yet afford, we count on the bodies and labor in the future to pay back the debt. We have treated the global ecological environment similarly—exploiting the planet for its resources, burdening future generations with the debts we currently incur in order to maintain superfluous and ostentatious lifestyles
The four notions of the diamond suttra
- The illusion of self: I am composed of cells shared with my ancestors, of flourishing and diverse microbiomes lining the inside of my gut, of non-me elements that come together to make me. Thus, the notion of me being separate from the rest of the world is false, and a construct developed by natural selection to prioritize the survival of my genes. Yet, in reality, my system cannot function without the rest of the world… Interconnectedness. I am all.
- The notion of “human being”: we depend on other beings in order to survive, whether it be plants, fish, or water. Yet we preference our species at the expense of others. Due to interbeing, by harming others we are harming ourselves. Our life requires cohesion with the rest of the world, and since we are interdependent with the planet and its constituents, this notion of “human-being” preference at the expense of others serves to eventually harm us
- The notion of “living being”: we are composed and dependent on inanimate matter as well—minerals, molecules, atoms. Life is contingent on these things, thus the preference for living over non-living can be unhelpful
- The notion of “life span”: when we die, we don’t really die, we just transform into something else. Likewise, within us live the genes of ancestors dating back to the creation of life billions of years ago.
Three basic needs: peace, understanding, and love. To cultivate in any situation a feeling of peace, understanding, and compassion allows for disillusioned and positive action
When suffering, get in touch with it. Do not cover it up with media, games, or alcohol. Ask why you are suffering, and where it has come from. Recognize it and hold it inside—look deeply into it and say “hello and say “hello my fear, anger, and despair. I will take good care of you.”
The mechanics of compassion: when suffering, look deeply into its nature and develop an understanding of it, and follow with a compassion towards the suffering

Atomic Habits

Published: May 04, 2023

Atomic Habits, James Clear

Chapter 1: The fundamentals: why tiny changes make a big difference

Good, and bad, habits compound. Good habits gain exponentially, though there is a period of ramp up where little improvements can be seen. Persistency is required to reach the larger gradient, i.e., when your marginal habits start to pay off
Systems are more important than goals. Focusing on lifting a specific weight is less important than improving technique and making sure you don’t miss a day at the gym. Use goals for setting a general direction and use systems for making progress
You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems
Chapter 2: How your habits shape your identity
Focus on changing your identity rather than your outcomes, e.g., the goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader
“I’m terrible with directions; I’m not a morning person; I’m always late” are all repeated stories we tell ourselves that act as barriers to positive change. This is identity conflict, where attachment to a particular version of your identity hinders change. Identity is transient, not static.
“Each action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become”
“Are you becoming the person you want to become?”
Chapter 3: Build better habits in 4 steps
Habits proceed in 4 steps: cue, craving, response, and reward
If a behaviour is insufficient in any of these stages, it will not become a habit. No cue means the habit never starts. No craving means no motivation to act. A difficult behaviour means you won’t be able to respond to it. No satisfaction of desire, i.e., reward, then there’s no reason to do it again
How to create a good habit:
- Make it obvious (cue)
- Make it attractive (craving)
- Make it easy (response)
- Make it satisfying (reward)
How to break a bad habit:
- Make it invisible (cue)
- Make it unattractive (craving)
- Make it difficult (response)
- Make it unsatisfying (reward)
  The 1st law: Make it obvious
  Chaper 5: The best way to start a new habit
People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. This is known as implementation intention
I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]. The most important cues are time and location.
Diderot effect: obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. Diderot was a French philosopher that suddenly became rich due to a generous donation. He bought a elegant robe, but nothing else matched it so he had to spend more and more money upgrading the rest of his belongings
Habit stacking is a positive version of the Diderot effect: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
Be specific with your habit stacking directions, e.g., “After I finish my morning tea, I will meditate.”
Chapter 6: Motivation is overrated; environment often matters more
It is easier to build new habits in new environments where you don’t have to fight against old cues
Make good cues obvious in your environment, and hide bad cues
Delegate specific spaces in your home to specific habits. This chair for reading, the kitchen for cooking, the bed for sleeping, etc.
Chapter 7: The secret of self control
Self control is a short term strategy, not a long one. Modify your environment such that you don’t need to exercise self control in the first place
To break bad habits, reduce your exposure to their cues. Remove the cues from your environment

Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: Complexity Theory

Published: May 04, 2023

Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: Complexity Theory, David Krakauer

“Convenient idealizations that throw the complex baby out with the merely complicated bathwater” — idealizations approach complex systems by removal of complex features, but the magic and realism of the system is lost in the process
In a biological organism’s life, they learn and adapt to their environment, attempting to maximize fitness (or equivalently minimize losses) given the complex array of components making up that environment. During this learning process, it’s challenging for the player to know whether once a peak is reached, if it is the global optimum for that organism or whether they can maximize further. Much like if I own a stock and it levels out, I don’t know whether it’s peaking or not so I may decide to sell
Generalizing in life involves sampling many outcomes; resulting in a longer training process, more exposure to error, yet improving the possibility of reaching higher peaks. This is a crude process and reaching the absolute peak in any domain is unlikely due to the coarseness of the learning rate. Specializing involves sampling less outcomes and trudging higher towards a local optimum and realizing its fullest local potential. Reaching the peak is made possible due to the granularity of the learning rate; but it’s also more likely to leave you at a local, rather than global, optimum of fitness.
- Specializers: small learning rate, more likely to penetrate deeper towards a local optimum, but also more likely to get stuck at a local optimum
- Generalists: large learning rate, less likely to penetrate deep into a optimum, but more likely to escape a local optimum
- The optimal strategy likely lies in the middle, where an adaptive learning rate is used
Observations from the natural world are mapped by humans into mathematical formulations. Patterns observed in the real world get encoded into symbols and strings of formal logical structure. Meaning is restricted to the natural world, formal systems have no way of synthesizing meaning, they just represent it symbolically.
Complexity is subjective, a random rock to your typical observer can be thrown, broken, or moved—that’s about it. But a rock to a geologist can be carbon dated and analyzed materialistically. What was simple to one was complex to another.
Developing a complexity theory requires formalizing intuitive notions about complexity into symbols and syntax. The subjective nature of complexity makes this challenging, thus the search for a general model that connects and equates subjective formulations is needed

The Enchiridion

Published: May 04, 2023

The Enchiridion, Epictetus

Confine aversion only to objects which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties (i.e., to injury, to malnutrition, etc.) and which you have in your control. If you are averse to things outside of your control (i.e., sickness, death, and poverty), you will be wretched.
Suppress desire, for if you desire what is not in your control you must necessarily be disappointed; and if you desire what is in your control, by nature of it being a desire, it is not yet in your possession
Use only the actions of pursuit and avoidance; yet use them gently and with reservation
When you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature the action is; e.g., if you go to bathe, keep your mind in a state conformable to nature, then if any hindrance arises during bathing you can say “I not only wanted to bathe, but to keep my mind in a state conformable to nature, and I will not keep it if I am bothered at things that happen.”
- This coincides with Buddhist philosophy, where a large emphasis is placed on being present (similar to this notion of conformance to nature). If you get annoyed when something doesn’t go your way, it is because you are attached to a particular outcome—or in the Greek case you desire what is not in your control, which is destined for disappointment
The uninstructed will lay the fault of their bad condition upon others, the novice instructed will lay the blame on themselves, the perfectly instructed will place the place blame on nobody
When you are prideful, and say “I have a handsome horse”, know that what you are proud of is only the good of the horse. What then, is your own?
- The modern equivalent of this is people being prideful of their luxurious possessions, i.e., their cars, their properties, etc. If one exerts meaningful effort into constructing these things, it is laudable and is worth praise; yet if they simply route money earned from elsewhere it seems less worthy of praise…should it be?
“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
Don’t think of things as lost (in the context of losing something you love, i.e, a loved one or your youth), think of them instead as returned. You don’t own what you can’t control, be grateful for it while it’s there but accept it when it goes.

Flights of Fancy

Published: May 04, 2023

Flights of Fancy, Richard Dawkins

Bats evolved with echolocation to locate flying prey, increasing their sampling frequency of clicks as they home in on a target. Moths evolved ears tuned to just the right pitch to hear bat shrieks
Moths may be furry to dampen the acoustics sent out by bats. Likewise, moths have small fork-like scales on their wings that resonate with bath ultrasound in such a way to disappear off the bat radar
Insects move their wings via a hinge-like mechanism on the upstroke, pulling the hinge down so that the wing moves up. To generate the downstroke, a muscle erects the thorax, lifting the thorax up so that the wing pulls down
Within a bat’s webbing are rows of thin thread-like muscles, thought to be derived from the same muscles that all mamas have in their skin for erecting hairs, such as when we get goosebumps. Goosebumps are a remnant feature from when our ancestors had more hair, erecting hairs when we got cold to trap warm air within the layer of hair. Getting goosebumps has also been shown to stimulate more hair growth in mice, acting as a signal to generate thicker coats to protect from the cold

The Great Leveler

Published: May 04, 2023

The Great Leveler, Walter Scheidel

Introduction: The challenge of inequality

The four horsemen of leveling: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics
Ways in which to measure inequality:
- Gini coefficient: measures extent to which the distribution of income or material assets deviate from perfect equality. Perfect equality: Gini=0, one person controls everything: Gini=1
- Percentage share of total income or wealth: i.e top 1% share higher incomes or assets than other 99% * Gini computes overall degree of equality, percentage shares describe the shape of the distribution
Income prior to taxes and public transfers is known as “market” income, income after transfers is called “gross” income, and income net of all taxes and transfers is defined as “disposable” income
Most of this book refers to “market” income, taxes and transfers are hard to trace depending on the society
Why does economic inequality matter?
It can hinder economic growth; lower disposable income inequality has been found to lead to faster economic growth and longer growth phases
The credit bubble that helped trigger the 2008 recession was in part due to low income households drawing on readily available credit, from the wealthy at the top, to borrow for the sake of keeping up with consumption patterns of more affluent groups
Under conditions where lending is more restrictive, wealth inequality also disadvantages low income groups as it blocks their access to credit
In developed countries, higher inequality is associated with less economic mobility across generations. Higher income families get access to better education, residential segregation sees public services disproportionally attracted to affluent areas
High levels of inequality are correlated with lower levels of self-reported happiness, but not so much health. This makes sense, as happiness can be hindered by discouraging social comparison
Part 1: A brief history of inequality
Chapter 1: The rise of inequality
Our ancestors, Australopithecus, from 3 to 4 million years ago were more sexually dimorphic, with male body mass advantages of over 50%. Evolution attenuated this sexual inequality both among males and between the sexes
As our brains and physiology changed, physical differences made less of an impact on inequality. As lower status men could form coalitions and make weapons to battle from afar (rocks, spears, bows), which played an equalizing role in the physical sense, but privileging knowledge/skill over size
In a site north of Moscow, dated from about 30000-40000 years go, the remains of a man and two children were found buried with loads of ivory beads and more, with estimates of the time required to make all these objects at 2-5 years. Despite this, social and economic inequality in the paleolithic era likely remained sporadic and transient
The Holocene era brought with it temperate conditions, allowing for the thriving of humans and most life in general. This allowed Homo sapiens to rely on local concentrations of resources, occupational specialization grew, strictly defined asset ownership developed as well as the perimeter defence of territory, and intense competition between groups that led to enslavement of captives (the Chumash of the California coast in year 500-700 were found to do this)—all fostering social hierarchy and inequality
Two crucial determinants of inequality: ownership rights in land and livestock, and the ability to transmit wealth from one generation to the next
The different types of wealth: embodied (genetic), relational (partners in labor), and material. In foragers, embodied wealth is more important; whereas in herders and farmers material wealth is most important
Transmissibility of wealth is about twice as high for farmers and herders than for foragers, and the material possessions available to them were more suitable for transmission
Inequality and its persistence over time is the result of 3 factors:
- The relative importance of different classes of assets
- How suitable they are for passing on to others
- The actual rates of transmission
If wealth is passed on between generations, random shocks related to health, parity, and returns on capital that would typically rebalance resource distribution is instead dampened. Resources accumulate over time rather than redistributing elsewhere
Agricultural development in societies, i.e., ways in which to develop and maintain wealth surplus, foster political inequality in these societies. A historical survey found that 86 percent of Native American societies (out of 258) surveyed found that those lacking significant surplus production also lacked signs of political inequality
80% of hunter gatherer societies had no ruling class, whereas 75% of agrarian societies do. Agrarian societies with wheat, rather than, say, roots, are more conducive to political rule as grain is more suitable for long term storage
In early societies/chiefdoms, state-directed allocation of material resources converted political inequality into income and wealth inequality, as political elite and administrators were allocated more materials (land, labor (slaves), etc.)
Chapter 2: Empires of inequality
The Han dynasty (200BCE-200CE) and Roman Empire (200BCE-200CE) feature historical accounts of inequality.
In the Han dynasty, the elite, aristocrats, government officials, and war officials normally earned status and resources via land ownership. They would regularly employ tactics to evade taxes (e.g., falsifying census records, creating fake names, collect taxes from tenants and pay less than received and pocket and pocket the difference).
Attempts to equalize power from elite to lower class were attempted throughout the dynasty, however, these attempts waned over time and discontinuities in leadership would disrupt them as well
- There would sometimes be a change of elite rule, due to warfare or internal politics, but the wealth at the top would mostly be redistributed to those next in line
In the Roman Empire, wealthy elites and retired war senators would accumulate properties—normally at the expense of the middle class, shoving them downwards towards the lower class. Property and material assets would concentrate towards these few over time, serving to increase polarity between the lower and upper rungs of the wealth ladder
Within these examples, imperial income inequality could be hindered only through conquest, state failure, or wholesale systems collapse—all violent upheavals. Despite some attempts, peaceful ways of combatting inequality have not made a meaningful impact in these historical accounts
In premodern societies, very large fortunes regularly owed more to political power than to economic prowess. This could be somewhat managed by the state rulers’ abilities and willingness to engage in tyrannical intervention
Chapter 3: Up and down
After the fall of the Roman rule, state collapse served to redistribute wealth throughout Europe and counter-act inequality
Prior to the Black Death, a millennia later, Europe was more developed and unequal than it had been since the Roman Empire. General stability and development lay fertile ground for increased inequality
This changed when the Black Death struck in 1347, which is estimated to have killed more than 25% of the European population by 1400. As a result, labor became scarce and unskilled labor and farm wages increased 2X. Commoners, from England to Egypt, enjoyed better diets and grew taller bodies
In late medieval-early modern Europe, urban regions suffered from more inequality (compared to rural regions) due to: greater division of labor, differentiation in skills and incomes, spatial concentration of elite households, and the inflow of poorer migrant workers
According to a Florentine census of 1427, wealth inequality correlated with the scale of urbanism—the larger the city the larger the wealth inequality
Part 2: War
Chapter 4: Total war
After defeat in World War Two, Japan underwent significant wealth leveling. Throughout the war the Japanese government directed resources (labor and capital) towards war efforts, impacting the top 1% the most. After the war, hyper-inflation devalued the capital owned by the top 1%, and exterior forces attempted to maintain a wider distribution of wealth
Post war, American occupation enforced the democratization of Japanese economic institutions. They postulated that low distributions of wealth to Japanese industrial workers and farmers hindered domestic consumption and led to overseas economic expansionism. Massive taxes were imposed on the affluent, where the assets themselves were taxed rather than income.
Unionization that was absent pre-war returned post war, providing improved benefits and a general consensus on wage structures for employees
Chapter 5: The great compression
Fiscal leveling constitutes of three main ingredients during war time: military mass mobilization, progressive enhancement of tax rates, and targeting of elite wealth of top income
While mass conscription applied to most, the wealthy normally got off due to age or privilege and stood to profit from commercial involvement in the war industry. Thus, countries like the UK, United States, and Canada imposed significant taxes on the incomes and estates of the rich as a means to keep things fair and ensure national cohesion
More autocratic nations like Germany and Russia opted to borrow or print money to sustain war efforts, this however led to hyperinflation, which eventually ended up compressing inflation by reducing the value of the capital of the elites (?)

Meditations

Published: May 04, 2023

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Three disciplines: perception, action, and will
- Perception: requires that we maintain objectivity of thought—that we see things dispassionately
  - This involves avoidance of inappropriate value judgements, such as designating things as good or evil. The things aren’t the problem, but the interpretations we place on them are. This is similar to emptiness in Buddhism. We assign an essence to things and thus interpret them as attractive or unattractive
- Action: active cooperation with the world, with fate, and above all with other human beings. We were made not for ourselves but for others (agree), and our nature is fundamentally unselfish* (I don’t completely agree with this)
- Will: we control our actions and are responsible for them—if we act wrongly, we harm ourselves. Likewise, if someone or something else harms us, they are harming themselves and not us, the victim. Acts of nature such as fire or illness, can only harm us if we see them as harmful
Seeing things for what they are and accepting them, is something Epictetus calls “the art of acquiescence”
Objective judgement, unselfish action, and willing acceptance of all external events. These three points are a recurring theme in Marcus’ writings
“The best revenge is not to be like that”
“To accept without arrogance, and let go with indifference”
“The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it”
- This is similar to the dog running alongside the wagon rather than being dragged by it, the wagon being logos. Those who feel helpless about life and settle into this mode get the sense that there’s no point in trying if the cards are stacked against them. There’s more room for growth than what they can see and limits they can reach. Giving up removes the possibility of seeing where those limits can take you
Mentions that wrongdoing done over pleasure is worse than that over anger. The angry wrongdoer is a victim of his anger, but the man doing it for pleasure is motivated by desire
- Don’t quite agree with this. Anger is also motivated by desire, an attraction towards an angry state. Both are motivated by desire, and thus both are victims. Buddha once said that anger is like an arrow with a poisoned root with a honeyed tip
Emphasis on being honest and present in one’s thoughts. If the mind is preoccupied with something you wouldn’t be comfortable speaking about, when those ask what you’re thinking about you will answer dishonestly—so be disciplined with your thoughts
Be ready to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. Conversion should always rest on a conviction that it’s right, or benefits others. Not because it’s more appealing or more popular
When something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself is no misfortune at all, to endure it and prevail is good fortune
If you resist the temptation to feel victimized—to feel harmed—then harmful things can’t happen to you, only things
Be tolerant of others, but strict with yourself
The best revenge is not to be like that
When asked to write out a name, would you clench your teeth and groan as you write it? When faced with responsibilities, approach them as you would writing a name, methodically and one letter at a time. Don’t get dissuaded by the text itself—complete it one task at a time
We tend not to waste much time concerning ourselves with our height or width, spatial dimensions of our bodies (these days a little more so, with weight issues associated with caloric abundance). So why should we concern ourselves with the temporal dimension of our body, i.e., how long we live? Accept the limits placed on the body.
The importance of detaching from our body’s urges, to resist impulses and sensations. Thoughts seek to be their master, not their subject. Thoughts were created for this use.
- Interesting. Frontal lobe development, contributing to logical calculus and delayed gratification, evolved such that our survival wouldn’t be impinged by short term gratification—i.e., indulgence in impulsive behaviour
Actions and perceptions need to aim at:
- Accomplishing practical ends
- The exercise of thought
- Maintaining a confidence found on understanding
  - in Buddhism action is understood as having three aspects: thinking, speaking, and acting (doing something). Some similarities here
When bothered by those behaving poorly in pursuit of pleasure, money, or status—reflect on when you thought like that. Recognize that they are acting out of compulsion, and attempt to remove the compulsion if you can

Understanding Our Mind

Published: May 04, 2023

Understanding Our Mind, Thich Nhat Hanh

Store consciousness stores and preserves all the seeds of our experiences, where seeds represent everything we have ever done, experienced, or perceived. These are “subjects” of consciousness
The seeds make up store consciousness and can be distinguished from the store, but the store is dependant on the seeds, thus the seeds are also “objects” of consciousness
The ways in which we act plant seeds for how we behave in the future. If you plant wheat, wheat will grow. If you act in a wholesome way, you will be happy. If you act in an unwholesome way, you will water seeds of craving, anger, and violence in yourself and others
When we perceive an object, we see its “sign” (I like signature more). As per Buddhism there are 3 pairs of signs of phenomena:
- Universal and particular: universal signatures are generic labels (e.g., a house) and particular signatures are more specific (e.g., the brick, wood, nails, etc. that make up individual houses)
- Unity and diversity: all houses are part of the designation “house”, but there are countless variations between the collection of individual houses
- Formation and disintegration: a house could be in the process of being built (formation), but is also already in the process of decay, being weathered by its surroundings (disintegration)
  - Seeing these signatures are the basis of the teachings of interbeing
It is easy to confuse our mental image, our signature of something, with its reality. The way to avoid misperceptions is through mindfulness: deliberate investigation of our perceptions, poking and prodding until we approach the true nature of a perception
When we have a false perception and continue to maintain it, we hurt ourselves and others. In fact, people kill one another over their competing perceptions of the same reality
Individual and collective seeds: the collective consciousness is made up of individual consciousnesses, and an individual conscious is formed by the collective conscious. This is the nature of interbeing
Looking deeply into an atom, we bow our heads in awe. And yet with our friend/significant other sitting next to us we think we already know everything about them
Walking at dusk, we see a long stringy object, and thinking it’s a snake we get scared. Upon shining a light on the object, we realize it was just rope. Our fear was the product of a misperception, not seeing something for what it truly was. We do this in life as well, misperceiving constructed perceptions as truth, avoiding deep deliberation of what we’re assuming
Impermanence and nonself are essentially the same thing, both meaning the absence of a separate, fixed self. Impermanence looks at this temporally, nonself looks at this spatially. The idea of a discrete self is incompatible with a continuous world
The true nature of consciousness is neither individual nor collective. We are simultaneously individual and collective. I am a unique biological pattern, that was formed by the collective consciousness of my family, the earth, and the cosmos. This collective consciousness is produced by many individuals. Interdependence.
Manas provides energy for ignorance, thirst, and craving. It also serves as the “survival instinct”, providing reflexive reactions to stimuli. It operates in the realm of representations, and thus cannot touch the realm of things-in-themselves (truth). The attachment of manas in a self is based on an image it has created.

The Moral Animal

Published: May 04, 2023

The Moral Animal by Robert Wright

Part 1: Sex, romance, and love

Chapter 2: Male and Female

Due to reproductive organ asymmetries, it’s in the male’s advantage to pretend to be highly fit, and in the female’s advantage to spot false advertising
Females of most species are coy, somewhat resistant to mating with males, whereas men are more liberal with sexual partners. Coyness is rewarding in the Darwinian sense, because the males that surpass that resistance, either verbally or physically, are more likely to have more fit offspring
Chapter 3: Men and Women
Flowers and other tokens of affection are more prized by women as it signals generosity, trustworthiness, and most importantly an enduring commitment
High male parental investment has made males evolve to compete for scarce female eggs, but females have also evolved to compete for scarce male investment
85% (~900/1100) societies around the world have been polygamous—that is, they have permitted men to have multiple wives. The majority of men, however, were likely monogamous as they couldn’t afford multiple wives, but the high-status males are allowed to if they can provide for the families
Chapter 4: The marriage market
Marriage favours lower class men. Women, who would otherwise marry up the hierarchy and split resources of a high-status male with other women, are forced to stick with a male mate at a similar spot in the hierarchy
Institutionalized marriage thus doesn’t serve women near the bottom of the hierarchy. They may have to stay with a bum rather than obtain resources from a well-off man. Low status males in this case may have more to benefit from marriage
Without institutionalized marriage, many low status males will be alone, upset, and likely become violent. Married men are less likely to commit crime—this could be because men who wouldn’t commit crime in the first place tend to get married, but marriage also settles the man down
Western culture now has a serial monogamous nature, where divorce is prevalent. This leaves children without their natural parents, and step-parents often care little for step-children, hindering development and lowering the quality of guidance for children from broken families
Unstratification of social status could help curb the decrease in monogamy; if resources are allocated more equally, women are less likely to have their eye on men up the echelon, as the echelon will be more balanced. Political and social inequality leads to allocation of multiple women to a high-status man, and more upset, low status males as a result
Chapter 6: The Darwin plan for marital bliss
Male sexual fantasies tend to be mostly visual in nature, whereas females tend to include tender touching, soft murmurs, and other hints of future investment
Some approach divorce with the mindset that they married the “wrong” person and next time they’ll get it right, but divorce statistics say otherwise. “The triumph of hope over experience”
How moral codes arise: people tend to pass moral judgements that help move their genes to the next generation. Thus, a moral code is a compromise among competing spheres of self-interest, each acting to mold the code to its own ends
Part 2: Social cement
Chapter 7: Families
Some parent-offspring conflict arises since children share 50% of genes with siblings, so put simply its in their best interest to favour themselves at 2-to-1 odds than their siblings. Whereas parents share genes equally with all offspring, so it could be in their best interest to treat each child equally. These broad differences in self interest could be the source of some child-parent conflict
Parents may have reasons to prefer some offspring over others, a pretty daughter in a poor family likely has a better chance of moving up socioeconomically than a handsome boy, whereas in an already rich family a man is more likely to maintain the resources and attract an attractive female, converting those resources into genetic proliferation
Studies on rats have shown that mothers starved of resources are more likely to provide milk to daughters, and wean off sons
In the middle-east/Asia as well as medieval Europe, infanticide of females was most common upon upper class families
In a study done in America, it was found that sons of high-class families were more likely to be breast fed, and less likely in low class families, i.e., breast-feeding frequency of boys changed with socio-economic status. Women who had a female child in low-class families were more likely to wait to have another child than if they had first had a male. The opposite trend was found for high class families
Magnitude of grief of a parent from a lost child seems to correlate near perfectly with fertility metrics of hunter-gatherer societies. That is, parents tend to grieve more for a child that is closer to their peak fertility potential. Grievance for an adolescent will be much stronger than that of an infant or older relative
First born siblings tend to be less exceptional. Studies of academics and political greats are found to rarely be first born amongst their siblings. Younger siblings tend to have to compete with older siblings for parental affection or attention, and the older sibling has had more time to develop a relationship with the parent, and likely wins favour through sacrifice of taking care of younger siblings. Thus, the younger sibling seeks another niche, say excellence in school, to gain parental favor
Chapter 9: Friends
In game theory, the TIT FOR TAT strategy wins out. Cooperate on the first go, and match the other player’s move from there on
If everyone at the start doesn’t cooperate, the TIT FOR TAT strategy doesn’t work. It’s likely cooperation started out due to kin-selection and gradually spread out, allowing TIT FOR TAT to dominate, and thus society to grow
Reciprocal altruism thus likely evolved selfishly, since unlike with kin-selection where genes are shared, altruism with outside-kin is likely just an optimal strategy for personal benefit—everybody wins. It also isn’t a surprise that betrayals are common as well, if people can cheat without repercussion, they will. Gossip and punishment deter this behaviour.
Chapter 10: Darwin’s conscience
In the Victorian environment, in which there were small quaint towns, it paid to be good, act with integrity, and be altruistic, as the towns were small, and it was the optimal strategy for small groups
However, in todays large cities, where nobody really knows anybody, it can pay to be dishonest and to be a cheat, hence the societal shift in norms from the Victorian times from having a strong “character” to having a nice “personality”
Those who lack a secure environment when growing up, either without parents to instill values of integrity and kindness, or in a disparate environment where these values aren’t necessary, often grow up to be criminals. They are generally not evil people, just products of their environment
Part 3: Social strife
Chapter 12: Social Status
In the Ache, though skillful hunters share their food with the tribe, they in turn enjoy more extramarital affairs, have more illegitimate children, and their children get special treatment
As more and more societies are re-evaluated in a Darwinian light, it becomes doubtful that any truly egalitarian society has ever existed
In a study, those given artificially low test scores to lower self esteem, were more likely to subsequently cheat in a game of cards. Another study found that people with lower serotonin levels are more likely to commit impulsive crimes
The common stereotype of a wife complaining that a husband can’t bring himself to admit he’s wrong may be because males who too readily sought reconciliation after a fight, or needlessly submitted to others, saw their status drop and thus their inclusive fitness
- Women fall prey to this as well, but if folk wisdom can be trusted, the average woman is less reluctant than the average man—which makes sense as the fitness of females depend less on status maintenance than does males
The ultimate aim for politicians is status, and thus they will say things that appeal to the group of voters most likely to get them into power or keep them there
Chapter 13: Deception and self-deception
“The best liar is the one who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.” Lies that are slight, and hard to discredit, are more difficult to get tangled up in, making them easy to hide behind
It may be in the genetic interest of someone at the low rungs of the status hierarchy to display their low status, as to advertise that they aren’t a threat to those above them. This is one possible explanation for individuals with low self-esteem
We could have a built-in tendency to refrain from bestowing status enhancement benefits on people whose status threatens our own. Darwin would often acknowledge minor researchers whose empirical observations aided him, but not those who’s ideas had influenced his thought (i.e., competitors near-above him in the status hierarchy)
When in a negotiation, say when buying a car, the first person to make a voluntary but irreversible sacrifice of freedom of choice is that who governs the negotiation. If a dealer believes you’re walking away for good, he’ll cave. If the dealer says he can’t accept less than X and appears as if his pride wouldn’t let him go lower, then he wins.
Studies show that when shown plausible/implausible arguments to a social issue you care about, people were most likely to remember the plausible arguments that supported their views, and implausible arguments of the opposition. The net effect drives home the correctness of our position, and the silliest of the alternative
Chapter 14: Darwin’s triumph
When dealing with non-kin, natural selection wants us to look like we’re being nice; the perception of altruism, not altruism itself, is what brings reciprocation. One aim of the conscience is to cultivate a reputation of generosity and decency, whatever the underlying motives of those actions are
Part 4: Morals of the story
Chapter 15: Darwinian (and Freudian) cynicism
Freud’s basic insight of the mind: it is a place of conflict between animal impulses and social reality
Chapter 16: Evolutionary ethics
A utilitarian mandate, in which behaviour that increases people’s happiness is considered good and thus encouraged, and behaviour that leads to peoples suffering is bad and thus discouraged, is thought to lead to a better off society (via non-zero sumness)
- In essence, considering the welfare of others as importantly as you would your own
Utilitarianism strives for maximum societal happiness: the greatest good for the greatest number
Some underlying reasons as to why we don’t like someone: liking them won’t elevate our social status, aid our acquisition of material or sexual resources, help our kin, or do any of the other things that during evolution had made our genes proliferate
Chapter 17: Blaming the victim
Determinism view: it seems likely that behaviour is determined in part due to genetic factors and environmental factors—our next move is decided by genetic interest and environmental circumstance
Robust moral codes rest not only on norms but on “metanorms”: society disapproves not only of the code’s violators but also on those who tolerate violators by failing to disapprove
Chapter 18: Darwin gets religion
Like how religions preach for brotherly love, politicians self-servingly preach for nationalism, i.e., brotherly love on a national scale

Range

Published: May 04, 2023

Range, David Epstein

Breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. The more breadth within learned content, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to situation they had never seen before—which is in essence creativity
A study found that typical children tend to be raised in families with an average of six household rules, compared to one rule for extremely creative children. After a wrongdoing parents would let the child know, rather than proscribing it beforehand
The “hypercorrection” effect: the more confident a learn is of their wrong answer, the better the information sticks when they subsequently learn the right answer. Tolerating big mistakes can create the best learning opportunities
- This effect was even reproduced in primates (rhesus macaques)
Teachers who drive overachievement in their current courses (by providing easier content) tend to undermine student performance in the long run (US Air Force study). Those who had more challenging math courses, and thus had lower student satisfaction, saw their students overachieve in future math courses (i.e., short term their grades would suffer, but long term their grades flourished)
Interleaving problems, i.e., mixing them up when practicing, has been found to be more effective than approaching problems in blocks. Shuffle the problems beforehand to improve learning via rules differentiation rather than learning structured patterns
According to a Yale study, more scientifically literate adults are surprisingly more likely to become dogmatic about politically polarizing topics in science. One theory is that they are better equipped to find evidence that confirms their beliefs
A personality feature that fights back against this propensity is scientific curiosity, not scientific knowledge. Roam freely, listen carefully, and consume indiscriminately. Be open-minded.
Scientific work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge (i.e., atypical citations with respect to the discipline) are less likely to be funded, more likely to be ignored upon publication, but more likely in the long run to gain traction and succeed

Make it Stick - The Science of Successful Learning

Published: May 04, 2023

Make it Stick - The Science of Successful Learning, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown

Chapter 1: Learning is misunderstood

“Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
We are poor judges of when we are learning well or not. When we’re undergoing a challenge it doesn’t feel productive, so we’re drawn to strategies that feel better, unaware that they may be less effective
Rereading text and massed practice are not productive, i.e., rapid fire repetition of something you’re trying to learn or cramming for exams. They give rise to feelings of fluency but are largely a waste of time
Retrieval practice - recalling facts or concepts from memory - is much more effective than review by rereading
Spacing out practice or interleaving it with other subjects makes it feel more challenging to recall, yet produces longer lasting learning and more versatile application of what is learned in later settings
Trying to solve a problem prior to being told the solution leads to better learning
The notion that you learn better according to your learning style, e.g., a visual or auditory learner, is not supported by empirical research. You learn better when you draw on all of your aptitudes and resourcefulness, rather than just the style you find most amenable
Extracting and understanding the underlying principles or rules of problem makes one more successful at picking the right solution in unfamiliar situations
People who learn to extract key ideas from new material, organize them into a mental model, and connect that model to prior knowledge show an advantage in learning complex mastery
Chapter 2: To learn, retrieve
The stronger one’s knowledge about the subject at hand, the more nuanced one’s creativity can be in addressing a new problem
Knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination; as creativity absent of a stable foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house
A 1978 study showed that cramming leads to higher scores on an immediate test but results in faster forgetting compared to practicing retrieval
Testing immediately after exposure enhances knowledge retention, one study found an 11% increase on test scores on a topic learned a week prior between a group that was tested immediately after and one who had not been tested prior
Multiple spaced out tests immediately after content is learned serves as an immunization against forgetting the material, the mental strain induced by testing solidifies a foundation of knowledge
Students who have been quizzed have a dual advantage: a more accurate sense of what they do and don’t know, and the strengthening of accrued learning from retrieval practice
Chapter 3: Mix up your practice
Massed practice is prevalent; whether it be summer language boot camps, colleges teaching a single subject promising fast learning, or continuing education seminars with material condensed to a single weekend. It feels productive, yet the material is forgotten as fast as it is learned. Spacing out practice feels less productive as it’s more effortful, yet it generates fertile ground for knowledge to grow out of and flourish
“The myths of massed practice are hard to exorcise, even when you’re experiencing the evidence yourself.” Massed practice feels better, because as you study you feel as though you’re learning faster and that feels good and more seamless. Yet when compared against the more cognitively challenging varied and interleaved practice, massed practice generally underperforms on later tests.
Providing a quiz at the end of a conference can help the audience retain some of what they learned. Normally they just listen and walk out, forgetting the material shortly after
Reflection is a form of retrieval practice, essential to bridging the gap in the learning practice (“What did I do? What happened? How did it work out? What would I do differently next time?”)
Chapter 5: Avoid illusions of knowing
A good way to engage in self-insight is to ask yourself: is the world giving me positive feedback? Is the world rewarding me in a way that I would expect a competent person to be rewarded? Is there something I can work on to reduce the delta? “Think of the kids lining up to join the softball team—would you be picked?”
Chapter 6: Get beyond learning styles
Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason, see relationships, think abstractly, and hold information in the mind while working on a problem
Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge of the works, the pattern recognition models one has developed from past learning and experience
Chapter 7: Increase your abilities
Myelin coating of axons generally starts at the back of our brain and works it’s way towards our frontal lobes as we grow into adulthood. Myelin coating thickness correlates with ability, and with increased practice, leading to thicker coats that improve the strength and speed of electrical signals
Automatic actions or responses to stimula, i.e., habits, tend to be directed from a region deep in the brain called the basal ganglia
Learning to remember the relationship between unrelated items, such as names and faces, stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampus. This neurogenesis starts in anticipation of the learning event, and persists after it has been completed
Some individuals aim for performance goals, working to validate their ability. These individuals unconsciously limit their ability, picking challenges that they are confident they can meet so as to validate their ability
Some individuals strive toward learning goals, working to acquire new knowledge or skills. With a goal to increase ability, they pick ever-increasing challenges, and interpret setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve
“Emphasizing effort gives a child a rare variable they can control, but emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of a child’s control, providing no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet

Published: May 04, 2023

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, Thich Nhat Hanh

We live in a civilization of borrowing. When we want something we can’t yet afford, we count on the bodies and labor in the future to pay back the debt. We have treated the global ecological environment similarly—exploiting the planet for its resources, burdening future generations with the debts we currently incur in order to maintain superfluous and ostentatious lifestyles
The four notions of the diamond suttra
- The illusion of self: I am composed of cells shared with my ancestors, of flourishing and diverse microbiomes lining the inside of my gut, of non-me elements that come together to make me. Thus, the notion of me being separate from the rest of the world is false, and a construct developed by natural selection to prioritize the survival of my genes. Yet, in reality, my system cannot function without the rest of the world… Interconnectedness. I am all.
- The notion of “human being”: we depend on other beings in order to survive, whether it be plants, fish, or water. Yet we preference our species at the expense of others. Due to interbeing, by harming others we are harming ourselves. Our life requires cohesion with the rest of the world, and since we are interdependent with the planet and its constituents, this notion of “human-being” preference at the expense of others serves to eventually harm us
- The notion of “living being”: we are composed and dependent on inanimate matter as well—minerals, molecules, atoms. Life is contingent on these things, thus the preference for living over non-living can be unhelpful
- The notion of “life span”: when we die, we don’t really die, we just transform into something else. Likewise, within us live the genes of ancestors dating back to the creation of life billions of years ago.
Three basic needs: peace, understanding, and love. To cultivate in any situation a feeling of peace, understanding, and compassion allows for disillusioned and positive action
When suffering, get in touch with it. Do not cover it up with media, games, or alcohol. Ask why you are suffering, and where it has come from. Recognize it and hold it inside—look deeply into it and say “hello my fear, anger, and despair. I will take good care of you.”
The mechanics of compassion: when suffering, look deeply into its nature and develop an understanding of it, and follow with a compassion towards the suffering

The Righteous Mind

Published: May 11, 2023

The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt

Part 1: Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning comes second

Chapter 1: Where does morality come from?

One of Haidt’s early cross-cultural studies on moral judgement found that between rural Brazil, a city in Brazil, and a city in the USA, those in the more disadvantaged areas tended to moralize more
Within each city, lower social status individuals tended to moralize more than those in high status. This effect of status was stronger than the differences in location
Kids tended to moralize more than adults
Those in rural Brazil still tended to deem something morally unacceptable even if they didn’t find anyone was harmed by the proposed scenario, whereas in the USA they would say it violates a social convention—showing that moral intuitions are not solely innate but absorbed via environmental influence
Gut feelings about disgust and disrespect can sometimes drive reasoning, normally fabricated post-hoc. People may have a moral intuition about a certain circumstance, and struggle to come up with a distinct reason as to why they believe it’s bad/good
Chapter 2: The intuitive dog and its rational tail
“Desire and reason pull in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong”-Ovid, Roman poet
There is a difference between personal preference and moral judgements. With personal preferences, it’s perfectly ok to decline a situation because you don’t want to, based on your subjective preference
Moral judgements, however, are not subjective statements; they are claims that somebody did something wrong. I can’t gather support to punish you just because I don’t like what you’re doing. I must point to something outside my personal preferences, that pointing is our moral reasoning
We reason morally not to see how we came to a judgement; but to find the best reasons why others ought to join us in our judgment
Moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail; you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments
Empathy is an antidote to righteousness and divisiveness, yet it’s challenging to empathize across a moral divide
The mere exposure effect: An experiment showed that repeated exposure to arbitrary objects made people like them more; the brain tags familiar things as good things. This is a basic principle in advertising
When exposed to a bad smell, subjects of a study were more likely to give harsher moral judgments. When reflecting on a past moral transgression, we are more likely to want to clean ourselves (Lady Macbeth effect). Even when something as simple as a hand-sanitizer is nearby, we become more morally conservative
Animals first evolved to attract and averse to smells and tastes, i.e., biochemical senses. This could be one reason why a bad/good smell effects our moral judgments—if I’m sensing something pleasant, this is probably something that’s good for me
An experiment gave its subjects a moral quandary and provided half of them with a weak justification and half with a strong justification. When asked their stance on the situation directly after reading the justification, most stuck to their intuitions and condemned the situation. When given 2 minutes to reflect afterwards, most who were shown the strong justification were much more likely to change their minds
After ingesting information that provokes an affective response, letting it mellow for a few minutes, such that our initial brain stem response dies down, allows us to judge things with more reason and openness
Chapter 4: Vote for me (here’s why)
People are more likely to engage in exploratory thought (truth seeking) than confirmatory thought (one-sided attempt to rationalize a particular point) when:
- Prior to forming an opinion, they are told they will be accountable to an audience
- The views of the audience are unknown
- The audience are well-informed and seek accuracy
One of thought’s central functions is to allow one to justifiably and persuasively describe why one acted in a particular way, and to search for reasons to convince oneself that they have made the “right” choice of action
Schools don’t teach people to reason thoroughly; they select the applicants with higher IQs, and people with higher IQs are able to generate more reasons (normally supporting their side and discounting the opposition)
When we want to believe something, we ask ourselves “Can I believe it?” and search for supporting evidence; when we don’t want to believe something, we ask ourselves “Must I believe it?” and search for contrary evidence
Part 2: There’s more to morality than harm and fairness
Chapter 5: Beyond WEIRD morality
When asked to write statements beginning with the words “I am…”, westerners are more likely to reference internal psychological states (I am happy, I am outgoing, etc.) and East Asians are more likely to reference roles and relationships (I am a father, I am a husband, etc.)
The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive things as separate objects rather than relationships
Other than ethics around harm and fairness, the ethic of autonomy is prevalent in western societies. Not as prominent in WEIRD societies are the ethics of community and divinity, though in more conservative and religious factions of western society these ethics are more prevalent
“We are multiple from the start.” The foundation for each of these moral ethics lies within us, latent, from the start. It is possible to view them all, to improve understanding of why others take moral positions, and to reduce ignorance towards why they feel that type of way
Chapter 6: Taste buds of the righteous mind
Five good candidates for being the “taste receptors” of the righteous mind are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity
Chapter 7: The moral foundations of politics
The brain of a newborn is one that is best seen as prewired—flexible and subject to change—rather than hardwired, i.e., fixed and immutable
“Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises…built-in does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.”
The moral matrix of liberals falls more heavily on the Care foundation than does that of the conservatives, though conservatives do still have some (e.g., save our troops… respect those who sacrifice for the group). The care foundation for the conservatives is aimed more locally, liberals tend to be a bit more universalist (e.g., human eating practices)
Regarding the foundation of fairness, on the left, fairness often implies equality, whereas on the right it implies proportionality (i.e., get paid in proportion to one’s contributions)
The loyalty foundation comes stronger for conservatives, who lean into loyalty by pledging loyalty their nation (nationalism) and to sports teams. Liberals have a harder time with this one as they tend to be universalists
We are the descendants of individuals who were best able to play the game of authority/subversion—to rise in status while cultivating protection from superiors and the allegiance of subordinates
The omnivore’s dilemma is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. They thus go through life with two competing motives: neophilia and neophobia
Liberals tend to be more neophilic (open to new experiences); conservatives tend to be more neophobic (preferring what’s tried and true)
There is some evidence that liberal and welcoming attitudes to immigrants are more common in times and places where risks of disease are lower (the recent pandemic made this apparent)
Chapter 8: The conservative advantage
The liberty/oppression foundation makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination, triggering an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies
- This manifests as egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism on the left, and “don’t-tread-on-me” and anti-government attitudes on the right
The fairness foundation focuses mostly on proportionality. Most people have a few intuitive concern for the law of karma, we want to see cheaters punished and good citizens rewarded in proportion to their deeds
Part 3: Morality binds and blinds
Chapter 9: Why are we so groupish?
Shared intentionality, i.e., when groups of humans share a common representation of a task they are pursuing, could have been the keystone step in the development in human morality. Once people began sharing a common understanding of how things were supposed to be done, and someone violated it, the group would feel a twinge of negativity towards the violator
Morality is like the matrix, it’s a shared, consensual hallucination within a group
A set of selection pressures operated within groups, e.g., via punishment of nonconformists; and between groups, e.g., via the most cohesive groups surviving and taking resources from less cohesive, smaller groups
The human love of using symbolic markers to demonstrate a group membership likely adapted because it provided a way for our ancestors to develop a sense of “we” beyond kinship. The more permanent the symbol (e.g., piercings and tattoos) the more permanent the membership. We trust and cooperate better with people who look and sound like us, we expect them to share our values and norms
We have a psychology which “expects” the social world to be divided into symbolically marked groups
Humans “self-domesticated” themselves when they began selecting for partners and friends based on their ability to live within the tribe’s moral matrix
Changes in our genes accelerated greatly during the Holocene era, once humans started becoming more social, agriculture development began, and humans expanded across the globe into novel environments. Genes and culture coevolve, and once culture starts picking up the pace, genetic evolution picks up the pace as well
Early population bottlenecks can also contribute to rapid genetic evolution. If we suddenly lose 95% of all food, the humans that survive are going to be the ones that work best together to monopolize the remaining resources. The small number of people that are left and the genes they carry have an immense impact on the generations that follow. Some suspect this happened 70000-140000 years ago during large global temperature fluctuations and volcanic eruptions that disrupted the environment
Groupishness tends to be focused on improving the well-being of the in-group, instead of harming the out-group (although this does happen, e.g., warfare)
Human nature is mostly shaped by individual selection. However, there is certainly a case to be made that group selection has played a role in shaping human nature, particularly in shaping our righteous minds
Chapter 10: The hive switch
There exists a “switch” in us that, when engaged, dissolves selfish interests and prioritizes the collective. The peak of this is collective effervescence, a state achieved when a large group acts in synchrony, generating a sort of electricity that reverberates throughout the group
We are homo-duplex, we live most of our lives in our individual, ordinary worlds, but achieve some of our greatest joys in brief moments of connection to the “sacred” world, where the self dissolves and we become part of the whole
Oxytocin bonds people to their groups. It increases intra-group love, but not love towards all humans as a whole
Mirror neurons enable empathy, but studies show that they activate more for those that share their moral matrix (i.e., for those on their good side)
Ch11. Religion is a team sport
Often our beliefs are post hoc constructions designed to justify what we’ve just done, or to support the groups we belong to
New atheists dismiss religion as costly, ineffective, and irrational—a product of cognitive misfirings (e.g., agent-detection module). However, it turns out religion is a solution to one of the hardest challenges humanity faces: cooperation without kinship
Communes (i.e., groups of people who reject the moral matrix of general society) in the United States tend to persist longer when they adopt a religion. More within group demands for sacrifice also correlated with group longevity. The longevity of secular communes was much shorter, though this doesn’t necessarily mean the people in these communes were more or less happy. It just means religious communes may be more effective groups
In the human population as a whole, genes that promoted religious behaviour were likely to become more common in each generation as the less cohesive societies perished and the more united ones thrived
If human minds and human religions coevolved, shaping one another, we can not expect people to abandon religion so easily. Of course, one can still reject organized religion, a more recent cultural phenomena. But someone who rejects all religion will have a hard time shaking off their religious psychology
Particular religious beliefs and practices don’t correlate much with how altruistic a religious person is. How enmeshed with their co-religious community is the strongest correlate to how generous and charitable they are in general. Friendship and group activities carried out in a shared moral matrix enhance selflessness.
“It is religious belongingness that supports neighbourliness, not particular religious beliefs.”
Chapter 12: Can’t we all disagree more constructively?
Genes collectively give some people brains that are more (or less) reactive to threats, and that produce less (or more) pleasure when exposed to novelty, change, and new experiences. Genetics play a role in one’s tendency to be conservative or liberal
A study which asked thousands of American to fill out a moral foundation questionnaire, where a third answered as themselves, a third pretended to be a typical conservative, and a third pretended to be a typical liberal, found that moderates and conservatives were able to most accurately predict what the other sides would answer in the questionnaire. Liberals were the least accurate, with those who were “very liberal” having abysmal ability to predict the morals of conservatives
This is likely due in part to the emphasis on two moral pillars (care/harm and fairness) that liberals stand on, and the six pillars that conservatives stand on (even though, ironically, conservatives tend to be a bit less empathetic)
Can you convince yourself that the following statements hold merit?
- People are inherently imperfect and prone to act poorly when all constraints of accountability are removed
- Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, making it dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason (i.e., rationality), unconstrained by intuition and historical experience
- Institutions gradually emerge, shaped by society, which we then respect and sometimes even sacralise; if we strip institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary and artificial, we render them less effective, exposing ourselves to social disorder and potentially a lack of meaning (anomie)
“Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for traditions, and dissolution/subjection to foreign conquest through the growth of individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible.”
Liberal programs with good intentions can sometimes have unintended consequences, e.g., the urge to help Hispanic immigrants in 1989 led to multicultural education programs that emphasizes the differences among Americans, rather than their shared values and identity
“Emphasizing differences between one another makes many people more racist, not less.”
“We think the other side is blind to the truth, science, reason, and common sense, yet everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects (i.e., beliefs).”

Breath

Published: June 01, 2023

Chapter 1: The worst breather in the animal kingdom

Around 40% of today’s population (western?) suffers from chronic nasal obstruction, around 50% of us are habitual mouth breathers (females and children suffer from this the most (why?))
Chapter 2: Mouthbreathing
How the body generates energy via food and/or air: anaerobic and aerobic respiration. Anaerobic respiration metabolizes glucose to generate energy, and is much less (16x less) efficient than aerobic respiration, a process in which the cells in our body have fine-tuned over the past 2.5 billion years
Mouthbreathing begets more mouthbreathing; nosebreathing begets more nosebreathing. Breathing through the mouth reduces air pressure against the back of the throat, causing the airways to sink and relax at the back of the throat, leading to restricted airways. Nose breathing increases air pressure, forcing the muscles at the back of the throat to open up, leading to opened airways
Chapter 3: Nose
The interior of the nose is lined with erectile tissue. When the right nostril is breathed through it tends to be associated with a more sympathetic response: increased heart rate and cortisol and feeds more blood (?) to the left frontal cortex which is associated with impulse response and logical decision making. The left nostril is associated with a more parasympathetic response, calming the body down and feeding blood to brain regions more associated with creativity and mental abstractions
Nasal breathing induces a release of nitric oxide by the sinuses, a molecule that plays an essential role in increasing circulation and oxygen delivery to cells. We can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen through nose breathing than by mouthbreathing
Chapter 4: Exhale
Chapter 5: Slow
Breathing slowly improves oxygen usage, allowing carbon dioxide to settle a bit longer which eases transport of oxygen within hemoglobin to needy tissues
Many meditative/prayer practices, e.g., Buddhist/Hindu chants and the Christian rosary, involve chants or rhythmic breathing of a rate of ~5.5 breaths per minute. These practices may have evolved as they synchronized with cardiovascular rhythms, and gave a feeling of well-being and alertness while practicing
Chapter 6: Less
Slower breathing holds in slightly more carbon dioxide, which lowers the pH in blood to make it more acidic. The sweet spot pH in blood is about 7.4, and the body attempts to maintain that pH
One way the body does this aside from breathing is through buffering, in which the kidneys release bicarbonate from blood into urine, lowering the pH in response to high pH levels (brought about by low carbon dioxide from too-rapid breathing)
- When bicarbonate leaves the body, it takes magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium with it. This is why asthmatics and others are prescribed these supplements to stave off future attacks
- Bones get weakened as well, as mineral stores within the bones are dissolved to compensate for the lost minerals
  Chapter 7: Chew
Chewing helps maintain a strong jaw and keeps the jaw and teeth structurally sound. The historical records find that around the time softer foods were developed, a corresponding significant decrease in teeth quality (straightness) came along with it.
I like to think of this like trying to plant a fence post in eroded and granular soil: your fence post is going to wiggle around. Whereas, with a strong, dense soil, the fence post stays straight and upright.
Chapter 8: More, on occasion
The parasympathetic system is part of the autonomic nervous system that stimulates relaxation and restoration. It eases digestion, relaxes bowels for waste elimination, and stimulates genitals before sex (“feed and breed” system). Many nerves in the lungs that connect to the parasympathetic system are located deep down in the lungs, so deeper, relaxed breaths tend to engage a parasympathetic response
The sympathetic system stimulates the fight or flight response. Nerves for this system tend to be located in the upper lungs. Short, rapid breaths engage the sympathetic system, routing blood from less-vital organs (like stomach and bladder) to more important organs (like muscles and brain)
Tummo breathing is a technique used by Buddhist monks in the Himalayas to stay warm with limited insulation. This heavy breathing practice coupled with cold exposure releases adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol on demand. Immune function is enhanced by adrenaline, inflammatory immune response in downgraded by cortisol, and norepinephrine redirects blood from the skin, stomach, and reproductive organs to muscles, the brain, and other vital organs
Tummo breathing and cold exposure expands the bounds on what the body is used to, and what it can handle, such that it can adapt and become flexible with respect to unseen stressful physiological responses
Tummo breathing procedure:
1. Lay flat on your back with a pillow beneath your head
2. Take a very deep breath into the pit of the stomach, through the nose if possible. Inhaling should first inflate the stomach, then the chest. Exhale out just as quickly as the inhale. Repeat 30 times
3. Exhale to leave about a quarter of the air in the lungs and hold that air for as long as possible
4. Take a huge inhale and hold it for another 15 seconds. Move the fresh air around the chest and shoulders.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for three or four rounds
  Chapter 9: Hold it
We have a cluster of neurons at the base of the brain stem called central chemoreceptors, that measure CO2 levels in the bloodstream (?) to regulate how fast and deeply we should be breathing. Low CO2 -> breathe slower, high CO2 -> breathe faster
These chemoreceptors have the ability to trigger a panic/fear response outside the amygdalae, which is generally responsible for translating external stimuli into aversive behaviour. The roots of the chemoreceptors are more ancient than that of the amygdalae, used by the first aerobic life forms around 2.5B years ago
Chapter 10: Fast, slow, and not at all
Epilogue: A last gasp
“…our body is much more nearly perfect than the endless list of ailments suggest. Its shortcomings are due less to its inborn imperfections than to our abusing it.” - Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi
Nine out of ten of the top human killers, i.e., diabetes, heart disease, stroke, are cause by the food we eat, water we drink, the houses and offices we work in. Humanity/civilizations created these diseases

Consilience

Published: June 01, 2023

Consilience: a “jumping together” of knowledge by linking facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation
Chapter 3: The Enlightenment
Francis Bacon (1561), a founder of the Enlightenment, believed that we must understand nature, both around us and within ourselves, in order to set humanity on the course of self-improvement
Bacon emphasized to beware of the idols of the mind:
- Idol of the tribe is assuming that more order exists in chaotic nature (i.e., being allured to simple answers that seemingly describe complex issues)
- The imprisoning cave is getting caught in the idiosyncrasies of individual belief and passion
- The marketplace is where the power of mere words are used to induce belief in nonexistent things
- The theatre is an unquestioning acceptance of philosophical beliefs and misleading demonstrations
- Bacon urged to observe the world around you as it truly is and reflect on the best means of transmitting reality as you have experienced it—approaching and transmitting truth is Nature’s calling
Chinese scholarship focused on holistic properties and on the harmonious, hierarchical relationships of entities, from stars down to mountains to flowers and to sand. The entities of Nature, in this view, are inseparable and perpetually changing, not discrete and constant as perceived by Enlightenment thinkers (who adopted a more reductionist approach)
Our species and its way of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution
The “Anthropic principle”: the laws of nature, in our universe at the least, had to be set a certain way so as to allow the creation of beings able to ask about the laws of nature
“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” - Einstein
To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
- Questions that can’t be answered are generally better than answers that can’t be questioned
Wilson suggests that there are two kinds of original thinkers: those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder. The tension between the two is what drives learning forward. (Ying and Yang)
Chapter 4: The Natural Sciences
Reductionism is the search strategy employed to find points of entry into otherwise impenetrably complex systems
“The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.”
Optimum intelligence for normal sciences: bright enough to see what needs to be done, but not so bright as to suffer boredom doing it
Natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than or equal to what is needed to survive
- The goal of a scientist should be to diagnose and correct the misalignment between human subjective experience and free-standing reality
  Chapter 5: Ariadne’s Thread
The activation-synthesis hypothesis suggests that dreaming may be a side effect of the reorganization and editing of the brain’s memory banks
- During sleep, with most sensory input lacking, the conscious brain is still activated internally by impulses originating from the brain stem. Lacking instantaneous sensory information, yet attempting to perform its usual function (?), the brain does its best to create images that move through coherent narratives—creating fantasy
  Chapter 6: The Mind
The thalamus, comprising of two egg-shaped masses of nerve cells near the centre of the brain, functions as a relay center through which all sensory information (other than smell) is transmitted to the cerebral cortex (i.e., the conscious mind). Even dreams are triggered by impulses passing through the thalamus
Neurotransmitter: a chemical that either excites an electric discharge in a receiving nerve cell or prevents one from occurring (acts within the synapse, the points of connection and microscopic space between nerve cells, at the ends of their axons)
Aggregates of neuron circuits gather in flat assemblages (layers) and rounded assemblages (nuclei), mostly placed at or near the surface of the brain. This is why the gray matter of the brain is gray, with the white colour coming from the myelin sheaths that insulate axons. These aggregates include sensory relay stations, memory modules, and emotional control centres.
Three primitive divisions of the brain are found throughout vertebrates, from fishes to mammals: hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain
- Hindbrain regulates breathing, heartbeat, and coordination of body movements
- Midbrain controls sleep and arousal, also parts regulating auditory reflexes and perception
- A major part of the forebrain is composed of the limbic system, comprised of the amygdala (emotion), hippocampus (memory, especially short-term), hypothalamus (memory, temperature control, sex drive, hunger, and thirst) and thalamus (awareness of all senses other than smell, be it temperature or pain)
- Forebrain also includes the cerebral cortex, covering the rest of the brain. The primary seat of consciousness, storing and collating information from the senses. It directs voluntary motor activity, speech, and motivation
The self is the main character in the winning dramas taken from the litany scenarios generated by the subconscious mind. The hidden preparation of these scenarios gives the illusion of free will. We make decisions for reasons we often sense only vaguely, and seldom understand fully
Can AI generate a human mind equivalent? Seems unlikely, as the mind’s emotions are driven by the senses (touch, sight, smell, taste, sound) and a computational neural network is unlikely to have access to these senses, especially at the resolution of a biological system that has fine-tuned its sensory organs over hundreds of millions of years. The AI may be able to mimic what a human mind is capable of, but without human senses and thus human emotion, it doesn’t seem like it would be conscious in the human sense; though, it could gain consciousness in the computational sense
Chapter 7: From genes to culture
Culture is created by the communal mind, and each mind is the product of the genetically structured human brain; genes and culture are thus inseverably linked
As a part of gene-culture coevolution, culture is collectively reconstructed each generation in the minds of its individuals. Writing and art allows culture to grow indefinitely large and even skip generation, as opposed to solely oral tradition. However, the fundamental biasing influences of epigenetic rules, being genetic and ineradicable, stay constant
Some individuals inherit epigenetic rules that enable survival and reproduction between in their environment and culture than individuals who lack those rules. As such, the human species has evolved genetically by natural selection in behaviour, just as it has anatomically and neurologically
Some cultural norms also survive and reproduce better than competing norms, causing culture to evolve on a track parallel to (and much faster than) genetic evolution. Culture allows rapid adjustments to changes in the environment through cultural adaptations without correspondingly precise genetic prescriptions. This is one reason why humans differ fundamentally from all other animal species
On epigenetic rules, i.e., innate genetic predispositions: o By four months old, infants prefer harmonious tones, and sometimes react to out-of-tune notes with a disgusted facial expression (the same as elicited by a drop of lemon juice on the tongue) o The startle response from a loud noise closes the eyes, opens the mouth, drops the head, sags the arms and shoulders, and buckles the knees, preparing the body as though to absorb a coming blow o Newborns prefer sugar solutions over plain water in the following order: sucrose, fructose, lactose, glucose o Within ten minutes after birth, infants fixate more on normally drawn facial designs than on abnormal designs o Two days after birth, infants prefer to gaze at their mother rather than unknown, other women o Smiling, used primarily to signal friendliness and approval and indicate a general sense of pleasure, appears cross culturally; environment has little influence in the maturation of smiling
Reification, i.e., the aggregation of ideas and complex phenomena into simpler concepts, is a quick and easy mental algorithm that creates order in a world otherwise overwhelming in flux and detail
The dyadic instinct, a manifestation of reification, is the proneness to divide classifications into two parts: in-group vs out-group, child vs adult, kin vs non-kin, married vs single, sacred vs profane, good vs evil. The boundaries of each division are fortified with taboo and ritual (initiation ceremonies, weddings, blessings, rites of passage)
Chapter 8: The fitness of human nature
The significant acceleration of cultural evolution in historical times may seem to imply that humanity has transcended its genetic instructions or found a way to suppress them. That is an illusion. The ancient genes and the epigenetic rules of behaviour they ordain remain comfortably in place
Through homo habilis, homo erectus, homo ergaster, and homo sapiens, cultural evolution was slow enough to remain tightly coupled to genetic evolution, until around 40000 to 10000 years ago, where Neolithic agricultural advances upped the tempo of cultural evolution
There is no evidence that our paleolithic genes simply disappeared during the “creative revolution” ensued by agricultural development. They remained in place and continued to prescribe the foundational rules of human nature
Chapter 9: The social sciences
The social sciences—anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science—strive to provide the power to predict what will happen if society selects one course of action over another
The social sciences lack consilience because they aren’t built upon, and don’t share, a solid foundation like the natural sciences do (e.g., medical sciences can build off molecular and cell biology)
As such, the social sciences are built into independent cadres with limited common ground, stressing the precision in words within their specialty yet seldom speaking the same technical language in another speciality. They mistake the overall atmosphere of chaos for creative ferment
The paradox of the social sciences is that it seems easier because we can talk with other humans but not with photons and atoms, yet this familiarity bestows a comfort that in turn breeds carelessness and error. People believe they know how they themselves think, and how others think, and how institutions evolve; they are wrong.
James S. Coleman, a distinguished sociologist from the University of Chicago, stated that the study of societies require “that the explanatory focus be on the system as a unit, not in the individuals or other components that make it up.” (i.e., holism)
- Imagine if the same were done in biology, “the essential requirement is that the explanatory focus be on the organism as a unit, not in the cell or molecules that make it up.” Biology would have remained stagnant around 1850 with that perspective. Biology is instead a science that traces causation across many levels of organization, from ecosystem to atom
Epigenetic rules are innate rules of thumb that direct the individual towards quick and accurate responses most likely to ensure survival and reproduction. Sometimes, especially in complex societies, they no long contribute to health and well-being; the behaviour they direct can militate against the best interests of the individual and its society
The practical role of evolutionary theory is to point to the most likely location of epigenetic rules within a culture
Chapter 10: the arts and their interpretation
Works of art communicate feeling directly from mind to mind, with no intent to explain why the impact occurs. In this sense, the arts are the antithesis of science
A potential formula for the driving pulse of the arts: imitate (generally something in nature), make it geometrical, intensify
The dominating influence that spawned the arts was the need to impose order on the confusion caused by intelligence
In a study on physical attractiveness of female faces, the features though most attractive were relatively high cheek bones, a thin jaw, large eyes relative to the size of the face, and a slightly shorter than longer distance between mouth and chin and between nose and chin
Though, these qualities are rare in the general population. Why, then, hasn’t natural selection directed facial features to this optimum? It’s possible that attraction to these features is an attraction to a super-normal stimulus—-much like how male butterflies can be tricked into trying to mate with a mechanical butterfly who’s wings are larger and flap faster, while ignoring the real female butterflies that surround it. Perhaps we follow a similar epigenetic rule as do other animals, i.e., “take the largest, or brightest, or most conspicuously moving individual you can find.”
- The author suggests that women with large eyes and delicate features may have less robust health (?), especially during childbearing; but they present physical cues of youth, virginity, and the prospect of a long reproductive period. This is why the beauty industry thrives: they manufacture super-normal stimuli by imitating the natural physiological signs of youth and fecundity
  Chapter 11: Ethics and religion
The dangerous Christian devotion of ”I was not born to be of this world” can encourage the notion that with a second life waiting, suffering can be endured—especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised
Ethical and religious beliefs are created from the bottom up, from people to their culture. They do not come from the top down, from God or other no material source to the people by way of culture
Tribes cooperate with one another through carefully defined treaties and other conventions, quick to imagine themselves as victims of conspiracies by competing groups, and prone to dehumanizing and murdering their rivals during periods of severe conflict. They cement group loyalty by means of sacred symbols and ceremonies. Their mythologies are filled with epic victories over menacing enemies
There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose, as such our brains were shaped by evolution to be groupish and primed for religious adoption
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods; it did not evolve to believe in biology. Religiosity conveyed genetic advantages throughout prehistory, and biology is a modern product and thus not reflected in our genetic algorithms. The two are not factually compatible, therefore those who hunt for both intellectual and religious truth will struggle to acquire both in full measure
Wilson believes that the competition between science and religion will lead towards the secularization of the human epic and religion itself. Science will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition, and in time uncover the foundation of moral and religious sentiments
Chapter 12: To what end?
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely
The Ratchet of Progress: the more knowledge people acquire, the more they can increase their numbers and alter the environment, whereupon the more they need new knowledge just to stay alive. In a human-dominated world, the natural environment steadily shrinks, offering less and less per capita energy and resources
A principal principle of organic evolution is that of habitat selection, that all species prefer and gravitate to the environment in which their genes were assembled. This is likely why so many people gravitate towards nature and the outdoors
The colonisation of space will be impossible without massive supply lines. The Biosphere experiment in the early 1990s, costing $200M, attempted to create a synthetic environment isolated from the real world (except for electricity and communication). Only 8 individuals participated in the experiment. The concentration of oxygen depleted five months into the experiment, and oxygen from the outside had to be pumped in to continue the experiment. Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide increases to dangerous levels. 19/25 vertebrates and all animal pollinators vanished, and cockroaches and ants multiplied explosively. The conclusion of the experiment was that “No one yet knows how to engineer systems that can sustain human life like the natural ecosystems that produce it for free.”
The wall toward humanity is evidently rushing toward a shortage of not only minerals and energy, but of food and water. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. The idea that “Life is good and getting better, we’re still expanding and spending faster…don’t worry, we’re a smart bunch, something will turn up; it always has.”
- It’s helpful to imagine the lily pad arithmetic riddle in this situation. A lily pad doubles itself each day after being placed in the pond. On the thirtieth day, the lily pads cover the pond entirely, unable to grow more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.
Humanity will attempt to invoke every techno local fix for an over-populated planet that genius can devise. They will be driven by venture capital and government subsidy in the free market economy, and reduce the risk of short term economic calamity. Though, these man-made procedures will enlarge the carrying capacity of the planet, and as human beings are typical organisms, their reproductive response will be to expand to fill the added capacity, and the spiral will continue
The more biodiverse an ecosystem, the higher it’s productivity and the greater it’s resilience to environmental stress. Since we depend on functioning ecosystems to cleanse our water, enrich our soil, and generate the air we breathe, biodiversity is something we shouldn’t discard carelessly

Starry Messenger

Published: June 01, 2023

Cloud 9 originates from when cloud taxonomy was documented by a Scottish meteorologist in 1896. The greatest cloud of them all, the cumulonimbus, landed at the highest spot—-number 9. The most divine cloud of them all, the term cloud nine appropriately refers to a state of divine bliss
Science denial happens on both sides of the spectrum: on the right, climate change and Darwinian evolution (for Christian fundamentalists); on the left, crystal healing, magnetic therapy, homeopathy, astrology, anti-GMO

The Social Conquest of Earth

Published: June 01, 2023

Chapter 1: The human condition

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival. Tribal conflict was a principal driving force that shaped biological human nature. By itself, mythmaking could never discover the origin and meaning of humanity (as it attempts to do); however, the discovery of the origin and meaning of humanity may explain the origin and meaning of myths, the core of organized religion
Part 2: Where do we come from?
Chapter 2: The two paths to conquest
Human groups are formed of highly flexible alliance, in which strategies for navigating these groups were written as a complicated mix of altruism, cooperation, competition, domination, reciprocity, defection, and deceit
This array of strategies required higher degrees of intelligence and intense socialization. The brain had to measure emotions of friend and enemy, plan strategies for social interaction, build mental scenarios of short and long-term relationships, and retrieve memories far into the past and long into the future to imagine the consequences of every relationship
Chapter 3: The approach
Chapter 4: The arrival
One critical point in our evolutionary past was when our ancestors developed an omnivore diet. Hunting game requires a high amount of teamwork and cohesion, and it’s worth it: meat is pound for pound more energetically efficient than vegetable food
Another critical point was the ability to control fire, which then led to camps (i.e., nests) which served as the nucleus for social groups. Now in close proximity to one another on a regular basis, intellectual development that enhanced one’s cohesion with the group (e.g., social intelligence, empathy, deceitfulness, etc.) was selected for, propelling our intellectual development further
- I also remember reading that cooked food also requires less energy to consume (chewing), which may have allowed resources to be directed away from the jaw to the brain region. It seems like these factors (this one and the previous point) arose in tandem, with cooked food enabling more brain capacity and social complexities driving the cerebral growth
  Chapter 5: Threading the evolutionary maze
The following preadaptations enabled human eusociality:
Living on land: without land dwelling there exists no possibility for the use of fire—a critical prerequisite to social flourishing in mammals * Being large: to house a brain with enough processing power to compute the complexities of social organization requires a large enough animal to house that brain. While ants are hypersocial and design intricate architecture with custom air conditioning, they are purely instinctual. And again, insects are too small to control fire * Grasping hands tipped with spatulate finger tips * Having those grasping hands free from walking, i.e., being bipedal * A shift from vegetarianism to an omnivore diet. Meat yields more energy per gram than vegetation. The social cooperation required to hunt meat also led to select for groups who could cooperate effectively * The controlled use of fire followed, facilitating the consumption of meats; mastication and digestion of cooked meats requires less energy * Persistent fire provided a refuge for early Homo species. As such, nests were formed—a precursor to the attainment of eusociality of all other known animals * With fireside campsites came division of labor, where subgroups formed and bands organized into dominance hierarchies
Chapter 6: Creative forces
The outcome of between-group competition for humans was determined largely by the size and tightness of the group, and the quality of their communication and division of labor
The genetic fitness of a human being is the consequence of both individual and group selection. These two forces tend to pull in opposite directions—I could deceive and cheat in pursuit of self-interest at the expense of the group, or I could be heroic and altruistic for the benefit of the group, but at the expense of my resources
- If the benefit from group membership falls below that which would be had from a solitary life, evolution would favour cheating or departure from the group. If personal benefit from group membership rises high enough, the members will be prone to altruism and conformity
Group composition is unstable because of advantageous group size increases from immigration, ideological proselytization, and conquest, pitted against the advantages by usurpation within the group and fission to create new groups
Much of culture (i.e., the content of the creative arts) has risen from the inevitable clash between individual and group selection
Chapter 7: Tribalism is a fundamental human trait
People must have a tribe. It gives them their own and social meaning in a chaotic world, making the environment seem less disorienting and dangerous. Each human has a system of interlocking tribes, savouring the company of like-minded friends, and yearning to be in one of the best tribes
Groups, regardless of how they are formed, have always been observed to rank out-group below in-group—even in experiments when they were told the in-groups and out-groups were chosen arbitrarily
The tendency to form groups and favour the in-group members has the earmarks of instinct. Children can have an inborn propensity to learn some things swiftly and decisively, known as prepared learning. Evidence suggests that in-group preference is prepared early in development, with infants being most sensitive to the sounds of their native language, regardless of whether the meaning of the speech is fully comprehended. Later, these infants look preferentially at person who spoke their native language within their hearing
The elementary drive to form and take deep pleasure from in-group membership translates at a higher level into tribalism. We are prone to ethnocentrism, preferring the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion (or anything that can be symbolically represented—as long as I can tell who belongs to my group and who doesn’t)
Different parts of the brain have evolved by group selection to create groupishness. Studies have observed that the amygdala (fear & anger) fires when subjects are presented an image of someone of a different race
Chapter 8: War as humanity’s hereditary curse
Once a group has been split off and sufficiently dehumanized, justifications can be made for horrible acts towards that group, no matter how gruesome
As a biological reproducing species, our population approaches limits set by available food and water. We are still fundamentally the same as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, just with more food and larger territories. Yet, we blindly obey the instincts that we’ve inherited from our Palaeolithic predecessors, which in our case lead to an overindulgence of energy and material resources
Chapter 9: Breakout
A loose rule of island biogeography is that animals smaller than 20kg tend to evolve into relative giants (e.g., the immense tortoises of the Galapagos), and animals larger than 20kg tend to evolve towards dwarfism (e.g., the dwarf deer of the Florida Keys)
- A cousin of Homo Sapiens, branching from Homo Erectus, are the Homo floresiensis of the island Flores, who were less than 1 meter tall and with brains of comparable size to australopithecines. This evolutionary product supports the above stated loose rules
“We should learn to promote human biological diversity for its own sake instead of using it to justify prejudice and conflict.”
Chapter 10: The creative explosion
Bands and communities of bands with better combinations of cultural innovations became more productive and better equipped for competition and war. Rivals either copied them or else were conquered. Thus, group selection drove the evolution of culture
Chapter 11: The sprint to civilization
The chiefs of chiefdoms typically micromanaged the affairs of their domain, delegating as little authority as possible to reduce the chance of insurrection. Common tactics include the suppression of underlings and fermenting a fear of rival chiefdoms
Part 3: How social insects conquered the invertebrate world
Chapter 12: The invention of eusociality
Chapter 13: Inventions that advanced the social insects
A significant change that allowed for the flourishing of ants, and other social insects in general, was the shift in arboreal flora from mostly conifers to leafy and flowered trees. Flowered trees are more diverse and thus leave a more diverse landscape in the soil below (as the portions of the trees eventually fall to the forest floor). They also coevolved with insects, encouraging pollination, and rewarding with sugar
This change in the tree landscape also led to a symbiosis between ants and sap sucking insects (i.e., aphids). These aphids would suck sap from trees and excrete their waste below. Ants eventually learned to consume this sugary waste, and in return the aphids wouldn’t get stuck in a pile of their sticky waste
Now, some species of ants have intricate nests with pastures laid out for their fleet of sapsuckers, much like how humans do for domesticated animals such as cows, sheep, and so on.
Some species of ants in more earthen regions (i.e., not so foresty) have granaries to store seeds of nearby plants
Social complexity seems to involve at some point a species developing an ability to sustain larger energy reserves. Ants develop intricate, complex nests with a caste of workers with specialized skills, as do humans in the forms of civilizations with farmers, engineers, and medics
“The more elaborate and expensive a nest is in energy and time, the greater the fierceness of the ants that protect it.”
Part 4: The forces of social evolution
Chapter 14: The scientific dilemma of rarity
Chapter 15: Insect altruism and eusociality explained
Chapter 16: Insects take the giant leap
One explanation as to the rarity of eusociality is that it requires specific pre-adaptations, notably the construction of a nest in which offspring are reared. Then, there comes a point where cooperation with another member of the species, e.g., one bee produces larvae while the other defends the nest. This would require an allele change (based on external environmental cues) in the bees that suppress certain behaviours, i.e., foraging for food or producing offspring
An allele flip of this sort happened with ants as the working caste lost their wings. The idea is that this gene switch would cause offspring that would otherwise disperse to instead stay and contribute to the nest. This would occur when cooperation of the group favours survival more than if the insect lived a solitary life
Eusociality seems to become irreversible once an anatomically distinct worker caste is developed
In a eusocial insect group, there must be a balance in cooperation. If too many queens, there are not enough workers to maintain the colony; if too many workers, food around the nest will fall short; if not enough soldiers, predators will overwhelm the nest; and if not enough foragers, the colony will starve
Chapter 17: How natural selection creates social instincts
Overarching principles crucial for understanding the genetic basis of instinct and social behaviour:
- The distinction between the unit of heredity and the target of selection. The unit is a gene/arrangement of genes that form part of the hereditary code. The target of selection is the trait/combination of traits encoded by the units of heredity and favoured/disfavoured by the environment
- Natural selection is usually multilevel: it acts on genes that prescribe targets at multiple levels of biological organization, such as cell and organism, or organism and colony. Selection occurring at one level (e.g., the cell) can work in the opposite direction from that of the adjacent level (e.g., the organism). A runaway cancer cell causes the organism of which it is a member to sicken and die. Conversely, the community of cells stays healthy when the growth of cancer cells is controlled
- In colonies composed of authentically cooperating individuals (i.e., humans), selection among genetically diverse individual members promotes selfish behaviour; while selection between groups of humans typically promotes altruism among members of the colony. Colonies of cheaters lose to colonies of cooperators. The degree of cohesiveness of a colony depends on the number of cooperators and cheaters, which depends on the relative intensities of individual selection versus group selection
- Traits (targets) that group selection acts upon emerge from interactions among members of the group (e.g., communication, division of labor, cooperation, etc.). If these interactions favour the colony over another colony who uses lesser interactions, the genes prescribing the improved group performance spreads through the population of colonies
- Individual vs. Group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness (virtue and sin) among society members. If a colony member devoted their life to service over marriage, the individual is of benefit to the society, even though they do not have personal offspring. If a colony member is a layabout our coward who saves their energy passes the resulting social cost onto others
Phenotypic plasticity describes how traits prescribed by genes (phenotypes) may sometimes be rigid (in the case of the number of fingers on the hand or colour of eyes) but may also be flexible based on environmental cues. There is a species of plant, the water crowfoot, who’s leaves will adopt a different style depending on the surrounding, brushed below water and broad above
Proximate cause: how a process or structure works
Ultimate cause: why the process or structure occurs in the first place
Chapter 18: The forces of social evolution
In this chapter E.O Wilson attempts to challenge the dogma of inclusive fitness theory, i.e., the notion that degrees of altruism are proportional to the degree of genetic relatedness when trying to explain the emergence of eusociality
While there are a few examples in which kin selection holds to explain social phenomena, group selection also offers convincing arguments as well
One example is that of an ant colony which invests more energy into virgin females than males. This was initially though to be because this particular ant species was diploidhaploid, i.e., sisters share 3/4 of their genes with one another compared to 1/2 with their mother. Female workers investing more in the virgin females compared to males seemingly confirmed inclusive fitness theory; they invested more in the females since they’re more related. However, an alternative explanation is that males are proportionally smaller and less energy intensive to produce than females, who have fatty deposits to support reproduction. If offspring were invested in based on energy equivalency, many more males would be supported than females, which would result in wasted resources (as many males would be left without a partner). As such, more investment in females is optimal for the colony in terms of resource allocation, making it a more efficient relative to colonies that do not follow this strategy (i.e., selection at the group level)
Chapter 19: The emergence of a new theory of eusociality
Part 5: What are we?
Chapter 20: What is human nature?
Human nature is the inherited regularities of mental development common to our species
Examples of this include:
- Incest avoidance: most social species are exogamous, i.e., their young go off to another tribe, humans are no different. Likewise, humans follow a simple rule of thumb known as the Westermarck effect: Have no sexual interest in those whom you knew intimately during the earliest years of your life. Note, this effect occurs regardless of the degree of relatedness between two individuals
- Colour perception: when modulating the intensity of light, we can correctly perceive the continuous nature of the intensity change. However, if we do the same with wavelength, i.e., changing colours, we bin the changes into their major colour groups (red, to orange, to yellow, to green and so on). We discretize colours, even though the wavelength spectrum is continuous, likely because it was evolutionary advantageous to do so
  - Cross culturally, the language used to describe colour follows a hierarchy (known as the Berlin-Kay progression): black and white -> red -> green/yellow -> blue -> brown -> the rest. This sequence is not random, indicating some human predisposition in describing more/less important colours
    Chapter 21: How culture evolved
Culture is the combination of traits that distinguishes one group from another
A cultural trait is a behaviour either first invented in a group or learned from another group, and then transmitted among group members
The driving force leading to the threshold of complex cultures appears to be group section. A group whose members could read intentions and cooperate among one another, and predict the actions of competing groups, had an enormous advantage over competing groups. Individual selection surely still played a role in intra-group competition, yet group selection acted on inter-group competition
Morality, conformity, religious fervour, and fighting ability were keystone to generating a united, cooperative, and effective group
Chapter 22: The origins of language
Three particular attributes enabled our species to approach the highest level of social intelligence: shared attention; high level of awareness required to act together in achieving a common goal; and the “theory of mind”, i.e., the recognition that their mental states are shared by others
Language is a set of coordination devices that serve to direct the attention of others
When the conversational gaps (the pauses between one person’s speaking and the other’s answering) of ten languages were measured, all were shown to avoid overlap, and the length of turnover gaps were found to be almost the same
In warmer climates, languages around the world have evolved to use more vowels and fewer consonants, creating more sonorous combinations of sounds; sonorous sounds carry further, in accord with the tendency of people in warm climates to spend more time outdoors and keep greater distances apart
The genetic basis of human language acquisition did not coevolve with language but predates the emergence of language. Language has evolved to fit the human brain, rather than the reverse
Chapter 23: The evolution of cultural variation
In the castes of any colonies, there exist major workers (giant soldiers that perform tasks outside of the nest) and minor workers (timid workers that perform tasks in the best such as nursing majors). Majors have a higher death rate, and are thus produced at a higher per capital rate than minors, maintaining an optimum balance in numbers between the two castes
Cultural variation is determined mostly by two properties of social behaviour: the degree of bias in the epigenetic rule (e.g., low in dress fashion or high in incest avoidance) and the sensitivity to the usage pattern (i.e., the likelihood that group members with imitate others who’ve adapted a particular trait)
Chapter 24: The origins of morality and honour
The conflict between the poorer and better angels of our nature stem from the conflicts arising between individual and group selection
Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin; group selection is responsible for much of what we call virtue
Group selection shapes instincts that tend to make individuals altruistic toward one another (but now towards members of other groups); individual selection shapes instincts in each member that are fundamentally selfish with reference to other members
Iron rule of genetic social evolution: selfish individuals best altruistic individuals, and groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals
The countries with highest quality of life (in terms of education, health, crime, collective self-interests) also have the smallest divide in wealth between the wealthiest and poorest citizens
A naturalistic understanding of morality doesn’t lead to absolute precepts and sure judgement but warns against basing them blindly on religious and ideological dogmas. When such precepts are misguided (as they often are), it usually stems from ignorance—i.e., important factors are unintentionally omitted during formulation
Examples of these ideological dogmas include:
- Opposition to artificial conception (sex without the intention of conception) with the (well-intended) reasoning being that sex is made to make babies. While this is true in most species, primates included, humans are slightly different in that women have concealed genitalia as to mask their fertility. This is to encourage sexual intercourse as a bonding mechanism without the intent to necessarily conceive a child. This strengthens the partners’ bonds, which is important since raising a human child requires long term support (due their relative helpless in early years) and thus additional investment from the father
- Homophobia: under the same guise, condemning homosexuality since sex doesn’t produce offspring is misguided. Homosexuality is heritable and occurs too frequently to be the result of mutations alone. Thus, natural selection must be acting to select for homosexuality in populations. Homosexuals occupy niches and roles that support groups more than had they been absent—hence homosexuality is natural and healthy within societies
  Chapter 25: The origins of religion
The illogic of religions is not a weakness, but their essential strength. Acceptance of their bizarre creation myths is what binds followers together
The core of traditional organized religions are their creation myths. Creation myths come about in part from folk memories of momentous events, like mass emigration, wars, and natural disasters; stories of devils and angels likely spawn from hallucinations invoked by sleep paralysis, mental illnesses (schizophrenia), or hallucinogenic drugs (mushrooms, fungi, hemp, etc., which were commonly consumed in the Middle East when Abrahamic religions were being crafted)
Around the late palaeolithic era humans started to reflect on their mortality, as suggested by ritual burial sites aged around ~95000 years ago
Thus humans would have asked where dead people go, and having still seen the dead in their dreams or hallucinations, they concluded the dead must be in some spirit realm, the same inhabited by dreams or hallucinations
Religious faith offers the psychological security that uniquely comes from belonging to a group
Chapter 26: The origins of the creative arts
“Art is the lie that helps us to see the truth” - Picasso
Part 6: Where are we going?
Chapter 28: A new enlightenment
On free will: we are free as independent beings, but our decisions are not free of all the organic processes that created our personal brains and minds
The opposition of the two levels of natural selection, individual and group level, has resulted in a chimeric genotype in each person, rendering each of us part saint and part sinner
Every person feels the pull of conscience, of heroism against cowardice, altruism against greed, truth against deception, and commitment against withdrawal. These dilemmas stem from the conflicting objectives of multilevel selection
To question the sacred myths of a religion is to question the identity and worth of its followers, which is why skeptics (including those from other tribes with equally absurd myths) are so righteously disliked
*Why We Get Sick, The new science of Darwinian medicine, Nesse & Williams
Chapter 1: The mystery of disease
Proximate explanations answer “what?” and “how?” questions about structure and mechanism; evolutionary explanations answer “why?” questions about origins and functions
Most medical research seeks the proximate explanations about how a body part works or how a disease disrupts function. The other half of biology, that tries to explain what things are for and how they got there, has been neglected in medicine
One may worry that evolutionary explanations are mere speculation, however studies are showing that evolutionary hypotheses can predict what to expect in proximate mechanisms (e.g., morning sickness evolved to protect the developing fetus from toxins during its most vulnerable state)
6 categories of evolutionary explanations of disease:
1. Defenses: while not actually an explanation of disease, this is listed because it is so often confused with other manifestations of disease. An example provided is that of a pneumonia patient who has blue-ish skin and a cough. The blue skin comes from a lack of oxygen in the hemoglobin which leads to darker blood. This is a problem that should be addressed, lack of oxygen is no bueno. The cough, however, is a defense, evolved to expel foreign material from the respiratory tract. Coughing is not a problem, and suppressing this defense puts the body at more risk
2. Infection: we evolved defenses to counter viral and bacterial threats, viruses and bacteria have evolve ways to overcome our defenses and even use them to their own benefit. This evolutionary arms race explains why eradication of all infections is futile
3. Novel environments (i.e., evolutionary mismatch)
4. Genes: some of our genes are perpetuated even though they cause disease, as some of their effects were “quirks” that were harmless in our evolutionary environment
5. Design compromises: walking upright gives us the ability to carry food, tools, and babies while walking, but predisposes us to back problems. To better understand diseases, we need to understand the hidden benefits of apparent mistakes in design
6. Evolutionary legacies: evolution is an incremental process and cannot make huge jumps. As such, some designs at this point can be sub-optimal, e.g., our food passes over our windpipe. Once a system is in place, it is costly to re-engineer the evolutionary history

Chapter 2: Evolution by natural selection

If tendencies towards anxiety, heart failure, nearsightedness, and cancer are somehow associated with reproductive success, they will be selected for and we will suffer even as we “succeed” in the purely evolutionary sense
When Henry Ford asked, while in a junkyard of Model T’s, what particular systems never fail on those cars, he was answered with “the steering column never fails”. He instructed his chief engineer to redesign it, as if it never breaks, they must be spending too much on it
- In a similar way, natural selection avoids overdesign
Some genes that cause aging are not necessarily maladaptive. They may confer benefits during the early years of life, when reproduction (and thus selection) is at its highest potential. These benefits are more important to fitness than the later costs of aging and inevitable death
When we ask these “why” questions about adaptive reasoning, we must guard against too readily believing fanciful stories. A bogus hypothesis to why our noses protrude would be that they evolved that way to hold up glasses. May seem plausible at first, but upon critical review it doesn’t hold up
Hypotheses about evolutionary origins require testing, and due to the impossibility of rewinding time and re-running evolution, testing of evolutionary hypotheses are especially challenging. This is no reason not to pursue them, the work just becomes more challenging and interesting
Chapter 3: Signs and symptoms of infectious disease
Numerous studies have found that animals consistently seek to warm their body temperature to combat disease, and when this is suppressed, by a fever-lowering drug for example, they are more likely to die
Studies have found that children with chicken pox take an average of 1 day longer to recover when fever was suppressed, similarly results were observed with colds
Fever has its costs; it depletes energy reserves 20 percent faster and causes temporary male sterility. High fevers can cause delirium and seizures
Iron deficiencies were found to be associated with infection, so physicians have in the past attempted to supplement iron. However, the body is actually trying to rid itself of iron such that it can’t be used by pathogens - supplementing iron enhances the pathogens and results in worsened infection. Care should be taken to respect the evolved wisdom of the body.
The female reproductive system normally finds fluids flowing outwards, hence protecting the system from infection. The only exception to this is during sex, when sperm flow inwards, and have the potential to carry bacteria along with them
This is a reason why mammals are thought to have menstrual cycles, and why humans have particularly profuse menstruation. Since human sexual activity is more constant, i.e., not constrained to a brief fertile window, females are presented with more opportunity of infection. Hence, the menstrual flush can help remove unwanted bacteria from the system
A functional classification of the signs and symptoms of disease is important and useful. To choose an appropriate treatment, we need to know if the symptom benefits the host or the pathogen. We need to analyze the strategies taken by the pathogen and attempt to oppose each of them, rather than just relieving symptoms and trying ineffectively to kill the pathogen
Chapter 4: An arms race without end
Bacteria have two substantial advantages over humans:
- High reproductive frequency: bacteria can evolve as much in a day as we can in a thousand years. Thus, we cannot evolve fast enough to escape from microorganisms
- High numbers: due to their small size, bacteria’s enormous numbers in our body means that improbable mutations occur more frequently
Some of the most effective antibiotics come from molds. Antibiotics are chemical warfare agents that evolved in fungi and bacteria to protect them from pathogens and other biological competitors
Early in their discovery, antibiotics were extremely effective. However, over time the bacteria that antibiotics fended off evolved to evade their defence, and since the antibiotics are removed from their natural environment and thus less capable of adapting, they saw they their effectiveness dwindle.
New antibiotics are churned out, and bacteria evolve resistance to those antibiotics, and the cycle continues
Long term exposure to antibiotics, and increasing the dosage of antibiotics when they aren’t sufficiently effective, puts a selective pressure on bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics, enhancing them and decreasing the effectiveness of the antibiotics
The use of antibiotics in farm animals can also end up harming the animals and the humans that eat them, this problem needs to be carefully measured against the economic gains that may be claimed from their use
It is critical that the pharmaceutical not promote inappropriate use of antibiotics for animals and humans, as the selective pressure that ensues enhances the bacteria that they fight. It is unlikely this advice be heeded, as moral exhortations for the good of the group are often welcomed but rarely acted upon. This would require costly government intervention and a sacrifice in profits
Within-host selection favours increased virulence (i.e., increases the diverting of resources from the host to the pathogen), while between-host selection acts to decrease it
- Pathogens compete with one another for resources within the host, but will not be able to proliferate if their host dies before transmitting them to another host
Diseases from vector borne pathogens (e.g., insects) tend to be more severe than those spread by personal contact. This is likely because between-host selection of person to person transmission would favour a less virulent pathogen that allows its host to go infect others; whereas, if for example a mosquito is the vector of transmission, the hosts health is of little interest to the pathogen as it will be transmitted by the insect anyways—the more vulnerable it makes the human, the easier it is for more mosquitos to suck their blood. In this case, it is in the viruses’ interest to have a mild effect on the mosquito, whilst feasting on the subsequently infected humans
Increased transmission can lead to increased virulence, if the pathogen doesn’t have to worry much about between-host transmission, it can afford to be greedy as it is likely to be transmitted in a shorter amount of time. AIDS was thought to be particularly virulent because of high sexual activity frequency and frequent use of drug users’ unsanitized needles. Safe sex and the use of clean needles can thus cause the evolution of lowered virulence
Chapter 5: Injury
Risk of melanoma is related more closely to number of sunburns than to total amount of time spent in the sun. People who are outdoors often adapt to their amount of usual exposure and are unlikely to get sunburnt; people who go out infrequently do not adapt and are at increased risk of sunburn
Sunglasses without UV protection reduce the total amount of visible light, leading pupils to dilate and admit more UV light that then damages the eye more than had the user not worn the glasses
Why don’t our fingers regenerate when cut off? The repair machinery would have to conform to an optimal trade-off between the advantages of rapid and reliable repair, the costs of the needed machinery, and the dangers of cancer (associated with mechanisms of cell replication)
Chapter 6: Toxins: New, old, and everywhere
Tall fescue grass is popular because it grows fast and resists pests. A symbiosis between a fungus and the grass exists, where the fungus creates toxins that are transported to the tips of the blades of grass to discourage hungry herbivores
If a fruit is eaten before the seeds are ready for dispersal, the whole investment of the plant is wasted. Ripeness of a fruit corresponds to the peak fertility of the seeds within
A diverse diet helps to minimize the damage caused by dietary toxins (the evolved defenses of plants), whereas a non diverse diet may lead to a toxin overload
Concerns over pesticides have led to attempts to breed plants that are naturally resistant to insects. This involves increasing the level of natural toxins, which tend to make humans sick as well. We are re-introducing the same natural toxins that farmers first bred out of plants generations ago. Natural toxins and artificial pesticides need be treated with the same amount of caution
In the context of alleviating morning sickness during pregnancy: “Unfortunately, making people feel better does not always improve their health or secure other long-term interests.”
Children avoidance of vegetables could also be adaptive. Strong-tasting vegetables contain more toxins, and during their development they would best stick to low-toxin vegetables. As such, certain vegetables repulse children, and this repulsion tends to fade as they age
Chapter 7: Genes and disease: defects, quirks, and compromises
Many genetic conditions that ail us now may have caused no trouble in our ancestral environment (and may have conferred some benefits), and only become a problem due to an evolutionary mismatch. For example, a craving and motivation for fatty foods might have been adaptive when foods were scarce
“We should rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.” - Dawkins
Chapter 8: Aging as the fountain of youth
Over the past few hundred years, the average length of life in modern societies has steadily increased, the maximum duration of life has not.
Senescence: the process of bodily deterioration that occurs at older ages. Increased susceptibility to disease and decreased ability to repair damage
Those with a genetic predisposition to get peptic ulcers, and die from these ulcers at old age, may benefit the individual by providing more protection throughout life from gastrointestinal infection via higher levels of stomach acid
The whole immune system is age biased, releasing damaging chemicals that protect from infection, but also lead to accumulated tissue damage
Genes with benefits in early age tend to contribute to senescence (trade off between effectiveness during fertile years at the expense of deteriorated function in infertile years)
Studies showed that beetles better able to reproduce early in life reproduced more and generate more offspring, but age and die earlier. Genes will generally select for whatever maximizes reproduction.
Any genes whose deleterious effects occur earlier than that of other genes will be selected against most strongly, thus selection acts on genes to delay deleterious effects until they are all in synchrony - hence the effect of the body’s functions decaying in seeming unison
Postulates of impotence - pessimistic assessments of what science can accomplish can have utility (investigate this further)
The preoccupation of living forever is likely to be supplanted by a desire to live as fully as possible, while it’s possible
Chapter 9: Legacies of evolutionary history
We have inherited systems that were not optimized for our bodies, they are historical legacies from our ancestors
Examples include:
- our air and food passages intersecting (making us vulnerable to choking),
- a retina in front of the interior of the eyeball instead of behind (causing optic nerves and vessels to obstruct the view),
- the appendix (used to help process low nutritional value food, rabbits still use it for example)
- Our spine was originally designed to withstand loads from back to belly, not head to bum. Same with the joints in our leg
  Chapter 10: Diseases of civilization
“What are the long-term consequences of such meager challenge to our body’s built-in temperature controls?”
- In reference to our environments being constantly temperature controlled for maximum comfort (A/C, heating)
Diseases brought about by civilization include obesity (energy excess, sedentariness), cavities (sugar excess), crooked teeth (lack of jaw development due to soft foods in diet), substance abuse/addiction (concentrations/availability of alcohol, opium, etc. would have been lower pre-agriculture, specialization led to increased potency of substances)
Rickets was a frequent malady due to vitamin D deficiencies. When humans started occupying regions with more cloud cover, forest cover, and cold areas requiring cave dwelling and clothing, they received less sun exposure. Heavily pigmented skins admit less light for vitamin D synthesis and yield more malady in sun-starved skin, thus less pigmented skins were gradually selected for
When faced with a problem of medical importance ask: What is its evolutionary significance?
- If it’s an adaptive mechanism, it generally means it was adaptive in the Stone Age. Some aren’t adaptive, but represent costs to other adaptations (e.g., senescence)
  Chapter 11: Allergy
  Chapter 12: Cancer
A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace
Multicellular organisms arose from some group of protozoa, in which each cell was a functionally independent individual. Most reproduction was asexual, with one cell dividing into two new ones.
In some modern protozoan species, the two new individuals do not break completely apart but stick together in pairs, or the offspring of pairs stick together in filaments or sheets called colonies.
In some colonies, cells may have differentiated into germ cells and somatic cells, meaning that some previously independent cells gave up reproduction to become genealogical dead ends. They would supply nutrients and protection to the few germ cells that sexually reproduce
All cells within these colonies had the same genes, so if sacrificing reproduction improved the genetic progress of the colony the cells would do so
For large colonies of cells, we may expect a mutant cell to appear that behaves in ways other than what maximally benefits the colony. Such large colonies thus need adaptations for maintaining discipline among the many component cells
In the human body, among our ten trillion cells there exists a small chance (say, 0.01%) that a cell reproduces when it shouldn’t. This leaves a billion of such faulty cells. Given the amount of defence mechanisms to detect these cells, however, they rarely get to proliferate. There exists a web of defences, though eventually a cancerous cell can fall through the cracks—especially as we age, and senescence causes cell regulatory capability deterioration
A cancer’s success can never be more than short term, because it has no way to disperse to other hosts, and its host’s death means its death too
The more menstrual cycles a woman has, the more likely she is to develop reproductive-system cancer. This could be because historically women would have a later menarche (harsher living conditions), then would be pregnant or lactating, which both inhibit menstruation. Perhaps the reduced frequency of these processes lead to reduced cellular processes in the mammary glands and gonads that protect against cancers
Oral contraceptives may reduce ovarian and uterine cancer risk, though they have their own side effects
Chapter 13: Sex and reproduction
The reason sexes exist at all, and that asexual reproduction isn’t as prevalent, is that:
- It introduces more genetic variation;
- It can prevent the accumulation of deleterious mutations; and
- It decreases vulnerability to pathogens. If a pathogen finds the key to exploiting a genetically identical colony it will be able to wipe out all of them. If they are more genetically diverse, this is more difficult to accomplish. This idea is support by the fact that asexual reproduction occurs in areas with fewer parasites
Large gametes have abundant energy stores, but are expensive to make; small gametes are inexpensive and can be produced in enormous numbers, but can’t survive for long
Trees are hermaphrodites, carrying both eggs and sperm(?) cells, can do so because reproduction can be done by vector transport by air currents or insects. This is not possible with mammals, thus there are no mammal hermaphrodites
Extra nutrients in sperm are more likely to retard its swimming, so low nutrient, fast sperm have been selected for
There exists a battle between fetus and mother, as both share only 50% of genes with each other. As such, fetuses have strategies to increase nutritional consumption from the mother, and the mother’s system has methods to counter act these exploitative tactics
- Fetuses secrete a hormone that increases and retrieves glucose from the blood, which increases the mother’s insulin production. This can produce pregnancy onset diabetes
- Fetuses also secrete substances that increase blood flow to the placenta by constricting blood vessels throughout the body and increase blood pressure. Moderate increases in maternal blood pressure are associated with lower infant mortality
Fetuses produce human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which blocks menstruation so that the fetus stays implanted. The mother’s body likely measures levels of hCG as means of detecting whether a fetus is viable or not. High hCG levels are the fetuses way of screaming “wait, don’t abort me!”
Chapter 14: Are mental disorders diseases?
Definitions of mental disorders were formed so research findings across different studies could be compared, however this emphasized sharp boundaries around symptoms instead of a continuous emotional process influenced by psychological factors, past events, and life situations
Sleep tends to be dominated by visual sense. We’re hard pressed to reimagine sounds, smells, taste, and touch from our dreams. This could be because sight is rather useless as night, so dreams can fully employ sight, whereas sound, smell, and touch may have been necessary to stay online in the background to detect threats during sleep
Chapter 15: The evolution of medicine
Genetic instructions are assembled in preparation for the future, but are caused by the past

Breath

Published: June 11, 2023

Breath, James Nestor

Chapter 1: The worst breather in the animal kingdom

Around 40% of today’s population (western?) suffers from chronic nasal obstruction, around 50% of us are habitual mouth breathers (females and children suffer from this the most (why?))
Chapter 2: Mouthbreathing
How the body generates energy via food and/or air: anaerobic and aerobic respiration. Anaerobic respiration metabolizes glucose to generate energy, and is much less (16x less) efficient than aerobic respiration, a process in which the cells in our body have fine-tuned over the past 2.5 billion years
Mouthbreathing begets more mouthbreathing; nosebreathing begets more nosebreathing. Breathing through the mouth reduces air pressure against the back of the throat, causing the airways to sink and relax at the back of the throat, leading to restricted airways. Nose breathing increases air pressure, forcing the muscles at the back of the throat to open up, leading to opened airways
Chapter 3: Nose
The interior of the nose is lined with erectile tissue. When the right nostril is breathed through it tends to be associated with a more sympathetic response: increased heart rate and cortisol and feeds more blood (?) to the left frontal cortex which is associated with impulse response and logical decision making. The left nostril is associated with a more parasympathetic response, calming the body down and feeding blood to brain regions more associated with creativity and mental abstractions
Nasal breathing induces a release of nitric oxide by the sinuses, a molecule that plays an essential role in increasing circulation and oxygen delivery to cells. We can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen through nose breathing than by mouthbreathing
Chapter 4: Exhale
Chapter 5: Slow
Breathing slowly improves oxygen usage, allowing carbon dioxide to settle a bit longer which eases transport of oxygen within hemoglobin to needy tissues
Many meditative/prayer practices, e.g., Buddhist/Hindu chants and the Christian rosary, involve chants or rhythmic breathing of a rate of ~5.5 breaths per minute. These practices may have evolved as they synchronized with cardiovascular rhythms, and gave a feeling of well-being and alertness while practicing
Chapter 6: Less
Slower breathing holds in slightly more carbon dioxide, which lowers the pH in blood to make it more acidic. The sweet spot pH in blood is about 7.4, and the body attempts to maintain that pH
One way the body does this aside from breathing is through buffering, in which the kidneys release bicarbonate from blood into urine, lowering the pH in response to high pH levels (brought about by low carbon dioxide from too-rapid breathing)
- When bicarbonate leaves the body, it takes magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium with it. This is why asthmatics and others are prescribed these supplements to stave off future attacks
- Bones get weakened as well, as mineral stores within the bones are dissolved to compensate for the lost minerals
  Chapter 7: Chew
Chewing helps maintain a strong jaw and keeps the jaw and teeth structurally sound. The historical records find that around the time softer foods were developed, a corresponding significant decrease in teeth quality (straightness) came along with it.
I like to think of this like trying to plant a fence post in eroded and granular soil: your fence post is going to wiggle around. Whereas, with a strong, dense soil, the fence post stays straight and upright.
Chapter 8: More, on occasion
The parasympathetic system is part of the autonomic nervous system that stimulates relaxation and restoration. It eases digestion, relaxes bowels for waste elimination, and stimulates genitals before sex (“feed and breed” system). Many nerves in the lungs that connect to the parasympathetic system are located deep down in the lungs, so deeper, relaxed breaths tend to engage a parasympathetic response
The sympathetic system stimulates the fight or flight response. Nerves for this system tend to be located in the upper lungs. Short, rapid breaths engage the sympathetic system, routing blood from less-vital organs (like stomach and bladder) to more important organs (like muscles and brain)
Tummo breathing is a technique used by Buddhist monks in the Himalayas to stay warm with limited insulation. This heavy breathing practice coupled with cold exposure releases adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol on demand. Immune function is enhanced by adrenaline, inflammatory immune response in downgraded by cortisol, and norepinephrine redirects blood from the skin, stomach, and reproductive organs to muscles, the brain, and other vital organs
Tummo breathing and cold exposure expands the bounds on what the body is used to, and what it can handle, such that it can adapt and become flexible with respect to unseen stressful physiological responses
Tummo breathing procedure:
1. Lay flat on your back with a pillow beneath your head
2. Take a very deep breath into the pit of the stomach, through the nose if possible. Inhaling should first inflate the stomach, then the chest. Exhale out just as quickly as the inhale. Repeat 30 times
3. Exhale to leave about a quarter of the air in the lungs and hold that air for as long as possible
4. Take a huge inhale and hold it for another 15 seconds. Move the fresh air around the chest and shoulders.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for three or four rounds
  Chapter 9: Hold it
We have a cluster of neurons at the base of the brain stem called central chemoreceptors, that measure CO2 levels in the bloodstream (?) to regulate how fast and deeply we should be breathing. Low CO2 -> breathe slower, high CO2 -> breathe faster
These chemoreceptors have the ability to trigger a panic/fear response outside the amygdalae, which is generally responsible for translating external stimuli into aversive behaviour. The roots of the chemoreceptors are more ancient than that of the amygdalae, used by the first aerobic life forms around 2.5B years ago
Chapter 10: Fast, slow, and not at all
Epilogue: A last gasp
“…our body is much more nearly perfect than the endless list of ailments suggest. Its shortcomings are due less to its inborn imperfections than to our abusing it.” - Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi
Nine out of ten of the top human killers, i.e., diabetes, heart disease, stroke, are cause by the food we eat, water we drink, the houses and offices we work in. Humanity/civilizations created these diseases

The Social Conquest of Earth

Published: June 11, 2023

Chapter 1: The human condition

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival. Tribal conflict was a principal driving force that shaped biological human nature. By itself, mythmaking could never discover the origin and meaning of humanity (as it attempts to do); however, the discovery of the origin and meaning of humanity may explain the origin and meaning of myths, the core of organized religion
Part 2: Where do we come from?
Chapter 2: The two paths to conquest
Human groups are formed of highly flexible alliance, in which strategies for navigating these groups were written as a complicated mix of altruism, cooperation, competition, domination, reciprocity, defection, and deceit
This array of strategies required higher degrees of intelligence and intense socialization. The brain had to measure emotions of friend and enemy, plan strategies for social interaction, build mental scenarios of short and long-term relationships, and retrieve memories far into the past and long into the future to imagine the consequences of every relationship
Chapter 3: The approach
Chapter 4: The arrival
One critical point in our evolutionary past was when our ancestors developed an omnivore diet. Hunting game requires a high amount of teamwork and cohesion, and it’s worth it: meat is pound for pound more energetically efficient than vegetable food
Another critical point was the ability to control fire, which then led to camps (i.e., nests) which served as the nucleus for social groups. Now in close proximity to one another on a regular basis, intellectual development that enhanced one’s cohesion with the group (e.g., social intelligence, empathy, deceitfulness, etc.) was selected for, propelling our intellectual development further
- I also remember reading that cooked food also requires less energy to consume (chewing), which may have allowed resources to be directed away from the jaw to the brain region. It seems like these factors (this one and the previous point) arose in tandem, with cooked food enabling more brain capacity and social complexities driving the cerebral growth
  Chapter 5: Threading the evolutionary maze
The following preadaptations enabled human eusociality:
Living on land: without land dwelling there exists no possibility for the use of fire—a critical prerequisite to social flourishing in mammals * Being large: to house a brain with enough processing power to compute the complexities of social organization requires a large enough animal to house that brain. While ants are hypersocial and design intricate architecture with custom air conditioning, they are purely instinctual. And again, insects are too small to control fire * Grasping hands tipped with spatulate finger tips * Having those grasping hands free from walking, i.e., being bipedal * A shift from vegetarianism to an omnivore diet. Meat yields more energy per gram than vegetation. The social cooperation required to hunt meat also led to select for groups who could cooperate effectively * The controlled use of fire followed, facilitating the consumption of meats; mastication and digestion of cooked meats requires less energy * Persistent fire provided a refuge for early Homo species. As such, nests were formed—a precursor to the attainment of eusociality of all other known animals * With fireside campsites came division of labor, where subgroups formed and bands organized into dominance hierarchies
Chapter 6: Creative forces
The outcome of between-group competition for humans was determined largely by the size and tightness of the group, and the quality of their communication and division of labor
The genetic fitness of a human being is the consequence of both individual and group selection. These two forces tend to pull in opposite directions—I could deceive and cheat in pursuit of self-interest at the expense of the group, or I could be heroic and altruistic for the benefit of the group, but at the expense of my resources
- If the benefit from group membership falls below that which would be had from a solitary life, evolution would favour cheating or departure from the group. If personal benefit from group membership rises high enough, the members will be prone to altruism and conformity
Group composition is unstable because of advantageous group size increases from immigration, ideological proselytization, and conquest, pitted against the advantages by usurpation within the group and fission to create new groups
Much of culture (i.e., the content of the creative arts) has risen from the inevitable clash between individual and group selection
Chapter 7: Tribalism is a fundamental human trait
People must have a tribe. It gives them their own and social meaning in a chaotic world, making the environment seem less disorienting and dangerous. Each human has a system of interlocking tribes, savouring the company of like-minded friends, and yearning to be in one of the best tribes
Groups, regardless of how they are formed, have always been observed to rank out-group below in-group—even in experiments when they were told the in-groups and out-groups were chosen arbitrarily
The tendency to form groups and favour the in-group members has the earmarks of instinct. Children can have an inborn propensity to learn some things swiftly and decisively, known as prepared learning. Evidence suggests that in-group preference is prepared early in development, with infants being most sensitive to the sounds of their native language, regardless of whether the meaning of the speech is fully comprehended. Later, these infants look preferentially at person who spoke their native language within their hearing
The elementary drive to form and take deep pleasure from in-group membership translates at a higher level into tribalism. We are prone to ethnocentrism, preferring the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion (or anything that can be symbolically represented—as long as I can tell who belongs to my group and who doesn’t)
Different parts of the brain have evolved by group selection to create groupishness. Studies have observed that the amygdala (fear & anger) fires when subjects are presented an image of someone of a different race
Chapter 8: War as humanity’s hereditary curse
Once a group has been split off and sufficiently dehumanized, justifications can be made for horrible acts towards that group, no matter how gruesome
As a biological reproducing species, our population approaches limits set by available food and water. We are still fundamentally the same as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, just with more food and larger territories. Yet, we blindly obey the instincts that we’ve inherited from our Palaeolithic predecessors, which in our case lead to an overindulgence of energy and material resources
Chapter 9: Breakout
A loose rule of island biogeography is that animals smaller than 20kg tend to evolve into relative giants (e.g., the immense tortoises of the Galapagos), and animals larger than 20kg tend to evolve towards dwarfism (e.g., the dwarf deer of the Florida Keys)
- A cousin of Homo Sapiens, branching from Homo Erectus, are the Homo floresiensis of the island Flores, who were less than 1 meter tall and with brains of comparable size to australopithecines. This evolutionary product supports the above stated loose rules
“We should learn to promote human biological diversity for its own sake instead of using it to justify prejudice and conflict.”
Chapter 10: The creative explosion
Bands and communities of bands with better combinations of cultural innovations became more productive and better equipped for competition and war. Rivals either copied them or else were conquered. Thus, group selection drove the evolution of culture
Chapter 11: The sprint to civilization
The chiefs of chiefdoms typically micromanaged the affairs of their domain, delegating as little authority as possible to reduce the chance of insurrection. Common tactics include the suppression of underlings and fermenting a fear of rival chiefdoms
Part 3: How social insects conquered the invertebrate world
Chapter 12: The invention of eusociality
Chapter 13: Inventions that advanced the social insects
A significant change that allowed for the flourishing of ants, and other social insects in general, was the shift in arboreal flora from mostly conifers to leafy and flowered trees. Flowered trees are more diverse and thus leave a more diverse landscape in the soil below (as the portions of the trees eventually fall to the forest floor). They also coevolved with insects, encouraging pollination, and rewarding with sugar
This change in the tree landscape also led to a symbiosis between ants and sap sucking insects (i.e., aphids). These aphids would suck sap from trees and excrete their waste below. Ants eventually learned to consume this sugary waste, and in return the aphids wouldn’t get stuck in a pile of their sticky waste
Now, some species of ants have intricate nests with pastures laid out for their fleet of sapsuckers, much like how humans do for domesticated animals such as cows, sheep, and so on.
Some species of ants in more earthen regions (i.e., not so foresty) have granaries to store seeds of nearby plants
Social complexity seems to involve at some point a species developing an ability to sustain larger energy reserves. Ants develop intricate, complex nests with a caste of workers with specialized skills, as do humans in the forms of civilizations with farmers, engineers, and medics
“The more elaborate and expensive a nest is in energy and time, the greater the fierceness of the ants that protect it.”
Part 4: The forces of social evolution
Chapter 14: The scientific dilemma of rarity
Chapter 15: Insect altruism and eusociality explained
Chapter 16: Insects take the giant leap
One explanation as to the rarity of eusociality is that it requires specific pre-adaptations, notably the construction of a nest in which offspring are reared. Then, there comes a point where cooperation with another member of the species, e.g., one bee produces larvae while the other defends the nest. This would require an allele change (based on external environmental cues) in the bees that suppress certain behaviours, i.e., foraging for food or producing offspring
An allele flip of this sort happened with ants as the working caste lost their wings. The idea is that this gene switch would cause offspring that would otherwise disperse to instead stay and contribute to the nest. This would occur when cooperation of the group favours survival more than if the insect lived a solitary life
Eusociality seems to become irreversible once an anatomically distinct worker caste is developed
In a eusocial insect group, there must be a balance in cooperation. If too many queens, there are not enough workers to maintain the colony; if too many workers, food around the nest will fall short; if not enough soldiers, predators will overwhelm the nest; and if not enough foragers, the colony will starve
Chapter 17: How natural selection creates social instincts
Overarching principles crucial for understanding the genetic basis of instinct and social behaviour:
- The distinction between the unit of heredity and the target of selection. The unit is a gene/arrangement of genes that form part of the hereditary code. The target of selection is the trait/combination of traits encoded by the units of heredity and favoured/disfavoured by the environment
- Natural selection is usually multilevel: it acts on genes that prescribe targets at multiple levels of biological organization, such as cell and organism, or organism and colony. Selection occurring at one level (e.g., the cell) can work in the opposite direction from that of the adjacent level (e.g., the organism). A runaway cancer cell causes the organism of which it is a member to sicken and die. Conversely, the community of cells stays healthy when the growth of cancer cells is controlled
- In colonies composed of authentically cooperating individuals (i.e., humans), selection among genetically diverse individual members promotes selfish behaviour; while selection between groups of humans typically promotes altruism among members of the colony. Colonies of cheaters lose to colonies of cooperators. The degree of cohesiveness of a colony depends on the number of cooperators and cheaters, which depends on the relative intensities of individual selection versus group selection
- Traits (targets) that group selection acts upon emerge from interactions among members of the group (e.g., communication, division of labor, cooperation, etc.). If these interactions favour the colony over another colony who uses lesser interactions, the genes prescribing the improved group performance spreads through the population of colonies
- Individual vs. Group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness (virtue and sin) among society members. If a colony member devoted their life to service over marriage, the individual is of benefit to the society, even though they do not have personal offspring. If a colony member is a layabout our coward who saves their energy passes the resulting social cost onto others
Phenotypic plasticity describes how traits prescribed by genes (phenotypes) may sometimes be rigid (in the case of the number of fingers on the hand or colour of eyes) but may also be flexible based on environmental cues. There is a species of plant, the water crowfoot, who’s leaves will adopt a different style depending on the surrounding, brushed below water and broad above
Proximate cause: how a process or structure works
Ultimate cause: why the process or structure occurs in the first place
Chapter 18: The forces of social evolution
In this chapter E.O Wilson attempts to challenge the dogma of inclusive fitness theory, i.e., the notion that degrees of altruism are proportional to the degree of genetic relatedness when trying to explain the emergence of eusociality
While there are a few examples in which kin selection holds to explain social phenomena, group selection also offers convincing arguments as well
One example is that of an ant colony which invests more energy into virgin females than males. This was initially though to be because this particular ant species was diploidhaploid, i.e., sisters share 3/4 of their genes with one another compared to 1/2 with their mother. Female workers investing more in the virgin females compared to males seemingly confirmed inclusive fitness theory; they invested more in the females since they’re more related. However, an alternative explanation is that males are proportionally smaller and less energy intensive to produce than females, who have fatty deposits to support reproduction. If offspring were invested in based on energy equivalency, many more males would be supported than females, which would result in wasted resources (as many males would be left without a partner). As such, more investment in females is optimal for the colony in terms of resource allocation, making it a more efficient relative to colonies that do not follow this strategy (i.e., selection at the group level)
Chapter 19: The emergence of a new theory of eusociality
Part 5: What are we?
Chapter 20: What is human nature?
Human nature is the inherited regularities of mental development common to our species
Examples of this include:
- Incest avoidance: most social species are exogamous, i.e., their young go off to another tribe, humans are no different. Likewise, humans follow a simple rule of thumb known as the Westermarck effect: Have no sexual interest in those whom you knew intimately during the earliest years of your life. Note, this effect occurs regardless of the degree of relatedness between two individuals
- Colour perception: when modulating the intensity of light, we can correctly perceive the continuous nature of the intensity change. However, if we do the same with wavelength, i.e., changing colours, we bin the changes into their major colour groups (red, to orange, to yellow, to green and so on). We discretize colours, even though the wavelength spectrum is continuous, likely because it was evolutionary advantageous to do so
  - Cross culturally, the language used to describe colour follows a hierarchy (known as the Berlin-Kay progression): black and white -> red -> green/yellow -> blue -> brown -> the rest. This sequence is not random, indicating some human predisposition in describing more/less important colours
    Chapter 21: How culture evolved
Culture is the combination of traits that distinguishes one group from another
A cultural trait is a behaviour either first invented in a group or learned from another group, and then transmitted among group members
The driving force leading to the threshold of complex cultures appears to be group section. A group whose members could read intentions and cooperate among one another, and predict the actions of competing groups, had an enormous advantage over competing groups. Individual selection surely still played a role in intra-group competition, yet group selection acted on inter-group competition
Morality, conformity, religious fervour, and fighting ability were keystone to generating a united, cooperative, and effective group
Chapter 22: The origins of language
Three particular attributes enabled our species to approach the highest level of social intelligence: shared attention; high level of awareness required to act together in achieving a common goal; and the “theory of mind”, i.e., the recognition that their mental states are shared by others
Language is a set of coordination devices that serve to direct the attention of others
When the conversational gaps (the pauses between one person’s speaking and the other’s answering) of ten languages were measured, all were shown to avoid overlap, and the length of turnover gaps were found to be almost the same
In warmer climates, languages around the world have evolved to use more vowels and fewer consonants, creating more sonorous combinations of sounds; sonorous sounds carry further, in accord with the tendency of people in warm climates to spend more time outdoors and keep greater distances apart
The genetic basis of human language acquisition did not coevolve with language but predates the emergence of language. Language has evolved to fit the human brain, rather than the reverse
Chapter 23: The evolution of cultural variation
In the castes of any colonies, there exist major workers (giant soldiers that perform tasks outside of the nest) and minor workers (timid workers that perform tasks in the best such as nursing majors). Majors have a higher death rate, and are thus produced at a higher per capital rate than minors, maintaining an optimum balance in numbers between the two castes
Cultural variation is determined mostly by two properties of social behaviour: the degree of bias in the epigenetic rule (e.g., low in dress fashion or high in incest avoidance) and the sensitivity to the usage pattern (i.e., the likelihood that group members with imitate others who’ve adapted a particular trait)
Chapter 24: The origins of morality and honour
The conflict between the poorer and better angels of our nature stem from the conflicts arising between individual and group selection
Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin; group selection is responsible for much of what we call virtue
Group selection shapes instincts that tend to make individuals altruistic toward one another (but now towards members of other groups); individual selection shapes instincts in each member that are fundamentally selfish with reference to other members
Iron rule of genetic social evolution: selfish individuals best altruistic individuals, and groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals
The countries with highest quality of life (in terms of education, health, crime, collective self-interests) also have the smallest divide in wealth between the wealthiest and poorest citizens
A naturalistic understanding of morality doesn’t lead to absolute precepts and sure judgement but warns against basing them blindly on religious and ideological dogmas. When such precepts are misguided (as they often are), it usually stems from ignorance—i.e., important factors are unintentionally omitted during formulation
Examples of these ideological dogmas include:
- Opposition to artificial conception (sex without the intention of conception) with the (well-intended) reasoning being that sex is made to make babies. While this is true in most species, primates included, humans are slightly different in that women have concealed genitalia as to mask their fertility. This is to encourage sexual intercourse as a bonding mechanism without the intent to necessarily conceive a child. This strengthens the partners’ bonds, which is important since raising a human child requires long term support (due their relative helpless in early years) and thus additional investment from the father
- Homophobia: under the same guise, condemning homosexuality since sex doesn’t produce offspring is misguided. Homosexuality is heritable and occurs too frequently to be the result of mutations alone. Thus, natural selection must be acting to select for homosexuality in populations. Homosexuals occupy niches and roles that support groups more than had they been absent—hence homosexuality is natural and healthy within societies
  Chapter 25: The origins of religion
The illogic of religions is not a weakness, but their essential strength. Acceptance of their bizarre creation myths is what binds followers together
The core of traditional organized religions are their creation myths. Creation myths come about in part from folk memories of momentous events, like mass emigration, wars, and natural disasters; stories of devils and angels likely spawn from hallucinations invoked by sleep paralysis, mental illnesses (schizophrenia), or hallucinogenic drugs (mushrooms, fungi, hemp, etc., which were commonly consumed in the Middle East when Abrahamic religions were being crafted)
Around the late palaeolithic era humans started to reflect on their mortality, as suggested by ritual burial sites aged around ~95000 years ago
Thus humans would have asked where dead people go, and having still seen the dead in their dreams or hallucinations, they concluded the dead must be in some spirit realm, the same inhabited by dreams or hallucinations
Religious faith offers the psychological security that uniquely comes from belonging to a group
Chapter 26: The origins of the creative arts
“Art is the lie that helps us to see the truth” - Picasso
Part 6: Where are we going?
Chapter 28: A new enlightenment
On free will: we are free as independent beings, but our decisions are not free of all the organic processes that created our personal brains and minds
The opposition of the two levels of natural selection, individual and group level, has resulted in a chimeric genotype in each person, rendering each of us part saint and part sinner
Every person feels the pull of conscience, of heroism against cowardice, altruism against greed, truth against deception, and commitment against withdrawal. These dilemmas stem from the conflicting objectives of multilevel selection
To question the sacred myths of a religion is to question the identity and worth of its followers, which is why skeptics (including those from other tribes with equally absurd myths) are so righteously disliked

Consilience

Published: June 11, 2023

Consilience, E.O Wilson

Consilience: a “jumping together” of knowledge by linking facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation
Chapter 3: The Enlightenment
Francis Bacon (1561), a founder of the Enlightenment, believed that we must understand nature, both around us and within ourselves, in order to set humanity on the course of self-improvement
Bacon emphasized to beware of the idols of the mind:
- Idol of the tribe is assuming that more order exists in chaotic nature (i.e., being allured to simple answers that seemingly describe complex issues)
- The imprisoning cave is getting caught in the idiosyncrasies of individual belief and passion
- The marketplace is where the power of mere words are used to induce belief in nonexistent things
- The theatre is an unquestioning acceptance of philosophical beliefs and misleading demonstrations
- Bacon urged to observe the world around you as it truly is and reflect on the best means of transmitting reality as you have experienced it—approaching and transmitting truth is Nature’s calling
Chinese scholarship focused on holistic properties and on the harmonious, hierarchical relationships of entities, from stars down to mountains to flowers and to sand. The entities of Nature, in this view, are inseparable and perpetually changing, not discrete and constant as perceived by Enlightenment thinkers (who adopted a more reductionist approach)
Our species and its way of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution
The “Anthropic principle”: the laws of nature, in our universe at the least, had to be set a certain way so as to allow the creation of beings able to ask about the laws of nature
“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” - Einstein
To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
- Questions that can’t be answered are generally better than answers that can’t be questioned
Wilson suggests that there are two kinds of original thinkers: those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder. The tension between the two is what drives learning forward. (Ying and Yang)
Chapter 4: The Natural Sciences
Reductionism is the search strategy employed to find points of entry into otherwise impenetrably complex systems
“The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.”
Optimum intelligence for normal sciences: bright enough to see what needs to be done, but not so bright as to suffer boredom doing it
Natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than or equal to what is needed to survive
- The goal of a scientist should be to diagnose and correct the misalignment between human subjective experience and free-standing reality
  Chapter 5: Ariadne’s Thread
The activation-synthesis hypothesis suggests that dreaming may be a side effect of the reorganization and editing of the brain’s memory banks
- During sleep, with most sensory input lacking, the conscious brain is still activated internally by impulses originating from the brain stem. Lacking instantaneous sensory information, yet attempting to perform its usual function (?), the brain does its best to create images that move through coherent narratives—creating fantasy
  Chapter 6: The Mind
The thalamus, comprising of two egg-shaped masses of nerve cells near the centre of the brain, functions as a relay center through which all sensory information (other than smell) is transmitted to the cerebral cortex (i.e., the conscious mind). Even dreams are triggered by impulses passing through the thalamus
Neurotransmitter: a chemical that either excites an electric discharge in a receiving nerve cell or prevents one from occurring (acts within the synapse, the points of connection and microscopic space between nerve cells, at the ends of their axons)
Aggregates of neuron circuits gather in flat assemblages (layers) and rounded assemblages (nuclei), mostly placed at or near the surface of the brain. This is why the gray matter of the brain is gray, with the white colour coming from the myelin sheaths that insulate axons. These aggregates include sensory relay stations, memory modules, and emotional control centres.
Three primitive divisions of the brain are found throughout vertebrates, from fishes to mammals: hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain
- Hindbrain regulates breathing, heartbeat, and coordination of body movements
- Midbrain controls sleep and arousal, also parts regulating auditory reflexes and perception
- A major part of the forebrain is composed of the limbic system, comprised of the amygdala (emotion), hippocampus (memory, especially short-term), hypothalamus (memory, temperature control, sex drive, hunger, and thirst) and thalamus (awareness of all senses other than smell, be it temperature or pain)
- Forebrain also includes the cerebral cortex, covering the rest of the brain. The primary seat of consciousness, storing and collating information from the senses. It directs voluntary motor activity, speech, and motivation
The self is the main character in the winning dramas taken from the litany scenarios generated by the subconscious mind. The hidden preparation of these scenarios gives the illusion of free will. We make decisions for reasons we often sense only vaguely, and seldom understand fully
Can AI generate a human mind equivalent? Seems unlikely, as the mind’s emotions are driven by the senses (touch, sight, smell, taste, sound) and a computational neural network is unlikely to have access to these senses, especially at the resolution of a biological system that has fine-tuned its sensory organs over hundreds of millions of years. The AI may be able to mimic what a human mind is capable of, but without human senses and thus human emotion, it doesn’t seem like it would be conscious in the human sense; though, it could gain consciousness in the computational sense
Chapter 7: From genes to culture
Culture is created by the communal mind, and each mind is the product of the genetically structured human brain; genes and culture are thus inseverably linked
As a part of gene-culture coevolution, culture is collectively reconstructed each generation in the minds of its individuals. Writing and art allows culture to grow indefinitely large and even skip generation, as opposed to solely oral tradition. However, the fundamental biasing influences of epigenetic rules, being genetic and ineradicable, stay constant
Some individuals inherit epigenetic rules that enable survival and reproduction between in their environment and culture than individuals who lack those rules. As such, the human species has evolved genetically by natural selection in behaviour, just as it has anatomically and neurologically
Some cultural norms also survive and reproduce better than competing norms, causing culture to evolve on a track parallel to (and much faster than) genetic evolution. Culture allows rapid adjustments to changes in the environment through cultural adaptations without correspondingly precise genetic prescriptions. This is one reason why humans differ fundamentally from all other animal species
On epigenetic rules, i.e., innate genetic predispositions: o By four months old, infants prefer harmonious tones, and sometimes react to out-of-tune notes with a disgusted facial expression (the same as elicited by a drop of lemon juice on the tongue) o The startle response from a loud noise closes the eyes, opens the mouth, drops the head, sags the arms and shoulders, and buckles the knees, preparing the body as though to absorb a coming blow o Newborns prefer sugar solutions over plain water in the following order: sucrose, fructose, lactose, glucose o Within ten minutes after birth, infants fixate more on normally drawn facial designs than on abnormal designs o Two days after birth, infants prefer to gaze at their mother rather than unknown, other women o Smiling, used primarily to signal friendliness and approval and indicate a general sense of pleasure, appears cross culturally; environment has little influence in the maturation of smiling
Reification, i.e., the aggregation of ideas and complex phenomena into simpler concepts, is a quick and easy mental algorithm that creates order in a world otherwise overwhelming in flux and detail
The dyadic instinct, a manifestation of reification, is the proneness to divide classifications into two parts: in-group vs out-group, child vs adult, kin vs non-kin, married vs single, sacred vs profane, good vs evil. The boundaries of each division are fortified with taboo and ritual (initiation ceremonies, weddings, blessings, rites of passage)
Chapter 8: The fitness of human nature
The significant acceleration of cultural evolution in historical times may seem to imply that humanity has transcended its genetic instructions or found a way to suppress them. That is an illusion. The ancient genes and the epigenetic rules of behaviour they ordain remain comfortably in place
Through homo habilis, homo erectus, homo ergaster, and homo sapiens, cultural evolution was slow enough to remain tightly coupled to genetic evolution, until around 40000 to 10000 years ago, where Neolithic agricultural advances upped the tempo of cultural evolution
There is no evidence that our paleolithic genes simply disappeared during the “creative revolution” ensued by agricultural development. They remained in place and continued to prescribe the foundational rules of human nature
Chapter 9: The social sciences
The social sciences—anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science—strive to provide the power to predict what will happen if society selects one course of action over another
The social sciences lack consilience because they aren’t built upon, and don’t share, a solid foundation like the natural sciences do (e.g., medical sciences can build off molecular and cell biology)
As such, the social sciences are built into independent cadres with limited common ground, stressing the precision in words within their specialty yet seldom speaking the same technical language in another speciality. They mistake the overall atmosphere of chaos for creative ferment
The paradox of the social sciences is that it seems easier because we can talk with other humans but not with photons and atoms, yet this familiarity bestows a comfort that in turn breeds carelessness and error. People believe they know how they themselves think, and how others think, and how institutions evolve; they are wrong.
James S. Coleman, a distinguished sociologist from the University of Chicago, stated that the study of societies require “that the explanatory focus be on the system as a unit, not in the individuals or other components that make it up.” (i.e., holism)
- Imagine if the same were done in biology, “the essential requirement is that the explanatory focus be on the organism as a unit, not in the cell or molecules that make it up.” Biology would have remained stagnant around 1850 with that perspective. Biology is instead a science that traces causation across many levels of organization, from ecosystem to atom
Epigenetic rules are innate rules of thumb that direct the individual towards quick and accurate responses most likely to ensure survival and reproduction. Sometimes, especially in complex societies, they no long contribute to health and well-being; the behaviour they direct can militate against the best interests of the individual and its society
The practical role of evolutionary theory is to point to the most likely location of epigenetic rules within a culture
Chapter 10: the arts and their interpretation
Works of art communicate feeling directly from mind to mind, with no intent to explain why the impact occurs. In this sense, the arts are the antithesis of science
A potential formula for the driving pulse of the arts: imitate (generally something in nature), make it geometrical, intensify
The dominating influence that spawned the arts was the need to impose order on the confusion caused by intelligence
In a study on physical attractiveness of female faces, the features though most attractive were relatively high cheek bones, a thin jaw, large eyes relative to the size of the face, and a slightly shorter than longer distance between mouth and chin and between nose and chin
Though, these qualities are rare in the general population. Why, then, hasn’t natural selection directed facial features to this optimum? It’s possible that attraction to these features is an attraction to a super-normal stimulus—-much like how male butterflies can be tricked into trying to mate with a mechanical butterfly who’s wings are larger and flap faster, while ignoring the real female butterflies that surround it. Perhaps we follow a similar epigenetic rule as do other animals, i.e., “take the largest, or brightest, or most conspicuously moving individual you can find.”
- The author suggests that women with large eyes and delicate features may have less robust health (?), especially during childbearing; but they present physical cues of youth, virginity, and the prospect of a long reproductive period. This is why the beauty industry thrives: they manufacture super-normal stimuli by imitating the natural physiological signs of youth and fecundity
  Chapter 11: Ethics and religion
The dangerous Christian devotion of ”I was not born to be of this world” can encourage the notion that with a second life waiting, suffering can be endured—especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised
Ethical and religious beliefs are created from the bottom up, from people to their culture. They do not come from the top down, from God or other no material source to the people by way of culture
Tribes cooperate with one another through carefully defined treaties and other conventions, quick to imagine themselves as victims of conspiracies by competing groups, and prone to dehumanizing and murdering their rivals during periods of severe conflict. They cement group loyalty by means of sacred symbols and ceremonies. Their mythologies are filled with epic victories over menacing enemies
There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose, as such our brains were shaped by evolution to be groupish and primed for religious adoption
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods; it did not evolve to believe in biology. Religiosity conveyed genetic advantages throughout prehistory, and biology is a modern product and thus not reflected in our genetic algorithms. The two are not factually compatible, therefore those who hunt for both intellectual and religious truth will struggle to acquire both in full measure
Wilson believes that the competition between science and religion will lead towards the secularization of the human epic and religion itself. Science will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition, and in time uncover the foundation of moral and religious sentiments
Chapter 12: To what end?
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely
The Ratchet of Progress: the more knowledge people acquire, the more they can increase their numbers and alter the environment, whereupon the more they need new knowledge just to stay alive. In a human-dominated world, the natural environment steadily shrinks, offering less and less per capita energy and resources
A principal principle of organic evolution is that of habitat selection, that all species prefer and gravitate to the environment in which their genes were assembled. This is likely why so many people gravitate towards nature and the outdoors
The colonisation of space will be impossible without massive supply lines. The Biosphere experiment in the early 1990s, costing $200M, attempted to create a synthetic environment isolated from the real world (except for electricity and communication). Only 8 individuals participated in the experiment. The concentration of oxygen depleted five months into the experiment, and oxygen from the outside had to be pumped in to continue the experiment. Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide increases to dangerous levels. 19/25 vertebrates and all animal pollinators vanished, and cockroaches and ants multiplied explosively. The conclusion of the experiment was that “No one yet knows how to engineer systems that can sustain human life like the natural ecosystems that produce it for free.”
The wall toward humanity is evidently rushing toward a shortage of not only minerals and energy, but of food and water. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. The idea that “Life is good and getting better, we’re still expanding and spending faster…don’t worry, we’re a smart bunch, something will turn up; it always has.”
- It’s helpful to imagine the lily pad arithmetic riddle in this situation. A lily pad doubles itself each day after being placed in the pond. On the thirtieth day, the lily pads cover the pond entirely, unable to grow more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.
Humanity will attempt to invoke every techno local fix for an over-populated planet that genius can devise. They will be driven by venture capital and government subsidy in the free market economy, and reduce the risk of short term economic calamity. Though, these man-made procedures will enlarge the carrying capacity of the planet, and as human beings are typical organisms, their reproductive response will be to expand to fill the added capacity, and the spiral will continue
The more biodiverse an ecosystem, the higher it’s productivity and the greater it’s resilience to environmental stress. Since we depend on functioning ecosystems to cleanse our water, enrich our soil, and generate the air we breathe, biodiversity is something we shouldn’t discard carelessly

Starry Messenger

Published: June 11, 2023

Starry Messenger, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cloud 9 originates from when cloud taxonomy was documented by a Scottish meteorologist in 1896. The greatest cloud of them all, the cumulonimbus, landed at the highest spot—-number 9. The most divine cloud of them all, the term cloud nine appropriately refers to a state of divine bliss
Science denial happens on both sides of the spectrum: on the right, climate change and Darwinian evolution (for Christian fundamentalists); on the left, crystal healing, magnetic therapy, homeopathy, astrology, anti-GMO

The Analects of Confucius

Published: August 01, 2023

Confucius was likely a private person who trained the sons of gentlemen in the virtues appropriate to a member of the ruling class. Though, it is clear that he longed for a more public position to disseminate his teachings
Chün-tzu, or gentleman, are recognized by freeness from violence or brusqueness, open and sincere expression, and speech free from vulgarity (careful and considerate speech)
Those who behave as a chün-tzu should find themselves welcomed everywhere. The alliances of ‘small people’ are directed against others, hostile and destructive in intent; but those of the gentlemen exist only for mutual satisfaction
Chün-tzu have no politics, but side with the Right wherever they find it
Softness, the unwillingness to inflict pain or take life, carried to its logical conclusion involves extinction, as does hardness, the indifference to the infliction of death and suffering
The downfall of liberalism (a rational meeting in the middle) has been due to the failure to associate it with any strong emotion. Extremes, not compromises, evoke the strongest emotional impulses
“If the distant do not submit, cultivate the power of wên (culture, the arts of peace) to bring them to you.” XVI
When one sees people who are better than oneself, one should instead turn their attention towards equalling them
If one learns but does not think, one is lost; if one thinks but does not learn, one is in danger
Keep order among them by chastisement and they will flee from you; keep order among them by ritual and they will come to you of their own accord.
Clever talk and a pretentious manner are seldom found in the Good
Be cautious in giving promises and punctual in keeping them
A gentleman who doesn’t continue eating after he is full, does not demand comfort in his home, is diligent in business and cautious in speech, and associates with the Good thereby correcting his own faults
Do not grieve that other people do not recognize your merits, the real tragedy would be to not recognize theirs
He who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher
A gentleman can see a question from all sides without bias, the small man is biased and can see a question from only one side
To recognize what you know, and what you don’t know, is knowledge
Do not mind failing to get recognition, be too busy doing the things that entitle one to recognition
Rotten wood cannot be carved
The Middle Way: to exceed is as bad as to fall short, moderation is key
Lavishness leads easily to presumption, as does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption
- Does frugality lead to meanness?
Be affable yet firm, commanding but not too harsh, polite but easy
If the Way prevails in your land, count it a disgrace to be needy and obscure; when the Way does not, then count it a disgrace to be rich and honoured
The gentleman brings attention to the good qualities in others, not the bad
When asked how to avoid burglary, build up qualities that cannot be stolen, rather than ostentatious material goods that can be.
In vain have I looked for one whose desire to build up his moral power was as strong as sexual desire
- This will generally be the case. Individual selection has a first order effect on our behaviour, group selection (which forms morals) has a second order effect (we abide to social rules because we must, otherwise our genes would perish)
Demand much for oneself and little from others to banish discontent
The demands that a gentleman makes are upon himself; those that a small man makes are upon others
A gentleman is proud but not quarrelsome, and aligns himself with individuals but not parties
3 profitable pleasures: pleasure from ritual and music, pleasure from discussing the good points in the conduct of others, and pleasure from having many wise friends
3 harmful pleasures: pleasure from profligate enjoyments, pleasure from idle gadding about, and pleasure from comfort and ease
3 mistakes that can be made in the context of speech: forwardness (speaking before being called to do so), secretiveness (not speaking when called to do so), and blindness (speaking before noting others’ facial expression)
Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness
Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into turbulence
Even minor walks of knowledge (specialized knowledge) have an importance of their own, but if pursued too far they tend to prove a hindrance; for which reason a gentleman does not cultivate them
- This same idea prevailed until the 19th century in England, where specialized knowledge was deemed incompatible with true gentility
One who studies widely and with purpose, who questions earnestly, and thinks for himself about what he has heard
When the small man goes wrong, it is on the side of over-elaboration
A gentleman seen from afar looks severe, when approached is found to be mild, and when heard speaking is found to be incisive

Thinking in Systems

Published: August 01, 2023

If we consider that a system causes its own behaviour, we need to consider that politicians don’t cause recessions or booms; oil-exporting nations are not solely responsible for oil prices—consumers are as well; and pathogens do not solely attack you, but you set up conditions for them to flourish within you
A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity
The least obvious part of the system, it’s function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behaviour
- To understand life, we need to identify the ultimate cause—life’s purpose: to survive and reproduce!
Someone trying to fix a system is intuitively attracted to a policy lever that has a strong effect on the system, and well-intentioned fixers often pull the lever in the wrong direction! Think, over-reactions to stock fluctuations. We are often surprised by the counterintuitive behaviour of systems when we start trying to change them
Economies are full of balancing feedback loops and delays, companies react in lieu of delayed responses, and those reactions produce oscillations of system outputs. This is why economies are cyclical—not because of this president or this company, but because the interconnected system is full of signal delays.
No physical system can grow forever in a finite environment
The real choice in the management of a non-renewable resource is whether to get rich very fast or to get less rich but stay that way longer
- When competing with other systems, the most likely choice made is getting rich very fast, because the competitors who make this choice will confer immediate advantages over those who do not.
Resilience provides a large plateau upon which a system can play, performing its normal functions in safety and surrounding the system with gentle, elastic walls, that bounce it back if it wanders too close to a dangerous edge
A system that loses resilience sees its plateau shrink, and whose protective walls become lower and more rigid, restricting the freedom of the system
When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behaviour is called suboptimization
Too much control can also harm a system. If a cell is not free to perform self-maintenance it will die; if stringent rules prevent students or faculty from exploring fields of knowledge freely, education will falter; over-control by governments has led to some of the greatest catastrophes of history
A highly functioning system requires enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large system goal, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing
Hierarchies form so that their originating subsystems can perform their jobs better
Hierarchies evolve bottom up. The top layers evolve to serve the purposes of the lower layers
Long term behaviour provides clues to the underlying system structure, and structure is the key to understanding not just what is happening, but why
We are too fascinated by the events systems generate, and insufficiently skilled at prospecting their history to find the structures from which behaviour and events flow
If we’re to understand anything, we must simplify. We must invent boundaries for clarity and sanity; but boundaries can produce problems when we forget that we’ve artificially created them. When you draw boundaries too narrowly, the system surprises you
National boundaries mean nothing when it comes to ozone depletion, greenhouse gases, or ocean dumping
Think of how many arguments have to do with boundaries—national boundaries, trade boundaries, ethnic boundaries, public vs. private
Boundaries are of our own making, and they can and should be reconsidered for each new discussion, problem, or purpose
If a company offers a perfect product or service at an affordable price, it will be swamped with orders until it grows to the point where some limit decreases the perfection of the product or raises its price
If a city meets the needs of all inhabitants better than other cities, people will flock there until some limit brings down the city’s ability to satisfy peoples’ needs
Bounded rationality is the idea that we act rationally with the limited data we have available to us, but that our acts can be irrational when considering the decision at a broader scope
The US and Soviet Union for years exaggerated their reports of each other’s armaments to justify more armaments of their own. Each side was escalating itself to the detriment of their local economies and to the entire globe with the evolution of unimaginably destructive weapons
Addiction can appear in large systems, such as:
- The dependence of industry on government subsidy
- The reliance of farmers on fertilizers
- The addiction of western economies to cheap oil
- The addiction of weapons manufacturers to government contracts
Modern medicine in general has shifted the responsibility of health away from the practices and lifestyle of each individual and onto intervening doctors and medicines
Addiction is finding a quick and dirty solution to the symptom of the problem (not the root cause), which prevents or distracts one from the longer and harder task of solving the real problem. Addictive policies are insidious, because they are so easy to sell, and so simple to fall for.
Like a drunk ransacking the house in hopes of unearthing just one more bottle, we will pollute our beaches and invade the last wilderness areas, searching for just one more big deposit of oil
Seeking the wrong goal is a system trap. For example, attempting to maximize GDP is harmful because it is a poor indicator of overall social well-being. More car accidents, and thus more spending on medical and repair bills, increase GDP. More parents hiring help to bring their children up increases GDP. An expensive second home for a rich family is better for GDP than an inexpensive basic home for a poor family. An efficient light bulb that both reduce electricity cost and lasts a long time makes the GDP go down.
GDP measures effort rather than achievement, regardless of whether that effort was put to good use or wasted, and regardless of whether the achievement is helpful or harmful; gross production and consumption rather than net/efficiency
System delays cause oscillations. When I receive delayed information about the state of the system stock, I overshoot or undershoot my goal. A system can’t respond to short-term changes when it has long term delays. This is why massive central-planning systems, such as the Soviet Union or General Motors, necessarily function poorly
Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning and cuts back resilience, leading to failure over the long term in highly variable environments
This means encouraging variability and experimentation and diversity, which is scary because it means “losing control”. This is why it’s so hard for people to adopt this highly effective leverage point
Collect as many explanations as possible and consider them all to be plausible until you find evidence that rules them out. That way you will be emotionally available to see evidence as it truly is, not clouded by entanglement with your own identity
Honouring information means above all avoiding language pollution—making the cleanest possible use out of language
What Wendell Berry calls “tyrannese”
- My impression is that we have seen, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning. And I believe that this increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration, over the same period, of persons and communities…
He goes on to say:
- In this degenerative accounting, language is almost without the power of designation, because it is used conscientiously to refer to nothing in particular. Attention rests upon percentages, categories, abstract functions. . . . It is not language that the user will very likely be required to stand by or to act on, for it does not define any personal ground for standing or acting. Its only practical utility is to support with “expert opinion” a vast, impersonal technological action already begun. … It is a tyrannical language: tyrannese.
The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful, and truthful as possible; part of the job of keeping information streams clear. The second step is to enlarge language to make it consistent with our enlarged understanding of systems
Our culture is obsessed with numbers, giving us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. If we motivate, rate, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result. Quantity is not necessarily as important as quality, however (e.g., when we maximize GDP and sacrifice quality of life).
Be interdisciplinary. Penetrate the jargons of other disciplines, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their respective lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses—they won’t make it easy for you Book notes 2023 p3

The Analects of Confucius

Published: August 29, 2023

The Analects of Confucius

Confucius was likely a private person who trained the sons of gentlemen in the virtues appropriate to a member of the ruling class. Though, it is clear that he longed for a more public position to disseminate his teachings
Chün-tzu, or gentleman, are recognized by freeness from violence or brusqueness, open and sincere expression, and speech free from vulgarity (careful and considerate speech)
Those who behave as a chün-tzu should find themselves welcomed everywhere. The alliances of ‘small people’ are directed against others, hostile and destructive in intent; but those of the gentlemen exist only for mutual satisfaction
Chün-tzu have no politics, but side with the Right wherever they find it
Softness, the unwillingness to inflict pain or take life, carried to its logical conclusion involves extinction, as does hardness, the indifference to the infliction of death and suffering
The downfall of liberalism (a rational meeting in the middle) has been due to the failure to associate it with any strong emotion. Extremes, not compromises, evoke the strongest emotional impulses
“If the distant do not submit, cultivate the power of wên (culture, the arts of peace) to bring them to you.” XVI
When one sees people who are better than oneself, one should instead turn their attention towards equalling them
If one learns but does not think, one is lost; if one thinks but does not learn, one is in danger
Keep order among them by chastisement and they will flee from you; keep order among them by ritual and they will come to you of their own accord.
Clever talk and a pretentious manner are seldom found in the Good
Be cautious in giving promises and punctual in keeping them
A gentleman who doesn’t continue eating after he is full, does not demand comfort in his home, is diligent in business and cautious in speech, and associates with the Good thereby correcting his own faults
Do not grieve that other people do not recognize your merits, the real tragedy would be to not recognize theirs
He who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher
A gentleman can see a question from all sides without bias, the small man is biased and can see a question from only one side
To recognize what you know, and what you don’t know, is knowledge
Do not mind failing to get recognition, be too busy doing the things that entitle one to recognition
Rotten wood cannot be carved
The Middle Way: to exceed is as bad as to fall short, moderation is key
Lavishness leads easily to presumption, as does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption
- Does frugality lead to meanness?
Be affable yet firm, commanding but not too harsh, polite but easy
If the Way prevails in your land, count it a disgrace to be needy and obscure; when the Way does not, then count it a disgrace to be rich and honoured
The gentleman brings attention to the good qualities in others, not the bad
When asked how to avoid burglary, build up qualities that cannot be stolen, rather than ostentatious material goods that can be.
In vain have I looked for one whose desire to build up his moral power was as strong as sexual desire
- This will generally be the case. Individual selection has a first order effect on our behaviour, group selection (which forms morals) has a second order effect (we abide to social rules because we must, otherwise our genes would perish)
Demand much for oneself and little from others to banish discontent
The demands that a gentleman makes are upon himself; those that a small man makes are upon others
A gentleman is proud but not quarrelsome, and aligns himself with individuals but not parties
3 profitable pleasures: pleasure from ritual and music, pleasure from discussing the good points in the conduct of others, and pleasure from having many wise friends
3 harmful pleasures: pleasure from profligate enjoyments, pleasure from idle gadding about, and pleasure from comfort and ease
3 mistakes that can be made in the context of speech: forwardness (speaking before being called to do so), secretiveness (not speaking when called to do so), and blindness (speaking before noting others’ facial expression)
Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness
Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into turbulence
Even minor walks of knowledge (specialized knowledge) have an importance of their own, but if pursued too far they tend to prove a hindrance; for which reason a gentleman does not cultivate them
- This same idea prevailed until the 19th century in England, where specialized knowledge was deemed incompatible with true gentility
One who studies widely and with purpose, who questions earnestly, and thinks for himself about what he has heard
When the small man goes wrong, it is on the side of over-elaboration
A gentleman seen from afar looks severe, when approached is found to be mild, and when heard speaking is found to be incisive

Why We Get Sick

Published: August 29, 2023

Why We Get Sick, The new science of Darwinian medicine (1996), Nesse & Williams

Chapter 1: The mystery of disease

Proximate explanations answer “what?” and “how?” questions about structure and mechanism; evolutionary explanations answer “why?” questions about origins and functions
Most medical research seeks the proximate explanations about how a body part works or how a disease disrupts function. The other half of biology, that tries to explain what things are for and how they got there, has been neglected in medicine
One may worry that evolutionary explanations are mere speculation, however studies are showing that evolutionary hypotheses can predict what to expect in proximate mechanisms (e.g., morning sickness evolved to protect the developing fetus from toxins during its most vulnerable state)
6 categories of evolutionary explanations of disease:
1. Defenses: while not actually an explanation of disease, this is listed because it is so often confused with other manifestations of disease. An example provided is that of a pneumonia patient who has blue-ish skin and a cough. The blue skin comes from a lack of oxygen in the hemoglobin which leads to darker blood. This is a problem that should be addressed, lack of oxygen is no bueno. The cough, however, is a defense, evolved to expel foreign material from the respiratory tract. Coughing is not a problem, and suppressing this defense puts the body at more risk
2. Infection: we evolved defenses to counter viral and bacterial threats, viruses and bacteria have evolve ways to overcome our defenses and even use them to their own benefit. This evolutionary arms race explains why eradication of all infections is futile
3. Novel environments (i.e., evolutionary mismatch)
4. Genes: some of our genes are perpetuated even though they cause disease, as some of their effects were “quirks” that were harmless in our evolutionary environment
5. Design compromises: walking upright gives us the ability to carry food, tools, and babies while walking, but predisposes us to back problems. To better understand diseases, we need to understand the hidden benefits of apparent mistakes in design
6. Evolutionary legacies: evolution is an incremental process and cannot make huge jumps. As such, some designs at this point can be sub-optimal, e.g., our food passes over our windpipe. Once a system is in place, it is costly to re-engineer the evolutionary history

Thinking in Systems

Published: August 29, 2023

Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows

If we consider that a system causes its own behaviour, we need to consider that politicians don’t cause recessions or booms; oil-exporting nations are not solely responsible for oil prices—consumers are as well; and pathogens do not solely attack you, but you set up conditions for them to flourish within you
A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity
The least obvious part of the system, it’s function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behaviour
- To understand life, we need to identify the ultimate cause—life’s purpose: to survive and reproduce!
Someone trying to fix a system is intuitively attracted to a policy lever that has a strong effect on the system, and well-intentioned fixers often pull the lever in the wrong direction! Think, over-reactions to stock fluctuations. We are often surprised by the counterintuitive behaviour of systems when we start trying to change them
Economies are full of balancing feedback loops and delays, companies react in lieu of delayed responses, and those reactions produce oscillations of system outputs. This is why economies are cyclical—not because of this president or this company, but because the interconnected system is full of signal delays.
No physical system can grow forever in a finite environment
The real choice in the management of a non-renewable resource is whether to get rich very fast or to get less rich but stay that way longer
- When competing with other systems, the most likely choice made is getting rich very fast, because the competitors who make this choice will confer immediate advantages over those who do not.
Resilience provides a large plateau upon which a system can play, performing its normal functions in safety and surrounding the system with gentle, elastic walls, that bounce it back if it wanders too close to a dangerous edge
A system that loses resilience sees its plateau shrink, and whose protective walls become lower and more rigid, restricting the freedom of the system
When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behaviour is called suboptimization
Too much control can also harm a system. If a cell is not free to perform self-maintenance it will die; if stringent rules prevent students or faculty from exploring fields of knowledge freely, education will falter; over-control by governments has led to some of the greatest catastrophes of history
A highly functioning system requires enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large system goal, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing
Hierarchies form so that their originating subsystems can perform their jobs better
Hierarchies evolve bottom up. The top layers evolve to serve the purposes of the lower layers
Long term behaviour provides clues to the underlying system structure, and structure is the key to understanding not just what is happening, but why
We are too fascinated by the events systems generate, and insufficiently skilled at prospecting their history to find the structures from which behaviour and events flow
If we’re to understand anything, we must simplify. We must invent boundaries for clarity and sanity; but boundaries can produce problems when we forget that we’ve artificially created them. When you draw boundaries too narrowly, the system surprises you
National boundaries mean nothing when it comes to ozone depletion, greenhouse gases, or ocean dumping
Think of how many arguments have to do with boundaries—national boundaries, trade boundaries, ethnic boundaries, public vs. private
Boundaries are of our own making, and they can and should be reconsidered for each new discussion, problem, or purpose
If a company offers a perfect product or service at an affordable price, it will be swamped with orders until it grows to the point where some limit decreases the perfection of the product or raises its price
If a city meets the needs of all inhabitants better than other cities, people will flock there until some limit brings down the city’s ability to satisfy peoples’ needs
Bounded rationality is the idea that we act rationally with the limited data we have available to us, but that our acts can be irrational when considering the decision at a broader scope
The US and Soviet Union for years exaggerated their reports of each other’s armaments to justify more armaments of their own. Each side was escalating itself to the detriment of their local economies and to the entire globe with the evolution of unimaginably destructive weapons
Addiction can appear in large systems, such as:
- The dependence of industry on government subsidy
- The reliance of farmers on fertilizers
- The addiction of western economies to cheap oil
- The addiction of weapons manufacturers to government contracts
Modern medicine in general has shifted the responsibility of health away from the practices and lifestyle of each individual and onto intervening doctors and medicines
Addiction is finding a quick and dirty solution to the symptom of the problem (not the root cause), which prevents or distracts one from the longer and harder task of solving the real problem. Addictive policies are insidious, because they are so easy to sell, and so simple to fall for.
Like a drunk ransacking the house in hopes of unearthing just one more bottle, we will pollute our beaches and invade the last wilderness areas, searching for just one more big deposit of oil
Seeking the wrong goal is a system trap. For example, attempting to maximize GDP is harmful because it is a poor indicator of overall social well-being. More car accidents, and thus more spending on medical and repair bills, increase GDP. More parents hiring help to bring their children up increases GDP. An expensive second home for a rich family is better for GDP than an inexpensive basic home for a poor family. An efficient light bulb that both reduce electricity cost and lasts a long time makes the GDP go down.
GDP measures effort rather than achievement, regardless of whether that effort was put to good use or wasted, and regardless of whether the achievement is helpful or harmful; gross production and consumption rather than net/efficiency
System delays cause oscillations. When I receive delayed information about the state of the system stock, I overshoot or undershoot my goal. A system can’t respond to short-term changes when it has long term delays. This is why massive central-planning systems, such as the Soviet Union or General Motors, necessarily function poorly
Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning and cuts back resilience, leading to failure over the long term in highly variable environments
This means encouraging variability and experimentation and diversity, which is scary because it means “losing control”. This is why it’s so hard for people to adopt this highly effective leverage point
Collect as many explanations as possible and consider them all to be plausible until you find evidence that rules them out. That way you will be emotionally available to see evidence as it truly is, not clouded by entanglement with your own identity
Honouring information means above all avoiding language pollution—making the cleanest possible use out of language
What Wendell Berry calls “tyrannese”
- My impression is that we have seen, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning. And I believe that this increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration, over the same period, of persons and communities…
He goes on to say:
- In this degenerative accounting, language is almost without the power of designation, because it is used conscientiously to refer to nothing in particular. Attention rests upon percentages, categories, abstract functions. . . . It is not language that the user will very likely be required to stand by or to act on, for it does not define any personal ground for standing or acting. Its only practical utility is to support with “expert opinion” a vast, impersonal technological action already begun. … It is a tyrannical language: tyrannese.
The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful, and truthful as possible; part of the job of keeping information streams clear. The second step is to enlarge language to make it consistent with our enlarged understanding of systems
Our culture is obsessed with numbers, giving us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. If we motivate, rate, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result. Quantity is not necessarily as important as quality, however (e.g., when we maximize GDP and sacrifice quality of life).
Be interdisciplinary. Penetrate the jargons of other disciplines, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their respective lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses—they won’t make it easy for you