Sex should not be too much fun - the Evolutionary argument

Evoanth has posted The Evolution of Infertility in Humans suggesting that in evolutionary terms successful reproduction is more important than maximising the enjoyment of sex. I commented:

It clearly helps, in evolutionary terms, to have a loyal supportive male to help rear his children - so the priority must be pair bonding and not "sex is fun." Make sex too much fun for the male and he may put fun with new partners above loyalty - which means less support for his children - and more venereal disease. If all males do it all the time the overall effect is less stability for the children, more venereal disease and definitely no advantage for the female genes.

If a few males spread their oats widely there could be a statistical advantage to them -  but if a female is in a more or less stable relation with a male who has just enough sexual capability to keep her pregnant he will still be the father of most of her children - even if a randy male gets in a poke or two.

Overall the balance could be that overall breeding success is highest with stable couples, supported by grandmothers, than , for example, a harem system where the male spends much of his energy defending his status rather than directly supporting his children - and where it pays any usurper to kill the harem's youngsters because he is not the father.

What I could have added is that team-work between males in small hunter-gather groups could also increase the survival chances of the group - and the genes of the individuals - and good team-work means trust - with minimum energy being expended in rivalry.

The Limits of Critical Thinking

In considering the evolution of the human brain a critical point comes when the quality of cultural information is such that it has more survival value than working things out from first principals. AT this point it pays to learn by following the best teacher (initially the parents) to maximise the speed and efficiency of learning the culture. This process will enable more and hopefully better culture to develop - so evolution will strengthen the tendency to follow the most charismatic teacher . This may have been fine when we were hunter gatherers in the woods but can go wrong in modern times, where a charismatic leader may have the power to influence large numbers of people for god or ill.

An article "The Limits of Critical Things" has just appeared in the online magazine "Skeptic" which examines what happens in practice. It is by Jamy Ian Swiss, a professional magician. He writes:

My experience with deception has proven to me that the human brain is evolutionarily programmed to be readily manipulated, whether by the likes of itinerant conjurors like myself and James Randi or by virulent megalomaniacs like Marshall Herff Applewhite. The human tendency to organize information even where no useful information exists appears to be hardwired into our brains. It was there for the first aboriginal rain dance, and it’s here today for the most contemporary forms of magical thinking. That tendency to organize, to look ahead and be creative and surmise from thin evidence is a distinctly human trait, as responsible for the greatness of the human condition as it is for its follies and failings. Our human “big brain” is an accident of evolution that may well be our salvation or undoing as a species, with its abilities to invent, create, explore and imagine, or to become addicted, depressed, or believe incredibly dangerous ideas in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
When we see the apparently placid willingness of the [Heaven's Gate] cult members to fulfill their grisly task of self-destruction, it is difficult to view them as victims. Considering the patently ludicrous ideas the cult based its belief system on, it’s tempting to write the followers off as cranks who were victims only of their own willful stupidity. But the phenomenon of cultism is characterized by distinctly manipulative practices of recruitment and maintenance that must be considered independently of the particular belief system they happen to be promoting. Toxicly effective cult leaders like Herff Applewhite will always produce followers who swear to their willing allegiance and free choice just as the observer of a magic trick will swear he never looked away the whole time the magician’s spoon was magically bending. Both victims are certain they had all the information necessary to make a capable judgment.

Read full article 

Some interesting footprints on the beach.

There are major difficulties in investigating human history immediately before the coming of agriculture some 10,000 years ago because of the lack of evidence for early fishing villages along the coast lines of the world. The problem arises because during the last ice age sea levels were 100 metres or more below the current levels and this would suggest that any remains could be buried deep underwater. A recent discovery of footprints in the sand said to be about 13,000 years old suggests that there is one place where evidence has been preserved at sea level.



The place is Calvert Island, British Columbia, and earth movements (presumably mainly due to the growth in the Rocky Mountains) mean that locally the sea level has only risen by a few metres since the Ice Age low. In addition the fact that humans appear to have been on the island at the time suggests that they had sea-going boats. I look forward to future developments from this site - but unfortunately the realities of plate tectonics means that there are not going to be similar sites in Europe of Asia. 

The need for a Symbolic Brain Language

I am currently drafting a detailed paper modelling the evolution of human intelligence and a key part of the work involved the definition of a "symbolic brain language" which shows how information is stored and processed. The following draft section explains the reasons why there is a difference between a conventional programming languages and the proposed brain symbolic language, and also explains why a simple approach should allow a complex system to be modelled.

Your comments on the following draft text would be appreciated.

Thoughts after completing "What is a Mind?" FutureLearn course

One of the problems with trying to relate the research I did in the 1970s and 80s to the evolution of human intelligence is that it involves many different specialist disciplines. Even if I was 50 years younger I would have difficulty in becoming up-to-date with all the potentially relevant recent research.  The "What is a Mind?" course was run from Cape Town university and perhaps was too philosophical for my liking but I found it useful, as did many other students. I deliberately set out to learn - rather than push my own research - and found discussions with people with many different specialist backgrounds (or none) most stimulating.

My final comment on the course is below

Trapped by the Addiction Box

On of the interesting side effects of doing the online Futurelearn course "What is a Mind?" is that one gets most interesting links in the discussion. I found the article The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think really makes you think about the subject - and makes one wonder if Western society has wrongly diagnosed the addiction problem - and has got addicted to punishing addicts! I thought the research on rats very revealing. And I can think of some human friends who "went wrong" and never seriously worked again because they were treated as criminals who nobody loved.

Point of View Affects How Science Is Done

I have just discovered the article Point of View Affects How Science Is Done which was published by  Douglas Medin, Carol D. Lee and Megan Bang last September and find it interesting from a number of points of view.

In suggesting that Gender and culture influence research on a fundamental level it uses as examples studies of social relationships in primate groups and how male and female observers have noticed different aspects of what the animals they observe are doing. This suggest that in considering how the human brain has evolved one must be careful about how one thinks about the effects of human society when making comparisons with both primate societies and those of surviving hunter-gather groups.

The ideas are also relevant to the problems I had developing CODIL in the 1970s and 80s - as described in Algorithms aren't everything. The problem I had were that those working at the forefront of the computer industry considered themselves to be a particularly intelligent elite ("you have to be clever to be able to program a computer") designing systems for the slow-minded plebs. In contrast my approach was that ordinary people understood what they wanted to do - and that to help them you needed to be humble and start by assuming they knew more about their wants than you could ever know. This made it difficult to get support for my work from the computing establishment.

The brain is really flexible

It says a lot about the adaptability of the brain, and how it can wire itself 
up in unusual circumstances just to watch how these 7 year olds can work
together, and share information. for instance if one watches the TV the
other can also "see" it