Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA10718 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:52:16 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020111102706.02c397e0@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 10:49:12 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Re: playing at suicide In-Reply-To: <200201110455.g0B4tDB16301@terri.harvard.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 11:55 PM 10/01/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Jeremy Bradley -
>
> >I suggest that answers to such questions as "why are we here" etc. were
> >invented so as to comply with existing social criteria.
>
>I suspect there are a lot of reasons to supply a ready set of answers to
>questions like that.
Buried in a short article my wife (Arel Lucas) and I wrote in 1989:
"Being able to anticipate the future may not have been an unmixed blessing
for early humans. Besides worrying about what to eat in the morning, and
how to get through the night without being eaten, our ancestors could worry
about existential angst, and ponder questions of the "Where Was I Before I
Was Me?" and "What Happens After I Die?" kind. It may sound silly, but such
questions, prompted by frequent deaths among those around you may have been
a barrier for hundreds of thousands of years to the emergence of smarter
people with enhanced ability to anticipate and plan for the future. It is
not good for your genes to be dwelling on such questions while something
large, furry, and not in the least concerned about angst, sneaks up and
nips off your head!"
... . . .
"Religious" memes compensating for too-smart-for-their-own-good brains is
rank speculation, but Marvin Minsky argues that more complex brains are
inherently less stable.
... . .
"This is very speculative, but "religious" memes could have "functions"
such as reducing the effects of grief or answering philosophical questions
about which it was (genetically) unprofitable to ponder. These memes would
be favored in a causal loop if they improve the survival of people carrying
genes which tend to destablize a person's mental state, but otherwise
improve their survival.
... . .
"Both modern and ancient religions seem to "fit" into similar places in the
mind, and have the similar functions of providing "answers" to the
unanswerable, and comfort to the grief stricken. "
... . .
http://www.keithhenson.org/cryonics.htm (in spite of the name, I don't
have a web site that I control. Several people run web sites that
chronicle my adventures.)
This is part of the article:
Most readers of Cryonics understand that we arrived at our current physical
structure (which includes everything--genes, jawbones and brains) through
the process of evolution, that is through random variation and very
non-random survival. About 4.5 million years ago our branch of the primate
tree split from our nearest relatives the chimpanzees when the climate
changed, and the shrinking forest left them "high and dry." (All this is
current best guess, but there is a large collection of evidence.) An entire
suite of physical and behavioral changes seems to have happened together.
Chimpanzees today have behaviors, such as sharing meat, that our common
ancestors are likely to have had. This tendency seems to have been
elaborated by our male ancestors into a steady provisioning of the females
and young by bringing food to them from the encroaching, but highly
productive, protein-rich plains. (As opposed to the chimps' way of life
where the females provide virtually all food for the young and the males
guard the territory.) Incidentally, compared to forest, grasslands provide
a *lot* of meat per square mile.
It is likely our common ancestor could walk upright for a short distance
since chimps can do it. Walking upright for ever further distances had an
advantage because the males who could free their hands for carrying food in
this changed situation were more successful in the number of children who
carried their genes in the next generation. Of course this took place in
social groups, so there was continual selection for: genes that made
cooperative behavior more likely; genes to exploit others cooperation; and
genes to resist being suckered. Computer evolution simulations (see Selfish
Gene) of such situations lead to stable mixes of reproductive strategies
similar to what are actually observed in human populations.
As genes became more common which (through the process of embryogenesis)
constructed males more and more likely to work (mostly in groups) to feed
*their* mates and children, other traits became advantageous. Sequestered
estrous (as opposed to the flamboyant chimpanzee event), continual sexual
receptivity, and a tendency toward monogamy (and jealousy) all tend to
genetically reward provisioning males. All of this culminated in the
several- million-year old institution of the human family.&
The net effect of all these changes was to about double the reproductive
rate of proto-humans compared to the chimpanzees. Our ancestors needed the
high reproductive rate because the plains were *Dangerous* places (no trees
to climb). A lot of them seem to have been eaten by leopards and the other
large predators of the time.
Some 2.5 million years ago we find the first evidence of worked stone.
While even chimpanzees pass cultural knowledge, such as how to catch
termites, from generation to generation, worked stone is the first
surviving evidence that our ancestors started passing down the generations
complex, non-genetic, behavior- influencing information. This information
can be said to program high level "agents" in the mind which are invoked to
do or make things. About the same time, the brain size of our forebears
started to increase substantially over the chimpanzee's. Tool making and
larger brains probably influenced each other in a positive feedback cycle.
Those able to learn the more complex tasks from those around them must have
had a significant survival advantage, in spite of the increased maternal
and infant mortality from getting those larger brains delivered.
[This was written some time ago. My current thoughts are more that the
advantaged of large brains in hitting targets as described by Calvin were
more important in the increase in size of the human brain.]
As the *information* of how to chip rock and other such discoveries was
passed on to larger numbers of the very people whose survival it enhanced,
a new evolving entity, the "meme" or replicating information pattern became
increasing significant.
(footnote ref--first defined in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins 1976)
Genes are totally dependent on cells; complex memes are no less dependent
on large human brains. Memes run the gamut from essential symbionts to
dangerous parasites. They evolve, and, in particular, they have
*co-evolved* with the human line. In the aggregate, they constitute
culture. The memetic information passed down from generation to generation
exceeded our genetic data some time ago.
As human brains enlarged they improved in the ability to anticipate
changes, making plans to hunt, to move with the seasons, and, later, to
plant seeds for a future harvest. These and similar "smart" behaviors have
obvious survival advantages, but they may have disadvantages as well. Alas,
it seems that it is quite possible to be too smart for "the good of one's
genes." A contemporary example is the statistical fact that highly
intelligent people have significantly fewer children than the norm. For
very different reasons, people of *subnormal* intelligence also have
lower-than-average reproductive success.
Many traits of populations that have a bell curve distribution are trimmed
by some form of selection on both ends. If they were not, natural selection
on individuals on one end of the curve would cause the population norm to
drift until a new norm was reached where individuals far out from the norm
in either direction suffered reduced reproductive success in about the same
amounts.
Being able to anticipate the future may not have been an unmixed blessing
for early humans. Besides worrying about what to eat in the morning, and
how to get through the night without being eaten, our ancestors could worry
about existential angst, and ponder questions of the "Where Was I Before I
Was Me?" and "What Happens After I Die?" kind. It may sound silly, but such
questions, prompted by frequent deaths among those around you may have been
a barrier for hundreds of thousands of years to the emergence of smarter
people with enhanced ability to anticipate and plan for the future. It is
not good for your genes to be dwelling on such questions while something
large, furry, and not in the least concerned about angst, sneaks up and
nips off your head!
(footnote --at least if it does it before you have lots of kids, and have
helped raise lots of grandkids. The recognition of this fact is reflected
in the Chinese tradition that those who would attempt to understand the I
Ching--a contemplative task bound to invoke troubling questions--are
traditionally warned off doing so until they have completed the parental
phase of life, and secured the future of their grandchildren.)
We know that eventually smarter people did emerge, and came to dominate the
world. This started about 200,000 years ago, roughly the same time that DNA
studies indicate that one woman was the common ancestor of us all. Like
chipped rock and larger brains emerging together, it is possible that some
meme mutated out of more primitive ones, or arose from observations to form
a "religious belief" that provided "answers" to such questions and had the
effect of compensating for genes that otherwise would made us too smart for
our own (genetic) good. Beliefs that could fit this description are known
to go back to the very beginning of written history, and archaeological
digs produce physical evidence (flower grave offerings) of such beliefs
back at least 70,000 years. (The actual timing is not important to this
argument, but objects believe to be "religious" in nature became common by
about 35,000 years ago.)
"Religious" memes compensating for too-smart-for-their-own-good brains is
rank speculation, but Marvin Minsky argues that more complex brains are
inherently less stable. It is true that our more remote relatives (such as
cows) seem to have fewer mental problems, perhaps just because they have
less "mental." His thought****
**** (footnote--- personal communication through Eric Drexler)
is that certain "agents" built with patterns from outside could enhance the
stability of a complex mind. He discussed a variety of mental "agents" in
Society of Mind, reviewed in Cryonics some time ago. One class, censors,
would be especially useful if kept someone's mind from spiraling down into
a blue funk over unanswerable questions. Ideas that when a family member
died he had gone to "the happy hunting grounds," and that you would see him
again might make a big difference in the survival of grief- stricken
relatives. Jane Goodall's report of a case where a chimpanzee seems to have
died of grief gives this model some credibility. (The chimp was believed to
have had an abnormally strong attachment to his mother.)
This is very speculative, but "religious" memes could have "functions" such
as reducing the effects of grief or answering philosophical questions about
which it was (genetically) unprofitable to ponder. These memes would be
favored in a causal loop if they improve the survival of people carrying
genes which tend to destablize a person's mental state, but otherwise
improve their survival.
Such genes might (for example) contribute to intelligence, sensitivity, and
forming strong emotional attachments. After a few millennia, religious
memes and conditionally advantageous genes would become quite dependent on
each other. In an environment saturated with religious memes, there would
be little pressure for minds to evolve that could get by without
stabilizing memes.
In turn, the religious memes that originated long ago have had plenty of
time to split into varieties, compete for hosts, and themselves evolve in
response to a changing environment. (An occasional variation may kill its
hosts, a la Jim Jones.) A lay observer looking for similarities over such a
period might not recognize much common ritual. (Joseph Campbell devoted his
life to discovering common threads in ritual.) Both modern and ancient
religions seem to "fit" into similar places in the mind, and have the
similar functions of providing "answers" to the unanswerable, and comfort
to the grief stricken.
The environment in those minds (mostly the result of other memes) has
greatly changed as people accumulated more observations about the world
around them and got better at manipulating it. There are known changes in
the history of religion, such as the tendency for monotheistic religions
(in the western cultural tradition) to replace polytheistic ones, and the
well known tendency for religions (and similar belief patterns) to mutate
into new and competing varieties. We can see some (the written part) of the
accumulated variation. For example, the religion of the Old Testament is
recognizably the ancestor of the more recent New Testament.
Because humans learn from other adults as well as parents, religious
beliefs that are "better suited" to infect human minds could spread, even
(if it survived translation) across language boundaries. (Islam simply
imposed Arabic on its converts.) In Europe during early historical times,
we can see the displacement of older religions with Christianity. Within
Christianity we can see in recent historical times competing varieties
mutate from earlier versions (a classic example would be the Mormons) and
within the US in the last decades we have seen the arrival of both new
"religions" such as Scientology, and the repeated importation of eastern
religions. (Almost all new and transplanted religions fail--we only see the
ones which grow large enough to notice.)
Because human minds usually hold only one religion at a time, religious
memes are in "competition" for a limited number of human minds. This sets
up the conditions for a powerful "evolutionary struggle" between religious
memes. You should expect the memes which survive this process to resist
being displaced, and to induce their hosts to propagate them.
How (at long last!) does this relate to the difficulty of selling cryonics?
We submit that the long term mental changes that happen to people who make
cryonics arrangements have a lot in common with religious conversions.
Logically, cryonics should be considered a low tech way to reach high tech
medicine, no more exciting than iron lungs, or pacemakers. Alcor, of
course, is *not* a religion; it doesn't aspire even to be a cult. However,
the mental "agents" the cryonics idea constructs in people's minds have the
same "deflect or modify thoughts about death" effect as some of the mental
agents most religious memes build. The cryonics memes seem to "fit" into
the "mental space" in people that is often occupied by a religion. As a
result people class it as one, or something closely related. Unfortunately,
this is a hotly contested spot in the mind! Memes of this class usually
include a submeme, "this is the only true belief, listen to no others." #
#(Footnote. Douglas Hoffstadter and one of us (Arel) prefers to look at a
meme as complex as a religion as "a scheme of memes," that is, evolutionary
bound cooperating groups of memes similar to the way mutually advantageous
genes are sometimes grouped on chronosomes.
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