[extropy-chat] Toronto Lecture by Keith Henson November 14, 2004

[natashavita at earthlink.net]

Wishing you much success with your talk -

Natasha



Original Message:
-----------------
From: Keith Henson hkhenson at rogers.com
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 08:53:56 -0500
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: [extropy-chat] Toronto Lecture by Keith Henson November 14, 2004



I signed on this list a while back, but have been a bit too busy to 
participate much.  In case you wonder what I have been up to in the last 
few years (besides trying to stay in Canada and away from scientology 
bounty hunters) I have been working on extensions to the paper you can find 
by putting _sex drugs cults_ in Google.

The Sunday after next I am giving a talk in Toronto.  It will be on 
evolutionary psychology and the origin of war.

The talk will be November 14, 2004 at 1pm at the Unitarian Church at

175 St Clair Ave W Toronto, ON

That's the same place that had a cryonics panel a year or so ago.

If someone knows other places to put this announcement, please do.  The 
last one (on cults) had a small attendance, though we did have someone who 
came all the way from Amsterdam and there was lots of interaction.

I know there is not much chance of many living close enough to be able to 
come, but this also serves to let you know what I have been working on in 
my copious free time.

Keith Henson

****************

Abstract of talk

Human population are observed to slowly oscillate between being dominated 
by rational memes and xenophobic/warlike, often disfunctional memes 
(religious and political such as communism).  Why?

I make the case that which class of memes dominates is dependent on the 
situation.  A stressed population facing a bleak future will have a high 
gain setting for infecting those not caught up with xenophobic or "going to 
war" memes.  Rationalist memes will prevail in situations of lower 
stress/worry.  This meme switch mechanism has its origin in the millions of 
years the human line lived as hunter gatherers.  It has the function of 
synchronizing a tribe's warriors to the ultimate effort to do or die in an 
attack on a neighboring tribe.  (Irrespective of which side won, the hunter 
gatherer population pushing the ecological limits was thinned out.)

"Thinned out populations" results in improving prospects and reduces the 
"gain setting" on the spread of xenophobic memes.  This was seen in 
Northern Ireland, though not resulting from large scale deaths.  In that 
case, a switch to a much lower birth rate a generation ago let economic 
growth exceed population growth.  Rational memes slowly prevailed and 
support for the IRA faded out.  My claim here is that the psychological 
switch into and out of war mode evolved in the stone age to be dependent on 
the difficulty of getting game and berries.  Today the mode trigger maps 
(roughly) into income per capita, more particularly into changes in income 
per capita.

This model has serious real world applications.  Because of the high birth 
rate in the Palestinian population (and Islamic populations in general), 
and low economic growth, there is no resolution of the problems in the mid 
east in sight.   The most likely (and grim) outcome is a population 
reducing spasm within the next decade similar to what happened in Rwanda 
unless some wild card such as nanotechnology becomes a major economic
factor.

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