[extropy-chat] Fundamental research and evolutionary psychology

[Keith Henson]

At 03:43 PM 2/2/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>Keith,
>
>Not only are the "rational" vs. "irrational" (emotional?) thought 
>patterns/biases important but the willingness to act upon various 
>"conclusions" plays a role.  It doesn't matter much (at least to society) 
>if you never act upon what you are thinking (either verbally or 
>physically).  [Its the old "What goes on in your head stays in you head." 
>principle (just like Las Vegas...)].

You are right, but I am going to disagree with you anyway.  What is in 
their heads does matter to society because people *can't* avoid acting on it.

The paper I wrote makes the case that people evolved in the stone age to be 
sensitive to the local ecosystem's prospects for feeding them--a bleak 
outlook flips a behavioral switch to a higher gain setting for xenophobic 
memes and suppresses rational thinking.  Circulating xenophobic memes 
eventually fired up the (mentally impaired) warriors for a do or die 
attack.  (This only makes sense if inclusive fitness was a *major* factor 
in human evolution.)

Given a population where some threshhold fraction sees a bleak future, 
society members on average will be more responsive to accepting and passing 
on xenophobic memes.  Even if the effect on a given person is so minor that 
all they do is fail to object to some other person's use of an ethnic slur, 
the overall effect of positive feedback (gain greater than one) can lead to 
war.

>Recent work has uncovered at least two genes, GRP and Stathmin that appear 
>to play a role in fear and how one deals with it.  Since GRP is a 
>hormone/neurotransmitter there are probably several more genes (the 
>promoter, the receptor, the secondary messenger, etc.) involved in its 
>activity.  All of these could have subtle variations (polymorphisms) 
>within the population.  Stathmin on the other hand seems to involve the 
>construction of neurons, particularly those involved with learned 
>fears.  Defects in this system would presumably give rise to the "Stupid 
>is as stupid has always done." phenomena (paraphrasing Forrest Gump).

Interesting links.  Lots more to this story you can bet.

>So there now an abundance of possible genetic variations that lead to 
>various subtle behavioral strategy differences for personal survival, 
>accumulation of power, making gene/meme copies, etc.

Sure.  But I am mostly talking about species-typical behaviors, those 
evolved by natural selection to maximize "inclusive reproductive success" 
in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, not the variations from 
person to person..

Keith Henson

>Robert
>
>1. 
><http://www.hhmi.org/news/kandel3.html>http://www.hhmi.org/news/kandel3.html
>2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastrin_Releasing_Peptide (though it needs 
>some work)
>3. 
><http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1129_051129_brave_mice.html>http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1129_051129_brave_mice.html
>4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stathmin
>5. 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala
>
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