The Evolution of Human Nature – Part 2

This is the second part of a series. It begins with Part 1.

From an evolutionary perspective, depression and ennui are highly disadvantageous. Who is more likely to survive and reproduce – a depressed, listless individual, or a happy, energetic individual? It could be argued that depression and ennui are adaptive responses to negative environmental factors, like pain, which cause us to avoid such factors. But my observation is that depressed, listless people usually have no idea as to the cause of their feelings, or what to do to overcome them. I think that it’s more likely to be a spurious emotional response to an environment for which we are not adapted – the post-tribal world. To use a computer metaphor, it is like a program that is given unexpected input – the output is spurious because it hasn’t been programmed for.

The social habitat that we are “programmed” for – for which we evolved – is tribal. What are the characteristics of a tribal environment? It is an environment in which the needs of the individual are balanced against the needs of the tribe. An individual may be called on to sacrifice himself, but only in extreme cases. When in conflict, deciding between the needs of the individual and the tribe is something like an individual deciding which of his own needs to serve. (Do I need food? Shelter? Sleep? Even a lone individual must decide which need to serve!) In other words, the individual doesn’t make strong boundaries between himself and his tribe – he identifies himself with the tribe.

What is the meaning of identification? It means that the individual has expanded his identity. He includes other individuals in his sense of self. When good things happen to these individuals, he is happy. When bad things happen to them, he is sad. We also have another word for identification – love.

Love, however, as they say, is a dangerous thing. Love that is not requited can easily be taken advantage of. Fortunately, love is not an all or nothing thing – it is a more or less thing (it can also be zero – indifference, or negative – hate). A healthy relationship is one where both individuals feel the same way about the other.

The natural social habit of human beings is a group of people with a high degree of mutual identification – a tribe.

Tribal Sex and Food

Don Boudreaux of Café Hayek posts about other evolutionary consequences of our original habitat:

In a recent e-mail he [Boudreaux’s friend – DB] suggested that some government intervention might be appropriate to reduce Americans’ consumption of fatty, non-nutritious foods. He pointed out (correctly) that we are genetically evolved to eat a lot of fatty foods when such foods are available. This genetic disposition served us well in our evolutionary past when food was seldom abundant. But because in the industrialized west today food is always abundant, our genes propel many of us to eat in ways that threaten our long-term health prospects -- that is, to overeat and become obese.

Then went on, tongue in cheek:

After all, the theory of natural selection says that men are evolved to maximize the number of sexual partners each enjoys. Such a preference for multiple partners made sense in our evolutionary past. But in today's bourgeois world, where stable families (the data show!) provide greater economic prospects for their members than do broken families, we must crack down on pre-marital sex, adultery, and divorce.

This is not exactly correct – it is an example of a conflict between evolutionary pressures on the individual, and evolutionary pressures on the tribe. Stable families are clearly to the evolutionary benefit of the tribe – they maximize the number of offspring per woman, however a particular (male) individual may find it advantageous to maximize the number of his offspring without regard to their care – the reproductive strategy used by insects and fish.

It is for this reason that almost all traditional societies have evolved institutions to encourage the stability of families – those tribes that didn’t have them were less successful and didn’t persist.

The Evolution of Human Nature - Part 1

For millions of years, stretching back beyond our earliest hominid ancestors, we have lived as hunter-gatherers, in tribal units. The earliest traces of agriculture date from only about 10,000 years ago, but the ancestors of most living humans have been practicing agriculture for less than 5,000 years. Even then, the social habitat was tribal – the most important social unit, and in most places the largest, was the village.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that significant numbers of people lived in cities, and not until the 20th century that their children grew up, their characters forged in the new urban habitat.

Not by coincidence, it is at this time that a new word appears in our lexicon – ennui: chronic boredom. At the same time people begin to talk about isolation – not circumstantial isolation that is caused by being alone, but existential isolation that persists even in the company of others.

The problem is that the human species is maladapted to its current habitat. We are not at home in the environment that we have created for ourselves. Instead we are plagued by a restless searching for – we don’t know what. To understand what we need we have to look at the social habitat for which we are evolved.

Kerry = Bush without conviction

David Warren says Kerry is "a political weathercock":

Mr. Kerry, though essentially a man of the left, is a political weathercock. Read carefully what he has been saying recently about the U.S. commitment in Iraq, and national interests throughout the region. He is now trying to position himself as hawk to Mr. Bush's dove, in the "war on terrorism". He is less tactful than Mr. Bush in referring to the "Islamic threat", and has been downright rude to Saudi Arabia. In press conferences among international media, he has forgotten that he can speak French.

In other words, Kerry will be the same as Bush, but without the conviction.

Bureaucracy, Democracy, Ideology and Policy

Amritas puts these words in the mouths of Hawaii’s politicians:

Your view is inherently less valid, you mere voter. We votees are superior! If we weren't, why did you vote for us? Because we were the right color?

Anything that is done by a bureaucracy is done less efficiently and with poorer quality than if it had been done by the free market (monopolies don’t count). There are two reasons for this: lack of bandwidth, and lack of external control.

Lack of bandwidth refers to the inability of decision-makers to know everything they need to know in order to make correct decisions. All big organizations suffer from this problem, and management theory is largely the study of ways of coping with it. Nevertheless, the larger the organization, the bigger the problem. This is why there is a continual turnover of companies in the market – big companies fail, and small companies sometimes succeed. It is the single advantage that small companies have over big companies.

Lack of external control refers to the promotion of bureaucrats within the system, and the inability to measure their success. In the private sector, success is clear: success equals profits. Any company that doesn’t make a profit (however small) will not be able to continue. The most profitable companies will be able to expand and grow. In successful companies, people are promoted (tend to be promoted) by how much they contribute to profitability. Companies that base promotion on something else will eventually fail.

Government bureaucracies don’t have this simple measure of success. It would be bad enough if this were the only problem, however, the problem is compounded – promotion of bureaucrats within the system, not being based on measurable success, is inevitably based on the needs of the system itself. All bureaucracies, lacking external control, no matter how noble their initial cause, will end up serving themselves.

As systems of government go, democracies have an advantage – not only because they are morally superior, but because they are structurally superior. In particular, they do have external control, however remote. Instead of the market, they have the voters. Success is not measured by profits, but by popularity. Government bureaucracy is ultimately responsible to something external to the system.

But for democracy to work, the voters have to be able to make the right decisions. My observation is that voters aren’t particularly good at doing this. However, in successful democracies, they at least want to. In places where people don’t base their vote on ideology or policy – but on clan, race, ethnicity, or some other irrelevant factor – democracy won’t work.

Detail thinkers, Holistic thinkers

I just stumbled across a long multi-party rant against Steven Den Best’s anti-email post. I now feel a bit guilty having done something similar myself. What struck me most, however, was the shallowness of the criticism. I’d like to see one of these guys try to fisk one of SDB’s posts (and you have to pick one of his central themes – I’m sure that he has a few fiskable posts)!

My point earlier was that SDB wanted to have it both ways – that he wanted, but didn’t want, people to email him – and that that’s simply not possible (I hope, though, that that post did cut out some of the chaff). But I totally understand his problem. Anyone in his situation – getting hundreds of emails a day, that are not spam – would have to deal with this issue.

The problem is even worse than most of you can imagine, because SDB is a different kind of person from most of you. The Instapundit, for example, has to deal with the same issue, probably to an even greater degree. But I would wager that it takes much less of a toll on him.

You see, there are two kinds of thinkers – detail thinkers, and holistic thinkers. Or, to be more accurate, you can place a person’s thinking somewhere along a spectrum between very detail-oriented and very holistic. Detail thinkers organize their thoughts as a collection of direct relationships: this fact is related to this other fact. Holistic thinkers construct for themselves complex inner models in which they place their facts. So, while “holistic” may sound like a touchy-feely word, and few people may think of SDB as touchy-feely, SDB is definitely an holistic thinker.

And one of the characteristics of holistic thinkers, especially very strongly holistic thinkers like SDB, is an impatience with details. The reason for this, is that holistic thinkers have trouble with (or may be incapable of) quick processing. The Instapundit probably speeds though his emails, deciding with little effort whether or not they are worthy of his attention. SDB is probably incapable of doing this – and that’s his problem.

About three-quarters of the population are detail thinkers, one-quarter holistic thinkers. Very strongly holistic thinkers like SDB are a tiny minority. Being in this minority has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that few people understand you.

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in Israel – the day begins at sundown. Here, this day is still taken seriously. There are no Memorial Day sales – in fact, the stores and restaurants are closed – nobody goes to the beach, or does anything that might be considered celebratory. At 8:00 PM and 11:00 AM the air-raid sirens, which can be heard in every inhabited place, go off. Not the rising and falling sound that signifies an attack (the memory of this sound from the first Gulf War still makes me start, sometimes, when a motorcycle goes by), but a steady single-pitched sound. At this time, everybody in the country stops what they are doing and stands at attention – for one minute in the evening, and for two the next morning. Those who are driving stop their cars and get out. During this time, the whole country comes to a stop. The traffic lights change silently while traffic stands still. Along the highways, the shoulders are crowded with cars, their occupants standing silently beside them, while the normally crowded lanes are empty. When the sirens stop, everyone gets back to their lives.

Israel is a small country. While all Americans may be linked by five degrees of separation, in Israel it is one. Any two Israelis, if they try, can almost always find someone whom they know in common. If I tried, I could probably find a personal connection to all 21,781 Israelis who have died for their country. Instead, I will limit myself to listing those whom I knew personally, who have died in the current war.

Sarah Duker was the roommate of a friend of mine. She was one of the first casualties of the Oslo War. At the time they called her, “a victim of the peace”.

Matthew Eisenfeld was Sarah’s fiancé.

Kobi Mandell was the son of my wife’s friend. The Mandells moved into my wife’s house after she married me.

Nissan Cohen was an employee of mine at Cleyal Ltd.

Ahuva Amergi was the daughter of my landlord. The contract I signed, which I still have in my desk, was written by her.

Rachel, Avishai, Zvika, and Neria Shabo were the daughter-in-law and grandchildren of my neighbor, two houses down from me.

Benjamin Blutstein was a student of a good friend of mine. I met him a few days before his death, at my friend’s memorial study-session for his father.

The following is a link to those who died in terror attacks in 2002, that I happened to come across.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. It too is a day that Israelis take seriously, while they celebrate. Most of us are not more than one generation removed from a time when six million Jews were murdered, and not one government in the world made it a priority to save them. A few years later, when a million Jews were stripped of their possessions and expelled from Arab countries, Israel was here to take them in.

“These are truths that even God can’t change”

Many years ago I took a course in symbolic logic. My professor was a man named Zoltan Domotor, who I remember with great fondness. In particular, I remember him once saying, “These are truths that even God can’t change,” referring, if I remember correctly, to modus ponens, and modus tollens – axioms which form the foundation of logic. If I understand him correctly, he was saying that it is possible to imagine a world with different laws of nature, but it is impossible to imagine a world without logic. I’m not sure that I quite agree with this – many Jewish authorities say that God made the world logical so that people could understand it – but the real point is that some truths are more basic than others.

Other truths, while not as basic as modus ponens and modus tollens, are so basic that they can be derived without the need of experimentation – they follow inexorably from their postulates. One such truth is the Theory of Relativity.

Einstein begins his original 1905 paper on Relativity with two simple postulates: There is no absolute state of rest, and the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference.

Examples of this sort [asymmetries in Maxwell's electrodynamics when applied to moving bodies - DB], together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the “light medium,” suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the “Principle of Relativity”) to the status of a postulate, and also introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.

The rest of the paper develops the Theory of Relativity step by step, without references or citations. No further information is needed – if these two postulates are true, then the theory of relativity must also be true.

Another example is evolution. Darwin spent years collecting evidence that evolution indeed accounted for the origin of species. But evolution must be true for any system in which the following two postulates are true: Descendants tend to have characteristics of their progenitor, and some characteristics are more advantageous for survival or propagation than others.

To understand the power of evolution, imagine a population in which 50% of the individuals had a characteristic that gave them a mere 1% greater chance of survival. After the first generation, their percentage of the total population will rise to 50.25% of the total population. After ten generations it will rise 52%. After a hundred generations it will rise to 73%. After a thousand generations it will rise to 92%. If this were a population of humans, and we assume an average generation of 25 years (probably too high), a thousand generations would be 25,000 years. This may seem like a long time when compared to a human lifetime, but in terms of human history it is quite short.

The real beauty of evolution, however, is that it can be applied to any system in which characteristics are inherited. In human terms, evolution acts simultaneously on the gene, the individual, the tribe, and society as a whole. Any of these (in fact, any group that persists over generations – and you can also play with the definition of generation) can be considered a “unit” of evolution.

Evolutionary theory has also been applied to economics – technologies that are more successful survive, while less successful technologies die out, and even ideas themselves – the unit of ideas being called a “meme”.

All this has been a rather lengthy jumping-off point to what I really want to explore in future posts: the nature of human nature.

Wild Cat

The refrigerator stopped working yesterday. Luckily, our freezer was almost empty. In fact, we didn’t lose anything – the nights here are still cold enough to keep food from spoiling, so we put everything outside. The only problem was the cats. Feral cats are everywhere in Israel – not surprising, since the wild ancestor of the domestic cat is native to these parts – this is the cat’s natural habitat.