Humanism

In this entry, unless otherwise noted, humanism will refer to the belief that humans have special status (i.e., superiority) among species (in the same spirit as the way sexism refers to views about the sexes, and racism refers to views about races).

Science has gradually chipped away at humanism.  Evidence for heliocentrism, evolution, the cognitive map of bees, super organisms, the evolution of culture, and evidence against dualism and free will, to name some examples, have had a big impact.   However, humanism still persists in various ways throughout our culture.

Consider language.  Here are some humanist words/concepts:

• ‘natural‘ – If humans build a skyscraper it’s unnatural, but if bees build a beehive it’s natural.  If humans clean a new environment with antibacterial soap, it’s unnatural, but if Jewel Wasps do it it’s natural (note: ants also make antibiotics).  And so on.
  All living and non-living things affect the environment around them.  Humans have their own niches in that regard (in terms of how we do it), but so does everything else.
  
• ‘humanist’ / ‘humanism’ – Sometimes people use the word ‘humanism’ as a synonym for being nice.  That definition of humanism is itself humanist (the bad kind), because it suggests that humans have some special ability for kindness.
• ‘animals’ – The word ‘animals’ often implies only non-human animals.

Humanist thinking also includes greatly overestimating how many things are uniquely human.

It’s great to see people like Neil Shubin trying to get people to see the evolution of living things as a small part of the evolution of the universe.  Humanism will be difficult to defeat, however, because we have egos interacting with paradigm shift resistance.

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Broken BS detectors

Hopefully it is not controversial to say that most humans have BS detectors that do not work very well.  How often, for example, does someone tell you something that you immediately know isn’t true (which can be demonstrated with two seconds of googling or going to snopes)?

I think it is very difficult for logical brain people to understand that when social brain people say they believe X, they are not saying that they’ve given it a lot of thought, have looked at the evidence, and decided that X was true.  Saying that they believe X is telling you what social group they belong to — it’s throwing up a gang sign.

Given that humans have large social brains, perhaps it is not surprising that having good BS detectors is not important.  To bond with your in-group, it’s important to trust them.

However, it is not hard to imagine people having good BS detectors and signaling trust.  If you think of it in terms of multilevel selection, you could reap the group benefits by signalling agreement, while enjoying the individual benefits by not believing in non-sense.   So why doesn’t that seem to be how our brains evolved?

I think the problem here is that in cases where the BS detector would benefit you individually, pretending to agree with the group would harm them (costing you the group benefit).  For example, if your group says that everyone should eat berries that you know are poison, you will not get the group benefits if your group members all die (while you secretly spit out the berries).  On the other hand, if their beliefs are more benign (like belief in a rain god), you would not get much (if any) individual benefit from awareness that what they believe is false.

Without multilevel selection pressure, I think that group benefits of bonding via trust trump individual benefits of being a critical thinker.  Thus, broken BS detectors.

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What I learned in 2011

At the end of a year, people like to make lists of top movies, books, etc.  What I plan to do instead is write about the things I learned each year. So, here are some brief highlights of things I learned in 2011:

• Epigenetics, toolkit genes, genetic switches and how most conversations about heritability are flawed.  I learned a lot about imprinted genes from Charlene Lewis (especially BDNF), about toolkit genes from reading Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful (which I highly recommend) and about all of these topics from (some of) Robert Sapolsky’s lectures on human behavioral biology (which are fantastic, and free on youtube and itunes).
• Social belonging sits atop the hierarchy of needs.  Sister Y introduced this idea with her blog here: “the need for social belonging is more pressing than the need for food.”  I have noticed that people are far more likely to want to kill (themselves or someone else) when they have been socially shamed, rejected, or ostracized.  NYU Psychology Professor James Gilligan noted:”The emotional cause that I have found just universal among people who commit serious violence, lethal violence is the phenomenon of feeling overwhelmed by feelings of shame and humiliation. I’ve worked with the most violent people our society produces who tend to wind up in our prisons. I’ve been astonished by how almost always I get the same answer when I ask the question—why did you assault or even kill that person? And the answer I would get back in one set of words or another but almost always meaning exactly the same thing would be, ‘Because he disrespected me,’ or ‘He disrespected my mother,’ or my wife, my girlfriend, whatever.”

  In the same program, Pieter Spierenburg pointed out that murder in defense of your reputation used to be viewed as a pretty minor offense: “Originally around 1300 the regular punishment for an honourable killing would be a fine or perhaps a banishment, whereas punishment for a treacherous murder would be execution.”

• Evidence in favor of our promiscuous past, the most interesting of which is sperm competition.  I was introduced to this topic in Sex at Dawn.
• Life cycles of parasites.  I learned about this from Robert Sapolsky and This Week in Parasitism.  I particularly love Toxoplasma and fish tapeworm.
• Lead and crime.  There are a lot of theories about why crime has declined since the 1990s.  These theories include:  legalization of abortion, tougher sentencing, end of crack epidemic, etc.  But I think the most interesting one is the reduction in lead exposure.  Total lead exposure was a non-decreasing function  from 1900 to 1970.  Lead exposure from gasoline increased sharply from 1930 to 1970.   We know that lead exposure, especially chronic exposure, has neurotoxic effects.  It can be particularly damaging to the frontal lobe.  Thus, we would expect that kids who were exposed to lead would be more likely to engage in impulse crimes when they are young adults.   Jessica Reyes documented the link between lead exposure and crime in the US in this paper.   The graph below, taken from her paper, overlays the lead exposure curve and crime rate curve (with a 22 year lag for lead exposure, because 22 is the average age at which violent crimes are committed, so we would expect childhood exposure to lead to have the largest impact approximately 20 years later):
  
  I think this is pretty compelling, and a fascinating story.  The League of Nations banned lead pain in 1922, but the US failed to adopt the measure.  The US didn’t take serious action until the 1970s.  To this day, lead paint exposure is a serious problem for people living in old homes in large cities.  I would love to see the lead exposure / crime link investigated using data from other countries.
• Religion. I learned about the history of god, its relation to changes in civilization (how transitions from polytheism to monotheism paralleled changes from foraging to farming, egalitarianism to hierarchy), lots of cool, related neuroscience, etc.  This is work in progress.  Hopefully I will have more to say about it next year.
• I found Sister Y’s views on nature very insightful.

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Sin is bad: self-fulfilling proofs

Example 1:  Religious folks say “Divorce is a sin.  It’s not part of god’s plan.”  etc.   Then, when someone gets divorced, they are criticized, judged and/or shunned.  This contributes to kids from divorced families not doing as well.  These data are then used as proof that “god’s plan” is best.

Example 2:  Teens are told “Sex before marriage is bad.  The bible says to wait until marriage.”  Then, when these teens have sex, they feel dirty, guilty, impure.  People then say “see, you had sex and you feel bad. You should follow god’s plan.”

Example 3:  People are told that homosexuality is a sin.  This results in gay people not feeling good about who they are.  They might end up depressed or suicidal.  This is used as evidence that homosexuality is wrong:  “they wouldn’t have been depressed if they had followed god’s plan.”

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Circumcision: an unexpected pattern

Both male and female genital mutilation (circumcision) is as prevalent as it is, in part, due to a desire to restrict sexual activity via a reduction in sexual pleasure.  For example, Dr John Kellogg (the cereal guy) recommended male circumcision as a remedy for masturbation; female circumcision is often performed to increase the chances of fidelity.

In the US there has generally been greater social pressure on girls to remain ‘pure’ and not express themselves sexually.  Promiscuous women (“sluts”) have been treated much more harshly than promiscuous males (“players/studs”).

So, we might expect circumcision rates to be much higher for girls compared to boys.  Instead, female circumcision is illegal and male circumcision is the norm (75% prevalence).   What’s going on here?

I suspect that circumcision rates would plummet if we just dropped the euphemism.  If doctors’ asked “have you decided if you want to mutilate [name of your baby boy]‘s genitals?” instead of “have you decided if you want to have [name of your baby boy] circumcised?”, they probably would get a different response.

Dropping a euphemism can be seen as having an agenda.  Nearly everyone is fine with calling female circumcision ‘genital mutilation,’ because we’re horrified by the practice (probably in part because we associate it with developing nations).  However, if a doctor referred to male circumcision as mutilation, I suspect that some people would say the doctor has a liberal agenda.

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Perfectionist parent?

If we choose to create a life — a life that is capable of both joy and suffering — then it is our obligation as parents to help our offspring have happy, fulfilling lives.  Our children do not owe us.  They did not choose to be brought into the world.

Not surprisingly, when a parent makes a child feel unworthy of love, society thinks poorly of that parent.  One example of this is perfectionist parents, who pressure their kids and set unreachable standards.  The general consensus is that children who feel undeserving of love need therapy to learn to love and accept themselves.

I have noticed that many people who believe in God feel unworthy of the love that they believe God has for them.   Religious folks often say things such as “what did I do to deserve God’s love?”

So, is God like a perfectionist parent to them? Is God raising or lowering their self esteem?

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folie à plusieurs

Silly naive children

If Rex, the family dog, dies, parents might tell their children “I know it’s sad, but Rex is in doggy heaven right now.”  This is a comforting lie, and parents know that children are naive enough to believe it.

Sticking with the pet theme, if parents’ decide to have the dog put to sleep, they might tell their kids that they took the dog to a farm where it can run around freely all day.

We all recognize that ‘put to sleep’ is a euphemism for death.  As adults,  we also know that ‘doggy heaven’ and ‘took the dog to a farm’ are also euphemisms for ‘Rex is in a permanent state of non-existence.’ Yet, we present the latter two euphemisms to children as if they are actual real things, just like we do with Santa Claus.

I picture parents talking to each other after the kids are in bed:  “Can you believe they fell for that?  I’m glad children are so trusting.”  Those silly naive children will believe anything!

Yet, even though we are aware that we tell children comforting lies, we do not seem to recognize that we might have been told the same type of comforting lies about life and death.  For example, religious folks might tell us that people do not really die, they just move on into a new state.  They go to people heaven!  Picture your local pastor as the parents telling kids about doggy heaven or the farm.

Mass delusion

Folie à deux refers to a psychiatric condition where two people share a delusional belief.  If the belief sounds crazy enough to the majority of people, then we recognize them as suffering from a psychiatric disorder.  Mass delusion seems more difficult to recognize.

Consider the following groups:

1. Heaven’s Gate group: believed that a space craft was trailing the comet Hale-Bopp and needed to commit suicide so that their souls could board the craft.

2. 9/11 conspiracy theorists:  believe that 9/11 was an inside job

3. Cult of Scientology: a financial pyramid scheme posing as a religion

4. Any popular religion

What are the differences between these groups?  Each of these groups believe/believed some things that we cannot test, and other things that we have tested and disproved.  Members of each group have their beliefs reinforced by other members of the group.   Why are some groups higher status than others?  I’ll take a stab at it, in order:

1.  We don’t like groups that advocate suicide.  Even people who believe we have a spirit that lives on cannot shake the strong desire to survive as a human (few phenotypes are more strongly correlated with genetic fitness than the desire to survive)

2. 9/11 happened recently. It’s pretty easy to make a strong evidence-based case that the Pentagon wasn’t hit by a missile or that the WTC wasn’t brought down by explosives.

3.  Religions invented in the last century suffer from a lack of social tradition inheritance and mystery.

4.  Most old, popular religions tell us things that we want to hear (we will live on, and there will be less suffering in the next world) and were created before the invention of image and voice recorders.  It’s easier to imagine huge miracles in times before there were cameras.

Smile for the camera

In general I think we have strong desire to delude ourselves into thinking the world is a better place than it actually is.

Consider:

• we have probably formed more euphemisms than dysphemisms:  a euphemism is a way of making something not sound as bad as it is
• we like optimists better than pessimists:  an optimist thinks things will work out better than they probably will
• we would rather see pictures of smiling people than frowning people:  someone smiling for a photo probably appears happier than they actually are

This does not seem like a bad strategy — I’m happier if I think the world is better place than it actually is.  Nevertheless, it’s interesting the line between perceptions about delusion and sanity, and how it relates to popularity and our needs.

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Should we prefer God?

This recent post reminded me of something that I’ve thought about before.  First, an excerpt:

Fifteen thousand years ago, our ancestors bred dogs to serve man. In merely 150 centuries, we shaped collies to herd our sheep and pekingese to sit in our emperor’s sleeves. Wild wolves can’t understand us, but we teach their domesticated counterparts tricks for fun. And, most importantly of all, dogs get emotional pleasure out of serving their master. When my family’s terrier runs to the kennel, she does so with blissful, self-reinforcing obedience.

When I hear amateur philosophers ponder the meaning of life, I worry humans suffer from the same embarrassing shortcoming.

…

I’d expect us to shout “life is without mandated meaning!” with lungs full of joy. There are no rules we have to follow, only the consequences we choose for us and our fellow humans. Huzzah!

But most humans want nothing more than to surrender to a powerful force. …

Suppose we did not have any evidence for or against the existence of God.  But, tomorrow the answer is going to be revealed.  What should we be rooting for?  What would make us happier?  To find out that we were created by God, or to find out there is no God?

Do answers to these questions correlate with belief, and, if so, what’s the direction of the causality?  If we prefer God does that affect how we see the evidence (motivated cognition)?  Or, do we first establish a belief about God and then start rationalizing to convince ourselves that the way things are is the way we prefer them?  I have heard a few agnostics and atheists say they wish there was God.  I don’t recall theists saying they wish God didn’t exist (although that kind of thinking is forbidden, right?)

Personally, I LOVE the freedom and uncertainty that comes with not having a conscious designer.  Why do some people prefer God?   Is immortality the only selling point?  (I’m sincerely curious)

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Self-serving credit and blame

In An American Tragedy, Dreiser writes:

For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control.  They would seek for something else — some malign, treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays — and find it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart, which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does not want to control it.

Religionists tend to credit God with the good things and blame the bad things on external influences (e.g., demons). I suppose this is a type of group-serving bias (where the group is people who believe in God).  Similarly, people tend to give themselves credit for success and blame bad outcomes on external influences (self-serving bias).

I suspect that most of the time we are not even aware we are doing it.  This is probably another example of self-deception having a fitness advantage.  One theory is “humans deceive themselves in order to better deceive others and thus have an advantage over them.”  Here, if we deceive ourselves we gain confidence (either in our belief about God or in our ability).  We also end up signaling our confidence and ability to others, potentially increasing our value to them as someone to associate with.

“Only the unimaginative carpenter fails to blame his tools.”  –Errol Morris

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The great debate

Hi Kids!  I’m TV’s Kirk Cameron!  I’m here to talk to you today about creation.  Now, you might have heard some crazy stories from your friends who try to convince you that God doesn’t exist.  But did you know the existence of God can be proven, 100 percent, absolutely, without the use of faith?  It’s really cool.  Check this out.

Look at the computer in front of you.  How did it get there?  Did it just appear?  Of course not.  Someone had to have created it. I don’t think any scientist would argue against that.   Now, use that same common sense to think about how life began.  Did life just appear out of nowhere?  Of course not.  We’re all here, which means there had to be a designer. It’s really pretty simple.

a

Uh, Kirk, using your ‘common sense,’  isn’t the existence of God proof that someone designed him?

a

Kirk:  Good question Lisa!  That’s what’s so cool!  You see, God is eternal.  He transcends time.  So ‘who made God?’ is a question that doesn’t really make sense.  No one could have created him.

Lisa:  But I could just say that this computer wasn’t designed because it is eternal and transcends time.

Kirk:  First of all, that would be  a pretty silly thing to say.  We know computers didn’t just appear out of thin air.  Not to mention the fact that we could find out where your computer was made and visit the factory.

Lisa:  Let me get this straight.  Your 100% proof that God exists is that all things had to have a designer, but you also say that God exists and didn’t have a designer.  And your proof that God exists and didn’t have a designer is that someone must have designed everything?

–

Tune in for Part II, when Kirk explains flaws in the theory of evolution.

Related links here and here.

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