Gad Saad’s Homage to the Late Harvard Biologist EO Wilson

I've followed the works of E.O. Wilson for many years, starting with his book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), which I read as a teenager. His recent death is both a great loss and an opportunity to remember his substantial contributions to evolutionary biology.

Gad Saad offers this excellent homage to E.O. Wilson's work. One thing that stood out to me is Saad's coinage of the term "human reticence effect." Here is Saad's explanation of this critically important term (and phenomenon):

The human reticence effect: It's perfectly okay to apply evolutionary principles to explain one million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine species, but if you apply to study one species called humans, well then, you are Himmler and you're a nazi. And so E.O. Wilson, in daring to apply incredibly rigorous and profound evolutionary principles to explain incredible animal behavior, including some very puzzling animal behavior, once he used that framework to apply it to human behavior, then he was a persona non grata which, of course, is exactly what you see 45 years later with evolutionary psychologists. If you apply a principle to study the evolution of mating behavior of the salamander then bruh, you're a great scientist. If you apply the exact same mechanism the same methodology, the same epistemology, to study the evolution of human mating in humans, well then, come on bro that's just faux science. It's "nazi science" it's "pseudoscience." I have written about why people have these emotional and cognitive obstacles to accept the application of evolutionary principles to the study of human behavior in much of my scientific work.

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Speaking Truth to Hate

Abigail Schrier recently deliver an impassioned speech to various organizations at Princeton. Her speech included this quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down."

I invite you to read her entire presentation. I responded in the comments:

You've got me thinking, what will I do next time I'm asked to provide my "pronoun"? Perhaps I'll say something like: "To do that would suggest that hundreds of years of biological science got it wrong in fundamental ways. Instead, you are free to assume which one of the two sexes I am." Thank you for your heartfelt essay/speech. Your money quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down." I'm trying to do what you do on a much smaller scale--you take 1,000 times more abuse than me and you seem to be thriving. This seems to prove your statement that speaking the truth to those who hate you is freeing. You, along with a couple dozen other highly visible people who have given themselves permission to speak what they believe, have given me more courage to say "no" whenever the the SJW tribe demands that I confirm that up is down. Thank you for your hard work leading up to your book and ever since. BTW, I am a classical liberal without a political home, yet you speak for me and many others like me. Please don't overlook that. Yours is not a "conservative" position. It is a thoughtful position anchored in reality.

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Mother Trees that Care For their Children Trees

What I'm currently reading: Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard (2021). Simard makes a stunning claim. Here's an excerpt from her introduction:

My queries started from a place of solemn concern for the future of our forests but grew into an intense curiosity, one clue leading to another, about how the forest was more than just a collection of trees.

In this search for the truth, the trees have shown me their perceptiveness and responsiveness, connections and conversations. What started as a legacy, and then a place of childhood home, solace, and adventure in western Canada, has grown into a fuller understanding of the intelligence of the forest and, further, an exploration of how we can regain our respect for this wisdom and heal our relationship with nature.

One of the first clues came while I was tapping into the messages that the trees were relaying back and forth through a cryptic underground fungal network. When I followed the clandestine path of the conversations, I learned that this network is pervasive through the entire forest floor, connecting all the trees in a constellation of tree hubs and fungal links. A crude map revealed, stunningly, that the biggest, oldest timbers are the sources of fungal connections to regenerating seedlings. Not only that, they connect to all neighbors, young and old, serving as the linchpins for a jungle of threads and synapses and nodes. I’ll take you through the journey that revealed the most shocking aspect of this pattern—that it has similarities with our own human brains. In it, the old and young are perceiving, communicating, and responding to one another by emitting chemical signals. Chemicals identical to our own neurotransmitters. Signals created by ions cascading acrossfungal membranes.

The older trees are able to discern which seedlings are their own kin.The old trees nurture the young ones and provide them food and water just as we do with our own children. It is enough to make one pause, take a deep breath, and contemplate the social nature of the forest and how this is critical for evolution. The fungal network appears to wire the trees for fitness. And more. These old trees are mothering their children.

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Facts as Hate Speech

Colin Wright is a biologist who often writes about sex and gender. He often pisses off people by claiming that there are only two sexes (and see here). But now, according to Instagram, he has also engaged in "hate speech." Here is his Tweet where he explains what happened at Instagram:

You can read the entire thread here.

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