My Cat Died and I’m Feeling Old

This morning my cat was stiff as cardboard. He'd died overnight. It was not much of a surprise, as he has refused to eat for 26 days. He basically died of AIDS, the feline variety (FIV). So I've been a bit distracted for about a month, and now the sword has fallen. I posted a short photo essay of his short life here, if you are curious. Then I read today's XKCD: XKCD is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 So I've outlived several cats, and kids born after too many events I experienced are old enough to bring them to mind. I've lived on the same block for as long as it took me to go from birth to two college degrees. I predate manned space flight and weather satellites. My first record player had both 16 and 78, as well as 33 and 45. I have changed tubes in my radio. 1984 still feels like it should be the future. I celebrated the American bicentennial. I still have a Vote McGovern button from just after my parents got their citizenships. No real point, today.

Continue ReadingMy Cat Died and I’m Feeling Old

Regulation as a prerequisite to meaningful cooperation

While I was reading up on free market fundamentalism, and I happened across an intriguing article by biologist David Sloan Wilson. As I started reading this article, I was wondering this: Even assuming that a “free market” works wonders in small societies, can societies be scaled up in size guided only by the free market, without formal regulations? D.S. Wilson argues that this is the wrong question. All societies are regulated. The only question is how they are regulated. D.S. Wilson notes that humans are incredibly cooperative, especially in “small face-to-face groups.” In fact, we regulate each other’s conduct so easily in small groups that “we don't even notice it.” This gives us the illusion that there is no regulation keeping things in check. All well-functioning groups, large and small, human and non-human, are highly regulated, however. Small groups often seem to work well without formal regulation, but free market fundamentalists (and others) confuse this lack of formal regulation for the total lack of regulation.

This self-organizing ability to function as cooperative groups is "so perfectly natural" because it evolved by a long process of natural selection, in humans no less than bees. By the same token, functioning as large cooperative groups is not natural. Large human groups scarcely existed until the advent of agriculture a mere 10 thousand years ago. This means that new cultural constructions are required that interface with our genetically evolved psychology for human society to function adaptively at a large scale.

Wilson’s approach makes intuitive sense. Throughout the Pleistocene (from about 2 MYA until 10,000 years ago), people lived in small groups. They lacked written language and written laws. They used unwritten techniques (presumably customs, habits, ostracism and various other informal methods of social control and punishment) to coordinate community efforts and punish cheaters. These informal methods worked well enough and long enough that we can now sit here and ponder how well they worked. But just because those ancient forms of regulations weren’t written down doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. And it doesn't mean that ancient societies weren't tightly regulated. Just as human households are highly regulated without formal rules, so are small societies. So are non-human societies:

These social preferences go beyond our own species. Cooperation and cheating are behavioral options for all social species, even bacteria, and cooperation survives only to the extent that it is protected against cheating. The eternal conflict between cooperation and cheating even takes place within our own bodies, in the form of genes and cell lineages that manage to game the system at the expense of the organism upon which they depend. We call them diseases, but they are really the failure of a vast system of regulations that enable us to function as organisms as well as we do . . .

What about the eusocial insects, such as ants, wasps and bees? Wilson would argue that a well-functioning hive doesn’t simply happen, and it certainly isn’t driven by something as simplistic as the “self-interest” of individual bees:

[B]ee behavior cannot be reduced to a single principle of self-interest, any more than human behavior. There are solid citizens and cheaters even among the bees, and the cheaters are held at bay only by a regulatory system called "policing" by the biologists who study them.

According to D.S. Wilson, you’ll find regulation (informal or formal) everywhere you find a well-functioning society of living organisms. Further, a human society based merely on individual selfishness can’t self-regulate because we can no longer depend on selfishness to be well-tuned or consistent thanks to Daniel Kahneman’s brilliant destruction of rational choice theory. Regulation runs a continuum from informal to formal. It is not like regulation itself just showed up for the first time in modern human societies. D.S. Wilson argues that in all large-scale societies, “regulation is required or cooperation will disappear, like water draining from a bathtub.” Without some form of regulation, all societies become rudderless and unproductive. Therefore, there must always be some form of regulation. The question to decide is “What kind of regulation?”

Let there be no more talk of unfettered competition as a moral virtue. Cooperative social life requires regulation. Regulation comes naturally for small human groups but must be engineered for large human groups. Some forms of regulation will work well and others will work poorly. We can argue at length about smart vs. dumb regulation but the concept of no regulation should be forever laid to rest . . . We also need to change the metaphors that guide behavior in everyday life to avoid the disastrous consequences of our current metaphor-guided behaviors. That is why the metaphor of the invisible hand should be declared dead.

I would agree that the “invisible hand” is shorthand for the informal regulations that have been since prehistoric times to facilitate social coordination of small primitive societies. Rather than declaring the “invisible hand” to be dead, though, it might be more accurate to suggest that the “invisible hand” lives on in modern societies, quietly and substantially supplementing our formal regulations. Seen in this way, the “invisible hand,” used in the complete absence of consciously planned social regulations and laws, is not a method for creating or maintaining a complex functioning modern society. Rather, it is the path back to the Pleistocene.

Continue ReadingRegulation as a prerequisite to meaningful cooperation

David Sloan Wilson suggests truth and reconciliation process for the group selection combatants

I've repeatedly posted on the concept of "group selection." One of the biggest proponents of group selection," David Sloan Wilson, doesn't believe the concept has had a fair hearing by biologists. He's got a point. Many of the discussions of group selection theory have been marked by name-calling rather than calm scientific discussion. D.S. Wilson has now taken the unusual step of publishing his defense of group selection in a series of posts at Huffington Post. In the first installment (published December 27, 2008), D.S. Wilson advocates for a "truth and reconciliation" process.

It is precisely because I am such an idealist about science that I am calling for a truth and reconciliation process for group selection. Something has to change. The controversy didn't need to drag on for decades and it will continue for decades more unless something deliberate is done. The goal is to be constructive--to heal rather than aggravate old wounds. Yet, even healing can be painful, for scientific conflict no less than political conflict. Another reason to initiate a truth and reconciliation process is because group selection is arguably the single most important concept for understanding the nature of politics from an evolutionary perspective.
I learned of D.S.Wilson's Huffpo series today while attending a lecture by Mark Borello, a historian of science who was giving a talk at Washington University. The title to his talk says it all: "Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection from Darwin to E.O. Wilson." In the post-talk discussion, a general consensus was reached that the pro- and anti- group selection contingents have been talking past each other for decades, yet it is difficult to sort out why they argue so passionately. Don't both groups have access to the same facts? The philosophers at today's talk suspect that the problem is that the different camps come to the debate armed with different conceptions of causation. That seems correct to me too, but . . . still . . . why can't we see eye to eye? Or, at least, why can't we agree on what it is we disagree about? What is the main difficulty with group selection? D.S.Wilson presents it in his second installment at Huffpo:

[C]onsider some standard examples of social adaptations: the good Samaritan, the soldier who heroically dies in battle, the honest person who cannot tell a lie. We admire these virtues and call them social adaptations because they are good for others and for society as a whole--but they are not locally advantageous. Charitable, heroic, and honest individuals do not necessarily survive and reproduce better than their immediate neighbors who are stingy, cowardly, and deceptive.

Do you see the problem? The individuals who exhibit altruism often don't pass on their genes to the next generation. Their good works, which undoubtedly improve the prospects of the others in their group, often fail to benefit the altruistic individual, evolutionarily speaking.

Most behaviors that we call prosocial require time, energy, and risk on the part of the prosocial individual. Most behaviors that we call antisocial deliver an immediate benefit to the antisocial individual. If most antisocial behaviors are locally advantageous and most prosocial behaviors are locally disadvantageous, then we have an enormous problem explaining the nature of prosociality, including the nature of human morality, from an evolutionary perspective.

The above paragraphs are the background of group selection in a nutshell. The contentiousness of the issue suggests why D.S.Wilson is suggesting a "truth and reconciliation process" rather than a calm review of scientific facts. He has already published 14 installments at Huffpo (you can see the list of links here). Or, if you want to get a big dose all at once, consider reading "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology," by D.S. Wilson and E.O.Wilson (no relation). It was published in December 2007 by the Quarterly Review of Biology and it can be found online here. BTW, D.S. Wilson's co-author, eminent entomologist E.O.Wilson, now 80-years old, has made a recent dramatic conversion to group selection, after being a group selection skeptic most of his life. Here is what E.O. Wilson said in an interview published by Discover Magazine:

EOW: I'm taking the idea of kin selection, and I've critiqued it. Kin selection is the idea that cooperation arises, especially in the eusocial insects—bees, wasps, ants, termites—because of individuals favoring collateral kin: not just Mom and Dad or your offspring but, just as important, brother, sister, cousin, and so on.

D: So you cooperate with close kin because it helps get some of your shared genetic heritage into future generations.

EOW: I found myself moving away from the position I'd taken 30 years ago, which has become the standard theory. What I've done is to say that maybe collateral kin selection is not so important. These ants and termites in the early stages of evolution—they can't recognize kin like that. There's very little evidence that they're determining who's a brother, a sister, a cousin, and so on. They're not acting to favor collateral kin. The new view that I'm proposing is that it was group selection all along, an idea first roughly formulated by Darwin.

D: The notion of group selection is heresy, is it not, in the current thinking about evolution?

EOW: Yes. I'm being provocative again, because this is a radical departure.

To jump ahead, the general solution (according to D.S.Wilson and E.O.Wilson) was anticipated by Darwin, and it consists of a

return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwin's solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology": Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.

This battle over the viability of group selection theory is heating up, just as it has been heating up for decades. This is a fascinating topic for the reasons D.S.Wilson suggests: group selection theory is potentially a powerful tool for understanding those two perenially hot topics: religion and politics.

I'll be working my way through D.S.Wilson's Huffpo articles and posting on them from time to time. From my reading of D.S. Wilson's prior works (including Darwin's Cathedral), he is a terrific writer and thinker. Even if he can't hit the grand slam, I'm hoping that he can put his finger on exactly why the opposing camps disagree. That would be a good start, indeed.

Continue ReadingDavid Sloan Wilson suggests truth and reconciliation process for the group selection combatants

The Onion: Obama’s plan gives seniors choice of how to die

According to The Onion, President Obama has now come forth with details regarding his death panels for senior citizens:

"Once again, let me be perfectly clear," Obama continued. "Seniors, rest easy knowing that I will never, under any circumstance, sign a bill that doesn't give you the option of being murdered by my administration in a manner of your choosing. I promise you that."

Continue ReadingThe Onion: Obama’s plan gives seniors choice of how to die

I’m behaving like someone who isn’t getting an answer to his question

This is a wild ride, but a lot was put onto the table. Even Dylan Ratigan's phrase "corporate communism. Look what happens when you put Dylan Ratigan, Betsy McCaughey and Anthony Weiner into the same room:

Continue ReadingI’m behaving like someone who isn’t getting an answer to his question