DNA And Evolution

 Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them: "This discrepancy tells us that the pairs’ similar appearances have more to do with their DNA than with the environments they grew up in. That surprised Dr. Esteller, who had expected to see a bigger environmental influence.

Evolution and Freewill, Co-operative Societies - Yet To Read

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3746998/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049057/
3. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/108006076/

https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/how-evolution-explains-the-emergence-of-freewill-in-humans - "Free will is just another kind of cause. The causal process by which a person decides whether to marry is simply different from the processes that cause balls to roll downhill, ice to melt in the hot sun, a magnet to attract nails, or a stock price to rise and fall."

Additional reading 

• https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/free-will-and-biology/ 
• https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/: Lovely. Largely what I think!
• https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/drove-not-drived/544595/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/farming-hunter-gatherers-labiodentals-linguistics/584950/: Evolution in language
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/unprecedentedly-thorough-evolution-experiment/581521/
  

Evolution Strategy

Solving the Evolutionary Mystery of Cannibal Spiders 

Human Instinct And Freewill

Human Instinct by Kenneth R Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Instinct-Evolved-Reason-Consciousness/dp/1476790264

This is a very nice book with interesting excerpts from other relevant sources. Some content in this book and the references mentioned below resonate with my thoughts.

Additional reading:

1. Freewill by Sam Harris
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

Thumb Goes Haywire

What Whales and Dolphins Left Behind for Life in the Ocean  

Quote from this article: 

In general, Dr. Hiller said, the rule of thumb in evolution is that genes that are not actively being used tend to disappear or be inactivated. But the new study suggests that the same process can purge the genome of genes that would make a new way of living too dangerous, extra baggage that emerging species — which became today’s whales, porpoises, dolphins — were better off without.

The above quote seems to indicate that evolution has a design behind it, that is it seeks to address a purpose. And that if something is not useful then shed it. 

While I have suspected this, all definitions of evolution state that mutation and other events that cause evolution strictly are random and that there is no goal that evolution heads towards. 

Which is true?

Man And Animals - Accepting As They Are

Sometimes we wonder why someone behaves so differently, absurd it might seem to us.

Of course we realize later that to the other person their behavior was perfectly justified. 

It's just that we are unable at times to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Now why is this so difficult? Do the shoes bite? Is the size not same as ours? This is a question that's been on my mind for a long time   Why do we, each one of us, think and feel so differently from others?

To address this question we have to look at cats, dogs, birds, fish etc. Why do dogs behave differently from cats? Or birds from fish? It's because each is a different species. Cats won't behave like dogs nor like fish or birds. Each of these has evolved differently and each has its own nature. Two different species aren't similar.

When it comes to people, we can take this analogy even farther. Each person is like a different species even if all people have 2 legs, 2 hands,2 eyes, 1 mouth etc. Each person is born with a unique set of genes and has had a unique set of experiences in their life.

The genes that you were born with and the experiences that you faced in your life hitherto are different from those that I was born with and faces. You are logically expected to be different, hence, from me in your values, your thoughts, your conditioning, your responses to a situation.

This is so logical, yet so difficult for my heart to accept. It's kind boggling.

We don't say a crocodile or a lion or a shark is cruel. We use different words to describe them. We may say they are carnivores or that they eat so many kilos of meat a day or that they are cannibals and eat their own siblings. But we do not use the word sweet, cruel etc to describe them.

Words like sweet (as in nature) or cruel are used to describe only those whose nature is quite different from the average of their species.

You don't have a vegetarian shark, nor a lion that is a sanyasi etc. Sharks are alike, at least to us they seem that way. 

Maybe, if a shark were to write a blog such as this it may understand that each shark is different from another and hence it may also use differentiating words such as cruel, brave, sweet etc to describe other sharks. 

But to us human beings, all sharks are similar, all lions are similar and so on. Here we use neutral or objective words to describe them - "eat meat", "have large teeth" etc.

But to describe each of us, human beings, we frequently use subjective words. Words that help describe how different each of us is.

But imagine if, as I wrote earlier, each of us is a different species. We would then describe others around us the same way we describe other species. 

Words such as galling, obnoxious, saintly, liar (or sweet / cruel) etc would hardly be used to describe other people. We would describe others the same way we describe other species.

So what's the big deal?

We do not expect other species to change their nature, language, religion, character etc. We know it's not possible. If we understand and accept that each one of us is really a different species, we won't expect others to change. We wont have New Year resolutions.

Does this mean we would love everyone and accept everyone? Yes, the same way we love all peacocks, whales and snakes. Meaning we understand each species has certain characteristics which will not change any time soon. We decide which ones to be close to and which ones to avoid. And which ones to watch from a distance with a binocular. 

Can we digest this thought? So difficult. 

It's our social nature that makes it difficult to accept this. We WANT to love some people and hate some others. Maybe the human beings who are least social can understand the perspective of treating other human beings as just another species - just different from themselves, nothing inherently good or bad. 

Is this a good idea or bad - to treat other people as another species?
We have come across people who would suggest to us, when we are having relationship issues, to take people as they are. What does this mean essentially? Is it not the same as treating others as another species - in the sense that we ought not expect them to change?

Which of us treats other people as they are? Those of us who are open or those who are judgemental? Does treating another human as another species imply alienation or acceptance?

End note
Just imagine. The expression "we human beings" would mean nothing if we treat other people as other species.

Puzzle: Network, Evolution, SIM, Sperm

I have a Nokia dual SIM feature phone (not Android) in which I have inserted one Airtel and one BSNL SIM card.

Now, since this morning I find that my Airtel SIM in the phone is not enabled. While BSNL is fine. It's not as though the Airtel Network is unavailable but the whole SIM is disabled at home. When i go about 4kms away from home, the Airtel SIM gets enabled and everything is normal. I tried this twice today - 4km in two different directions. The phone worked fine but come closer to home, it gets disabled.


I checked another phone with an Airtel SIM. As expected it works perfectly fine in my house while at the same time the Airtel SIM in Nokia is disabled.

The question is why.

Is it a SIM problem? Is it a phone problem? Is it a network problem?

Should i change my house? Because of an issue with a Rs1000 phone or a Rs25 SIM issue? That doesn't make sense.

Is it possible that the real culprit is the BSNL SIM which disables the Airtel SIM near my house intentionally - so that I give up in frustration and end up porting my Airtel to BSNL?

I am reminded of a certain behavior in some animals. Males in certain species, before copulating with a female, remove any residual sperm residing inside the female in order to ensure that the female is impregnated with its own sperm and not by that of the other male. 

Once we move into a house, don't we clean it to ensure that nothing of the previous tenants remains? Exactly the same.

The only males that seem to clean house are males of certain species - during, rather before, copulation. 

Is BSNL doing something similar in my phone?

Today, 15th July, I visited Airtel showroom. I got a fix from them. They changed my network settings on the phone from automatic to manual and that seemed to solve the issue. 

I guess BSNL didn't do any hanky panky. Whew...

As to why automatic Network selection should create some hanky panky in my phone, I have no clue.

Freewill Defined

Freewill is proven if a person can be directed to achieve an (actually many) end results over a long period of time. The ability to work backwards from an objective is an indication of freewill. 

But such objective (s) should be contrary to what a person normally believes or follows or is capable of. Hence such objectives would be stressful to any person and will usually not be in sync or even be out of sync with their values.

Someone once defined our values as those that we will continue to follow even if the whole world were against them. 

Hence freewill is the capacity to perform things which are counter to our values over a long period of time. The extent to which we can perform this is the extent of freewill. Or, in a lighter vein is an indication of the extent of our values.

These values are embodied in our S1. For an intro into S1, S2 read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.htm. And as Daniel Kahnemann says, it's very effortful to run counter to our S1.

Stress Induced Mutation

After writing about need (Venus) based evolution that I suspected earlier here, I read this:
https://www.wired.com/2014/01/evolution-evolves-under-pressure/ "Cells actually decide to turn up their mutation rate when they are poorly adapted to the environment. "

X ray on bacteria in the 1950 created consistent replicable mutations. I believe that stress and need cause mutation. Hence animals high in the future chain don't (need to) mutate much, example being crocodiles, maybe lions?

IDMI And ITBC

I was initiated to the concept of "intention" by a friend about 20 years back. When something he did was not right, his reply would be that he didn't intend it that way. That response would leave me flummoxed. I didn't know then whether his response was appropriate, meaning relevant to my comment. But the response seemed to indicate that he wasn't at fault. And here I was left holding the baby (some thing that hadn't gone well which he was responsible for). And I had been intimated that it wasn't his fault. 

Something didn't sound right.

Fast forward 20 years. I still hear the same refrain "I didn't mean it" (IDMI) or "I didn't intend it".

IDMI is an interesting expression that addresses an issue between 2 parties. 

If you point out a problem that occurred because of what i did (or didn't) do, my IDMI essentially removes my culpability while perhaps acknowledging your predicament. It, hence, shifts the focus from a fault on my side to empathy shown by me towards you. It's likened to a scenesce where you tell me about your issue and I provide a shoulder to cry on. The IDMI changes the issue you raised against me to an issue you have that has nothing to do with me except that I am being nice enough to listen to your woes.

Wow that's a terrific change in balance of power, isn't it?

More recently I was talking to another friend of mine when I pointed out that he had not having discharged his responsibility. He told me that he had always deeply wished for it. Just that he didn't or couldn't do it (for years). 

I asked him. If he were a teacher grading a student's paper, would he give marks for correct answers or for the student's intention to write correct answers. He replied that he would give marks only for answers that were correct. Most teachers would agree with my friend.

It got me thinking. How is it that we expect a correct job while correcting an answer paper but in a social milieu we go by the intention to do the right thing? It's as though we have a dual operating system in our mind where "has to be correct" OS is switched on at certain times (example, when we are correcting a paper) while "intended to be correct" OS is switched on as in some social interactions. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/rita-and-sheila.html.
Often even within the context of social interactions, we sometimes use the "has to be right" mode while evaluating whole in other cases we go by the intention. The focus on the intention is basically used as a final "correction factor" to be applied on top of the evaluation based on normally agreed formula. The correction factor gives us the leeway to change the final grades. The beauty of it is that it's completely subjective while seeming to be perfectly fair.

The switching between one "OS" to another happens seemlessly. For example, while correcting a paper, we may take a break and talk to another teacher about some incident at school or about our personal lives when the "intended to be correct (ITBC)" mode is switched on.

Once I read an article which went like this:
First there was an assertion about some behavior (I forget what exactly it was). It was followed by a declaration that the said assertion was a myth. This interested me immensely. So I read further. The author went on to explain the reason why the behavior was exhibited. 
I thought then, so there is a reason for the behavior. Did the presence of a valid reason for a particular behavior have anything to do with whether the behavior is real or a myth?
The presence of a valid reason for a behavior is taken to imply that the behavior wantwa exhibited. Hence, if I do something wrong, I need to come up with a reason for my behavior. Then I didn't do anything wrong. IDMI is a way to nullify my negative behavior.

This ITBC cannot exist where words don't exist. An animal cannot communicate the ITBC sentiment. Animals only react to what some other animal did and not to what they intended to. A peacock cannot convey to a female that he intended to show more beautiful feathers but on the way they got ruffled and hence she should give the peacock a chance to pass on his genes. Uh uh.

Prior to the time before humans learnt to talk, we would not have known the ITBC concept. We would have evaluated and been evaluated based on what we did, rather than by what we intended to do. And then, somewhere in the world, the first human being uttered those words "I didn't mean it (IDMI)". Imagine the shock of the person who heard such a thing for the first time.

Over time, we have been moulded to give importance to what was intended apart from what was done.

One doesn't need a camera to see what was done. It's hugely more difficult to see what was intended. The rational reason behind understanding why something was done (understanding behavior) was replaced or confused with something that would induce empathy.

By replacing "correct behavior" by "intended to be correct (ITBC) behavior as our yardstick we have created a kind of an "equal opportunity" institution in the social arena. 

It doesn't matter as much if I didn't do the right thing so long as I can convincingly aver that I intended to be correct. The balance of power is moving towards those who can convince better from those who do better.

This would lead to the extinction of those who can't persuade or convince better, for example the peacock mentioned earlier. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/06/relation-between-nt-sf-natural.html

Additional Reading
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/01/survival-of-fittest-non-t.html

Mutation In Evolution

I had always thought mutations could be a result of other factors rather than just an accident. My interest in this subject is as a layman. 

Most articles I read seemed to indicate that mutations were completely by chance. I seem to remember this from a book I read earlier "Mutations happen by accident. The subsequent natural selection does not." 

Now here are some quotes:

"It is important to realize that mutations do not occur in response to the environment. They simply happen." 
From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html

"The emerging molecular mechanisms of stress-induced mutagenesis vary but share telling common components that underscore two common themes. The first is the regulation of mutagenesis in time by cellular stress responses, which promote random mutations specifically when cells are poorly adapted to their environments, i.e., when they are stressed." From
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3319127/

"The effect of radiation on the mutation rate in flies had two implications...Muller's experiments demonstrated that heredity could be manipulated quite easily" 

While Siddhartha Mukherjee's book "The Gene" page 119, talks about how a specific intensity of X Ray introduced mutations in flies. In this example, I wondered, playing the devil's advocate, whether it's not possible that the mutations were still an accident but  that natural selection resulted in the survival of the mutated flies. In the absence of the Xray, there was no such mutation. Hence Xray did cause the mutation.
Is this experiment, conducted around 1930, not proof that mutation can be designed to happen, rather that environment plays a part in mutation?

https://www.seedquest.com/keyword/seedbiotechnologies/primers/varietydevelopment/inducedmutation.htm - This link also talks about how mutation can be induced.

Specific mutations that have been consistently reproduced in organisms under controlled conditions, as in a lab, prove that mutations are not just an accident.

It is possible that several kinds of mutation can happen in an experiment of which only a few pass the natural selection test. To determine the list of all mutations that happen one has to pause or block natural selection from happening. If natural selection cannot be paused then the entire test shows the result of mutation and of natural selection together. 

Lab experiments show the final result of induced mutation and natural selection acting on top of it. Hence the chronological sequence is: 
Lab condition causes mutations on which natural selection works which results in the survival of some mutants and perhaps destruction of other mutants.

In this context, I have quotes from a nice book "Primate Change" by

In "Primate Change" book by Cregan-Reid

• "In most other primates, the foot has a different set of functions and consequently a different design."

My comment:The "design" in evolution doesn't work backwards from a purpose unlike engineering design. Mutation causes a different design and it's my belief that the animal learns to use the new design as best as it can. Design (of our body) doesn't have purpose in mind. Hence I am uncomfortable with the word "consequently" in the quote. When I contacted the author about this, he replied that he meant "Design" to imply something like Shape and not Intention / Purpose.

• "As the guts in these hominins shrank (suggesting an improvement in the quality of their food), it meant that other organs could receive more evolutionary attention in future generations."

My comment:Is the total Evolutionary Attention a constant? Again, are we supposing a design in Evolution, a prioritization and planning?

Interesting articles on the subject of whether evolution is predictable:

• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/predictable-evolution-trumps-randomness-of-mutations/
• http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/746
• https://www.mpg.de/10636321/is-evolution-predictable

Additional Reading

https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/extinction-and-allele.html

Extinction And Allele

I was reading about recessive and dominant alleles, say blue and brown eyes as per Mendel's theory.

https://www.quora.com/Can-two-brown-eyed-people-have-a-blue-eyed-child

Let's assume that Blue eyed have an evolutionary disadvantage and that over a period of time they become extinct. The last of the blue eyed people die without offsprings. 

Now the remaining people with brown eyes still may have the recessive blue eye allele. Two such people having the blue allele could give birth to a child with blue eyes and the extinct blue eye could reappear again. Unless the blue allele itself disappears there is a possibility for the blue to manifest itself. 

Does this mean that Extinction cannot happen unless the said allele disappears completely?

Extinction of the dominant allele, brown, is simpler to understand. If the last of the brown eyed person dies without offspring then all the remaining population will have only blue eyes. Since blue is recessive, all the blue eyed people will have to have both alleles blue. Hence brown cannot reappear except in the case of a mutation creating a brown allele.

Does this mean that a species is more likely to become extinct only if its alleles are all or mostly dominant?

After I wrote this post, I started Googling and found some relevant links which are listed in Additional Reading below. One thing struck me as strange when I was reading some of the articles. That one should not consider that recessive allelle as being less frequent in the population, and that the word recessive should only refer to whether the allelle is visible when it combines with that dominant one. Now, statistically the recessive allele is more likely to be much lower in population (approx 25%) unless natural selection or some other reason chooses the recessive over the dominant.

Another thing that confuses me is the expression that "a success adapts to it's environment". To me, such an expression is misleading. An animal does not adapt and induce a mutation. Natural or sexual selection ensures that the "unfit ones are removed" leaving the "fit ones standing". 

Additional reading

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2h42n3/can_recessive_genes_eg_blue_eyes_blondred_hair/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/58nav8/can_dominant_traits_disappear/
3. https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/askexpert/redheads-%E2%80%93-endangered-species: This article expresses the same view that I mentioned. 

Chicken And Egg

When asked the question whether the egg came first or the chicken came first, I used to claim, in a lighter vein, that the egg came first and that the chicken came from the egg. In reply to the obvious question as to where the egg came from, I would grin and say that the egg came from a duck. 

I think my answer, which I gave decades ago when I had no idea of the concept of evolution, perhaps wasn't altogether wrong. Maybe it was a "duck" which laid an egg having a mutation which resulted in the birth of a chicken instead of a duckling.

The original chicken and egg question was interesting primarily because it made the assumption that an egg could come only from a chicken and vice versa. It didn't include mutation as a possibility. The question was created primarily in a social setting to stump you. 

People Breach Your Defenses, Reach Your S1

The whole idea of marketing (of the business kind or the feminine kind) is to ensure that they address or reach your S1. Advertisers would not want to reach your S2 with their messages. For an intro into S1, S2 read http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html.)

When you say no to a request for help, if people respond with:

1. "You have no affection for me, you are so hard and inflexible"

2. "You were never harsh like this, you have changed so much"

3."Who else can i ask?"
Any form of desire and feelings being expressed appeals to the heart.

When people praise you for no real reason uttering empty phrases.:"Your work is so nice", "You are such a nice man." 

They are addressing / reaching your S1 = heart. Not S2. You may tend to let your guard down.

Additional notes and examples of people reaching your S1:

There is a sense of urgency when they talk about an issue, the urgency creates an expectation of fast decision from you, avoiding the use of your S2. The problem people mention would seem to be big needing immediate attention from you. 

• The situation could refer to their plight. "I have to pay my kids' school fees, it has to paid online only. I don't know how to make online transactions. And unfortunately my husband, who handles this always, is also out of town. Can you please  please pay on my behalf. I will repay ASAP." Now if your S2 was up and running, it might have a few questions:. 1. Why don't you give me your card details, I will pay online using your card. 2. Why don't I explain to you and you can pay yourself? 3. Why don't you reach your husband? Is internet unavailable where he is? Why don't take the help of your teenage son for whom internet is a piece of cake? And so on. But the sense of urgency in your friend prevents your S2 from operating. You end up jumping to help her when it wasn't really warranted.
• The issue brought up could refer to your own plight also (in this case your action may benefit them - for example, an insurance agent tells you: "Imagine if you die tomorrow, what will happen to your kid, wife, take an LIC policy immediately." If your S2 was up, it may have raised the question of whether an insurance policy was essential currently, what should be the maximum premium, comparison of LIC's policy with other policies etc.

Most advertisements want to reach your S1. They don't want you to use your S2 and start probing logically into their message "Our toothpaste / toilet cleaner / shampoo / car is 23% better than our competitors'. We work hard so you can sleep easy." Imagine if the message was wrongly delivered to your S2. How would you process the message above and what would your brand recall be?

Why are we urged not to make a decision when we are angry? When we are angry, we are usually riding our S1. Not the best time to make any big decisions when S1 is completely in control.

When people address your S1 and if you are a thinker, that's like telling you to cut your onions with the knife in your left hand. Quite a difficult task. All you have at the end is just tears.

Can you have your S2 always up? No way. But  you may have identified certain people as being ones who only talk to your heart and take you for a ride, especially if you are a thinker (as in MBTI). Set an internal alarm that wakes up your S2 as soon as you encounter this people.

Addional reading

• http://upfrontanalytics.com/market-research-system-1-vs-system-2-decision-making/
• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/05/tinkering-with-your-s1.html

Evolution And Vishnu

A friend sent me this:

"Mom, I am a genetic scientist. I am working in the US on  the evolution of man. Theory of evolution. Charles Darwin, have you heard of him? " Vasu asked.

          His Mother sat next to him,  smiled and said, "I know about Darwin, Vasu. But Have you heard of Dashavatar? The ten avatars of Vishnu?" 

Vasu replied yes. 

          "Ok! Then let me tell you what you and your Darwin don't know.

        Listen carefully- 

        The first avatar was the Matsya avatar, it means the fish. That is because life began in the water. Is that not right?" 

          Vasu began to listen with a little more attention.

            She continued, "Then came the Kurma Avatar, which means the tortoise, because life moved from the water to the land. The amphibian! So the Tortoise denoted the evolution from sea to land.

            Third avatar was Varaha, the wild boar, which meant the wild animals with not much intellect, you call them the Dinosaurs, correct?" Vasu nodded wide eyed.

            "The fourth avatar was Narasimha, half man and half animal, the evolution from wild animals to intelligent beings.

            Fifth, the Vaman avatar, the midget or dwarf, who could grow really tall. Do you know why that is? Because, there were two kinds of humans, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapiens won that battle." 

            Vasu could see that his Mother was in full flow and he was stupefied.

          "The Sixth avatar was Parshuram, the man who wielded the axe, the man who was a cave and forest dweller. Angry, and not social.

          The seventh avatar was Ram, the first rational thinking social being, who practised and laid out the laws of society and the basis of human relationships.

          The Eighth avatar was Balarama, a true farmer who showed  value of agriculture in the life.

          The Ninth avatar was Krishna, the statesman, the politician, the diplomat, the Ambassador, the sutile interpreter, the lover who played the game of society and taught how to live and thrive in the adhaarmic social structure.

          And finally, my boy, will come Kalki, the man you are working on. The man who will be genetically supreme."

            Vasu looked at his Mother speechless. "This is amazing Mom, how did you .... ? This makes sense!"

          She said, "Yes it does, son! We Indians knew some amazing things, but just didn't know how to pass it on scientifically. So we made them into mythological stories.  Mythology creates faith and makes man sensible. It is just the way you look at it - Religious or Scientific. Your call."

That's evolution explained from Hindu religion. yet it's all about Vishnu (no Shiva).

Now, what does this story, told by mother to son, prove?

1. That the ten avatars of God existed? No, where is this proved?
2. That the Gods knew about evolution? No, if God's existence or His avatars aren't proved, where is the question of His knowing about evolution? Of course God being  omniscient, He knows everything including evolution. You dontd need the Dashavatar story, as told by the mother, to prove it.
3. That our Rishis knew about evolution and they created the story of the Dashavatars which follows the same path as organisms did in evolution? Maybe so or maybe it's just an accident. Even then how fish evolved into tortoise is not explained.

Addional reading:

Nice article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049057/

Tinkering With Your S1

I was talking to a friend about controlling our own S1 and how difficult it is. 

It struck me that controlling our S1 would be like applying brakes on our entire personality and not just in curbing expression of some negative trait of ours, which is what we are interested in and which drove our discussion.

Our talk, with my friend's questions and my answers, brought out other ideas. I figured that the only time we are in complete control of our S1 is when we are asleep or in a coma or dead. This, of course, is a trivial solution.

I said to my friend that when the sage Vishwamitra was in a trance and the danseuse Menaka tried to disturb him and failed it was because the sage's S1 was completely dead or in hybernation. The question I asked was: which part of the Rishi was awake when he was doing Tapas? My answer is: none. That's how the rishis could avoid getting disturbed and their S1 was safely tucked away and Menaka's SASC (Shake ass and Show Cleavage) routine couldn't be effective.

And we have read that when the Rishis were disturbed from their trance, they woke up and in a burst of anger they cursed whoever disturbed them - caused by a complete loss of control over their S1, which also is now awake.

Can we really control our S1? And thus control ourselves? 

I am stil waiting for an answer.

In this context one repartee that another friend frequently comes up with is that experience teaches us a lot of things and our behavior changes because of this. All our behavior, she would say, hence isn't coded in our genes. Don't we control  our S1 when we force ourselves to control our outbursts? Don't we consciously use our S2 in place of the usual S1? Is this not an example of controlling our behavior, she would ask. Essentially this is one example of a case when there is a feedback loop - when an incident, say our own outburst, causes us to rethink our behavior and hence we take pain to avoid it. We will come back to this later.
Yes, nurture or experience definitely affects our future behavior - but my question is: do we control and, if yes, how do we control our memory and experience of such events which in turn affect our S1?

What are we outside of our S1? If we isolate our S1, what remains of us? If someone could observe (just observe and do nothing else) us and see our S1 and S2 in action - what would they see? Would they see some X factor inside us but excluding our S1, S2 affecting our behavior? Maybe that X has freewill.
It is my belief that our S2 is invoked by our S1 and hence control of S2 is not available outside of our S1.

Coming to the feedback loop, my question to my friend is the same. What person or identity exists outside of S1? If invoking of S2 an example of freewill? Who invoked S2? S1 or something else? If it is S1, do we control it?

As i think about the feedback loop, a question arises in my mind. Assume we are hooked up to various equipments electrical, mechanical or chemical which are in turn hooked up to a computer. Now, let's say, we ourselves or someone else can choose how we want to behave and enter our desired behavior in a computer. The computer which knows us will gives us the necessary electrical, chemical or mechanical inputs so that we behave in the way that was requested. Now, in this case who controlled our behavior? Was it the computer or the person who entered the request in the computer? The answer, that it is the computer, is trivial. Let us focus on the other option - that it was the person who entered the request in the computer. How did the person think up the request? Which part of the person thought of requesting such a behavior from me? Was it that person's conscious decision to expect a certain behavior from me? Or was he just made aware of this decision which was made by his S1?

Our own goal setting including New Year resolutions are of the same type. The question is: how did we set the goal? Was it from S1 or  S2 or something else? S2, I believe, is invoked by S1.

Ever since I had an argument of sorts with a couple of friends I have been thinking about this issue, specifically how to prove or disprove existence of freewill. I think most people understand and accept that our behavior depends on nature (genes) and nature (our experiences and observations). We understand that we were born with our genes and unless we get to tinker with our genes, as explained earlier, our genes remain invariant except for the mutations which are anyway outside our control. The focus then comes to nurture. How much are we in control of HOW we accept what we experience. I am reminded of the Thirukkural 
Epporul yaaryaarvaai ketpinum apporul
Meiporul kaaba tharivu.

Meaning, no what what we hear it makes sense to only absorb the truth in it.
Wow, so beautiful. 

Now this relates directly to how we should accept what we hear, observe or experience. Written few thousand years back it was assumed that we could control how we abaorb or relate to our experience. 

Now let us assume that thereis an "I", the essence of what I am which holds my Freewill. This "I" should hence take inputs from whatever our genes tell us, also from what our experience gives us and THEN process both and then decide for ourselves what we should do which in turn causes my brain to release certain chemicals which finally causes some thought, emotion or reaction from me. 

The question is then whether this "I" exists. How do we prove it.

Take two objects or beings with the same DNA and subject both to the same experience from conception / birth. If they show diverge in their phenotype (I hope I am using the term correctly) - that is in any trait or behavior, then we conclude "I" exists.

Ok?
Additional Reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/s1-and-s2-daniel-kahnemann-my-examples.html
2. https://www.quora.com/Is-impatience-a-genetic-trait-or-learned-behavior
3. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/10/08/bad-kids-cant-blame-their-genes/#.WwfLhh6FTIU: Quote from the link: "Yet geneticists finally struck gold – or seemed to – with a new technique called genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA). Instead of looking at each variant individually, GCTA quantifies how genetically similar any two people are as a whole. GCTA has shown that the more genetically similar people are, the more similar they tend to be in terms of complex traits. Hooray – the missing heritability is… well, it’s still missing, but at least we know it’s out there, in small pieces scattered across the genome."
4. https://www.fs.blog/2016/07/our-genes-and-our-behavior/
5. https://www.fs.blog/2016/06/no-two-people-alike-part-1/: Quote: "If you look at the books and the training that teachers get, genetics doesn't get a look-in. Yet if you ask teachers, as I've done, about why they think children are so different in their ability to learn to read, and they know that genetics is important. When it comes to governments and educational policymakers, the knee-jerk reaction is that if kids aren't doing well, you blame the teachers and the schools; if that doesn't work, you blame the parents; if that doesn't work, you blame the kids because they're just not trying hard enough. An important message for genetics is that you've got to recognize that children are different in their ability to learn. We need to respect those differences because they're genetic. Not that we can’t do anything about it."
6. http://www.nealelab.is/blog/2017/9/13/heritability-101-what-is-heritability: Quote: "Heritability is a property of the population not the individual. When the heritability of a trait is described, it reflects how much variability in the population is a consequence of genetic factors. It does not “explain” why an individual has a disease."..."Heritability is not immutable. Since heritability reflects the balance between the effects of genetic and environmental factors, if you change the environment you can change the trait’s heritability."..."High heritability does not mean group differences are genetic. There is a troubling history of attributing observed group differences, such as reported racial disparities in IQ scores, to genetics. As noted above, heritability is specific to the choice of measurement,  population, and environment, and the heritability of a trait is not immutable. As a result, it’s not valid to use a trait’s estimated heritability as evidence for “inherent” differences between populations."
7. https://psmag.com/environment/genes-affect-behavior-environment-85139

Freewill - Homo Deus

A friend of mine was thoroughly impressed with the book: Homo Deus, A Brief History Of Tomorrow. He strongly recommended that I read it too.

The book mentioned that what we think is freewill is actually not so, that it is our genes which control our actions. Or something to that effect. I had been telling my friend that we do not have freewill, even before either of us had read this book.

My friend called me up the other day and asked me: if we do not control our behavior and if our behavior is controlled by our genes, then the genes must be running some kind of program or algorithm. 

1. Does the algorithm cover every eventuality? How can it?
2. If it does not (which is more likely), then how is behavior determined in a case which is not coded or covered in the algorithm? How is our behavior determined in such a case?
3. Next, our behavior also changes with experience. How does the algorithm learn to behave differently with time?

I did not have any nice answer for his questions. I thought about them and here is my attempt.

That we don't control something (don't have freewill) does not translate exactly into "there is some other agency that has a 100% well defined algorithm (for determining our behavior." 

Our behavior is at best only known to (as against determined by) us. The S1 - from Daniel Kahnemann - which decides what we do, takes necessary decisions and actions which at best we only come to know of but not control.

So now who decides how we behave?: it's the S1. On what basis does S1 decide our behavior? S1 has access to our memory bank and to our heuristics engine. The latter, I guess, is encoded or is derived from our genes and perhaps also undergoes modification after birth based on our experience.

Now when confronted with a situation, how exactly does the gene deal with our memories, with any logic / shortcuts / heuristics etc and result in a course of action from S1 - which is what my friend asked me - I have no idea. :(

Additional Reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/01/we-do-no-have-freewill-draft-proof.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-is-mans-purpose-in-life.html

Parent Of Enneagram Type 5 Or INTJ

I was thinking today. When we are toddlers, our parents, older siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles would have played with us, fed us, clothed us and generally made us feel cared for and good.

What if suchs caring didn't happen? What if it did happen when we were a baby but we felt the care to be inadequate? What recourse would we, as a baby, have had? This is what was running in my mind, also based on what I had read about what happens when the primary caregiver is absent or is inadequate.

Maybe the child tends not to reach out to people, as that has not helped the baby in the past. The baby tends to become an introvert, perhaps. If the baby find itself to be unable to figure anything out, it thinks the best way is to do what the mom/parent says and not to think for itself. The baby then becomes a J (as in MBTI). Maybe the baby gets scared of the things in its life and tends to switch things out and lives in an abstract world - becomes an N (as in MBTI).

Maybe this is the reason why Enneageam 5 type 5 people (typically INTJ) are supposed to have had a neglected childhood.

Of course I do know of atleast one Ennea type 5, who was not neglected as a child. I can't explain how that child turned out to be be a 5.

This leads to be the next question - as a parent do we know when our child feels neglected and may turn out to be be an Ennea type 5 or an I or N or J?

Of course it's quite possible and likely that a particular child's nature has nothing to do with parenting.

Additional Reading:
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/01/enneagram-and-mbti-comparison.html

Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

This subject has a lot of key words.. And confusing.

Adaptation is like a mutation...a change in the gene while copying (when cells replicate, the gene is supposed to be xeroxed.. sometimes the copy is not perfect... That incorrect copy is the mutation.)

When this adaptation extends thru the population (as a result of natural selection - meaning those that have the adaptation survive, others don't.. And hence the allele having the adaptation increases in proportion. This increase in allele frequency is technically the definition of evolution).

Now what is allele?

Alleles are varieties of a gene..if you take people size, genes causing fat and thin people are 2 alleles. Similarly blue eyes and black eyes are alleles. BTSA and... similarly. 

From Google: Difference between evolution and adaptation:Evolution can be defined as the change in the allelic frequencies within the gene pool of a population. The term “adaptation” is typically used to describe a newly mutated trait that increases fitness in a particular environment... Evolution is the process by which that beneficial traits spreads throughout a population.

Not every adaption may survive. Its natural selection, acting like a machine, that decides which adaptions survive and which don't. Acting like a machine meaning : if this adaptation helps me be successful (live long and breed well), i will retain this adaptation. And the allele with this adaptation increases in frequency. Evolution will have happened.

Now in the book "Selfish Gene" Dawkins explains some concepts well.

Imagine 2 ring binders having 23 volumes each, each volume having a number of pages.

The genotype (the total of all genes in a body) is like the complete set of 46 binders. Each of the binders is a chromosome. Human body has 23 pairs= 46 chromosomes. (Other animals have a different number of chromosomes.) Each page in the binder is a gene. Phenotype is the list of all observable behavior exhibited by an organism.

I think this is all the important definitions one needs to remember.

Another good source of information is berkeley site. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php. "Evolution is true". Together these three sites/books,  including the current one are enough to get a great introductory understanding of the subject of evolution. Evolution is true is what i liked best.


And one thing I am completely lost about is the relation between natural selection and Mendel's heredity theory. I need to read this up

Pg 67

The programmer's actual role is rather more like that of a father teaching his son to play chess. He tells the computer the basic moves of the game, not separately for every possible starting position, but in terms of more economically expressed rules. He does not literally say in plain English 'bishops move in a diagonal, but he does say something mathematical equivalent... Then he might program in some 'advice' written in the same sorry of mathematical or logical language, but amounting in human terms to hints such as 'don't leave your kind unguarded' or useful tricks such as 'forking' with the knight... The important point is this: when it is playing, the computer is on its own and can expect no help from its Master.

My comment

The metaphor suggests that the Gene has programmed the human body in the same way that a software programmer programs a computer to play chess.

Pg 158

In terms of how many babies to have or eggs to lay.. The gene that decides is not the one which is preprogrammed with a number but it is one that is preprogrammed to estimate the right number in real time.

My question

Why do parents want to have babies? Why does the Gene want to maximize its own number? What purpose does it serve?

Pg 158

Will it always pay a mother to treat all her children equally, or might she have favorites? Should the family function as a single cooperating whole, or are we to expect selfishness and deception even within the family? Will all members of a family be working towards the same optimum, or will they disagree about what the optimum is? These are the questions we try to answer in the next chapter.

Pg 164

Even if parents do not want to show favoritism, could it be that children grab favored treatment for themselves? More strictly, would genes for selfish grabbing among children become more numerous in the gene pool than rival genes for accepting no more than one's fair share? This matter has been brilliantly analyzed by Trivers in a paper of 1974 called "parent offspring conflict"

Pg 168

Sometimes, as we have seen, one member of a litter is a runt [an animal that is smaller than average]. He is unable to fight for himself as strongly as the rest, and runts often die.  We have considered the conditions under which it would actually pay a mother to let a runt die... A gene that gives the instruction "Body, if you are very much smaller than your litter mates, give up the struggle and die" could be successful in the gene pool, because it has a 50% chance of being in the body of each brother and sister saved, and its chances of surviving in the body of the runt are very small anyway.

But the following is a reasonable strategy for a parent who is undecided as to what is her optimum clutch [batch] size for the current year. She might lay one more egg than she actually 'thinks' is likely to be the true optimum. Then, if the year's food crop should turn out to be a better one than expected, she will rear the extra child. If not, she can cut her losses. By being careful always to feed the young in the same order, say in order of size, she sees to it that one, perhaps a runt, quickly dies, and not much is wasted on him, beyond the initial investment of egg yolk or equivalent. From the mother's point of view, this may be the explanation of the runt phenomenon. He represents the hedging if the mother's bets. This has been observed in many birds.

Pg 169

A child will lose no opportunity of cheating. It will pretend to be hungrier than it is, perhaps younger than it is, more in danger than it really is. It is too small and weak to bully its parents physically, but it uses every psychological weapon at its disposal: lying, cheating, deceiving, exploiting right up to the point where it starts to penalize its relatives more than its genetic relatedness to them should allow. Parents, on the other hand, must be alert to cheating and deceiving, and must try not to be deceived by it. If the parent knows that its child is likely to lie about how hungry it is, it might employ the tactic of feeding it a fixed amount and no more, even though the child goes on screaming. A. Zahavi has suggested a particularly diabolical form of child blackmail: the child screams in such a way as to attract predators deliberately to the nest. The only way a parent can stop it screaming is to feed it.

But they [parasitic brood] do not lack ruthlessness. For instance, there are honeyguides who, like cuckoos, lay their eggs in the nest of other species.  The baby honeyguide is equipped with a sharp hooked beak. As soon as he hatches out, while he is still blind, naked and otherwise helpless, he scythes and slashes his foster brothers and sisters to death: so they don't compete for food. The familiar British cuckoo achieves the same result in a slightly different way. It has a short incubation time and so the baby cuckoo manages to hatch out before its foster brothers and sisters. As soon as it hatches, blindly and mechanically, but with devastating effectiveness, it throws the other eggs out of the nest. And therefore the attention of the foster parents entirely to itself.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype

Dawkins summarizes these ideas in what he terms the Central Theorem of the Extended Phenotype:

“An animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes "for" that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.[2]

Pg 191

Bruce effect: Male mice [presumably not the father of the unborn baby] secrete a chemical which when smelt by a pregnant female can cause her to abort.

Pg 193

It is a rather horrible but very subtle argument. A parent may be expected to desert the moment it is possible for him or her to say the following: "This child is now fat enough developed that either of us could finish off rearing it on our own. Therefore it would pay me to desert now, provided i could be sure my partner would not desert as well. If i did desert now, my partner would do whatever is best for her/his genes. He/she would be forced into making a more drastic decision than i am making now, because i would have already left. My partner would "know" that if he/she left as well, the child would surely die. Therefore assuming my partner will take the decision that is best for his/her own selfish genes, i conclude that my best of course of action is to desert first. This is especially so since my partner may be thinking along exactly the same lines and may seize the initiative at any moment by deserting me... Genes for deserting FIRST could be favourably selected simply because genes for deserting SECOND would not be.

Pg 206

Let us suppose that females in the ancestral bird of paradise species preferentially went for males with longer than average tails. Provided there was some genetic contribution to the natural variation in male tail length, this would, in time, cause the average tail length of males in the population to increase. Females followed a simple rule: look all the males over and go for the one with the longest tail. Any female who departed from this rule was penalized, EVEN IF tails had already become so long that they actually encumbered males possessing them. This was because any female who didn't produce long tailed some had like chance of one of her sons being regarded as attractive. Like a fashion in women's clothes, or in American car design, the trend toward longer tails too off and gathered its own momentum. It was stopped only when tails became so grotesquely long that their manifest disadvantages started to outweigh the advantage of sexual attractiveness.

My comment

I had earlier commented about evolution in fashion is similar to natural selection.

"In a way evolution is like fashion. You never know which will catch on and become a hit and reproduce successfully over generations. If you analyzed the fossil record of fashion in the last 100 years, you may find some were stagnant for a period of time and some changed rapidly in bursts. And someone is always experimenting causing the drift or the mutation. The rest is natural selection."

Pg 219

The physical characteristic of the calls [of small song birds] seem to be ideally shaped to be difficult to locate. If an acoustic engineer were asked to design a sound that a predator would find hard to approach, he would produce something very like the real alarm calls of many small song birds. Now in nature this shaping of the calls must have been produced by natural selection... it means that large numbers of individuals have died because their alarm calls were not quite perfect.

One question that comes to mind:
Dawkins often talks about how a particular behavior (say altruistic behavior)may not be a stable strategy because future generations also exhibiting the same behavior may not help it to survive and procreate.
The question is this: 
Is the evolutionary stable / unstable Strategy (ESS / EUS) heritable? These behaviors or strategies seem to be or may be acquired traits and hence not heritable. How do we explain our strategies or adapted strategies to be heritable?
Confused.