Evolution An interesting paper on cultural evolution 31 Dec 2009 PNAS has a very interesting paper about cultural evolution in Taiwan at the beginning of the 20th Century, by Melissa Brown and Marcus Feldman. It basically argues that two different selective forces, Cultural and Social, influenced the decline in footbinding – it became seen as a low status practice, which… Continue Reading
Genetics An old question: genes and responsibility 1 Nov 2009 Here’s a judge doing what generations of philosophers and theologians haven’t been able to do: determine when determination is determinative: In the report, [scientists] Pietrini and Sartori concluded that Bayout’s genes would make him more prone to behaving violently if provoked. “There’s increasing evidence that some genes together with a… Continue Reading
Sermon On bullying at school, and reunions 17 Jul 2009 Mark Chu-Carroll has a heartfelt rant against how he was treated as a “geek” at school, which resonates with me. I was a geek, but I managed to avoid being attacked daily (mostly) by becoming a “head” or “hippy” (it was the 1970s, okay?). As such I fit into a… Continue Reading
Evolution Gods above 6 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 It’s no real coincidence that the standard metaphor for approaching gods is one of height. Humans not only defer to those who are “above” them in the social hierarchy, they also tend to defer to people who are literally taller than they are. Taller individuals tend to have higher status… Continue Reading
Biology Social dominance psychology in humans 2 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 There is a syllogism I call the Phylogenetic Inference: All members of clade X are F Species S is a member of clade X S is F It’s not infallible, but it is a good inductive rule, because monophyly acts as a kind of Straight Rule for biological induction. Let’s… Continue Reading
Evolution Social dominance hierarchies 1 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 Given the dynamic nature of dominance hierarchies among animals, it would be very unlikely to get a well formed control hierarchy in nature. Continue Reading
Education What is “secular”? 13 May 200918 Sep 2017 In keeping with the last post on humanities, I thought I’d ruminate with no effort or knowledge to back it up on what the term “secular” means. If the fundamentalists are to be believed, it is a synonym of “humanist” and also “Satanist”, “infidel” and “homosexual”. But somewhat more seriously,… Continue Reading
Evolution Is religious cognition adaptive? 8 May 2009 There was a paper recently in PNAS on “The cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief“. A couple of bloggers, Epiphenom and I Am David, come to opposite conclusions. Epiphenom says that the study shows that religion is not a side-effect of the evolution of cognitive processes, while IAD says… Continue Reading
Social dominance Eccentricity 12 Mar 2009 In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric…. Continue Reading
Humor Gems from Tom Waits 25 Oct 2008 Waits is one of the few people I admire almost without reservation, even including the industrial blues. A comment quoted on a passing web site was “We are monkeys with money and guns”, leading me via Google to this wonderful interview at NPR a few months back. Read it. I… Continue Reading