1. You have to consider religions as fauceirs that can evolve in a much faster pace than species for example. Species are fauceirs too, and according classical evolutionary theory different species can evolve during isolation. Thus consider these Eastern and Western Religions as different species that evolved differently.
2. No doubt the Western religion was more successful as it not only spread and populated Africa and whole America, but also evolved into a culture, so that religious traits are maintained now by atheistic Western people.
3. Also Western religion was more successful as it helped to evolve not only moral and culture but also economy and science. Throughout the last centuries Western societies trumpet Chinese which were rather characterized by stagnation.
4. You cannot estimate a society’s level of evolution by its size as you know that mammals, wolves and tigers for instance, were much higher evolved species compared to those huge dinosaurs.
5. Political and military colonization was termed the process that happened in the 19^th century. The Western society clearly won this competition comparable to the struggle for survival of the fittest.
6. But unlike the survival-of-the-fittest principle which results in wiping out the unfit, something happened that is comparable to the biological term speciation. This process started in the middle of the 20^th century. These cultures began to form a common ecosystem with each of them occupying a specific ecological niche.
7. Now we observe cooperation but also competition. Competition where the niches overlap cooperation where they don’t.
8. And we also observe something that has only recently been discovered in biological evolution and termed mobile DNA which is from the fauceir (more general) perspective the exchange of sub-fauceirs. Elements of Western culture even Christianity emerge in China while Chinatowns refuse to dissolve but become important part of social life in many Western cities.

Hope you understand and enjoy this. Actually the blog you quoted and dissected is also an example how Western culture soaks into Chinese. Unfortunately some Western politicians try to imitate Chinese politics, too, considering a strong government a successful one. This is unfortunate as it deprives Western culture of its evolutionary potentials.

More about evolutionary potential in some later post or on fauceir.org that we are just about to reconstruct.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Understanding this fundamental rule can help you grasp the framework of human history.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

The following assumptions underlay fauceir analysis of happiness.

1. Happiness is a fauceir, as you have probably guessed already, but as such it automatically has the following additional properties that we are going to discuss.
2. Happiness consists of sub-fauceirs.
3. Happiness is sub-fauceir to other fauceirs in which control it is involved.
4. Happiness evolves and adapts

Happiness consists of sub-fauceirs of various kinds. Those processes include chemical and neuronal reactions and can be effected by fauceirs of similar type. For instance, feeling pain—an other neuronal reaction—can significantly influence the current state of happiness. Also psychotropic drugs can influence the way happiness is perceived.

A baboon alpha male amidst his harem. He feels probably happy in this position.

Why happiness evolved? Happiness is an important rewarding system that positively controls behavior. Behavior patterns that are positively rewarded in animals range from activities so primordial as intake of food and sex to complex operations as organizing a harem. We humans have inherited all these fauceirs and so it is not surprising that some behavioral disorders root in these inborn fauceirs. For instance in some people, obesity is caused by the lack of other means to create positive feelings or by an exceptional high internal amplification of them. Sex addiction is an other example. Not properly controlling some behavioral patterns inherited from social animals results in violent and anti-social behavior.

A baboon male punishes a rebel female which also make him feel happy, probably, and in the female a reflex is conditioned that makes her feel happy in his harem in the future. In modern human societies such behavior is deprecated.

We humans do not only show social behavior as do some animals, we yield to our societies. We humans are no longer in sole charge of our biological makeup. We humans live in societies that took over control of our behavior. This includes the rewarding system happiness. About 10.000 years ago, this important change in evolution on Earth took place. Societies evolved out of sub-fauceirs that were we humans.

That doesn’t mean that we humans feel differently. We still like good food, sex, and, yes, a harem would be fine, wouldn’t it. But we cannot indulge in everything that makes us happy as some of these actions would seriously disturb a societies proper function. For instance, if some few men would be allowed to maintain huge harems a lot of other men would be forced to live without sexual reward, which would further decrease their productivity and increase social unrest, and finally the society as a whole would fail in competition.

(Now I can clearly hear the counter argument: Harems have existed and still exist. That’s true but does not rebut my thesis, as (1) these societies were by far not as successful as those without them, (2) even in those societies harems had their peak in times when many men died in wars, and (3) nowadays harems are rare and gender disproportions are alleviated by the infusion of females from other countries.)

The advent of human societies posed enormous problems. For instance population density increased and the division of labor resulted in growing social inequality. If a compound of social animals becomes overpopulated, individuals feel the urge to dissolve it or at least to expel some members. Also in such compounds is a permanently ingoing fight for social status. In human societies its members had to learn to tolerate other members and life-long acceptance of their social status, they had to tame all the negative feelings aroused by that situation.

Although baboons live in hierarchical troops, they would not surrender and accept a low social position for a lifetime.

Many methods evolved to overcome these feelings and to create happiness out of nothing. Drugs were an appropriate way that time and they are still in use for that very purpose. Religions were used for the same purpose. The ancient Greeks who invented scientific medicine in contrast to religious and superstitious types of treatment also created a scientific approach to consciously control happiness and well being. As these theories were only known to and followed by a few ancient Greeks, they still are not appropriate to most people.

Most people will rely on more basic methods to control happiness booze and religion:

“For the pyramids, each worker got a daily ration of four to five liters. It was a source of nutrition, refreshment and reward for all the hard work. It was beer for pay. You would have had a rebellion on your hands if they’d run out. The pyramids might not have been built if there hadn’t been enough beer.”

However, alcohol makes dizzy and in higher dosage and continuously applied certainly impairs intellectual capabilities. But as discussed in an earlier post social evolution doesn’t require intelligent people any more. It needs social ones. So this post became a praise for social drinking. That make me—a strict anti-alcoholic—dizzy.

Besides during my holiday I attended a language school to improve my English. I hope you can feel the difference, and it was worth the money. Though I think I didn’t learn to much English, it was great fun anyway.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

The ever growing crew of scholars in university’s ivory towers, who adapt an intermediate position.

Ostensibly, they oppose the unscientific views of creationism but ideologically they are close to it. This scholastic camp comprises well tenured professors in biology who are not at all interested to change the system that feeds them so well. They would not allow for free competition that eventually threatens their position. Instead besides the mandatory fusillades against creationists (they have to convince the taxpayers of their usefulness in the above mentioned balance of power), the main goal is to keep everything unchanged. Some grant application competition here, some cronyism there, but never as challenging questions. For instance the question how all this is related to progress.

Progress for them is a precarious issue, so it is best to sweepingly deny it. They even deny it in evolution which is in stark contrast to the forefathers of evolutionary theory. Wallace and Darwin rather naively believed that natural selection brings about not only genetic adaptation but also progress. That it doesn’t work as easy was welcome news to those scholastics who simply declare evolution is nothing about progress but adaption, but how evolution creates complex organisms, such as mammals, from simple ones, such as bacteria, remains obscure. The same as with creationism.

For those who like graphical representation, the position of the scholastic evolutionary theory, the real scientific evolutionary theory, and creationism is depicted here.

Please also see my blog entry here.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Regardless the obvious tendency of societies to become more heterogeneous and unequal, there are also tendencies to propagate equality as in this post to which a gave the following comment:

• installment
• approachable
• haunt
• posits
• entreaty
• parochial
• deliberations
• principle of declining marginal utility
• credence
• aspirations

These are the terms I had to consult a dictionary for in order to understand this post. I admit, I’m not a native English speaker, still it is a relatively long list compared to other even philosopher’s blogs.

I hope you don’t take offense in it, but I only want to illustrate how difficult it is to avoid jargon you are particular familiar with.

The other assertion laid out over several paragraphs is that you oppose racial and sexual discrimination and even favor affirmative action. Guessing from your name, you probably suffered such discrimination and would benefit from affirmative action, so this point of view is probably also tainted with personal experiences.

There is nothing wrong with that. As a rule that can be deduced from Fauceir Theory there is no such thing as an independent or impartial observer. Every perception is an information transfer between fauceirs and both fauceirs will change after that information transfer due to imprecision and resource consumption. In more colloquial words, a man after seeing a picture, hearing a voice, experiencing a situation, and so on will never be the same again.

Finally, the main flaw in Singer’s book [1] (as far as I understand from your post) is that INequality is the goal of evolution. Examples that evolution created inequality are countless and commonplace. That human societies propagate equality is an other sub-process of evolution which is driven by ideology and therefore not perceivable as such by those engrained.

Replace ideology by the more general term, a fauceir’s drive for inner stability, and you will find the same tendency to create uniformity in other social compounds, an ant colony for instance and a group of soldiers. As laid out in some earlier post humans as biological beings are no more at the top of the evolutionary pyramid on this planet. This place is occupied by social fauceirs now for which human individuals play the role as slaves only, and as such they have to suffer their society’s, master fauceir’s, pressure for uniformity, consequently.

1. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 3. Aufl. (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

All resides with evolutionary progress, so fiercely denied by evolutionary watchdogs in their capacity of editors of prestigious evolutionary journals and scientific meetings. True evolutionary scientists since Darwin and before appreciate progress as an essential part of evolution, and they claim that progress occurs naturally without interference of a divine hand.

Next the term neutral as the term fitness are fauceir dependent. These terms depend on your vantage point. As almost all evolutionary biologists are DNA heredity fixed, many evolutionary changes, even progress is neutral to that system of heredity. For instance, while we discuss evolution this means progress to evolutionary theory (hopefully) but has absolutely no effect on my and your reproductive success )

Fauceirology abstracts the world into a system of nested fauceirs, evolutionary units, that have their own agendas. Hence progress in one of these nested fauceirs can be neutral or even disadvantageous to an other. That depends on the fauceir hierarchy. Let’s give an example from the Bible. (Those rather militant atheist may wonder why the Bible can be quoted to substantiate evolution, but evolution embraces everything even religion.)

I used the same example in an earlier post already. It is the story about Joseph and his brothers, so elaborately illustrated by Thomas Mann in his novel. This story may serve as an allegory for what happened to these complex protein molecules described in the Nature paper. The two brothers of Joseph’s were not as bright as him. In fact, they were rather jerks. (Remember the resemblance to misfolded proteins.) Still these two brother were successful in outdoing Joseph as they combined their forces. As they throw him for starvation into a dried out well, they won the competition for their father’s heritage. It would have had a bearing on reproductive fitness if they had wiped him out. They didn’t. Not in that example. Though their interaction was a success in respect their own well-being it was neutral.

Same ‘neutral’ evolutionary examples can be found throughout the realm of biology even among different species. These interactions can be temporary forming mating couples or packs or persistent forming symbioses.

Emoticon is an language example. The world is full of them.

What is the general rule the take home message concerning neutrality of evolution.

Neutrality and Progress is a question of fauceir perspective.

I’m amazed how much evidence in support of fauceir theory has accumulated over the last couple of years. This Nature acticle is only one and many wait to be covered here.

Concluding this post, I’d like to relate the message from Nature 2004 when Mato tried to publish his Fauceir Theory

Nature, 27.10.2004

Thank you for offering us your paper entitled “An evolved concept of evolution: A generalized theory of evolution extending from physics to societies provides more insight into specifics.”, which we must decline on editorial grounds. Unfortunately, we are not persuaded that the proposed article will be of sufficiently immediate interest to our readership to justify publication in any section of the journal.

I am sorry that on this occasion we cannot be more encouraging.

… the developments are encouraging though.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

By contrast, I admire the American prison system. Besides it is like the Russian system, and both countries share some features that probably make such a prison system more likely.

1. Both are large countries. Nor primarily in the sense of a large population—China and India have even larger populations—but rather in the sense of vast and sparsely inhabited areas that make it easy for a criminal to disappear from a region where the crime was committed and reappear elsewhere to commit the next crime.
2. And even more important. Both countries harbor a highly heterogeneous multicultural population that requires a high degree of tolerance which in turn makes it much more difficult to control potential criminals by customs such as neighbor watch.

Data from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm

Given these two reasons for a more severe penal system in large countries, I wonder if the present European system will change now that Europe becomes larger, easier to move home, and multicultural by significant immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. And those changes can be sensed already. Not surprisingly though, in Western Europe, Moslems are more likely to be imprisoned, same as Latinos and African Americans in the US. With the population of Moslems rapidly growing by immigration and height fecundity rate, the number of prisoners will happen to rapidly increase too.

That immigration in Europe has something to do with imprisonment can be sensed from the next chart. Switzerland and Scandinavia have a low prisoner rate as they also have greater impediments to immigration: A language difficult to learn, especially Finnish, a restrictive immigration policy, Switzerland for instance, and no former colonies that often serve as bridgeheads to immigrate to the motherland, UK is the predominant example.

data from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm

It is rather naive to gauge the effectiveness of a legal system by summing up the cost of their prisoners alone. Criminals are always a burden to a society either by draining a society’s wealth when pursuing criminal acts or by consuming society’s resources during legal action or imprisonment. By contrast to the US, the Europeans legal system chose other priorities. In Europe they try to keep calm those criminal elements outside prison, but this also comes at a price. Add the costly European social systems, the various subsidies, and all kinds of social transfer payments and you get a rough estimate of that cost.

At this point, you may argue spending money for a social system is more beneficial to a society than say spending it for a penal system. That fits only partly. The way of bolstering the social system to prevent crime has serious drawbacks too.

1. Laziness is infectious. If people learn that you can live a decent life based on social subsidies without work, it will spoil others.
2. The increasing number of people who depend directly or indirectly on social transfer payments exerts a ripple effect on politics. Influential political parties exist that exclusively rely on such potential criminal elements. The effect of an altered constituency on the outcome of democratic election is described elsewhere by a mathematical model.

I strongly disagree over the five reasons why we want to incarcerate people. It is neither retribution, crime deterrence, rehabilitation, restitution to the victims, nor social denunciation that makes incarceration necessary as all these goals can be achieved by other probably cheaper methods. The only reason that makes practical sense is isolation to prevent people who are a burden to society from influencing the course of society.

Back to Fauceir Theory, a legal system in its capacity to isolate criminal elements is a fauceir and therefore its control function is characterized by imprecision and consumed resources. We talked about consumed resources already. Imprecision is an other issue. Imprecision not only includes those who are sentenced despite their innocence or vice versa. Imprecision also includes punishments that are either not effective to isolate criminal attributes or isolate favorable attributes as well. To give an example, a child abuser probably may become a valuable member of the society on an island where there are no children around. Same with a rapist. Put him into a coal mine and allow occasional well observed trips to a brothel and he probably will make a decent contribution to the society’s wealth.

Thus Fauceir theory does not tackle the rather ideological question why which legal system is better. Fauceir Theory asks how to evolve an existing legal system in term of improved precision and reduced resource consumption. This according fauceir rules can only be accomplished by including additional sub-fauceirs.

This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Anonymus

• by Joan E. Strassmann, Robert E. Page Jr., Gene E. Robinson & Thomas D. Seeley²
• by Edward Allen Herre & William T. Wcislo ³
• by Krakauer DC, Flack JC.⁴
• by Michael Doebeli⁵
• by Nonacs P.⁶
• by van Veelen M, García J, Sabelis MW, Egas M.⁷.
• And this article by Markus Waibel, Dario Floreano⁸

can also be considered as related to this discussion.

I won’t give the fauceir stance on this subject here which deserves to Mato who will hopefully do this in the near future. My point is about the way discussions are held in evolutionary biology. Some insight provides this science article by Elizabeth Pennisi. Evolutionary biologist Stuart West who organized a roar of more than 130 scientists⁹ is quoted:

“[Our] letter is written in the hope that it will keep nonspecialists from wasting time on it.”

this can be simply rephrased:

“As in this case we were unable to prevent this article from publication we want to exert control on what is published now with all the power of a big crowd.”

Isn’t it shameful for a scientist to appeal to a fallacy like this?

“As most of the people thing the other way this cannot be true and should not be considered more seriously.”

Isn’t it the privilege of scientist to be true even if opposed by the majority? Didn’t famous scientists even lost their lives in their struggle for scientific advancement, Giordano Bruno for instance.

I like the allegory put forward by Steve Jones.

Not long ago, I was stung by a metaphor. A gang of paper-wasps guarding their shared nest, irritated at my exposition of their habits to a bunch of students, went on the attack. The effects were unpleasant — a hot, sweaty, choking feeling and an overwhelming desire to take a cool shower (which did not help).

An extraordinary scientist is not meant to be a mere social insect. He (please excuse sexists wording) used to develop outstanding ideas because he has an outstanding character, and an outstanding character can be maintained only by individualists. Well and these kind of people have to suffer the aggression of those who instinctively—as this is rooted in irrational behavior and only superficially rational activity—feel obliged to defend the hive. For decades Fauceir Theory challenges conventional evolutionary believes and has therefore bluntly dismissed. Mato should be please to learn that others share the fate.

It’s time for a change, now.