Evolutionary watchdogs and the discussion about eusociality

A nature article by M. A. Nowak, C. E. Tarnita & E. O. Wilson¹ aroused a furious reaction. Six comments have been submitted to nature alone:

• 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.

---

1. Nowak MA, Tarnita CE, Wilson EO. The evolution of eusociality. Nature. 2010;466(7310):1057-1062.

2. Strassmann JE, Page RE Jr, Robinson GE, Seeley TD. Kin selection and eusociality. Nature. 2011;471(7339):E5-6; author reply E9-10.

3. Herre EA, Wcislo WT. In defence of inclusive fitness theory. Nature. 2011;471(7339):E8-9; author reply E9-10.

4. Krakauer DC, Flack JC. Better living through physics. Nature. 2010;467(7316):661.

5. Doebeli M. Inclusive fitness is just bookkeeping. Nature. 2010;467(7316):661.

6. Nonacs P. Ground truth is the test that counts. Nature. 2010;467(7316):661.

7. van Veelen M, García J, Sabelis MW, Egas M. Call for a return to rigour in models. Nature. 2010;467(7316):661.

8. Waibel M, Floreano D, Keller L. A Quantitative Test of Hamilton’s Rule for the Evolution of Altruism. PLoS Biol. 2011;9(5):e1000615.

9. Abbot P, Abe J, Alcock J, u. a. Inclusive fitness theory and eusociality. Nature. 2011;471(7339):E1-4; author reply E9-10.

---

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.

Just an Other Comment on Memes

As the discussion evolves into a vivid example of fauceir, in this case meme, evolution, I try to send an other comment which I copied here.

@John Dinkelspiel
I watched Susan Blackmore’s talk on memes, and in fact, she is extending the concept of memes towards Fauceir Theory by introducing more types of fauceirs namely the ‘teme’, technological meme, but you cannot name them all. Fauceirs are innumerable. Even replicating fauceirs are abundant and they show a tremendous variation in mechanisms of replication. You cannot even name all the mechanisms but you can classify them by precision and resource consumption. Mato explained these parameters in his first Fauceir lecture, available at YouTube.

@John
Surprisingly enough, I find myself defending Meme Theory. Though I agree with you that the meme concept is vague at best, and though I disagree with Susan Blackmore that it can be improved simply by copying and varying, still I feel there is a fundamental predication made in Susan’s talk that comes true. We shy away from admitting it. I outlined it more precisely in my blog entry.

Grown up in the countryside, I know how people who live in big cities for generations loose elementary instincts to survive in the wilderness. (The movie Crocodile Dundee is no exaggeration.)

You may want to counter that this can be learned again based on the Madagascar 2 slogan “If you make it in New Your you can make it everywhere”, but I vehemently disagree. These instincts are lost and gone for ever. I wonder what experienced rangers in Arizona would say about it.

@JRD
There is nothing scary about that. As a matter of fact, fauceirs, manipulate fauceirs since time immemorial. Fauceir-fauceir-interactions is the prerequisite of evolution.

@Jim Brennan
I guess you compare parasitic memes with fast food. Well, all fauceirs, including memes, can evolve into parasitic behavior. Each host fauceirs has to defend numerous such attacks.

@Graham Macdonald
Well, genes are an abstract concept too. If you took a stretch of DNA into a test tube, it would not work as a gene. A gene needs its context, the environment where it can take action. The same holds true for a meme. If you wrote some source code on a paper, it would not work either. Fauceirs are abstract entities and they have always to be studies apart from its physical representation in the context in which they have evolved.

You may counter that a gene can be represented only by a certain DNA sequence while a piece of software can be transmitted by various forms. That’s not true. The same gene is not always the same stretch of DNA. It may include synonymous variations. Moreover, as some organisms or organelles use a slightly different genetic code, the same gene can be coded differently at an other place.

---

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.

An other Comment on Memes

This is a re-posted comment on an article to be found here.

Thank you for this crash course in meme theory and its historical background. I couldn’t afford neither time nor money to read Dawkin’s books, and I don’t think it is necessary any more as so many repercussions are available for free in the meantime.

Please allow to summarize this article as follows:
Definition: Meme is a specific psychological fauceir that exhibits replicator properties.

The invention of memes in times of bursting information technology was consequential. The similarities between memes and genes are striking. Both posses unique replicator properties, but replication needs a complex machinery to take place. In case of genes, this is accomplished by a host of proteins; in case of memes, storage and communication devices are needed. And namely these devices developed rapidly in the second half of the last century, so memes became abundant and obvious.

As with gene theory of evolution, the meme theory’s problem remains that all the plausible explanations of evolution require that complex replicator machinery at work. Fauceir Theory easily can solve this problem by extending the study of evolution to fauceirs that do not provide replicator properties.

Fauceir Theory is around for about the same time as meme theory, and it explains evolution in even more general and abstract terms. As with meme theory, people seem not to be terribly keen on it. Fauceir Theory seems not to be an infectious meme actually 😉 but this is not surprising or even disappointing. On the contrary, it can be predicted by fauceir rules that an advanced fauceir, an advanced meme in this case, needs time to gain acceptance.

---

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.

A Clockwork Orange revisited

Sometimes it is difficult to resume writing after such a pause. The first think one wants to talk about is the cause of a writers block, if there is one. Well, there is a cause as far as I can understand it. I made a long journey and during this journey I was listening to an audiobook. It was the  Clockwork Orange that I found worth going deep with after this little passage on a web page on English Grammar. No, it was not disappointing. The book is well written as the comment made me guess. Yes, it was annoying. Probably I’m one of very few people on this planet who instantly understood all words in this audiobook, as in fact all the words that may sound so strange to native English speakers are in fact Russian words, easily comprehensible to someone who speaks both languages. But this was the annoying point. Why did he use Russian words? Easy enough, it is clear to everybody that the writer invented this alien jargon to characterize a group of youngsters as detached from normal social behavior. The unfamiliar language creates a distinct reality in which the degree of brutality exposed by this group of criminals becomes out-of-this-world and hence tolerable, though not acceptable.

But, why Russian? I guess the answer to this question is that this book was written by Anthony Burgess in 1962. It was the period of cold war, and Russia was the enemy. An here it occurs to me that it was an intended effect a means to subconsciously infuse hatred against Russian people who speak the same tongue. In fauceir terms it is the imprecision ingrained in every information process here employed intentionally in terms of propaganda to manipulate people. Nowadays an author would probably rather use Arabian.

All this was clear to me right from the beginning. There was something else that made me nervous that subconsciously infused something in my mind that made me depressed and silent. Now I know what it was. By contrast to native English speakers these words were not alien to me. They have a meaning that aroused feelings and these feelings were in stark contrast with what happened in the plot.

To give an example that can be apprehended by English speakers, imagine members of a gang addressing each other by words like ‘my friend’ or ‘my dear one’. Sounds strange doesn’t it. An English speaking gang would use words like pal, crony, buddy, and so on,  and in Russian, of course, such words exist, too. Droog, however, the word frequently used by gang members in that Burgess’ book,  when used among criminals has a rare sarcastic taste.

An other example, devotchka in Russian is an innocent girl and the word is synonymous with virgin. Russian criminals wouldn’t use that word to address a normal female person, if they were not sex criminals. Even among ordinary criminals this word is reserved for someone they harbor sincere feelings for. An ordinary woman is called by Russian criminals whore or bitch like supposingly everywhere in the world.

Having said that, I hope everyone can understand how I took in this book. It was detestable. It was as if these criminals not only showed an extraordinary degree of brutality, but also trampled the least bit of their own feelings, as if they were not humans at all but robots programmed only to destroy.  It was unbearable. But it was unreal, too,  as every robot has its programmer. Robots don’t brutally destroy everything on their own account. They must have a programmer.

Finally, I got over it because I understood that everything was my mere misconception, imprecision in fauceir terms so to speak.

---

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 Evolution of Christianity

It might be understood as a sequel to the meme post yesterday, but actually I planned this topic long before, and I felt Christmas suites best for it.

The evolution of Christianity is a typical example of the evolution of a non-biological fauceir. Christianity is one of the most successful religions in the world. Its followers not only outnumber all the other religions, but also Christian societies are leading in social and technological progress. So we may say that Christianity is dominating this world. It was not always that way. In ancient Rome, Christians were rather a fringe group of no importance at all. If we want to understand what changed this religion to become the most successful in the World, we have to step down the staircase to the catacombs of Rome where the earliest Christian relics can be found.

The catacombs of Rome are ancient burial places. In a time when Rome was overcrowded burial places were rare and expensive. The ancient Christians were no affluent people rather craftsmen who soon discovered while working in quarries that the rock underneath Rome composed of tuff is a fantastic material to excavate long cellars, so they finally found a place to escape the troublesome world and to hide dead loved ones in peace.

Of course, as other religions often do, Christians started decorating the tombs, and these paintings now are the only clues to ancient Christian believes still preserved today.

If at Christmas Eve people flock in churches to listen that Jesus was born to suffer for our sins, we may guess it was not always the story of a Jesus leading an life full of privations that fascinated Christian believers. At least pictures of a crucified Jesus so common in medieval churches are absent in these catacombs. Jesus is rather depicted as a scholar, a wise man who is instructing his followers.

These people seemed to strongly believe in miracles as it is depicted by the Jonas story.

Jonas fell overboard, became devoured by a dragon who disgorged him, and finally he lived in heaven. (Please remember reading this picture from the right to the left.)

What made the ancient Christians change their attitude and to celebrate a suffering Jesus instead of all this miracle stuff? The answer is an evolutionary process that closely resembles some kinds of evolution by natural selection so obvious in biology.

Ancient Rome was virtually a dictatorship and people suffered from cruelties and injustice. Concerning religion Rome was rather pluralistic many religions coexisted. Among others also Jews lived there, but only Christianity made it to the top becoming the domination religion of the Roman empire after several centuries of suffering.

As we know today, the most effective way to resist a dictatorship is to ignore hardship and intimidation. Certainly, this is not good for the one who has to suffer, it is definitely advantageous for the whole social group. So the group of Christians in ancient Rome became so resistant to Cesar’s dictatorship by encouraging members to self-sacrifice. (For a vivid illustration please read Quo Vadis) They taught Jesus’ life history as a model of an successful life though in fact he was a looser. He was a looser in respect to his own life and his family, but he made some valuable social contribution, and therefore Christian clerics maintain his life was useful.

If a compound of fauceirs succeeds in controlling its members so strongly that these members neglect individual interests and pursue the compound’s interests only, the compound, a fauceir himself, is more successful. A biological example is the worker bee in a bee hive or cells in a tissue that get specialized. As an other social example take soldiers in an army. If you appreciate this argument you will easily understand why Cromwell’s army was so successful.

Amazingly, the same ideology that made Christianity so successful to resist Roman dictatorship helped people in medieval times to resist oppression exerted by the Christian church itself, and ironically it often is the basis of atheism, at least in those people who are able to discriminate between ethics and faith. In the Christmas church the priest will remember were our ethics derived from, even those of most atheist.

Merry Christmas!

---

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.

Memes, Genes and Others are Fauceirs

This is actually a comment on a podcast. The second part of this podcast is not listenable to me because of so much lingual titubation. Lets stick to the main points in the first part.

The problem of similarities. Memes like genes are fauceirs and they behave as such. They share common properties as they belong to the same class, but it is pointless to expect they were identical. In fact, if you analyze fauceirs cladistically, you will find that memes and genes are closely related. That is why memes were so readily identified as mental cousins of genes.

The problem with the definition of genes and memes. Now that we know both belong to the same class we can define them by a genus–differentia definition: They are fauceirs characterized by some specific properties. This prevents from being vague, such as stretch of DNA or cultural item etc.

The problem of competition for resources. The claim that memes fight for memory and social awareness the same way as computer programs compete for CPU time is an oversimplification. Genes don’t compete for storage space on a stretch of DNA, at least they don’t do so in eukaryotes. We know gene compete by the phenotypes they define, and these phenotypes compete for resources such as food and mating partners.

What meme are and what not remains obscure to me too. From fauceir perspective, I feel two concepts are mingled in the theory of memes:

1. Memes are fauceirs. That’s quite clear to me.
2. Memes have an evolutionary history. Genes came first. Memes evolved in organisms that are controlled by genes. Therefore it is legitimate to say memes evolved from genes. Is it surprising than that memes retain some features of their ancestors.

---

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.

Epistemology of Evolutionary Theory – The Fauceir Stance

This is actually a comment to a comment. Because it became so extensive, I decided to post it separately.

Still trapped in the classical evolutionary theory, you believe that selection is the only mechanism that controls evolution. It was a great discovery by Wallace, not by Darwin as a matter of fact, that a stochastical process, such as natural selection, is capable to control evolution, but now we know there exist other stochastical processes, too. And it can be even proved that natural selection is not a homogeneous process. This paper provides some idea.

Distinguishing two classes, selective and non-selective (neutral) processes in case of evolutionary theory, is a crucial step, but it is merely the first step towards a more comprehensive theory of evolution. The advancement of the evolutionary theory is an epistomological process, and epistemology, in more general terms, can be understood as an evolutionary process itself to which Fauceir Theory is applicable, so please allow to explain the development of the evolutionary theory in fauceir terms.

Lets start with some analogies that illustrate that the first step in comprehending the worlds complexity is to construct a black-and-white discrimination:

1. A child learning to comprehend the world by dividing things in bad and good.
2. Marx starting to analyze social processes by describing two classes exploiter and worker.
3. The trial and error experiment.
4. Bit set or not set in computer science.

Well, and if you want a more plausible biological example, take the faculty of seeing. The most primitive visual organs can distinguish between light on and off. More sophisticated organisms can discriminate light intensities, colors (wave lengths), or even, with the help of some memory, motions.

In analogy, the epistemological process that happens to evolutionary theory now is that differentiation between selectively neutral and non-neutral control processes. But appreciating fauceir theory adds the whole spectrum of intensities.

I hope I found some colleagues to discuss this topic seriously and to publish it eventually.

---

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.

Logical Fallacies—Assets and Impediments—the Fauceir Stance

Logical fallacies are a typical example of fauceirs as they clearly embrace the dualism of information and control, and as such they are not simply good for cheating or bad for rational discussions. They have evolved and carved out a niche for themselves in communication and decision making, so a rational analysis of logical fallacies has to set off advantages and drawbacks. I’m well aware about fierce protests of those who deny any usefulness in the realm of rationality, but please allow to explain my point in further detail.

As discussed before, two aspects of fauceirs may be analysed separately:
1.the impact on the signaling cascade
2.the imprecision that is added to this signaling cascade

ad 1) The impact on the signaling cascade is that the so called logical fallacies significantly reduce and improve the signaling cascade by abridging complex evaluations.
For illustration the post-hoc-propter-hoc fallacy. As our experiences show that in many cases the sequence of events also signifies causality, for some decisions, it is enough to know the sequence and not the causality. For instance, if the administration of a new medication is followed by serious complications, we would be much more careful to administer it again even if unaware about the causality.
Next illustration the appeal-to-authority fallacy. Nobody is capable to muster all the scientific evidence, so we have to rely on experts of some sort.

Ad 2) Abridging complex evaluations might be useful in some instances, but can lead to wrong conclusions elsewhere. Examples are abundant when doctrines have been used to misguide people. Some are listed here, but we have to be aware that almost every faith is misusable that way.

Finally, someone may counter that the term logical fallacy is reserved for cheating on logical discussions only. I generally agree, but my intention was to make clear that this cheating is rooted in useful developments of our thinking. Cheating is a natural by-product of every fauceir’s imprecision.

Being consistently rational

Being consistently rational includes being an atheist—right. Next, the most forceful atheists are heretics who cling to demons or aliens—plausible as this has also been propagated by theists for centuries. Therefore pagans worshipping the devil consider themselves rational, though they are the most irrational of all.

Just an other example. Rationalists favour Darwinian evolutionary theory. The most fervent proponents bitterly fight creationism and any other deviations thereby denying that some thousand years ago the idea that the world has been created was a great achievement compared to what existed before, and they also deny that Dawins’s theory already became out-dated, and in doing so they deny evolution of human thoughts and ideas—an irrational position again.

Conclusion. Being rational is the attitude to permanently question the own position in the light of new evidence and to be tolerant of other people’s believes even if they are not. It is being like Jesus has been some 2000 years ago. Oh, I know it appears to be a blaspheming position to all faithful though irrational rationalists.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) vs. Capability Quotient (CQ)

Arm Wrestling on Wikipedia

A recent paper defined a CQ that was used in mathematical calculations instead of the traditional IQ. The difference between CQ and IQ is almost the same as between the strength, of an arm muscle measured by arm wrestling for instance, compared to the physical value of force as it is defined by Newtons’s law. Force is what accelerates a certain mass according to the formula given below.

Newton's definition of force

Intelligence is a subjective property describing a man’s intellectual capabilities, as strength describes his physical capabilities. (Please excuse sexual language that may annoy somebody. This holds true for women too, of course.) As strength can be measured by various methods with slightly different but statistically correlating results, also intelligence can be measured by different IQ-Tests, and again they produce different results, but on average they correlate.

Newton didn’t bother to develop his classical mechanics on such a shaky ground as strength measurements, and all the same, if you are trying to perform model calculations on intellectual capabilities, you cannot rely on a paramater that is both subjective and test dependent. Therefore a CQ, capability quotient, has been introduced. The CQ is task related. The better the outcome the better the CQ. In a special case, if the task is a specific IQ test, CQ is identical to IQ.