Epigenetics and divergent neurology.

If genetic switches can be invoked to explain homosexual individuals, I'm comfortable considering whether epigenetics can switch on genes that cause autism.

The "gunkle" theory suggests that if/where a group of humans is the unit for genetic selection, there is survival advantage to having a capacity to generate individuals whose productivity contributes to the group in general, rather than striving to compete for/gain/keep a female spouse and raise their own offspring. The epigenetic switches would be triggered by environmental conditions. It's been suggested that lots of children, or high stress in the gestating woman could be triggers.

Regarding autism, I don't think it's controversial to say that societies benefit from having individuals who specialise in different areas of productivity. Specialisation leads to a higher degree of skill and better technology being available to the group.

It's also fairly plain that for someone to specialise effectively, they can't be a 100% generalist in seeing to all the things that need to be done to maintain a lifestyle compatible with a complex society. So there's trade of specialisations; the textiles specialist trades with the flint knapper, the flint knapper trades with the carpenter, the carpenter trades with the butcher etc etc. And on a domestic level, a person, traditionally a woman, maintains the household in all the ways that their family and society requires. These people - usually women - don't specialise because they are the support crew for the people who do specialise. And in return, the specialist works hard to advance their knowledge and skills, excels in their field and brings wealth and status to their family, and their community. And their culture/family/society has the selection advantage over societies in which people are individually expected to each do everything for themselves, so have little technology or time to develop and build on it.

I hope this makes sense so far. The benefits of specialists, and a society which is structured to support them, has an advantage. But... what society would have an advantage above and beyond that? What if a society were *forced* to support individuals who were predisposed to intensely focus on narrow fields of interest?

Civilised societies are often judged as such by the way they treat their less fortunate. The sick and infirm are not dragged into the woods and left to the elements; they are cared for. So, what if someone were impaired in a way that required their family or society members to support them, and that impaired individual were coincidentally really strongly predisposed to learn everything there was to learn about a given craft, and then to practice that craft, become a master at the craft and pass on their improved techniques to future generations? Wouldn't that put the society's development in the fast lane compared to other, neighbouring/competing groups?

So if, by some epigenetic accident, a group were to sporadically generate individuals who had to be supported by family/the group, who had an inclination to hang out with adults when they are a child, and to hang out with children when they are an adult, loves to talk and learn about their specific field of interest, and excels at their specific field of interest, that would set up the society to both gain technology more rapidly, and to maintain the knowledge and skills, building on those skills generation after generation.

Autism is a complex set of traits, not all expressions and combinations will be beneficial, but not all have to be - only enough to provide the group with a survival advantage overall.

Triggers could be anything from high stress in ancestors for some number of generations, famine after years of bounty, bounty after famine, lots of study (because that will change your brain), lots of technology, lots of people... so many possibilities!

IIRC I wrote this here because it came up as a tangent on a discussion of the gendering of emotional labour. That relates to this because of the fact that the default specialist is male, and the default generalist is female. I assume this is because women lactate, so they stay at home with the baby/children/elderly while the men go out to raid the neighbouring village/defend the village from raiders. "Women as domestic slaves" is very common throughout history as I know it. Women keeping house while the man is at war/working with machinery/making another one of his crazy "inventions"/being a brain surgeon etc is another, gentler version of that same trope.

Men* get the benefits of being a specialist without the obligation to be as productive as a genuine specialist. It's a really sweet deal, but in order to justify it, society has to assume that women all naturally be and do all things that are required of a generalist. Men don't question the fact that women are responsible for doing pretty much everything that they, as men, choose not to do. They take the life's work of the women who are their support crew as their due. The woman does her duty in society; support the man so he can do amazing things for the benefit of all. Often men work very hard, some try all their life to contribute something amazing, but some just hang out with mates, drinking or killing pixels clocking up untold hours in online games, never imagining that the woman who does their housework might prefer that he did it himself so that she could do something else.

The imbalance in workload and opportunity can't be unjust if it's 'just natural', right?

That assumption is the first error. The second error is the idea that because genuine specialists are seldom adept at doing emotional labour, and all men are specialist, then men 'just naturally' don't do emotional labour.

So if women are expected to "just naturally" do emotional labour, the question comes up: why aren't more autistic girls noticed to be deficient in that aspect of their behaviour? The best answer I have to that is a question that invokes gender difference in the way autism manifests which has been selected for over thousands of generations, and has very grim implications: What point is there in having a generalist who can't do all the general duties, including having enough social perception to stay alive while relatively powerless due to low status?

*I know, I know #notallmen

Terrorism comes in many forms, instilling a sense of terror in the population to get them to comply with demands.

This can manifest as random bombing sprees, threats to contaminate water supplies or do similar violence or when thugs holding hostages drag a feisty one aside and beat them senseless in full view of the other hostages to put paid to any plans for non-compliance.

Strategically demonstrating the punitive measures which people who refuse to cooperate will be subjected to is a form of terrorism.

If the TSA is, as has been claimed, sending up a hue and cry of "Opt out! Opt out!" when someone chooses not to be x-rayed for security purposes, then performing an "enhanced pat down" on them, including genital groping, tears of humiliation and obvious distress in full view of the other travelers awaiting screening, specifically to demonstrate the unpleasantness of the alternative to submitting to the x-ray scan...

If that is being done in the name of protecting people against terrorism, I just hope whoever deemed that it be so is aware of the horrible, horrible irony.

Points of Difference: a Feminist issue.

Discussing points of difference can attract comments about points of similarity, suggesting that the similarities override the differences. The people discussing the points of difference are not actually oblivious to the similarities. They are just discussing the points of difference. Or the impacts of the points of difference. Or, in the case of geek feminism, discussing the impacts of the beliefs people have about the impacts of the points of difference.

Women in IT are like guys in IT except that the majority (guys) brew up a culture based on their perception that women in IT are not like men in IT. The difference lies in the perception that there is a difference, not in the difference itself. The points of difference between female IT workers and male IT workers do not constitute a professional difference. Gender is not perceptibly relevant. The fact that it has an impact on the careers, productivity, self-confidence and lives of women indicates that it does have an impact.

But it is not "being female" that causes the problem. The problem is a cultural myth that conjures up the supposed difference in ability, individual value or worthiness. In a perfect world, these myths would not exist, and it would be taken for granted that women and men are equal. But we are flawed individuals dealing with other flawed individuals in a flawed world.

One key problem women in IT face is not one of dealing with our own professional flaws, but with the flaws of other professionals. And, of course, of dealing with the impacts of the beliefs of our colleagues regarding our gender, which they do not realise is a professionally irrelevant point of difference.

"Feet to the Fire"

In this age when much of the media has abrogated its responsibility to fact check or follow up or report actual news rather than just regurgitate sensationalist junk and celebrity hairstyles, I'd like to see (and I didn't see this coming) a new reality TV show which could be called "Feet to the Fire".

It would be a sort of hybrid of Consumer Affairs, Media Watch and Mythbusters. On it, people who made outrageous allegations would be on their honour to prove that what they said was true.

Charlatans promoting dodgy health products (as seen on Today Tonight!) would be challenged to put a useful sample of test subjects (selected by an independent panel of scientific and fair minded people) through their regimens to demostrate the veracity of their claims.

"Experts", claiming that young people these days have unrealistic expectations of living in palatial first homes when they should do what people did back in the day and buy modest homes in the outer suburbs, would be presented with several "normal young couples" with average incomes and basic expectations, and the experts would be tasked with finding them properties they could genuinely recommend the "young people" would be able to afford to buy and live in.

And I would love to see some homeopaths go through a double blind study of their magic water where the test subjects were infected with, say, stomach ulcer germs or similar. Hrm. Might be a bit mean, but hey, if they are prepared to stand by their products, who am I to stop them?

I can see that there would be problems with getting people to come on a show like that, but I believe that, if the program had solid credibility, some would be forced to rise to the challenge.

Atheism may have a marketing problem.

I notice many atheists being frustrated by the way so many religious people presume that a person who does not believe in God must be immoral.

Thinking about the manner in which the "classic Christian spiritual redemption story" has become one of the more emotionally gripping tools of religious evangelists, I slipped into a realisation that the religious belief/atheism delineation in these stories correspond 100% with bad life/good life descriptions. None of the people who relate their personal redemption stories say "Well, life as an atheist was actually perfectly satisfying and virtuous but I now believe in God and that's the only difference." They uniformly begin with a tale of woe or horror describing a life of misery, emptiness, sin, crime, drugs, prostitution - take your pick, but it's always awful in some way. Then they give their lives to Jesus and their life becomes good. They become good.

The idea that people become good when they "find religion" is so pervasive that it has become a cliche. This widely advocated theme has to contribute heavily to the perception of religious people that to be an atheist must necessarily entail living a "bad" life. Simple reflex would incline people to think that if Religious = Good, then Not Religious = Bad, right?

Given that, it follows that for someone to choose to live an evil life must be an act of evil, a choice of an evil person or the act of a person who is susceptible to the influence of evil. From the perspective of some religious people, then, it is natural to imagine that these "Atheists" are not only without the light of the laws of God, but actively choosing evil, sin and crime in their daily lives, and that is abhorrent, dangerous and Must Be Stopped!

It seems to me that atheism has a visibility problem. On the one hand we have a religious population who are routinely exposed to specimens of atheists who now repent of their sinful ways and live virtuous religious lives, so imagine that other people who have not found religion must live sinfully. On the other hand, we have your run-of-the-mill atheists who (I'm ready to bet) are no less virtuous or lawful than the religious section of the community, but who are not handed a microphone at religious gatherings and encouraged to weep with ecstacy as they talk about how awesome it is to live a lawful life of kindness while not believing in Jesus.

In fact, due to the nature of atheism, their atheism being a non-issue to the cast majority of atheists, most atheists are not readily identified to religious people as examples of people being atheists while not being evil.

Another category of people who do not get handed the microphone at evangelical gatherings are those who cease to participate in their religion. People who stop believing in religion and serenely go on with their lives are not greeted noisily by public gatherings of atheists who joy fully chant slogans as they hear their story of atheist epiphany.

We do hear about religious people who do bad things, but the religious establishment quickly point out that they could not have done evil while being true adherents to said religion. By default, as soon as someone who is religious does something bad, they become a defacto atheist. The opposite does not apply to atheists who do wrong. They remain atheists in the mind of religious people, and their wrong behaviour serves to highlight the badness of atheism. And of course, in the minds of atheists, an atheist who does wrong is thought of as a criminal, not neatly popped out of the atheist "us" into some religious "them" category as well.

Hmm. These may constitute arguments in favour of formal recognition of atheism in parallel with, but separate to, formal religious organisations. I'm not sure how that would work, because atheists are likely to be less interested in belonging to a formal organisation than cats are in doing synchronised swimming.

Idea sketch: Multiple conflicting objectives.

Warning; another hurried jotting, subject to editing for reasons of reason, coherence and legibility.

"The objective" is not one thing, but a range of things along the continuum between minimal objective and optimal objective:

Optimal = proliferation and security of genetic material

Minimal = don't die.

How achieved is dictated by the macramé knottiness of culture and circumstance which dictate multiple conflicting objectives along this continuum.

A major conundrum: The need to be selfish vs the need to perceive one's self as worthy. Ties to "chosen people/special one" beliefs by way of justification/absolution. That conflict is the amniotic fluid in which embryonic hypocrisy develops.

More overt forms of unreason: To care more, to strive more, to be more certain, to be more avid, to be more fanatical - these are beneficial in finding meaning behind the justification.To realise one is wrong is catastrophic to confidence and motivation, so believing absolutely in something that cannot be disproven is optimal, if, by virtue of being empirically unprovable, literally crazy.

Early, early (early) philosophers anywhen looking for the unifying theory of everything, concepts that cover phenomena from disease to weather are tied to god-theory.

Aside: If it did play out like this, I wonder how long, on average, it took before the developers of god-theory realised what a powerful human-manipulation tool it could be?

Levels of imperfection in rational agents

(Caveat: This was hastily tappitty-tapped on a very, very hot day and may be subject to editing for clarity/coherence/sanity at some point.)

A rational agent "is an agent which takes actions based on information from and knowledge about the agent's environment. It strives to maximize the chances of success, where success is defined as the achievement of some desired outcome"

The use of this agent in modelling human behaviour perplexes me, as it seems potentially corruptible, and subject to the imperfections of its human programmer. By programming a rational agent to behave in a given way, almost any outcome can be modelled for a given scenario. At the same time, the behaviour of identically programmed rational agents will be identical under identical circumstances, where humans, with their far more complex and non-identical "programming" will not. The only way to make a model which might be able to predict human behaviour is to make its programming as complex and diverse as that of actual humans.

A term I have seen used is "perfectly rational agent" where the agent is presumed to have all required information and the time required to process it, as opposed to a "bounded rational agent" which will have limited information, limited processing ability/time or other constraints placed on it to more closely model behaviour of imperfect agents like humans.

I see humans and animals to be bounded rational agents. The intellectual capabilities required to do more than interpret input and react according to simple programming is beyond most animals because the cost of maintaining a brain large and powerful enough to do more is greater than the benefit. Of course, there is a wide range of intellectual ability among living things, which could be viewed as being dependent of how constrained they are by these "bounds" within which they must function.

Humans, who are less bounded, are intelligent enough to evaluate, reason and consciously decide rather than simply react. Looking up and down the scale, we can see that more processing ability plus more information collecting ability equals higher intelligence. Now humans, by becoming clever enough to invent the question; "Why?", have left me wondering; why are humans not more rational? Why are humans, with their big, clever brains, not closer to being perfectly rational beings?

I suspect that human behaviour is less able to be modelled using rational agents than that of less intelligent animals. I'd have expected humans, being at the "more information plus more processing ability" end of a spectrum would be more easily modelled by the hypothetical "perfectly rational agent", and have to wonder why evolution made such a weird corkscrew turn with a half-pike out into the realms of irrationality.

I describe rational agents as being "programmed". Humans are smart enough to be able to not only recognise their programming, but to question the overall purpose of their programming. Some humans want to find their programmer, take it apart and see what makes it tick. Some, for whatever reason, do not want anyone to ever 'look behind the curtain'.

Humans have penetrated the evolutionary "fourth wall". I mean, look at us; we've not only noticed how we evolved, we are taking apart and examining the stuff we are made of. It's not wonder we are interested in critically analysing our programming with regard to the big "Why?" questions. And the singularity that keeps drawing me in, as it has countless others in time past is; There is no Answer. No "42". No "God". No "Ultimate Meaning". No Point. (I have my own workaround for this, but it seems that many people find this idea unacceptable).

Recognition of the ultimate futility of life has a bad effect on morale, especially under adverse circumstances, and therein lies the detriment in in being more perfectly rational. Being more perfectly rational makes it more difficult for an individual to miss the fact that life is futile. Being more perfectly rational makes it hard to ignore the point beyond which continuing to hope and strive is just an exercise in futility. Humans have a weird trick they use to get around that; they've evolved in such a way that they keep the advantages of being "clever" without incurring the "futility" penalty by impairing the "rational" part of the combination.

Animals strive by reflex alone. They don't need a higher purpose to continue to fight against hopeless circumstances. They just do. The nature of their boundedness assists them to live in a way that works ...for a sustainable number of their species.

Humans who have a purpose feel better, work harder and are more inclined to get along with others who share a common (non-competitive) purpose. It does not matter much what the purpose is, as long as it is relatively stable, (un-disprovable is ideal) and not more detrimental than beneficial to those who hold it.

Beyond the fourth wall, there are likely to lie a whole bunch of interesting eventualities. One I have noticed is the ability to recognise that in the absence of a programmer/God/creator figure, the "purpose of life" is not necessarily graven in stone.

People can choose what they want to take on as their individual purpose, and individuals can make up our own answer to the question of "Why?"