Category Archives: behavior

civil society, communication, cultural evolution, learning, meaning, psychology, social organization, sociology, synergy

New journal: Human Arenas

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Linked here. The blurb:

The aim of this journal concerns the interdisciplinary study of higher psychological functions (as topic of a general theory of psyche from the perspective of cultural psychology) in human goal-oriented liminal phenomena in ordinary and extraordinary life conditions. The journal is organized around topics and arenas of human activity, rather than the traditional boundaries of academic disciplines. It will explore human arenas from the point of view of historical foundations, methodology, epistemology, and the intersection of disciplines. Human Arenas promotes an innovative mix of theoretical and empirical studies, as well as qualitative and quantitative approaches based on “small data,” that is, the analysis of crucial and meaningful data, rather than the inductive accumulation of large empirical “evidence.”

Topics of interest include:

·         Human arenas of movement (moving, changing, developing, crossing borders and horizons, utopia, crisis, resistance, schooling)

·         Human arenas of creation (imagining, fictionality, music, sensuality, drawing, dancing, playing, affectivating, anticipating, eating and cooking, loving, ambivalence)

·         Human arenas of regulation (religion, rituals, semiosis, constructing/destroying/deforming, killing, believing, caring, value, cultivating, dwelling, blocking/facilitating, inhibiting/promoting, coordinating collective action, ornamenting, voicing/silencing)

The journal itself is the arena for the development of theoretical foundations and empirical horizons of a general theory of human psyche, from a counter-hegemonic and peripheral perspective, meant to foster continuous dialogue with any kind of mainstream. The vision of the journal is to provide an interdisciplinary space for debate, in which psychology can learn from other disciplines, and other social and behavioral sciences (e.g. archeology, anthropology, biosemiotics, philosophy, medicine, natural sciences, ecology, humanomics, aesthetics, sociology, art, history, etc.) can learn from psychology. The journal will support the development of general formal models of human phenomena, also by reflecting upon processes of abduction, generalization and theorization.

behavior, cognition, cultural evolution, evolution, genetics, social organization, sociology

Cultural and genetic evolution

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From this article:

“The idea that humans have cognitive instincts is a cornerstone of evolutionary psychology, pioneered by Leda Cosmides, John Tooby and Steven Pinker in the 1990s. […] This all seems plausible and intuitive, doesn’t it? The trouble is, the evidence behind it is dubious. In fact, if we look closely, it’s apparent that evolutionary psychology is due for an overhaul. Rather than hard-wired cognitive instincts, our heads are much more likely to be populated by cognitive gadgets, tinkered and toyed with over successive generations. Culture is responsible not just for the grist of the mind – what we do and make – but for fabricating its mills, the very way the mind works.”

“The evidence for cognitive instincts is now so weak that we need a whole new way of capturing what’s distinctive about the human mind. The founders of evolutionary psychology were right when they said that the secret of our success is computational mechanisms – thinking machines – specialised for particular tasks. But these devices, including imitation, mind-reading, language and many others, are not hard-wired. Nor were they designed by genetic evolution. Rather, humans’ thinking machines are built in childhood through social interaction, and were fashioned by cultural, not genetic, evolution. What makes our minds unique are not cognitive instincts but cognitive gadgets.”

“The mind of a newborn human baby is not a blank slate. Like other animals, we are born with – we genetically inherit – a huge range of abilities and assumptions about the world. We’re endowed with capacities to memorise sequences, to control our impulses, to learn associations between events, and to hold several things in mind while we work on them. […] These skills and beliefs are part of the ‘genetic starter kit’ for mature human cognition. They are crucial because they direct our attention to other people, and act as cranes in the construction of new thinking machines. But they are not blueprints for Big Special cognitive mechanisms such as imitation, mind-reading and language.”

“To be fair, evolutionary psychology did something crucially important. It showed that viewing the mind as a kind of software running on the brain’s hardware can advance our understanding of the origins of human cognition. Now it’s time to take a further step: to recognise that our distinctively human apps have been created by cultural, not genetic, evolution.”

argumentation, biology, brain, brain functions, brain structures, complexity, embodied cognition, fact-based reasoning, genetics, ideology, neurodevelopment, scientific approach, sex differences, social organization

‘Neurosexism’ debated

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Neuroscientist Larry Cahill takes issue with a Feb 2019 Nature favorable book review of Gina Rippon’s The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience That Shatters The Myth Of The Female Brain.

Cahill’s response prompted an interview by Medium Neuroscience writer Meghan Daum.

Scientific findings have a way of upsetting apple carts, especially when we consider our oft-demonstrated human capacity to bend science to advantage some power-coveting groups over others.

Valid research amply shows there are real differences in male and female neuroanatomy and functions. Honest science must follow the evidence where it leads. Clearly, any discovered differences cannot be allowed to justify unequal social or economic opportunities or treatment. Cahill compares the situation to genetics. That people differ genetically in a vast number of ways cannot be taken as cause to misstate scientific findings or preclude further learning about genetics.

There are times and circumstances in which certain research approaches must be blocked for humane or other reasons but that is a different argument than denying the findings of a body of research because they are uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Thoughts?

artificial intelligence, behavior, bioengineering, biology, brain, cognition, complex adaptive systems, complexity, consciousness, evolution, genetics, meaning, natural selection, paradigms, physics, quantum mechanics, scientific approach, Stuart Kauffman, systems thinking

Ideas of Stuart Kauffman

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If you are familiar with complex systems theorist Dr. Stuart Kauffman’s ideas you know he covers a broad range of disciplines and concepts, many in considerable depth, and with a keen eye for isomorphic and integrative principles. If you peruse some of his writings and other communications, please share with us how you see Kauffman’s ideas informing our focal interests: brain, mind, intelligence (organic and inorganic), and self-aware consciousness.

Do you find Kauffman’s ideas well supported by empirical research? Which are more scientific and which, if any, more philosophical? What intrigues, provokes, or inspires you? Do any of his perspectives or claims help you better orient or understand your own interests in our focal topics?

Following are a few reference links to get the conversation going. Please add your own in the comments to this post. If you are a member and have a lot to say on a related topic, please create a new post, tag it with ‘Stuart Kauffman,’ and create a link to your post in the comments to this post.

artificial intelligence, attention, automation, behavior, civil society, cognition, communication, Douglas Rushkoff, economics, emotions, existential risks, meaning, neural hijacking, psychology, risk analysis, social networks, social organization, sociology

Book: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

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Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff investigates the impacts of current and emerging technologies and digital culture on individuals and groups and seeks ways to evade or extract ourselves from their corrosive effects.

After you read the book, please post your thoughts as comments to this post or, if you prefer, as new posts. There are interviews and other resources about the book online. Feel free to recommend in the comments those you find meaningful. Also, the audiobook is available through the Albuquerque Public Library but may have a long wait queue (I’m aiming for a record number of ‘q’s in this sentence).

Please use the tag and/or category ‘Rushkoff’ in your new posts. Use any other tags or categories you want. To access categories and tags while composing a post, click ‘Document’ at the top of the options area on the right side of the editing page.

How to add a category to a post in WordPress sites using the Gutenberg editor

Any comments you add to this post should inherit the post’s categories and tags. Add any additional ones as you like.

Last, this site includes a book reviews app for registered site members. To use it, log in and select Review under the New menu.

Starting a new book review

complexity, evolution, genetics, hierarchy, natural selection, synergy

the evolution of synergy

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Good quick summary of some of Deacon’s ideas. Deacon: “We need to stop thinking about hierarchic evolution in simple Darwinian terms. We need to think about it both in terms of selection and the loss of selection or the reduction of selection. And that maybe it’s the reduction of selection that’s responsible for the most interesting features” (9:40).

artificial intelligence, civil society, meaning, social organization, storytelling, transhumanism

Rushkoff: Team Human

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Mark suggested this book as a future group reading and discussion and I agree. Rushkoff provides a very brief summary of his new book on the topic in the TED talk below. It starts with tech billionaires main concern being: Where do I build my bunker at the end of the world? So what happened to the idyllic utopias we thought tech was working toward, a collaborative commons of humanity? The tech boom became all about betting on stocks and getting as much money as possible for me, myself and I while repressing what makes us human. The motto became: “Human beings are the problem and technology is the solution.” Rushkoff is not very kind to the transhumanist notion of AI replacing humanity either, a consequence of that motto. He advises that we embed human values into the tech so that it serves us rather than the reverse.

automation, behavior, complex adaptive systems, complexity, decision making, economics, evolution, framing, game theory, learning, limbic system, metaphors, natural selection, psychology, risk analysis, sociology

Running on escalators

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Ideally, automation would yield a Star Trek reality of increasing leisure and quality of choice and experience. Why isn’t this our experience? An article on Medium offers insight into why this is not occurring on any significant scale.

Evolved behavioral strategies explained by the prisoner’s dilemma damn the majority of humans to a constant doubling down. We exchange the ‘leisure dividend’ (free time) granted by automation for opportunities to outcompete others.

Apparently, the sort of reciprocal social learning that could lead us to make healthy choices with our leisure opportunities depends on us and our competitors being able to mutually track our outcomes across consecutive iterations of the ‘game’. That ‘traceability’ quickly breaks down with the complexity inherent in vast numbers of competitors. When we conclude that any viable competitor may use her leisure dividend to further optimize her competitive position, rather than to pause to enjoy her life, we tend to do the same. Each assumes the other will sprint ahead and so chooses to sprint ahead. Both forfeit the opportunity to savor the leisure dividend.

The prisoner’s dilemma shows that we (most humans) would rather be in a grueling neck-and-neck race toward an invisible, receding finish line than permit the possibility a competitor may increase her lead.

Any strategy that’s so endemic must have evolutionary roots. Thoughts?

behavior, decision making, economics, existential risks, genetics, metabolism, psychology, risk analysis

Test determines approximate year of death

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Age-at-death forecasting – A new test predicts when a person will die. It’s currently accurate within a few years and is getting more accurate. What psychological impacts might knowing your approximate (± 6 months) death time mean for otherwise healthy people? Does existing research with terminally ill or very old persons shed light on this? What would the social and political implications be? What if a ‘death-clock’ reading became required for certain jobs (elected positions, astronauts, roles requiring expensive training and education, etc.) or decisions (whom to marry or parent children with, whether to adopt, whether to relocate, how to invest and manage one’s finances, etc.)?

algorithmic bias, artificial intelligence, autonomous machines, civil society, evolution, social organization, storytelling

Lent responds to Harari

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Lent makes many of the points we had in our discussion of Harari’s book Homo Deus. Lent said:

“Apparently unwittingly, Harari himself perpetuates unacknowledged fictions that he relies on as foundations for his own version of reality. Given his enormous sway as a public intellectual, Harari risks causing considerable harm by perpetuating these fictions. Like the traditional religious dogmas that he mocks, his own implicit stories wield great influence over the global power elite as long as they remain unacknowledged. I invite Harari to examine them here. By recognizing them as the myths they actually are, he could potentially transform his own ability to help shape humanity’s future.”

I will only list the bullet point fictions below. See the link for the details:

1. Nature is a machine.
2. There is no alternative.
3. Life is meaningless so it’s best to do nothing.
4. Humanity’s future is a spectator sport.