Left Brain Vs Right Brain

The brain is far from understood, if it were simple enough for us to understand then we would be too dumb to understand it.  However, we do know a lot about it.  Only quite recently the plasticity of the brain has become accepted - it used to be thought that the brain structures were fixed and that they filled up with knowledge and experience, much like a computer.  I remember as a boy being taught that the number of neurons in the brain grew until adulthood and then they just started dying off with no new ones replacing them.  The truth is more complicated - our brains form new connections all the time and can become rewired dramatically through necessity if one area becomes damaged, but generally there are structures in the brain that perform [more-or-less] specific functions.

People sometimes talk about being left or right brained, i.e. more dominant in the left / right hemisphere.

The left hemisphere contains the structures strongly associated with: grammar and vocabulary; logically structured thinking; analysing and controlling feelings; reality.

The right hemisphere contains the structures strongly associated with: intonation of speech; an unstructured approach to tasks (they call it 'multitasking' which has been shown to be less efficient in tests); emotional responses; fantasy.

To summarise, the left brain is rational, and the right brain is a hippy.

No prizes which side I'd be associated with, although actually I'd say I am much better than average at seeing the big picture - the less immediate consequences of actions - which is a right-brain trait.

The 2 hemispheres communicate by little roads called commissures, and one superhighway called the corpus callosum.

For severe epilepsy this superhighway of communication is sometimes severed, leading to some fascinating discoveries.  The two halves of the brain can be thought of as having separate consciousnesses!  Imagine being trapped inside someone else's head, much like in the film 'Being John Malkovic', able to see everything but only able to have a slight influence on his behaviour.  That may be happening inside you right now!  With some subjects who have had their corpus callosum severed, a written command can be flashed up visible only to the eye without the subject being consciously aware of it.  For example, if the word "LEAVE" is flashed up, the subject may get up and start to leave the room - when asked why they are leaving they reply something like "I'm thirsty, I want to go get a soda".  The right brain has invented a story for the the conscious mind that is coherent with the action demanded by the subconscious.

Some of these patients also experience 'alien hand syndrome' in which one arm is under the control of the 2nd hidden consciousness.  Freaky.

I wonder if the religious doctors see these patients as having 2 souls?

Most people invent stories for their lives that fit with their actions.  Most people believe they have rational reasons for their actions, but actually it is just lies told to them by the ultimate manipulating puppet master - their own subconscious.

Villains

Can animals be villains?  I've heard of heroic dogs and horses (and military medals of bravery have even been awarded to pigeons!) but I've never heard of a villainous animal.  

Villainy is a hard concept to tie down, so perhaps it's best to first think of evil - are there evil animals?  Of course, some people needlessly view the ways of an entire species or family, usually a reptile, as evil - but to tar a whole group of animals as evil must surely be to dilute the meaning of the word so much as to be meaningless.

   

Intelligent animals can certainly lie.  There are troops of monkeys that forage on the jungle floor, and if one spots something juicy in someone else's patch they occasionally give a warning call that sends everyone into the trees - leaving them free to go get it.

More obvious lies have been told by chimps and gorillas that have been taught sign language - and seem as prone to fibbing as most humans, though the lies are typically less devious.  In one famous example there was a gorilla called Koko who had a pet kitten.  Koko had a fit of temper in the night and ripped a heavy steel sink off the wall; when asked what happened, Koko pointed to the kitten and signed "cat did it".

Is it such a long way from the simple lies of gorillas to the deceptive games of human villains?  We are all animals and the forces of nature and nurture are powerful ones indeed - so how accountable is anyone?  I like to ask people who believe in the devil if he could repent and be good again.  It perplexes them as they have to either give up on the idea he has free-will and therefore that he is evil (these seem intertwined), or give up on their belief he is fated to be the head evil dude forever.

Villains add to the rich tapestry of life and help create bonds in society - nothing brings people together more than a common enemy - that's why the highest sense of nationalism is in times of war.

So in conclusion, I've waffled and digressed a bit, and I had no clue where I was going when I started writing this, but it is past 3am so forgive me - I hope you just have some food for thought :)

Heros

Perhaps you are familiar with 2 quite famous experiments in psychology: the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the Millgram experiment.  If not, the summary is that when people are cast in a role, they change their behaviour to be more congruent with the behaviours expected of that role.  A film was made based on the Stanford Prison Experiment that is well worth watching (imdb=7.9), called "Das Experiment" (German - make sure you download the English subtitled version!).

This effect is part of what is known as Attribution Theory in psychology.  An everyday example of the application of this was discussed briefly in my post on persuasion - calling someone "mate" or "buddy" will help elicit trusting and loyal behaviour.

The effect also must be borne in mind when explaining how whole groups of people performed acts considered 'evil' such as all the Nazi guards herding the Jews to their deaths.  Humans seem to readily accept that there are psychological reasons excusing bad behaviour, but conveniently forget the other side of the mirror, that the same forces are at play in the other direction as well.

Soldiers, police, and firefighters are all called 'Heroes' if they go into a dangerous situation and get killed.  It is much more often when they are killed, possibly because you can't speak ill of the dead - so no-one is allowed to bring any evidence forward opposing the moniker.

After the 9/11 attacks the firemen (and women) who responded were called heroes.  I think most of the population, if they had worked in the fireservice for long enough to hold it close to their personal identity, would have done the same thing - in which case are most of the population heroes who just haven't had the circumstances to demonstrate it?

I think it's great people like that are publicly called heroes - they put themselves in harms way for my benefit, and if we didn't impose the expectation of them being heroes perhaps they wouldn't.  It is in society's interests to call them heroes (and mean it!) - and that is why that meme has evolved.

Sure, some may join up as a vocation, but I think most are probably sheep just acting out a role thrust upon them.

Stories from childhood

At 11 years old I changed school to one with separate lessons with specialist teachers.  My biology teacher introduced us to the theory of evolution in the first lesson.

It made complete sense to me - if there is a subset of a species with a mutation (adaptation) that makes them ever so slightly more likely to have [more] kids then, over a long time in a large group, those mutations will become increasingly common (because they are genetic) and thus the species evolves.  Conversely, any trait that makes it less likely for an animal to reproduce (such as causing them to die quickly) will be strongly selected against.

I came home from school that day and said to my mother, who was a high-school biology teacher herself, "why do people believe that ostriches stick their heads in the sand when they see a predator?"

"Because they do"

"But if they did they would die out very quickly - that's evolution, and it's obviously true whereas 'common knowledge' is sometimes wrong"

"Well it's not wrong in this case"

This incident greatly influenced how I thought of my mother from then on.

Looks

I read an article based on a paper recently that concluded you could tell if someone were criminal from how they look.  I was astounded at the bad science behind it - there was no attempt to mitigate for, or even mention, the possibility that it was hairstyle or someone generally looking like they have had a hard life that provided the (somewhat weak) correlation with criminality.  Personally I don't think this study can conclude anything - in which case why did they bother?

As an aside - there is evidence that better looks are correlated with higher IQ.  I know it is with me anyway ;)

The weakest correlation was with rapists - suggesting (to me) that men from all walks of life can be capable of rape, whereas someone who is in a gang, or trailer park, etc, is much more likely to commit and be caught for murder than some white collar dude.

Anyway, here are some of the pics used in the research.  I'll post the answers and link the paper in a few days' time to give you a chance to see how you do!

Who are the criminals? 

Motivation

In the NY Times a couple of days ago, there was an article written by an economist explaining why people sometime make bad decisions.  He obviously understands that evolutionary pressures have shaped our minds - shaped them to survive long enough to pass their genes on to the next generation, not shaped them to be happy.  He posits that happiness is usually only fleeting, and its allure is held in front of the mind like a carrot; he suggests that our minds are wired to be anxious and unhappy as the prime motivating factor in people's lives.

There is a lot wrong with his article, but the things it got right got me thinking.  I agree that happiness for most people lasts a much shorter time than being anxious or unhappy, and I know that most people instinctively move towards carrots and away from sticks.  Most people.  What about those who aren't neuro-typical?  People with flat affect, a smaller than average amygdala, a low fear response, have been shown conclusively to not react (not nearly as much anyway) to metaphorical sticks.  It is no use using punishment as a means of changing the behaviour of someone with an antisocial personality disorder - there has to be a carrot dangling somewhere.  Those with BPD and other disorders associated with anxiety do experience the stick, but it is beating them in every direction depending on which way the wind is blowing.

So is the reason that those with flat affect, and those who are overanxious, have difficulty with long term objectives simply that the motivation is too low or the direction the motivation is never in the same direction for more than 5 minutes?

The Eyes

The eyes are the window to the soul, so they say. 

A massive part of our brain is dedicated to the visual analysis of our world, which is probably why we feel that the centre of our being is in our head – I think this feeling is more related to the location of our most important sense than to the actual location of our brain.  A hippy friend once said to me after he'd bumped his head on a short doorframe, "I always forget I have a body above my eyes".  he was stoned at the time though.

The reason we need a lot of brainspace for our vision is that it is a very complex mathematical problem to solve. 

If you have only one eye then it is presented with a 2D image with no depth information – your depth perception is certainly much reduced with only one eye, but you can navigate your way around day to day life without difficulty. 

This is something that is not to be sniffed at – your brain has to make many many assumptions about what an object's shape actually is and some shading information to then turn this into a sensible image presented to your conscious mind. For example, you know a TV screen is a rectangle, but if you see it from an angle it will form an image of a parallelogram onto your retina. It seems reasonable to assume it should actually be a rectangle and therefore is interpreted as a rectangle at an angle. What if it isn't an object you've seen before... a lot of processing is needed and optical illusions show some of the limitations of that processing.

When you have 2 eyes depth perception becomes easier, because each eye sees a slightly different image due to parallax. However, turning these 2 images into a coherent 3D world is nothing to be sneezed at either, and even the very best computer systems with artificial vision (2 camera 'eyes') are very slow and have a high failure rate compared to a human being.

The computational theory of mind is still the best theory to explain how we do things, and the current limitations on artificial vision are not evidence against it, but merely highlight what a massively complex calculation it is, and that it does require some reasonable assumptions – vision is an incomplete information problem.

One interesting validation of the computational theory of mind to do with vision that I read about recently concerned the reaction times of recognising shapes. Someone is asked to memorise a list of a few strange symbols, and then shapes are flashed onto a screen. When one of the ones in the list appears the subject presses a button. If the shapes are rotated when they are flashed up then the time it takes to recognise it is linearly proportional to the angle it was rotated by. This seems reasonable if the brain has a 'module' that rotates shapes. If the shape is a mirror image and rotated then the reaction time is exactly the same no matter what the rotation. At first this puzzled the researchers but a mathematician pointed out to them that for a rotated mirror image there is always a single axis to flip it about to get it back to the original image – all the shapes only required one flip in the mind's eye. How it determines where this axis is was not explained...

So in conclusion, the world you see is not the actual world – it is blemish corrected, your blind spot (where the optic nerve comes out of the retina) is filled in with guesswork, and is heavily image processed. Our heavy reliance on vision has shaped our thoughts and metaphors in our language.

And yes, that is my eye.

Sphex Wasp

Sphex wasps, when they reproduce, paralyse prey and lay their eggs in/on it.  When the eggs hatch the baby wasps have a fresh food source to give them a good start in life.

The mummy wasp digs a hole in the ground (they are commonly known as digger wasps) then goes off and brings back a paralysed grub.  It sets it beside the entrance to the hole and goes into the nest.  It is possible that another wasp has commandeered the hole.  After a quick look around it comes back out and grabs the grub, drags it into the hole, lays its eggs, and leaves (covering the hole entrance).

This seems like reasonable and intelligently foreplanned behaviour.

If, when the wasp goes into the hole, you move the paralysed grub by an inch or two, it comes out, re-locates the grub, moves it back to beside the hole entrance, and then goes back inside the hole.  It looks around then comes out again.  If you have again moved the grub, and continue to do so, the wasp will be caught in an infinite loop of hardwired behaviour.

Are you?

The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Critical to fully understanding the evolution of behavioural traits is understanding some basic game theory, such as the iterated prisoner's dilemma.

The basic prisoner's dilemma is as follows: two criminals are taken to the police station and interviewed separately. They went on a crime spree together and there is enough evidence to convict them of some of the minor offences. Imagine you are one of the prisoners and you are given a choice, which you assume your partner in crime has also been given: confess to everything and thereby grass up your partner for the major charges [defect]; or keep your mouth shut [cooperate]. If you talk and your partner doesn't, then you get a reduced sentence of 2 years in prison because of helping to convict your partner; and he gets 10 years. If he talks and you don't then obviously the reverse happens. If you both give a full confession then you both get 8 years, and if neither of you talk you both get 4 years. What do you do?

Now imagine that you and your partner can both live forever, and any time either of you are not in prison you go on another crime spree together and each time you get caught and face the same decision. You know your partner's previous responses, so this will obviously affect whether you cooperate or defect in the latest interview with the police. This situation is the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and occurs (in other forms!) every day in societal life (the social contract).

The various consequences to the options can be formalised into a pay-off matrix, and different weightings given to the possible outcomes. So long as all the options are sensible, for example the benefit to you for defecting when your partner cooperates should always be more than the benefit to you for cooperating when your partner cooperates, then it is possible to make some firm conclusions about the worth of different strategies.

Axelrod created a tournament in which different programs played against each other (200 iterations for one game) and then each program's total score was added up. Some of these programs had very sophisticated algorithms to predict whether the opponent would cooperate or defect, however the overall winner was a program called tit-for-tat which simply started out cooperating and then did whatever the opponent had done the previous move. In the second tournament the winner was called tit-for-2-tats, I don't think I need to explain that one's tactics!

It is important to note that in a population it isn't as simple as there being an optimum strategy that everyone should abide by. One of the founders of modern game theory, John Nash (of “A Beautiful Mind”), showed that strategies of cooperation and defection settle to a balance (the Nash equilibrium) – so long as the frequency of defection is low, then on average the cooperators gain by continuing to cooperate and the small number of defectors can take advantage.

Emotions Part3

Love

Have you read Part1 and Part2?

Evolution depends on procreation of offspring that live to successfully procreate themselves. When a woman becomes pregnant she is vulnerable, and, in our past, would not be able to look after and feed herself. When she gives birth this remains true, and the early years of the infant have a high relative mortality rate (by this I mean that if a child survives the first couple of years, there is a high probability it will make it to adulthood).

This means that it is an evolutionarily fit strategy for men and women to couple off for at least a few years – to ensure their genes are passed on successfully.

When choosing a mate, you want to select the best mate that will also be happy to have you, and for that selection period to not be too long. As an interesting aside, game theorists can prove the best strategy for a game like this is to evaluate the potential mates you meet for 36.8% of your acceptable time period (1/e) and then mate with the next one that comes along that is better than the best option of the evaluation period. For example, if you wish to settle down between the ages of 18 and 32 then 37% of that window is 5 years, so you should settle for the first person you are presented with who is better than anyone you've met up to that point at the age of 18 + 5 = 23 years old.

What if a better option is presented to a man in the period shortly after he gets his woman pregnant? Would it not be in his interest to switch? Yes, but if this happened at a high frequency in a population then it would not be a good strategy on average. A woman needs to believe that her man will stick around and so men do not tend to 'decide' to be with their mate for rational reasons that could be trumped by a better woman round the corner, but they fall in love instead. Love acts a bit like the doomsday device explained in part 1; it says to a potential mate, “I am with you for irrational reasons, and so there is no reason why I will leave you.” The feeling, to be trustworthy to the mate, must be accompanied by difficult to fake physiological symptoms.

It is possible to take a blood test to see if you are in love. The telltale chemical/hormonal signature lasts approximately 30 months. This is, predictably, roughly the length of time between conception and the child exiting the high-risk early years.

When a man has sex he is less committed to caring for the woman and child, whereas if the woman gets pregnant, she is committed to becoming more vulnerable and expending a lot of resources to have a child. Therefore it makes sense that sex will lead to feelings of love more easily for women than men.

Souls

What is a soul?  Perhaps others would define it differently, but I am going to use a loose definition: 'the part of an individual that is not rooted in the physical world, and enables that individual to somehow have a consciousness after physical death'.

If you believe you have a soul, and you believe in evolution, and you don't believe that all life forms have a soul (e.g. a worm, a bacterium...), then you must come to the conclusion that at some point along the evolutionary trail an animal existed that didn't have a soul whereas its offspring did.  This seeming absurdity springs from evolution being a very finely gradiated change, whereas a soul would seem to be something that is either present or not – you can't have half a soul.

Another problem I have with the concept of souls is the whole afterlife thing.  If heaven exists, is it possible to do bad things there?  I don't want to hear any crap about how you won't want to do any bad things because you will be surrounded by god's love – if I didn't want to do something that was slightly morally dubious in heaven (even just to test whether i could) then i wouldn't be me.  If this soul doesn't look like me (physical attributes dead on earth) and doesn't have the same personality and critical faculties as me, then it isn't me and the question of whether this soul lives on after I die is one of complete irrelevance.

The Law

yes, it is 'Dubya' eating a live kitten, his favourite midnight snack

The direction of law in a civilised society should be, and is, towards making the law based on rational judgment rather than evolved, instinctive, responses.  Something should not be illegal based, for example, on disgust.  It should not be illegal to eat your pet when it dies (and nor is it to my knowledge).  How about eating a dead relative?  How about two gay brothers getting married and having a physical relationship?  How about bestiality?

We must take into account whether an act infringes on another person's human rights, or not, when we make laws.  If it does not, then it should be legal unless it is also destructive to society.  For example should heroin be legal?  If someone becomes a heroin addict, their contribution may go from being positive though tax payment, to being negative – losing their job, becoming a criminal, and using up police and court time.  The heroin addict isn't just harming themselves, they are harming society; it is for this reason that there is a strong argument for laws to be not purely based on whether the act infringes on someone else's human rights.  
But this exceptional case is only an interesting digression – the point is that as civilised societies mature, law should become more rational and gradually reverses laws such as homosexuality being illegal.  

What's next?  Don't misunderstand me – i think that laws should reflect the views of society to some extent; but i wish (and believe we are moving slowly in this direction) that society's views on law should be more rationally based than they are now.