Science and Teleology part IV

This is the forth installment of an essay where I have been discussing the relationship between science and teleology. In the previous installment, I continued to explore why animals play. It was determined that play is a type of learning behavior but that this wasn't quite the teleological answer that we were looking for. I ended the installment by asking what the advantage of learning is. I also stated, somewhat cryptically, that this was the wrong question but for the right reason.

The question I asked is misleading. It is misleading because conflates learning and play. Although we have determined that some animals play to learn, it does not follow that all animals play to learn. In fact, the ability to learn, unlike the behavior of play, is fairly common. Mice, famously, can learn to navigate mazes. Pigeons can learn to play tic-tac-toe (or knots and crosses if you prefer) and can do a decent job of it. Even nematodes (simple worm-like creatures) can be trained to take a right hand path at an intersection so as to avoid a shock.

It is, however, the right question in the sense that we need to consider what advantage learning confers; however, we also need to understand what differentiates the sort of learning that happens during play and to determine what advantages are conferred there.

The advantages of learning may seem self-evident but we should bear in mind that the vast majority of organisms do not and cannot learn for the simple reason that most living beings on the planet don't have brains. This has not inhibited the success of bacteria, plants, fungi, various protozoa, various algae and slime molds, nor a number of animals such as sponges and star fish. In like manner, many animals that do have brains have such simple brains that they can not learn new behavior including arthropods (insects, spiders, crustaceans, etc), and the majority of mollusks (with octopi and squids being the notable exceptions).

We might suppose that the ability to learn is a good survival strategy when it comes to dealing with complex environments and this supposition would, in fact, be true; however it isn't the only strategy nor is it always the best one. Small creatures tend to adapt to shifting environments by simply breeding fast and copiously. Many larger organisms, such as trees, cope by assuming forms that are extremely durable. We should also be aware that not all environments are equally unstable. Many environments are very stable of long term periods which allows for survival strategies that "assume" that any given life will experience a given set of circumstances.

When it comes to thinking about animals it's often helpful to think in terms of something called a protein budget. A protein budget is simply the amount of raw material that you have to work with when creating a given organism. The "you" in question is nature and we can think of this in terms of natural selection or, if we are so incline, in terms of a god (it really doesn't matter in this case). Your one and only goal is to make creatures that can survive long enough to reproduce.

The main thing you need to understand is that you have a finite amount of material to work with. That's your protein budget. You can spend it on things like claws, or wings, or brains, or sophisticated eyes, and so forth and so on. Like any budget, you can only buy so much before you run out of funds, which means that you have to spend your allocation wisely.

Brains can be expensive and they aren't always the best deal. If your animal can manage to do without them, you should probably spend your funds on other things. Even if you opt to buy a brain, you can't always afford to get the best model. If your animal's brain is taking up so much of your budget that your animals can't successfully defend itself, you've made an unwise purchase. In the natural world, animals that have "budgeted" badly go extinct.

The reason that we find brains in the natural world is that they do come with quite a few advantages. While it is possible, in many circumstances, to get along without brains, having a brain does improve your interactions with the world. High-end brain models not only improve your interaction but allow you to modify your interactions over your lifetime so as to continually improve your survivability — if you can afford it.

Not all animals have an equal protein budget. Insects get a very small budget and have to be especially conservative in their spending. Larger animals, such as reptiles, have more latitude. They can afford to spend a big chunk of their budget of some relatively sophisticated brains. But even in big animals, there's always the question of trade-off. Do I benefit from having a bigger brain or by spending it on something more practical. Dinosaurs, famously, had a literally huge success by spending the bulk of their budget on bulk. Being bigger was more useful to them then being smarter (and make no mistake, dinosauria was an immensely successful order of animal).

So let us say that we have decided to budget for a brain and that we've opted for a learning model. We still have a critical question to ask: what sort of things do we want to learn. Here is where we really need to start thinking about the disadvantages of learning. Yes, disadvantages.

Creatures are born into a hostile world. There are an immense number of ways to die. You can fall off a cliff, you can be crush under a bolder, you can be eaten by a predator, you can be killed by a sexual rival (or a mate: just ask a praying mantis), you can succumb to disease, you can eat a poisonous plant, and so forth and so on. Although the ability to learn from mistakes can be useful (mustn't eat those particular berries again; they got me sick!) having to learn everything is a disadvantage.

Imagine being an antelope and having to learn that lions are predators. Your first lesson would probably kill you. If you are an antelope, it's a lot better if you know, from the start, that lions are dangerous. In other words, you're better served, in this case, by having an instinctual aversion to lions.

An instinct is nothing more than a pre-programmed set of behaviors that are hard-coded into the structure of the brain. They are, essentially, "memories" that you are born with.

We humans tend to disdain instincts. We consider them something primitive that has been superseded by our capacity to reason. We have every right to be proud of our rational abilities but our tendency to see them as being an natural advantage is a bit anthropocentric.

Again, we need to think in terms of budgets. This time, instead of a protein budget, we need to think about a neural budget. Any given brain will only have so much space. Any amount that we budget for learning is going to subtract away from the space that we can allocate from instinct (and vice versa).

If I am an animal that is being born into harsh circumstances it is typically to my advantage to come into the world with as many instincts as possible. Instincts tend to be necessities while learning tends to be a luxury. It is often a good idea to budget some space for the capacity to learn, of course. If I am a mouse, there's no way that instinct is going to prepare me for the particular configuration of tunnels that I'm going to have to traverse. Being able to learn tunnel layouts (or mazes) is a very useful trick, so I'll need to budget some brain space for that. As a rule, though, it's a very good idea to be born with as much survival gear as possible, which means a bias towards instinct over learning.

When most animals learn, what they learn are things that supplement their instincts. Few animals need to learn the basic elements of survival, such as how to walk. The only animals that can afford that are those who are shielded from those basic necessities.

Does this ring a bell?

In the previous installment we noticed that animals that engage in play tend to have long development times. I called this "developmental luxury". Those animals that are shielded from most of the dangers of their environment can afford the luxury of dispensing with some of their instincts. They can afford to take the time to learn how to do the things that other animals are born knowing how to do.

This still doesn't explain why they would "want" to. We are still left wondering what the advantage of learning how to do things that we could, in principle, be born knowing. Why not keep those as instincts?

We're still asking the wrong question. The right question is why can't we keep those as instincts. This question will be the subject of the next installment.

Contruct

We decided to build a god.

We built it out of wire, string and clay,
And some transcendent goo
That we found lying on the beach.

It flashed into luminescence
Brighter and more beautiful
Than the sum of a thousand days,
Filling our hearts with joys unnamed.

It proclaimed Itself our creator
And cursed thunder at our denials.

It told us that we were wretched
And unworthy of Its love,
Which was boundless,
Unconditional,
And subject to impromptu revocation.

It proclaimed twelve Eternal Rules
And promptly commanded their violation
In Its name and for Its glory.

It finally shambled off into the sky
Shouting at us to keep our eyes
Cast firmly upon the ground
As a reminder of our lowly state.

We indulged it for a week
Before we took it apart.

Chicken!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Chickenjoke.com has every conceivable answer to that enduring question.

Enjoy.

Off-site Essay: The Power of the Ring

This who have been reading this site may have deduce a particular fact about the author of the site:

1. The author is an unabashed geek
   
2. The author is fascinated by religion
   

In addition to this, anyone reading for any stretch of time will have realized that the author is an atheist. Unfortunately, this second realization may have prompted you to jump to any number of conclusions which are, in all liklihood, erroneous.

One thing that people instantly assume upon discovering my atheism is that I must, by definition, have an inherant hostility towards religion. To be sure, there are a number of things about religion that I can't agree with (most particularly the theistic conjecture that is central to a majority of religious beliefs) and there is a lot that I find objectionable in particular religions. Never the less, I actually do not have an inherit hositility towards religion, on the whole, and, in fact, consider it a valuable (if distorted) mirror of the human psyche.

Given this, my choice for this week's off-site essay nicely combines my geekiness as well as my fascination with religious subjects. It's a sermon by a Unitarian Universalist preacher. The topic of the sermon is The Lord of the Rings.

The semon is in PDF format so you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read it.

Naked

If I could strip myself
Of these fearful concerns,
Discarding them into
An unused corner
To be laundered
At some later day,

I would run naked
Through the high grass of my dreams,
With wishful winds against my face,
My skin prickling with possibility,
Luxuriating in the blue freedom
Of an unbounded sky,

But the zippers snarl,
The clasps do not unbuckle,
And I find that I cannot
Simply shrug this straighjacket
From my shoulders.

Meet Mr. Split Brainy

For this week's fun, I offer you the most absolutely disturbing educational flash animation that I've ever seen. Sample text:

"This is Mr. Split Brainy wondering what the brain smells like. He doesn't think it smells like anything in particular."

Science and Teleology, part III

In the prior installments of this essay I introduced the concepts of teleology and etiology and their relationship with science. In the last essay, I advanced the proposition that science can approach some teleological questions and proposed that the phenomenon of play was one such area. I finished by conducting a partial survey of life forms, eliminating the vast majority of organisms from consideration. At the end of the installment, I had limited the scope of inquiry to mammals and offered the reader the challenge to see if they could determine the unifying factor that links those mammals which do play.

I suggested that you might want to start with a random sample of mammals. So you might have come up with a list something like aardvarks, bats, cats, elephant, horse, mice, mole, sloths, etc. You might then have divided them into animals that are known to engage in play (cats, elephants, horses), animals that don't (aardvarks, bats, moles, sloths), and animals that you might not have been sure about (say, mice).

On any comprehensive list there are going to be questionable cases. We must first decide whether or not we can, in fact, categorize such outliers. In my list, I put mice in the questionable column. The reason that I did so is that mice in captivity often do seem to engage in play like activity. I know one girl who had a group of mice that would all get on their spinning wheel, run it up to a high speed, and then grab on to the wheel's frame which caused them to get spun around on the inside of the wheel (which, if nothing else, proves that mice don't suffer from motion sickness). That certainly seemed like play; however, a wheel in a cage is not a natural environment. It is well established that many creatures will exhibit anomalous behavior when put into unnatural circumstances. Do mice in the wild exhibit playful behavior? I haven't been able to find evidence that they do. So, which column should mice fall into?

There are any number of inaccurate stereotypes concerning the workings of science and not all of them come from the detractors of science. Many people who are "pro-science" have a notion that scientists will scrupulously include all experimental data in their considerations. In principle, it is true that data shouldn't be discarded on the basis that it contradicts a given hypothesis, but this isn't quite the same as saying that all data is automatically going to be included. This isn't always so.

Let us suppose that I'm conducting experiments on the effects of various salts on the boiling point of water. I set up a traditional experiment where I have a control (several beakers of distilled water) and an experimental set. I conduct a series of measurements for salt X and find that in nineteen trials the boiling point clusters closely around 102.7 degrees centigrade. In the twentieth run, however, my thermometer reports a boiling point of 131 degrees!

If we were to follow the stereotype, I would dutifully record the data point on my carts and adjust my curve to fit it in. In practice, though, I know damned well that 131C is not a real boiling point. Perhaps my instruments have a defect, or maybe there was a patch of superheated steam that threw of the thermometer. Whatever the case, I know to a high degree of certainty that the measurement is meaningless. I can do one of two things at this point. I can either exclude it from my data entirely or include it in the data and discount it from the conclusions.

Modern practice favors the latter. Modern science is a very competitive venture and anything that could even potentially look like data manipulation can be used to destroy one's career; however, whether or not I plot the data in my submission, it would be equally irresponsible for me to allow it to impact my results and doing so would also get me into hot water (if you'll pardon the pun). Given this, I'll note the outlier but I will specifically say that it is an outlier and that it isn't included in the calculations for the actual data curve. It should be noted that many respected experimentalists from the earlier days, when science was more of a gentleman's hobby, didn't bother to do that much. Bad data was tossed out on its ear without any hesitation.

So, having dispensed with the outliers, for the time being, let us look at the data and offer some tentative hypotheses.

You may have noticed that there seem to be a lot of carnivorous animals on the list: wolves, lions, hyenas, and so forth. Could it be that being hunted is the factor that we are looking for? But what about elephants and horses, who are both herbivores, as well as primates, which span the gamut from strict vegetarians (gorillas) to predatory omnivores (such as chimps and, yes, humans).

Clearly there is more to the matter than diet, however, before we more along too hastily, we should note there are, in fact, a lot of carnivorous predators and periodically predatory omnivores. Should we, perhaps, consider the herbivores on the list to be outliers? In this case, I think not. There are enough herbivorous creatures that we can't simply dismiss them from consideration without running the risk of skewing our answer. What we need to do is to think about what commonalities there exist between the predators and the non-predators on our list. We should, however, consider the predatory bias to be a clue.

My goal, here, is to give you an idea of how scientific inquiry works. The fundamental point that I want to convey is that science is systematic. Too many people have an image of science where a scientist takes a look at some new phenomenon, ponders it briefly and then, from the vastness of his intellect, produces just the right insight to explain it. As much as so-called eureka moments are celebrated, real science is a grueling and often tedious exercise where observation after observation is tested against one tentative hypothesis after another. Even the grant theorists such as Einstein had to consider mountains of prior observation and theory before producing their own. The public, too often, sees science as a sequence of facts that are provided on demand. They don't see the working process that is responsible for the production of those conclusions.

For the purposes of this essay, I'm providing an abbreviated account of the considerations that we should be examining. If this were a real scientific investigation, we should be considering dozens, if not hundreds, of alternatives and we should be using more than a random sampling of mammals as our dataset. Fortunately for us, I'm following a trail that has already been laid out by the real workers. Because they have put themselves to the effort of being systematic, I can afford a certain degree of laziness.

I would like you to take a final moment to consider the data, however, before moving on. Consider what we have and ask yourself what commonality binds play.

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As it happens, there are actually two factors that are almost universally present in animals that play. The first factor is that animals that play are not born with a full set of mature behaviors. The second factor is that the behaviors that they engage in while playing resemble behaviors that adult animals employ in non-play activities.

Let us consider a wildebeest calf, a lion cub, an elephant calf, and a human baby. The first does not engage in play while the latter three do.

When a wildebeest is born, the very first thing that it needs to do is to stand up. The reasons for this are very good: a calf that cannot stand on its own four legs is in serious danger of being eaten by passing carnivores. One of the most horrific videos that I've ever seen was a mother wildebeest with a half born calf being torn to shreds by hyenas. Clearly, time is of the essence.

A lion cub, by contrast, has a strung resemblance to a domestic kitten. It is born blind and feeble. Likewise, so is a human baby. An elephant calf is somewhere in the middle. Elephants are very protective of their young, and they have the bulk to back up their protectiveness, so an elephant calf isn't at high risk of being eaten by the local fauna. On the other hand, elephants require a large foraging area and have to move fairly large distances to eat. Elephants, unlike lions, can't create a crèche for their offspring, and they can't carry them from place to place, as humans can do, so a baby elephant needs to get her feet under herself fairly soon.

This represents something that we might call developmental luxury. A wildebeest does not have the luxury of being born unable to walk, nor does an elephant, but a human and a lion don't have to be born with those capabilities. We have, so to speak, the luxury to take our time to develop those capabilities. This is a very big clue, by the by.

Let us return to our wildebeest. Our wildebeest is not only born knowing how to walk. She also knows how to forage, how to spot predators, and how to stay with her herd. She also has a set of behaviors that cause her to remain close to her mother and which prompts her to nurse on a periodic basis (as do lions, humans and elephants). As she matures, she will lose these while gaining certain sexual behaviors (again, as will lions, humans and elephants). This, for the most part, represents the whole of her knowledge set. Wildebeests don't need to know a lot in order to be successful. A wildebeests life may be occasionally stressful (you try being on someone's lunch menu) but it is not a complicated life.

Our lion cub, on the other hand, is going to need to know how to hunt, which means not only knowing how to chase down animals but also how to select favorable targets and how to coordinate their kills with the other members of their pack. There is also a range of non-hunting behaviors that lions need to develop which also relate to their pack structure. A lion needs to be able to discern its place in the pack hierarchy and to know how to behave with respect to other members in the pack.

Elephants, obviously, do not hunt and there's not much that they need to know about foraging (plants are docile prey). This is not to say that an elephants mental space is small. We humans have an expression, "as plain as the nose on your face", which means that something is obvious and simple. If elephants had language, that expression would be an oxymoron. Baby elephants are not born with well coordinated trunks (just as human babies don't have well coordinated limbs and fingers). They can get away with this because they are highly social creatures and their mothers can help them along until they get their trunks under their full control. Elephants also have a fairly complex social structure which they need to integrate with.

Humans, of course, are the most complex case. A human child is born without control of her body, knowledge of her society, any skills, or even language. By the time she becomes an adult, she must acquire all of these things.

Let us call this feature developmental complexity. Although our three examples have the luxury to be born with less than a full compliment of behaviors, they also have the obligation of developing a behavioral set that is substantially more complex than their wildebeest peer.

Before we continue, I want to head off a potential red herring. Elephants, humans, and lions are social creatures. You may be tempted to suppose that this is the critical ingredient; however, many playful creatures are solitary. Most species of cat, for instance (including domestic cats and tigers) are non-social. Socialization isn't irrelevant but, like carnivorousness, it isn't the whole shebang.

Returning to the topic, you may have noticed that there is a word that I haven't been using. That word is "learning". I've been avoiding it because it is the final clue. Animals that play are animals that are born knowing less than they know about the world (developmental luxury) and which have a lot that they will ultimately need to know about the world (developmental complexity).

Play behavior is synonymous with learning behavior. Juvenal animals play in order to learn how to be adult animals.

At this point you might suppose that we have our teleological answer. We are not quite there, yet, unfortunately. We have one more question that we need to address: why do some animals need to learn anything in the first place? In other words, what's the advantage of learning?

I will leave this for you to ponder this until the next installment. I will give you a clue though: I'm deliberately asking the wrong question, but for the right reason.

Whaa...?

What the headline said: "Bush Plan Gets Double Blow"

What I read: "Bush Plans to Get Double Blow"

For a second I thought that the president was really making plans to surpass Clinton's legacy.

Resumé

It is late
And the weather is Decembered.

Yes, that's not really a word,
But bear with me.

You see,
I'm here

In a place with a warmth and a love,
And it's small but we call it home,

And I'm wondering how easy it would be
To fall out into that Decembered weather,

And so I'm typing out a distillation of
My skills, these little talents I have,
(And maybe a white lie or two for seasoning)

Trying to say,
In essence,

Choose me! Pick me! Take me!
Me! Me! Me!

With as much dignity as a pup
Nosed-pressed to a pet store window

And I imagine you,
Reading this summation of my self:

Who is he that we need him?
Who is he to be trusted
With our time, money, and responsibilities?

And there are other hims and hers out there
Tugging at your sleeve,
Begging for your blessing

And they all have warm little homes
That they love, too,

And I hate them, wish they'd go away
Because they are a distraction
That tries to steal your eyes away

From me, me, oh please this time me!

All I can do is give you this
Here-I-am sheet of paper

Hoping that it will suffice to tell you
That I am the one you want.

Unstructured Sniglets

Long, long before The Daily Show there was Not Necessarily the News, which was a kind of sketch comedy take on the news. Overall, it was a medium funny show but it did have one segment which achieved a popularity all its own: I speak of sniglets.

A sniglet is defined as a word that is not in the dictionary but which ought to be. Viewers would send in their suggestions and host Rich Hall would read the best entries on the air. My personal favorite is flopcorn, defined as "The unpopped kernels at the bottom of the cooker".

Bert Christensen's Truth & Humour Collection has a nicely representative sample of sniglets. Enjoy.

Fear Itself

" A new survey to be released Monday reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public. In one finding, 43% of the public say they believe the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. Just 14% of the public can name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the major poll conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy."
[Read More]

One of the essential paradoxes of a democracy is that the citizens of a democracy can freely choose to dismantle it. We haven't quite reached that point in America. The majority still accept the necessity of a free press and, beyond that, the courts have remained consistent in their defense of the press.

Be that as it may, when I see that such a large number of people are willing (and, perhaps, eager) to allow the government to curtail the press, I wonder. My concern is multiplied by the realization that prominent members of the legislative majority have been making calls to restrain the judiciary.

I believe that this is a perilous time. Fear has always been poisonous to democracy. FDR was not speaking hyperbolically when he said that the only thing we have to fear it fear itself. Since 9/11, we have been existing in a state of fear. We have an executive branch that has been actively capitalizing on that fear to advance its own ends. It is during such times as this that people are most willing to compromise their freedoms for the sake of perceived necessities. It is precisely at these times that we must be most strenuous in resisting these urges for comfort and safety at the expense of our precious freedoms. I fear the fearfulness of the people.

I would urge my American readers to stand up and speak out. When you hear coworkers, friends, neighbors and family suggesting that we should be willing to give up a little freedom in order to achieve a sense of comfort, do not be silent. Remind them that our freedom has been bought at a very steep price and that it dishonors those who died to grant us our rights if we cast those treasures aside so easily and timidly at the first hint of danger. Even more importantly, write to your representatives. Do not email them, write them and tell them, in your own words that you are not willing to sit idle while our Constitutional guarantees are eroded. Insist that they do their jobs as the stewards of our democracy.

Democracies can die suddenly or they can die the death of a thousand cuts. Let us keep ours from either fate.

No Essay

Sorry guys, I know that you were expecting the third installment of my essay on science and teleology. Unfortunately, I've been so busy working on a presentation for work that I haven't had the time to complete it.

Please accept my apologies and my assurances that I'll have it ready by next week.

Take care.

Speaking in Tongues

I speak in tongues,
None of them my own.

A Babylonian gabble of demons
Have infested my mouth,
Leering between my teeth
When I try to smile.

I cast a hard rage at them
And try to spit them to the ground.
Mothers move to shield their children
From the madman in their midst.

I try to reason with them
But they skewer my arguments
On pitchforks and pikes,
Stuffing them back in my throat
So that I may choke on their taste.

I know that no one can hear me
Because my voice is lost
In a wilderness of words.

So I sit.
So I sleep.
So I wander the streets
With wide eyes and fear,
Speaking in tongues.

Dynamite

I wasn't expecting to like Napoleon Dynamite (largely because of an utterly incomprehensible media campaign by MTV). I finally saw it on DVD because a friend of my girlfriend strongly recommended it. Much to my surprise, I really liked it. It is, indeed, a true example of geek cinema.

If you liked it as well, you may like today's link to the Napoleon Dynamite Soundboard, which is a clever little Flash tool with various quotes from the movie.

Off-site Essay: Personal Values

I have not, on the whole, been a been fan of Wicca.

This is not because I disagree with its ontology, per say... I believe that Wicca is no more or less valid than any other religion out there (and if that sounds coy, I remind you that I'm an atheist &mdash do the math), nor is it because I have any moral objection to Wicca. I am certainly not concerned with the whole "witchcraft" angle, nor am I particularly concerned with the fact that Wicca has a rather dubious historical basis (again, something that I don't think distinguishes it from the majority of other religions in the world).

The biggest issue I have with Wicca has been the Wiccans. To be specific, I find that a lot of Wiccans strike me as being religious dilettantes. While I find nothing wrong with Wicca's core ideologies (other than the fact that they are a bit hard to pin down), I find that a lot of Wiccans seem to have joined the religion for the simple reason that Wicca has a very flexible belief structure. That alone isn't necessarily a bad thing. Buddhism, which I rather do admire, also has a fairly flexible range of potential beliefs that a given adherent can accept; however, where I find that most Buddhists approach that flexibility seriously and consider it an imperative to conscientiously work out their philosophy of the world, I find that many Wiccans seem to treat their religions flexibility as a lax fill-in-the-blanks theology that they can tailor to their personal convenience.

Fortunately, there are exceptions. I do respect those Wiccans that really take the time to think through their moral and philosophical stances. I am disappointed that they seem to be the exception.

Today's link is from the Existential Harmonics site which is run by one Kyle Lewis, who is also a friend of mine in real life. Kyle is definitely an extraordinary Wiccan and an extraordinary person. Recently he took the time to write down his personal values, framed by his Wiccan theology (as well as his studies of Kabbalah), in a systematic set of essays. He hasn't quite finished (ultimately he's going to have 10 + 1 categories); however, what he's done so far deserves reading. The link is to his introduction which he's thoughtfully cross-linked with the individual essays (currently through essay nine).

If you want to see a well developed set of moral considerations from a religious perspective that most people would find alien, exotic and, perhaps, threatening, I would implore you to take a look at what he's written.