Seeking Wisdom

by Peter Bevelin

  Are bacteria always bad far us?

  No, they are important for our digestion and immune system. They are also vital for life on earth. Without them we wouldn't exist. In order to generate energy, we need oxygen. This oxygen is assumed to have been generated by a group of bacteria called cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae), the light-harnessing microbes that live primarily in seawater.

  The key source of energy for nearly all life is sunlight. This light energy is transformed into chemical energy in plants, algae and certain bacteria by photosynthesis. For example, plants make their food- usually glucose-from carbon dioxide (through leaves) and water (mainly through roots). Sunlight provides the energy needed to run the biochemical process that yields sugar and the by-product oxygen (that water molecules contain) which is released into the atmosphere. When we eat plants (or animals that eat plants), we take in their stored energy.

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  In plants, photosynthesis is handled by chloroplasts. They contain the molecule chlorophyll, allowing plants to absorb the energy from the sun. Chloroplasts may have evolved from cyanobacteria that were fusioned with plants a long time ago. Fossil evidence shows that there were cyanobacteria-like microbes on earth 3.5 billion years ago. It is also believed that mitochondria (the non-bacterial cell structures where oxygen is used to burn food for energy) evolved as a result from a fusion of different kind of bacterial cells.

  Another activity of some cyanobacteria is nitrogen fixation. For example, in plants from which beans or peas are taken, bacteria live in the roots and chemically convert (fix) atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia useful to other organ1sms.

  Why isn't the world covered with dead plants and animals?

  Partly because bacteria breaks down the tissue of dead plants and animals into nutrients like carbon and nitrogen that are then released back into the environment.

  Go out and look at a recently dead bird. Then look at it a month later. There are only bones left.

  Thus, evolution selected the behavior that made our ancestors survive and reproduce. What guidance system has evolution selected to help us make better decisions for survival and reproduction?

  Guidance through values and life experiences Human beings are pulled forward toward and by nature seek pleasure, whereas they flee from and reject pain.

  - Epicurus (Greek philosopher, 341-270 BC)

  What drives us?

  The 17th Century English philosopher John Locke said: "Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided." We are driven by our need to avoid pain (and punishment) and a desire to gain pleasure (and reward). Evolution has made any behavior that helps us survive and reproduce feel pleasurable or rewarding. Behavior that is bad for us feels painful or punishing. Feelings of pain and pleasure are a useful guide to what is good or bad for us. If we eat, we feel pleasure. If we starve ourselves, we feel pain.

  Harm avoidance first. Our brain is equipped to register pain more sensitively than any other emotion. We also remember negatively arousing stimuli better.

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  Neurology Professor Antonio Damasio says in Descartes' Error that "it is the pain related signal that steers us away from impending trouble." It makes evolutionary sense that we have the desire to avoid pain. Psychology Professor Randolph Nesse and Biology Professor George Williams say in Why We Get Sick: "Pain is the signal that tissue is being damaged. It has to be aversive to motivate us to set aside other activities to do whatever is necessary to stop the damage."

  That we are sensitive to events or stimuli that have painful implications for us, explains why we have such an aversion to loss. Richard Dawkins says in The Blind Watchmaker: "However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive." The fear ofloss is much greater than the desire to gain. Research shows that we feel more pain from losing than we feel pleasure from gaining something of equal value and that we work harder to avoid losing than we do to win. That we pay more attention to possible losses than gains makes sense. In Steven Pinker's book, How The Mind Works, social psychologist Timothy Ketelaar says, ''As things get better, increases in fitness show diminishing returns: more food is better, but only up to a point. But as things get worse, decreases in fitness can take you out of the game: not enough food and you're dead."

  Our aversion to pain also encourages a certain human behavior: to take the most rewarding view of events. We interpret choices and events in ways that make us feel better. We often prefer to hear supporting reasons for our beliefs; think of ourselves as more talented than others, and make the best of bad situations.

  How are certain connections strengthened?

  If certain connections help us interact with our environment, we use them more often than connections that don't help us. Since we use them more often, they become strengthened.

  Evolution has given us preferences that help us classify what is good or bad. When these values are satisfied (causing either pleasure or less pain) through the interaction with our environment, these neural connections are strengthened. These values are reinforced over time because they give humans advantages for survival and reproduction in dealing with their environment.

  For example, light is preferred to darkness, eating certain food is better than not eating, etc. When we drank our mother's milk, our brains told us that "eating" was pleasurable. Our chance of survival increased. If we didn't eat after we were born, the feedback from our brain would be that "not eating" was painful. The chances are that we ate in the future. Since the feedback from eating

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  was pleasurable, certain neural connections were strengthened. In the future, when we were exposed to the same stimuli, this group of neurons reacted stronger. Any behavior that we find rewarding, either pleasurable or less painful, are strengthened.

  The connections in our brain are constantly strengthened and weakened, developing and changing. The more we are exposed to certain experiences, the more the specific connections are strengthened, and the better we learn and remember those experiences. We then use these stored representations of what works when we respond to people and situations. Essentially what we do today is a function of what worked in the past. We adapt to our environment by learning from the consequences of our actions. We do things that we associate with pleasure and avoid things that we associate with pain.

  Does the brain work like a computer - systematically and logically?

  No, it is a selection system that puts together patterns among neurons. Dr. Ralph Greenspan says:

  In no sense does the brain work like a computer. Computers record, and computers have things stored in specific places that are stable. Our brains do none of that. When the great chess master Gary Kasparov lost to Big Blue everybody said "Aha, this machine can think!" Big Blue was not thinking. Big Blue was simply replaying the entire history of chess. That's not the way that Gary Kasparov or any human being plays chess. We do pattern recognition. Even though we are capable of logic, our brain does not operate by the principles oflogic. It operates by selection of pattern recognition. It's a dynamic network. It's not an "if-then" logic machine.

  A chess computer has no pattern-recognizingability. Instead, it explores all the possible moves on a given chessboard. Chess-masters look for patterns and decide what to do based on what have worked well in the past. Why? Because what worked in the past is most likely to work in the future. Warren Buffett follows up with:

  There was a great article in the New Yorker magazine ... when the Fischer/Spassky chess matches were going on. And it got into this speculation of whether or not humans would ever be able to take on computers in chess. Here were these computers doing hundreds of thousands of calculations a second. And the article asked, "When all you're really looking

  at is the results from various moves in the future, how can a human mind deal with a computer that's thinking at speeds that are so unbelievable?"
...

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  Well, it turns out a mind like... that of a Fischer or a Spassky essentially was eliminating about 99.99% of the possibilities without even thinking about 'em. So it wasn't that they could outthink the computer in terms of speed, but they had this ability of what you might call "grouping" or "exclusion", where essentially they just got right down to the few possibilities out of these zillions of possibilities that really had any chance of success.

  Now we reach a key question: What part of the value system is called "human nature?"

  So far we've learned that connections between neurons determine how we think and behave. Our genes provide us with the framework for neural development and our life experiences and our environment shapes our brain.

  Since the brain is formed by life experiences and since an individual doesn't keep doing what doesn't work (learns through trial and error), evolution has reinforced the behavior and values that help us survive and reproduce. This behavior must be the behavior that was adaptive in the environment in which humans spent most of their evolutionary history. The question then becomes: What was the operating environment in which the human brain evolved?

  The hunter-gatherer environment has formed our basic nature

  Human evolution started about 4 to 7 million years ago and today's "modern" human brain appeared on the scene some 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. For most of that time our ancestors lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies. These societies existed until the end of the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago. Soon thereafter, some 10,000 years ago, agriculture was developed.

  This means that humans have spent more than 99% of their evolutionary history in the hunter gatherer environment. If we compress 4 million years into 24 hours, and if the history of humans began at midnight, agriculture made its appearance on the scene 23 hours and 55 minutes later.

  If the conditions and challenges of the hunter gatherer environment is the

  environment in which natural selection has selected the adaptive traits for survival and reproduction, we must find out what the environment looked like back then. What drove our ancestors' evolution? What were the characteristics of the environment that have shaped today's brains? What were the environmental conditions in which the hunter-gatherers lived? What was the availability of resources like food and mates? How was the climate and the geography? Social environment? Size of population? What enemies, predators, and dangers existed? There is no observational evidence from the hunter-gatherer environment. It seems likely though, that the environment of our ancestors represented

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  ecological, social and human conditions that are quite different from today. People were living in small villages where everyone knew everyone else and strangers didn't show up often. There were enemies, predators and diseases. Limited resources created competition for food and mates.

  What different roles did men and women likely play? Men were responsible for hunting, and defending the group from predators and enemies. Women gathered and prepared food near the home, and cared for the children.

  If this were the environment, what would be appropriate behavior to increase the likelihood for survival and reproduction? What behavior has been natural during 99% of our history?

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  - THREE -‌

  ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR FOR SURVIVAL AND REPRODUCTION

  The individual comes first

  There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

  - Margaret Thatcher (Former British Prime Minister)

  Do people do what they perceive is in their best interest?

  Yes, one basic trait that all individuals share is self-interest. We are interested in protecting our close family and ourselves. Why?

  Since natural selection is about survival and reproduction, and individuals either survive or die and reproduce or not, it makes sense that individuals are predisposed to act in ways that enhance their own prospects for survival and reproduction. The ancestral environment consisted of limited resources, including reproductive resources, and fierce competition. Self-interest came naturally.

  What if our ancestors were composed of altruists - individuals that helped others at their own expense? Altruistic individuals are at a disadvantage. They are always vulnerable to some mutants that take advantage of them. Altruistic behavior cannot evolve by natural selection since natural selection favors individuals that are best at promoting their own survival and reproductive success. Only behavior that is selfish or for the mutual good is in an individual's self-interest and therefore favored by natural selection. Some behavior may under certain conditions look like altruism but can often be explained by self-benefit. Social recognition, prestige, fear of social disapproval, shame, relief from distress, avoidance of guilt, a better after-life or social expectations are some reasons behind "altruistic" acts.

  But how did our social and moral qualities develop? As Charles Darwin wrote in

  chapter four of The Descent ofMan: "Whyshould a man feel that heought to obeyone instinctive desire rather than another? Why does he bitterly regret if he has yielded to the strong sense of self-preservation, and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow creature; or why does he regret having stolen food from severe hunger?" In chapter five of the book, Darwin wrote that there is a: "powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, namely, the praise and the blame of our fellow-men."

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  The love of approbation and the dread ofinfamy, as well as the bestowal of praise or blame, are primarily due... to the instinct of sympathy; and this instinct no doubt was originally acquired, like all the other social instincts, through natural selection ... We may therefore conclude that primeval man, at a very remote period, would have been influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows. It is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil. To do good unto others -to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you, - is the foundation-stone of morality. It is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the dread of blame. A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such actions by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration. He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high character.

  A high standard of morality would also benefit a tribe. Darwin continues:

  It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an advancement in the standard of morality and an increase in the number of well endowed men will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.

  Often cooperation is in our best interest

  If people aren't altruistic by nature, are they cooperative?

  Mutual aid has tremendous survival value. But under what conditions do people cooperate? The game of the Prisoner's Dilemma may shed light on this: Suppose you and a partner commit burglary. Both of you are picked up by the police who then question you one by one. There is not enough evidence to convict you unless one of you confesses. The interrogator gives you a choice to cooperate or not.

  ''Jfyou both deny the crime, there is still enough evidence to put you both in jail for 1 year."

  "If you both confess, you both go to jail for 3 years. "

  ''Jfyou confess but your partner denies, you will be free and your partner will go to jail for 10 years. "

  ''Ifyou deny but your partner confesses, you will go to jail for 10 years. "

  What should you do? The consequences for you depend on what your partner

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  does. From an outsider's perspective, it seems that bot
h of you would be better off denying the crime (1 year). But from your point of view, it seems best to confess (freedom). The problem is that you don't know what your partner will do. If your partner betrays you, it is better that you also betray him and get 3 years in prison, instead of the 10 years you get if you deny, but your partner ends up confessing. If on the other hand your partner denies, it is still better that you confess because this way you will be free, instead of the 1 year you get if you deny. Since both you and your partner follow this "logic" and confess, you will both go to jail for 3 years. Doing what you believe is in your best interest leads to a worse outcome than if you cooperate and deny. But here is the dilemma. You don't know if you can trust your partner. Cooperation only works if you and your

  partner can trust each other.

  Tests show that if people play the game over and over, they learn that it is more profitable to cooperate. Repetition tests trust. Trust is key and fragile. It can vanish in a moment. As the 19th Century American President Abraham Lincoln wrote: "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem."

  Another way to create cooperation is to let the partners communicate during the game. Talking encourages cooperation. Since people are social animals, they may change their behavior to keep others goodwill. In the end, it's a matter of trust and giving individuals an incentive to cooperate.