Implications of cultural norms on human evolution

[rousseau]

So we agree that to an iron age farmer, plowing is almost as magic as rain dances, and a plausible evolutionary explanation why we tend to pick up the latter is that if we reject the former, we end up dead at a young age?

If so, the discussion about how rejecting norms might lead us to abstain from forming families is purely speculative. The proposition that not following norms may lead us to reject a family and kids and thus leave us to die alone when we're old is not a necessary ingredient to explaining the existence of (and our propensity to adhere to) those norms if we have independent reason to believe that not following norms will likely lead us to starve to death in a harsh winter/unusually long dry season long before that. It thus falls victim to Occam's razor. You can still speculate about it, but doing so isn't very scientific.

Perhaps it's speculative, but the larger point is kind of an inverted way of saying the same thing. If we imagine someone who is born with a severe developmental disability, or with a dysfunctional reproductive system, in the most literal sense of the term they a) can't adhere to norms b) won't make up the majority of a population. They fall out of the gene pool or make up a small proportion of it. So yes following norms is adaptive, but it follows from that, that an inability to follow norms is maladaptive. By definition culture orients us to have children, if any quality of our genetic make up, whether physical or psychological, inhibits us from having children, it's inhibiting us from following norms.

No that doesn't mean the lack of the trait is selected for, where I agree with you. But it does mean that mathematically our species are predominantly norm followers.

Sure, but if/when there is little limitation in what norms can look like (beyond those posed by other aspects of our cognitive biology), the mere fact that we tend to adhere to them does little to impose boundaries on what kind of societies we can form. That's in contradiction to what you said in your last post, namely " when we try to scale this trait to macro-systems it causes an inherent flaw in those systems".

And this is where our mental-make up becomes the critical question. Ultimately the efficacy of our macro-systems stem from our individual abilities. So it brings us back to the question - what are people like - and is their predisposition a constant. My argument is that culture is a kind of limiting factor which orients the majority of our species in a certain way. The question is what this orientation is and how it influences the movement of our systems.

 

[Jokodo]

So we agree that to an iron age farmer, plowing is almost as magic as rain dances, and a plausible evolutionary explanation why we tend to pick up the latter is that if we reject the former, we end up dead at a young age?

If so, the discussion about how rejecting norms might lead us to abstain from forming families is purely speculative. The proposition that not following norms may lead us to reject a family and kids and thus leave us to die alone when we're old is not a necessary ingredient to explaining the existence of (and our propensity to adhere to) those norms if we have independent reason to believe that not following norms will likely lead us to starve to death in a harsh winter/unusually long dry season long before that. It thus falls victim to Occam's razor. You can still speculate about it, but doing so isn't very scientific.

Perhaps it's speculative, but the larger point is kind of an inverted way of saying the same thing. If we imagine someone who is born with a severe developmental disability, or with a dysfunctional reproductive system, in the most literal sense of the term they a) can't adhere to norms b) won't make up the majority of a population. They fall out of the gene pool or make up a small proportion of it. So yes following norms is adaptive, but it follows from that, that an inability to follow norms is maladaptive.

How is that different from saying an irregular heart beat is adaptive? A prerequisite to having an irregular heart beat is to have a heart beat, and few if any people have a 100% regular heart beat - so essentially everyone who doesn't have an irregular heart beat is dead.

By definition culture orients us to have children, if any quality of our genetic make up, whether physical or psychological, inhibits us from having children, it's inhibiting us from following norms.

I think you meant to say "by stipulation" - at least this isn't any definition of culture (or children) I'm aware of.

No that doesn't mean the lack of the trait is selected for, where I agree with you. But it does mean that mathematically our species are predominantly norm followers.

Sure, but if/when there is little limitation in what norms can look like (beyond those posed by other aspects of our cognitive biology), the mere fact that we tend to adhere to them does little to impose boundaries on what kind of societies we can form. That's in contradiction to what you said in your last post, namely " when we try to scale this trait to macro-systems it causes an inherent flaw in those systems".

And this is where our mental-make up becomes the critical question. Ultimately the efficacy of our macro-systems stem from our individual abilities. So it brings us back to the question - what are people like - and is their predisposition a constant. My argument is that culture is a kind of limiting factor which orients the majority of our species in a certain way. The question is what this orientation is and how it influences the movement of our systems.

Our mental makeup - yes. But our predisposition to follow norms is actually the one part of our mental make up that, far from limiting the possibility space of human societies, expands it. If everyone were just doing what comes most naturally to them to achieve their individually best outcome (in a combination of instinct and rational deliberation, whatever their relative import - and even 100% rational deliberation isn't guaranteed or even expected to create an ideal outcome at the societal level!), there'd be one and only one possible stable shape of society given a particular environment, and there's no reason to assume that it would be one that scales well. It is because of our predisposition to follow cultural norms that the possibilities multiply. If you're worried that our inclinations nudge us towards a social structure that doesn't scale well, our predisposition to follow norms is not your enemy - it is your best friend!

There is actual evidence that cultural norms make people living in large-scale complex societies (where daily interactions with strangers are the norm) more inclined to engage in "altruistic punishment", i. e. penalizing non-cooperative behaviour in strangers even at a cost to the self and thus creating an environment where cooperation pays off even in contexts where otherwise wouldn't. We used to think this is an odd and evolutionarily hard to explain biological disposition of humans - turns out it isn't biological, and not shared by people living in small scale societies where interactions are mostly limited to acquaintances you can pay back next time you meet them! http://matchism.org/refs/Henrich_2010_WeirdestPeople.pdf

 

[fromderinside]

Altruistic punishment. I'm think you're taking it as something that grows out of herd and mob conditions as a means to keep the functioning whole together.

It's not. What you describe is a bit like what was observed and used by Wynne-Edwards in his argument for group selection. He referred to the tendency for some members among Sage Gross to move to the periphery resulted from in what he called altruistic behavior for the common good loss of reproduction and more certain death by predators during mating group gatherings as a group genetic adaptation.

Of course Williams demonstrated it was just another example of group organization as a social consequence of individual competition. The fact is is losers cannot be judged as volunteers is obvious. One needs other, individual gene related - For instance, it has been amply demonstrated that individual passenger pigeons developed attributes requiring large scale clusters to stimulate biochemical mating functions - rational to explain development of large group social mating behavior. Trying it is for the group good just doesn't work. I'm pretty certain that a six inch tail feather isn't justified by flight dynamics either. What I'm saying is don't use a genetic brush to describe individual tendencies within large groups. Sometimes, individual in-group behaviors, like sexual mate tastes, are just weird.*

*^{_{All from memories from about 55 years ago.}}

 

[rousseau]

Somewhat related - Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development - implies a similar thing. That is most of us follow conventional norms.

I think you could kind of run with these stages in a loose way and grab hold of the word 'conventional'. If we can agree that following norms is conventional, and that most of us are oriented to follow norms, then most of us don't get to the point of post-conventionalism. Those members of a community with self-defined moral principles, and life-strategies are the exception, rather than the norm.

Map this into religion, politics, and we get a situation where most of us are not able to peer beyond the status quo. We see the system, but not any of the inherent dysfunction of the system. A lack of systems thinking, if you will.

 

[Jokodo]

Altruistic punishment. I'm think you're taking it as something that grows out of herd and mob conditions as a means to keep the functioning whole together.

It's not. What you describe is a bit like what was observed and used by Wynne-Edwards in his argument for group selection. He referred to the tendency for some members among Sage Gross to move to the periphery resulted from in what he called altruistic behavior for the common good loss of reproduction and more certain death by predators during mating group gatherings as a group genetic adaptation.

Of course Williams demonstrated it was just another example of group organization as a social consequence of individual competition. The fact is is losers cannot be judged as volunteers is obvious. One needs other, individual gene related - For instance, it has been amply demonstrated that individual passenger pigeons developed attributes requiring large scale clusters to stimulate biochemical mating functions - rational to explain development of large group social mating behavior. Trying it is for the group good just doesn't work. I'm pretty certain that a six inch tail feather isn't justified by flight dynamics either. What I'm saying is don't use a genetic brush to describe individual tendencies within large groups. Sometimes, individual in-group behaviors, like sexual mate tastes, are just weird.*

*^{_{All from memories from about 55 years ago.}}

I wouldn't know, I wasn't around 55 years ago. Nor is that my point. Whether you like the term or not, and even if whoever first coined it was wrong about its explanation, "altruistic punishment" has become established terminology for a class of behaviours where the subject penalizes uncooperative behaviour even though letting it fly would gain them more. "Altruistic" because, so it's argued, doing so (when widespread) makes cooperation pay off more and thus makes the world a nicer place for other (cooperative) agents, "punishment" should be obvious. The textbook example is an experiment where participant A, actually an assistant to the experimenter, gets to divide a sum if money as he sees fit. Participant b, the actual subject, can accept the partition or reject it, in which case neither gets anything. Running this setup on undergrads had shown that most will reject a 9-1 or a 8-2 partition, even as it means going home with less money. (I'm explaining this mostly for other readers, as I expect you to know all of this and more first hand).

Im not using it to argue for group selection, and if anyone ever did, that's not my mess to sort out. Instead I said s almost the opposite - that it isn't the product of any kind if biological evolution but learnt behaviour, as it could not be replicated in small scale societies where subjects tended to act rationally in accepting any non-zero share.

 

[Jokodo]

Somewhat related - Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development - implies a similar thing. That is most of us follow conventional norms.

I think you could kind of run with these stages in a loose way and grab hold of the word 'conventional'. If we can agree that following norms is conventional, and that most of us are oriented to follow norms, then most of us don't get to the point of post-conventionalism. Those members of a community with self-defined moral principles, and life-strategies are the exception, rather than the norm.

Map this into religion, politics, and we get a situation where most of us are not able to peer beyond the status quo. We see the system, but not any of the inherent dysfunction of the system. A lack of systems thinking, if you will.

Sounds more like philosophy than science to me.

 

[fromderinside]

Altruistic punishment. I'm think you're taking it as something that grows out of herd and mob conditions as a means to keep the functioning whole together.

It's not. What you describe is a bit like what was observed and used by Wynne-Edwards in his argument for group selection. He referred to the tendency for some members among Sage Gross to move to the periphery resulted from in what he called altruistic behavior for the common good loss of reproduction and more certain death by predators during mating group gatherings as a group genetic adaptation.

Of course Williams demonstrated it was just another example of group organization as a social consequence of individual competition. The fact is is losers cannot be judged as volunteers is obvious. One needs other, individual gene related - For instance, it has been amply demonstrated that individual passenger pigeons developed attributes requiring large scale clusters to stimulate biochemical mating functions - rational to explain development of large group social mating behavior. Trying it is for the group good just doesn't work. I'm pretty certain that a six inch tail feather isn't justified by flight dynamics either. What I'm saying is don't use a genetic brush to describe individual tendencies within large groups. Sometimes, individual in-group behaviors, like sexual mate tastes, are just weird.*

*^{_{All from memories from about 55 years ago.}}

I wouldn't know, I wasn't around 55 years ago. Nor is that my point. Whether you like the term or not, and even if whoever first coined it was wrong about its explanation, "altruistic punishment" has become established terminology for a class of behaviours where the subject penalizes uncooperative behaviour even though letting it fly would gain them more. "Altruistic" because, so it's argued, doing so (when widespread) makes cooperation pay off more and thus makes the world a nicer place for other (cooperative) agents, "punishment" should be obvious. The textbook example is an experiment where participant A, actually an assistant to the experimenter, gets to divide a sum if money as he sees fit. Participant b, the actual subject, can accept the partition or reject it, in which case neither gets anything. Running this setup on undergrads had shown that most will reject a 9-1 or a 8-2 partition, even as it means going home with less money. (I'm explaining this mostly for other readers, as I expect you to know all of this and more first hand).

Im not using it to argue for group selection, and if anyone ever did, that's not my mess to sort out. Instead I said s almost the opposite - that it isn't the product of any kind if biological evolution but learnt behaviour, as it could not be replicated in small scale societies where subjects tended to act rationally in accepting any non-zero share.

Just setting up a arena for discussion of small group large group behavioral dimensions Jokodo. As I read your description I see you attribute 'altruistic punishment' as some form of beneficial social moderating mechanism resulting from learning experiences and, as you put it constituting one of a class of individual behaviors in large groups. My position was that such would be hard to justify if advantage or personal benefit served as a core basis for learning as it demonstrably does. As you put it advantage would dictate one acting otherwise to one's near term interest.

Seems to me there is something missing here in the analysis. Otherwise one wouldn't look at large group outcomes as basis for individual behavior. Why not reduce your analysis to immediate group and find local situations nearby reasons for immediate individual behavior. Your view requires some mechanism in individuals for adjudicating on terms long term stability in large groups for local judgments. You have provided none. I'd gladly entertain a cluster of competing selfish motives resulting in group cooperative dynamics through complex trade supporting individual behaviors.

Noe I'm not saying one doesn't learn to act more than one to one transactions. Obviously we learn to put family and neighbor before stanger, different, and enemy. My guess is there are a suite of local behavior drivers - selfish behaviors like those resulting from one choosing short term advantage - that lead up to the result of large group long term stability behaviors by individuals. I just can't get from general group behavior to individual behavior by contradictory name labelling something that has to be relatively complex to result in such as you describe.

 

[Jokodo]

Altruistic punishment. I'm think you're taking it as something that grows out of herd and mob conditions as a means to keep the functioning whole together.

It's not. What you describe is a bit like what was observed and used by Wynne-Edwards in his argument for group selection. He referred to the tendency for some members among Sage Gross to move to the periphery resulted from in what he called altruistic behavior for the common good loss of reproduction and more certain death by predators during mating group gatherings as a group genetic adaptation.

Of course Williams demonstrated it was just another example of group organization as a social consequence of individual competition. The fact is is losers cannot be judged as volunteers is obvious. One needs other, individual gene related - For instance, it has been amply demonstrated that individual passenger pigeons developed attributes requiring large scale clusters to stimulate biochemical mating functions - rational to explain development of large group social mating behavior. Trying it is for the group good just doesn't work. I'm pretty certain that a six inch tail feather isn't justified by flight dynamics either. What I'm saying is don't use a genetic brush to describe individual tendencies within large groups. Sometimes, individual in-group behaviors, like sexual mate tastes, are just weird.*

*^{_{All from memories from about 55 years ago.}}

I wouldn't know, I wasn't around 55 years ago. Nor is that my point. Whether you like the term or not, and even if whoever first coined it was wrong about its explanation, "altruistic punishment" has become established terminology for a class of behaviours where the subject penalizes uncooperative behaviour even though letting it fly would gain them more. "Altruistic" because, so it's argued, doing so (when widespread) makes cooperation pay off more and thus makes the world a nicer place for other (cooperative) agents, "punishment" should be obvious. The textbook example is an experiment where participant A, actually an assistant to the experimenter, gets to divide a sum if money as he sees fit. Participant b, the actual subject, can accept the partition or reject it, in which case neither gets anything. Running this setup on undergrads had shown that most will reject a 9-1 or a 8-2 partition, even as it means going home with less money. (I'm explaining this mostly for other readers, as I expect you to know all of this and more first hand).

Im not using it to argue for group selection, and if anyone ever did, that's not my mess to sort out. Instead I said s almost the opposite - that it isn't the product of any kind if biological evolution but learnt behaviour, as it could not be replicated in small scale societies where subjects tended to act rationally in accepting any non-zero share.

Just setting up a arena for discussion of small group large group behavioral dimensions Jokodo. As I read your description I see you attribute 'altruistic punishment' as some form of beneficial social moderating mechanism resulting from learning experiences and, as you put it constituting one of a class of individual behaviors in large groups. My position was that such would be hard to justify if advantage or personal benefit served as a core basis for learning as it demonstrably does. As you put it advantage would dictate one acting otherwise to one's near term interest.

Seems to me there is something missing here in the analysis. Otherwise one wouldn't look at large group outcomes as basis for individual behavior. Why not reduce your analysis to immediate group and find local situations nearby reasons for immediate individual behavior. Your view requires some mechanism in individuals for adjudicating on terms long term stability in large groups for local judgments. You have provided none. I'd gladly entertain a cluster of competing selfish motives resulting in group cooperative dynamics through complex trade supporting individual behaviors.

Noe I'm not saying one doesn't learn to act more than one to one transactions. Obviously we learn to put family and neighbor before stanger, different, and enemy. My guess is there are a suite of local behavior drivers - selfish behaviors like those resulting from one choosing short term advantage - that lead up to the result of large group long term stability behaviors by individuals. I just can't get from general group behavior to individual behavior by contradictory name labelling something that has to be relatively complex to result in such as you describe.

Can you rephrase? Im not sure I understand your objection, if any. Though I suspect it's rather tangential to my point, which is that the initially surprising behaviour of participants in the ultimatum game is not as stable across cultures as once implicitly believed. That is an empirical finding that stands irrespective.

 

[fromderinside]

... my point, which is that the initially surprising behaviour of participants in the ultimatum game is not as stable across cultures as once implicitly believed. That is an empirical finding that stands irrespective.

That was your point? Such would suggest something other than "that it isn't the product of any kind if biological evolution but learnt behaviour, as it could not be replicated in small scale societies where subjects tended to act rationally in accepting any non-zero share"

Baiting one with "not....biological evolution" garnished with it's "learnt behaviour" because large group findings don't replicate small group findings does not jump out from "initially surprising behaviour of participants in the ultimatum game is not as stable across cultures as once implicitly believed."

It may be so in the game but its not compelling evidence for learning - a product of evolution - is not evolution at all for the reason I posted. One doesn't get from a large statistical group observation of choices differentiation between evolution and learning.

 

[Jokodo]

... my point, which is that the initially surprising behaviour of participants in the ultimatum game is not as stable across cultures as once implicitly believed. That is an empirical finding that stands irrespective.

That was your point? Such would suggest something other than "that it isn't the product of any kind if biological evolution but learnt behaviour, as it could not be replicated in small scale societies where subjects tended to act rationally in accepting any non-zero share"

Baiting one with "not....biological evolution" garnished with it's "learnt behaviour" because large group findings don't replicate small group findings does not jump out from "initially surprising behaviour of participants in the ultimatum game is not as stable across cultures as once implicitly believed."

It may be so in the game but its not compelling evidence for learning - a product of evolution - is not evolution at all for the reason I posted. One doesn't get from a large statistical group observation of choices differentiation between evolution and learning.

You're either derailing, or im stil not getting your point. Of course, the evolved mechanisms by which we learn, and how they lead to an overall learning strategy different from our closest relatives, adding up to a biological basis for our capacity to manifest culture of a qualitatively different kind that in chimps, are the one red thread of my contributions to this discussion.

That I'm pointing out that the responses to one particular experiment are not (immediately) the product of what the lay person might call "instinct" does not nullify that.

Of course, the learning that underlies the behaviour is based in evolved learning strategies. I've been going on about those for the entire thread. The rest, if you don't like it, go to your favourite scholastic search engine and pick a fight with any of the numerous authors who've written about the "ultimatum game" and/or "altruistic punishment" - not with me!

 

[fromderinside]

Apparently, since I see little evidence of appearance consistencies in scofflaws, the driving genetics are more tied to behavioral aspects of evolution rather than physical appearance aspects of evolution.

Above was my initial response to rousseau. Given what you wrote later it appears we are more in agreement than latest posts suggest.

However.

Thank you for enlightening me. I just got gored by the juxtaposition of learning against evolution from large group results yielding counter intuitive results to presuppositions - I presumed to be from fitness approach expectations - of expected results by the scientific community.

Moving on.

 

[rousseau]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

 

[ruby sparks]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

Tell her to watch the Robin Williams sketch about giving birth.

From memory I'm not sure if it includes the suggested test that can be done (eg by men) to help them appreciate what goes on, but that part goes something like...

Take your top lip between thumb and forefinger, pull your lip outwards as far as you can, then pull it up and over your the top of your head.

 

[Jokodo]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

An anecdote can never replace data.

Also, I'm unsure what exactly this is meant to show. You, me, and everyone else rationalise their decisions ask the time, in ways thay may not ne informative if underlying motives. Introspection isn't a kill all source of data.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Take your top lip between thumb and forefinger, pull your lip outwards as far as you can, then pull it up and over your the top of your head.

Lower lip. And it's a Bill Cosby routine.
A little later in the set, he describes his wife's attempt at natural childbirth.
"...Then she grabbed my lower lip, pulled herself up off the table, and shouted, I WANT MORPHINE!"

 

[rousseau]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

Tell her to watch the Robin Williams sketch about giving birth.

From memory I'm not sure if it includes the suggested test that can be done (eg by men) to help them appreciate what goes on, but that part goes something like...

Take your top lip between thumb and forefinger, pull your lip outwards as far as you can, then pull it up and over your the top of your head.

What kind of absolute maniac (and/or complete, unflinching badass) would ever want to go through that?

 

[ruby sparks]

Take your top lip between thumb and forefinger, pull your lip outwards as far as you can, then pull it up and over your the top of your head.

Lower lip. And it's a Bill Cosby routine.

 

[ruby sparks]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

Tell her to watch the Robin Williams sketch about giving birth.

From memory I'm not sure if it includes the suggested test that can be done (eg by men) to help them appreciate what goes on, but that part goes something like...

Take your top lip between thumb and forefinger, pull your lip outwards as far as you can, then pull it up and over your the top of your head.

What kind of absolute maniac (and/or complete, unflinching badass) would ever want to go through that?

The one you're married to, apparently.

My wife also claims (after reading about it) that evolution has seen to it that women don't properly remember the experience, otherwise they would not do it more than once.

 

[rousseau]

Jokodo you're going to love this one.

I asked my wife, who's known she's wanted kids her whole life, why that was. She said because it sounded like fun. If an anecdote from one person can't answer this entire question, I don't know what can.

An anecdote can never replace data.

Also, I'm unsure what exactly this is meant to show. You, me, and everyone else rationalise their decisions ask the time, in ways thay may not ne informative if underlying motives. Introspection isn't a kill all source of data.

I was mostly just kidding. After a long string of exchanges where you tried to hammer home evidence and rigor, why not make the most pure speculation possible with a single anecdote.

And yet it's also funny because there could be some truth to it. The sexually successful person is oriented to experience our culture and lives as fun, which is something I suggested earlier.