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How people interpret touch is definitely a high level personality trait that we can control. People often do. Some people associate touch with something bad and

by curi 19y ago

How people interpret touch is definitely a high level personality trait that we can control. People often do. Some people associate touch with something bad and recoil from it. People also have cultural ideas about appropriate and inappropriate touching, and react accordingly. That reaction isn't firmware. A second problem with the "Genes Rule The World" hypothesis (if you get to name my position, I get to name yours ;p) is that no one ever actually explains how they do this (while allowing vast room for conscious control, reinterpretation, etc)

jey 19y ago
"Some people associate touch with something bad and recoil from it. People also have cultural ideas about appropriate and inappropriate touching, and react accordingly. That reaction isn't firmware." Yes, this is all stuff that can be layered on top of the basic firmware. But wouldn't you say that when you hug someone you love in a time of distress, you're feeling something innate and at your core? I'm not saying we're simple or whatnot, there's definitely many facets to our cognition that are all in there rumbling around. But we sure aren't blank slates that are programmed by the environment. I think a better analogy is that we have a bunch of knobs with certain ranges, and the environment & genetic variation together dial in these knobs to make us who we are. This provides plenty of room for the complex interplay between the different emotions, like the example you cite where someone is generally distrusting of people and dislikes touch. I bet even that distrusting person could feel close to someone who put in a lot of effort to build a friendship to overcome their initial hesitance, and feel comforted by this closeness. Again, it's a difference-in-degree and not a difference-in-kind. "A second problem with the "Genes Rule The World" hypothesis (if you get to name my position, I get to name yours ;p) is that no one ever actually explains how they do this (while allowing vast room for conscious control, reinterpretation, etc)" That's what the fields of Genetics, Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Biology are about. :-) Check out that book I referenced in the parent post, it's pretty interesting. If it's not genes that determine what we are, then what? Or at least, even if there isn't an alternative better answer yet, why aren't genes a suitable answer?
- curi 19y ago
  Here is what I wrote on the subject a few weeks ago: http://www.scribd.com/doc/488229/Untitled http://www.scribd.com/doc/488229/Untitled (it's from email, the quoting got lost. the first 2 paragraphs had quoting)
  - curi 19y ago
    wow scribd fails. it worked last night. email me if you want to see. (see my profile for addy)
- curi 19y ago
  But wouldn't you say that when you hug someone you love in a time of distress, you're feeling something innate and at your core? If I thought I was feeling something innate that would not be valid evidence I actually was, just a self-reported anecdote. If it's not genes that determine what we are, then what? Or at least, even if there isn't an alternative better answer yet, why aren't genes a suitable answer? The answer is memes. And the short reason why is: memes evolve much, much faster than genes, so once they existed, they got to do everything mind-related, and biological evolution no longer got to do anything. This also explains why genes aren't a suitable answer :)
  - jey 19y ago
    Yes, that's an anecdote. It was meant to be an illustrative point, not a scientific factually valid point. You should read the EvPsych literature to get the scientific argument. I don't know enough about it to cite the papers, etc. Another book that looks at factors involved in the evolution of the human brain is The Symbolic Species by Terrence Deacon, http://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-Evolution-Language-Brain/dp/0393317544 http://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-Evolution-Language... "The answer is memes. And the short reason why is: memes evolve much, much faster than genes, so once they existed, they got to do everything mind-related, and biological evolution no longer got to do anything. This also explains why genes aren't a suitable answer :)" Yes, memes exist, and they do quite a lot, but it's not like as soon as memes showed up, everything else went out the door! Even if we assume that memes had some ability to thwart further biological evolution, that wouldn't reverse all of the built-in stuff that existed at the point memes came on the scene. Everything that memes do is layered on top of the huge amount of pre-programming that we're born with; memes exist solely on the highest thin layer of a big multi-layered system. Don't forget that we're actually primates with primate brains, and mammals with mammal brains. Millions of years of mammalian brain evolution weren't discarded just because we invented a vehicle for meme transmission (language). That high-level idea transmission mechanism resides on top of a regular ol' primate brain, with all of its complex builtin emotions for survival, reproduction, social interaction, etc. Anyway, I'm not an expert on this stuff, so I can't put together a really convincing argument citing specific experimental facts and whatever. I'm starting to repeat myself ... shows how little I know about this stuff. You should read some of the stuff on EvPsych to draw your own conclusions about the validity of the field. Check out this blog post on Overcoming Bias: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolutionary-ps.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolutionary-ps.html

by curi 19y ago

jey 19y ago

"Some people associate touch with something bad and recoil from it. People also have cultural ideas about appropriate and inappropriate touching, and react accordingly. That reaction isn't firmware." Yes, this is all stuff that can be layered on top of the basic firmware. But wouldn't you say that when you hug someone you love in a time of distress, you're feeling something innate and at your core? I'm not saying we're simple or whatnot, there's definitely many facets to our cognition that are all in there rumbling around. But we sure aren't blank slates that are programmed by the environment. I think a better analogy is that we have a bunch of knobs with certain ranges, and the environment & genetic variation together dial in these knobs to make us who we are. This provides plenty of room for the complex interplay between the different emotions, like the example you cite where someone is generally distrusting of people and dislikes touch. I bet even that distrusting person could feel close to someone who put in a lot of effort to build a friendship to overcome their initial hesitance, and feel comforted by this closeness. Again, it's a difference-in-degree and not a difference-in-kind. "A second problem with the "Genes Rule The World" hypothesis (if you get to name my position, I get to name yours ;p) is that no one ever actually explains how they do this (while allowing vast room for conscious control, reinterpretation, etc)" That's what the fields of Genetics, Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Biology are about. :-) Check out that book I referenced in the parent post, it's pretty interesting. If it's not genes that determine what we are, then what? Or at least, even if there isn't an alternative better answer yet, why aren't genes a suitable answer?

curi 19y ago
Here is what I wrote on the subject a few weeks ago: http://www.scribd.com/doc/488229/Untitled http://www.scribd.com/doc/488229/Untitled (it's from email, the quoting got lost. the first 2 paragraphs had quoting)
- curi 19y ago
  wow scribd fails. it worked last night. email me if you want to see. (see my profile for addy)
curi 19y ago
But wouldn't you say that when you hug someone you love in a time of distress, you're feeling something innate and at your core? If I thought I was feeling something innate that would not be valid evidence I actually was, just a self-reported anecdote. If it's not genes that determine what we are, then what? Or at least, even if there isn't an alternative better answer yet, why aren't genes a suitable answer? The answer is memes. And the short reason why is: memes evolve much, much faster than genes, so once they existed, they got to do everything mind-related, and biological evolution no longer got to do anything. This also explains why genes aren't a suitable answer :)
- jey 19y ago
  Yes, that's an anecdote. It was meant to be an illustrative point, not a scientific factually valid point. You should read the EvPsych literature to get the scientific argument. I don't know enough about it to cite the papers, etc. Another book that looks at factors involved in the evolution of the human brain is The Symbolic Species by Terrence Deacon, http://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-Evolution-Language-Brain/dp/0393317544 http://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-Evolution-Language... "The answer is memes. And the short reason why is: memes evolve much, much faster than genes, so once they existed, they got to do everything mind-related, and biological evolution no longer got to do anything. This also explains why genes aren't a suitable answer :)" Yes, memes exist, and they do quite a lot, but it's not like as soon as memes showed up, everything else went out the door! Even if we assume that memes had some ability to thwart further biological evolution, that wouldn't reverse all of the built-in stuff that existed at the point memes came on the scene. Everything that memes do is layered on top of the huge amount of pre-programming that we're born with; memes exist solely on the highest thin layer of a big multi-layered system. Don't forget that we're actually primates with primate brains, and mammals with mammal brains. Millions of years of mammalian brain evolution weren't discarded just because we invented a vehicle for meme transmission (language). That high-level idea transmission mechanism resides on top of a regular ol' primate brain, with all of its complex builtin emotions for survival, reproduction, social interaction, etc. Anyway, I'm not an expert on this stuff, so I can't put together a really convincing argument citing specific experimental facts and whatever. I'm starting to repeat myself ... shows how little I know about this stuff. You should read some of the stuff on EvPsych to draw your own conclusions about the validity of the field. Check out this blog post on Overcoming Bias: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolutionary-ps.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolutionary-ps.html