..in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
Romans 2:15
One of the most amazing things I have ever seen is a watching a young child, blind from birth, get up and walk. If you think about it from an engineering perspective, walking is an incredibly complex activity, requiring significantly rapid computational power to ensure both balance and locomotion, yet nearly all little children are able to do so without any real difficulty. The amazing thing in this blind child's instance is that she did it without any form of spatial orientation or visual example or how to do. The functional capacity was innate. She was not born a blank slate.
I can also remember the first time I saw an erotic image, and remember the blood surging to my groin unexpectedly. I remember being shocked by the response, yet what had happened was, that without any prior learning, my eyes had transferred the information to some portion of my brain which was was able to computationally extract the erotic information from the image and then initiated the then "inappropriate" physiological response. All this happened without my conscious awareness.
People tend to look at human behaiviour without reference to the computational mechanics involved. Take, for example, disgust, as mentioned in the previous post. For the brain to elicit a disgust response visual, nasal and tactile information must be computationally analysed and an appropriate response be elicited. The disgust response predicates circuitry or software which is capable of eliciting it. Furthermore, the sensation of disgust is not some lower order reflex like a knee jerk, but rather one that can be elicited across a wide variety of real and imaginative human situations.
Furthermore, some things are intuitively disgusting, which implies that not only is there pre-existing circuitry which enables the response but that certain conditions are capable of eliciting it to the exclusion of other situations. In other words, values are front loaded and the system can discriminate. Why are slimy things thought of intuitively disgusting or bad smells. Likewise, deformity but why not beauty? Clearly the disgust mechanism is biased toward one type of outcome.
Likewise with hypergamy. Why are not all men equally capable of eliciting arousal in women? Why is arousal conditioned on several predicate factors. In other words, why does it discriminate against one type of man against the other? I suppose some people will say evolution but the important point to noted is that the hypergamic response is biased toward a certain type of male. The values are front loaded.
Human beings are not born blank slates, rather, we have predictable patterns of behaviour which we bundle under the name of human nature. We feel affection for our kin, we associate with like, we chafe at injustice (think about it, why do we have any response at all when we see injustice), predictable things elicit disgust. We have an inbuilt operating system.
Much like a microprocessor, on its own, is incapable of doing anything meaningful without an appropriate program likewise neurons have to be "wired up" and signal transmission needs to be modulated across them in order for any meaningful behaviour to be elicited. The human mind has an architecture which predetermines human nature. We tend to think of instinct in terms of animalistic tendencies but I think we fail to appreciate that instinct operates at much higher levels with several higher order cognitive functions being instinctive as well. Human beings are born with an operating system.
But much like there is a difference between Windows and iOS it appears that not all humans are born with the same operating system. Rather their seems to be a variance amongst people. As mentioned in the previous post. Disgust sensitivity seems to vary amongst individuals, so while all humans may have a disgust response, saying that disgust is part of human nature can easily obscure the fact that there is a wide range of sensitivity with regard to it.
So what?
Experiments in cognitive science show that morality is frequently a rationalised intuition and it's fascinating to think that basics of human morality may be encoded into our genome throught the genetic biases that are encoded into our higher order response. How we "feel" about a certain thing seems to be influential in our moral understanding of it. The feeling we get to a situation, on the other hand, seems to have a strong genetic component.
Which brings me to cognitive science. I'm a big believer in the Dual Process theory of the mind (with updates later) and what I think we're seeing in the distinction between System 1 and System 2 process of the mind is the strong genetic basis to System 1 i.e. biocognition and System 2 processes being more abstract. Hypergamy, Disgust, Homophily are all System 1/genetic responses. System 1 is our inbuilt operating system, it's what gives us our human nature.
I really enjoyed reading this because it echoed many of the thoughts bouncing through my head at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, humans have an operating system. the variance between individuals can be explained by thinking of the operating system as AI. Any AI will have certain fundamental processes hard-coded into its functioning. In our case, such things as life-sustaining processes, basic movement patterns, fundamental drives, mammalian pack behavior would be hard-coded. As well as the ones you mentioned; disgust, hypergamy, morality.
but AI must also have the ability to take in new information, process it and respond to it. It must be able to respond to its environment. This aspect of our programming is driven by several things. Our early childhood experiences on a fundamental level. A blend of hard-code and software. But it is also driven by cultural institutions like the family, school, church, government, media, literature, sub-culture.
I find that software can be put into two general categories. Stories and Games.
Through stories we make sense of the environment, of relationships, of the passage of time. we construct identities, create and pursue goals. We construct pasts and forecast futures.
Through game we discover boundaries and rules. we assess risk and reward. sort ourselves into heirarchies. co-operate and compete.
In the human software, everything can be broken down into a story or game. What's your story? What games do you play? Who taught it to you? Why? Are you playing the same game as everyone else? Is the story accurate anymore?
Currently, we are in the process of hacking ourselves. We are peering deep into our own programming for the first time thanks to technology. Advertisers, Governments, Videogame Programmers, Website designers, Internet Celebrities, Biologists, Psychologists, Hustlers and Scammers. All these people are figuring out how we work. But no one's really driving or using this information quite dexterously yet, other than to make a quick buck or try to control you.
An interesting example of higher-level thinking overcoming lower-level wired-in behavior can be found in aviation. It is no doubt instinctive, if one suddenly starts falling, to grab hold of something to avoid the fall. In an airplane, pulling back on the stick or yoke will under most circumstances cause the plane to climb, or to slow its rate of descent...but if the nose drops suddenly caused by an aerodynamic stall, pulling back is the *last* thing you want to do: you need to get the stick/yoke forward to break the stall.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that happens in flight training is to reprogram this instinctive response, by repeatedly practicing stalls and recoveries. However, there have been some cases recently involving very experienced pilots where it does not appear that the reprogramming worked when it needed to.
Another interesting post.
ReplyDeleteMay I suggest that there is an error in this sentence: "Why are not all men capable of equal arousal?"
I think you meant to write something like "Why are not all men equally capable of eliciting arousal in women?"
@brinjal
ReplyDeletebut AI must also have the ability to take in new information, process it and respond to it. It must be able to respond to its environment.
Yes, I agree. One of the fundamental mechanisms of System 1 learning is conditioning and I feel that this has important political implications.
Currently, we are in the process of hacking ourselves. We are peering deep into our own programming for the first time thanks to technology.
Yes, I think were on the verge of a huge paradigm shift in society. Cognitive science is about to upend the notion of man as a rational animal with the profound political and social implications that it will have.
What I find interesting is the notion of intuition being an "Operating System Output". Which by implication leads to the conclusion that there are quite a lot of "higher order" neurological processes going on without our conscious awareness. The attraction we suddenly feel for an attractive woman is not "calculated", but felt in her presence, which implies an enormous computational substructure which must be coded in our DNA that gives us the sensation.
But what's really interesting is the relationship between this inbuilt system and the cognitive miser. Because if you think about it, cognitive misers aren't actually thinking when they respond rather blurt out whatever the hardware/software computes as the response.
@David Foster
I think instrument flying is one of the best examples of the need to override system 1 response. It's quite frightening to realise just how many crashes have been due to the pilot doing the intuitive rather than the correct thing. The Air France Crash in the South Atlantic being a prime example.
@ Julian
I'm glad you like it, though I'd appreciate your thoughts given your biological background.
Thanks for the suggestion.
"What I find interesting is the notion of intuition being an "Operating System Output". Which by implication leads to the conclusion that there are quite a lot of "higher order" neurological processes going on without our conscious awareness. The attraction we suddenly feel for an attractive woman is not "calculated", but felt in her presence, which implies an enormous computational substructure which must be coded in our DNA that gives us the sensation."
ReplyDeleteIt would probably be pretty easy to create an AI system that determines if a woman is attractive enough (cues for probable fertility and health) to trigger that initial attraction. It would be harder, I think, to create an AI system correctly simulating initial female sexual attraction or non-attraction to a man.
I will maybe add some more comments, but at the moment I will do what I did at Dalrock recently, suggest they read the following short story I wrote recently, based on some real events. It was only after I read it that I realised that the Aaron character made two classic "alpha" remarks. I suggested the Dalrock people see if they could spot them, but I will give them here.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I didn't notice this until I reread the story. I suppose the relevance of this is the question of what signals "alpha" and what women find attractive (contrariwise, there are things that a man can say that elicit disgust, which is often seen in women with the lipcurl that accompanies contempt. If you see that in your wife or girlfriend, you have a MAJOR problem.)
https://davidcollard.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/the-young-wife/
The lines are:
“Why don’t you take your top off?”
and
“So, what are we going to do about her?”
Notice how the woman in the story complains about these remarks, but her behaviour tells another tale.
So, what is "alpha" attraction based on? I have suggested a simple solution, but people seem to like to complicate matters. That is, a man will cause arousal in a woman if he makes it obvious in some way that he is or considers himself superior to her. Women want to mate with their betters.
This can be done in many ways, but that is perhaps the basic dynamic. A female acquaintance recently published a fantasy novel. She refers to the "nonchalance" in some men which intrigues women. Nonchalance is basically an air of superiority.
Also, check out the trailer of The Last Days of Disco. There are several references to disgust and attraction, especially from 1:00 to 1:30.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoCyQcUh7Ug
And, finally, on a personal note.
ReplyDeleteI have a congenital condition in my right leg (Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, quite rare). It has a noticeable unaesthetic effect on its appearance.
If I had been born a girl, it would have made a big difference to my sexual attraction and marriageability.
When I was a young man, I used to worry that it would bother girls. In fact, it never seemed to bother any of them, even the most appearance-conscious.
In many ways it is a puzzle, but I think the likely explanation is simply that women do not focus on a man's legs as part of his attraction, whereas for some men a woman's legs are very important. (They are for me, and I am pleased my wife still has nice legs).
Women are attracted to, I suppose, power and the appearance of power. To arrogance and so on.
Here is another trailer, in which "Nick" discusses why "Rick" is attractive to women. From the same director as the previous trailer, the lines are funny and I suspect more honest than most that Hollywood purveys.
http://www.whitstillman.org/2015/07/16/newly-restored-metropolitan-trailer/
The whole thing is good, but see 0:45 for Nick's remarks.
(This trailer is a rare example of a trailer that actually does an injustice to the film. The film is much more intelligent than the trailer.)
Sorry, to add yet another comment, but to answer the original question, what is the biological basis of disgust?
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could get a fair way by saying that we feel disgust for whatever is bad for the transmission of our genes.
I can think of some counter-examples, but it a possible theme to pursue.
We are disgusted by bad smells associated with possible disease. We are disgusted by some people's very smell. Maybe for genetic reasons. (I once danced with a perfectly nice girl, who was not dirty in any way, but something about her strongly disgusted me. It was strange, but the feeling did not abate.)
I feel disgust when I see a man kissing a man, but I imagine most normal men and women would find this following image appealing. It looks correct.
NSFW!
http://phdbimbo.tumblr.com/post/124112916947/good-girls-have-achingly-empty-holes-and#notes
We are disgusted by deformity because it implies disorder, possibly genetic, or if it disease, it implies genetic propensity to disease.
About twenty years ago, the idea of disgust was a popular one in those circles that follow intellectual trends. I do not mean that in a snide way. I mean that it was a hot topic.
@David
ReplyDeleteIt would probably be pretty easy to create an AI system that determines if a woman is attractive enough (cues for probable fertility and health) to trigger that initial attraction.
I honestly wonder how it's coded in the DNA.
@Julian.
Thanks. Bummer about Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome but it doesn't seemed to have impaired you in any way!
No, it hasn't.
ReplyDelete