Skin Cancer, Osteoporosis and Modesty. Multiparametrism.

Australia is blessed with sun to the degree that Canada is blessed with snow. It's exceptional for it not to be sunny here.  As a consequence, Australia is "blessed" with extraordinary high rates of skin cancer compared to the rest of the world. The pale skin of the Europeans (especially the Aryan types) is prone to mutagenisis when exposed to copious Australian sun.  Fortunately, most skin cancers are relatively benign, and a good part of the average GP's practice consists of cutting out skin cancers.

With the exception of people who have rare genetic conditions, the risk of skin cancer is correlated with sun exposure. In fact we can roughly plot the risk/exposure graph as follows.

From about the mid 30's to the late 70's the local culture strongly promoted sun exposure and as a consequence, the skin cancer rates were quite high. Concerned individuals lobbied the government and a quite successful skin cancer awareness and protection campaign was launched.  Dermatologists and a government funded campaign advised people to limit their exposure to the sun.  It was a quite successful program and people are now far more aware of skin cancer than before and widespread protective measures are employed.  As a consequence, skin cancer rates in young people have begun to stabilise, the old are still suffering for their previous sins. 

In the mid 90's however it began to be noted that more and more people were becoming Vitamin D deficient.  Now Vitamin D deficiency contributes to osteoporosis which most people think is relatively benign. Yet the disease burden of this condition is quite significant, resulting in fractures, pain and a quite severe reduction quality of life. Endocrinologists were to first to notice this affect,  and their solution was to get more sun.

In fact if we plot the risk of Vitamin D deficient osteoporosis vs sunlight we get the following graph.

As we can see the risk of one is inversely related to the other. Choose your poison. More sun, increase your risk of skin cancer, less sun increase your risk of osteoporosis. You can't win.


A lot of the conflicting "medical advice" that people get from the mainstream media is due to the above phenomenon. Given the "connectedness" of biological processes. Altering one, results in effects on other systems.  The source of this conflicting medical advice is from the medical profession, particularly the specialist component of medicine.

The nature of the medical profession is such that when expert opinion is required on any matter, the authoritative words of a specialist in the field is required. This professional, who is very knowledgeable in their particular field, looks at the human being from the vantage point of that particular field, offers advice from the vantage point of that particular field. So when the news article is about skin cancer, a knowledgeable dermatologist is trotted out who advocates less sun. Two weeks later when the osteoporosis is the flavour of the day, and endochrinologist is trotted out who advises people to get more sun. The public are confused.

The problem is of course, specialisation, which is another word for cognitive compartmentalisation. It takes a generalist to see what the specialist can't. A generalist would ask,  what is the systemic risk vs sun exposure? A crude graph could be drawn as follows:

Here we see that minimum risk is somewhere between the two extremes. Trying to avoid one pathology by avoiding all the risk factors associated with it frequently increases the risk of a different one.  Zero risk is impossible, and trying the achieve it is likely to lead to more pathology. The trick to healthy living is to minimise risk, not avoid it all together. It's the common-sense philosophy of the golden mean.

As a side issue. It would appear that the healthy human beings need a reasonable amount of sun exposure on their skin to keep them healthy. Excessive Victorian Era and Modern Islamic prudery are objectively unhealthy. People need to show a little flesh to be healthy.

Austrian Slutwalkers: A tale of two Autists.

Most of the manospehere has rightly condemned the slutwalk phenomenon for the idiocy that it is.  In the end what the sluts are protesting against is human nature. Men will always be attracted to provocatively dressed women because they signal sexual availability. And a woman who signals sexual availability through her dress, is more likely to be a target for unwanted sexual attention than a woman that is demurely dressed. This is not my opinion this is fact. Protesting about this fact of human nature shows a degree of either entrenched idiocy or social autism or both.

What the slutwalkers are complaining about is having to take account of the problem of evil in their day to day affairs. Evil,  in this instance, being the propensity to be raped. The core contention of their theory is that with enough "education", punishment and shaming men can be stopped from raping. This, of course, is a rejection of the doctrine of original sin. No amount of legal stricture will ever stop evil.

Normal people recognise the existence of evil in their day to day affairs and accommodate for it. Girls don't dress provocatively around drunken men, they don't take rides with strangers, they don't walk through dark parks at night and so on. Yes, in an ideal world there should be no threat to their safety, but the world is not ideal and trying to ignore the existence of evil in the human condition is simply reality avoidance.

A lot of the Austrian Economic school are a bit like the slutwalkers.  I personally believe that they provide the best explanation with regard to economic phenomena with one exception, they are socially autistic. Sluts complain about getting raped when dressed provocatively, and Austrians complain about people getting upset at loosing their jobs as a consequence of economic efficiency. Both completely ignore the reality of human nature.

Take for example envy. The Austrian school says that it is bad, and I agree, that just like rape it is bad. But envy, like rape, is a real world phenomenon and any decent economic theory has to take it into account. Unfettered capitalism may make the world a richer place but the forces of envy that it unleashes may destroy the world and any sane economic theory must take into account envy, not simply protest about it. What may limit successful long term capitalism may not necessarily be resource access but envy which restricts capital allocation.

A smarter economic theory would acknowledge envy and try to mitigate (not eliminate since it is impossible) it's effect by economic means. No one ever asks the question, is it possible to maintain social stability with maximum economic efficiency? It's always assumed it is possible, yet is it?

The greatest threat to capitalism is socialism. An ideology which was born during the greatest period of laissez faire capitalism in history. The parents of Socialism were Darwinian capitalism intersecting with human nature.

Personally I don't think it is possible; optimising for one parameter, say economic efficiency, comes at the expense of social stability, which is ultimately the foundation of the economy. I think that there is a sweet spot  along the economic efficiency "curve" which mitigates envy enough to stop it being a threat.

The Austrians have a good explanation for economic events. The problem with their theory, though, is that there is a huge blind spot in acknowledging the evil in human nature and making allowances for it. Just like the slutwalkers.

Tragic

Shoppers' shock as man proposes in mall food court........... and is REJECTED.


Cringe. He may not feel that great at the moment but he's dodged a bullet.

Human Nature as a Parametric Limit.

In the post on engine design, commentator R Brockman made the following comment;

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points. What happens when a society goes outside the set of parameters that it was "designed" for? Advanced technology has radically changed our life -- do the Old Design Rules still work?

I think that this warrants some further elaboration. It's my belief, and a cursory examination of history will confirm, that it is possible to have different type of societies (i.e equilibrium points) but only only within certain limits. The whole point about the "Tao of Life" is that there is more commonality amongst enduring societies than than there are differences.

I suppose the reason why there is limited range of equilibrium points within a human societal "system" is because the material from which human society is built, human nature, puts constraints on types of societal structures that can be maintained.  Human capabilities with regard to jealousy, trust, fear, love, friendship, etc. are the limiting factors with regard to human interaction.  Human nature is the material from which societal "engines" are formed, and this in turn places limits on the type of enduring societies that are possible.

An example of this is with regard to sexuality.  Most men naturally desire variety and it would be expected, that given this nature, societies would develop which would cater to this fact. Yet it's pretty obvious that culturaly advanced polyamorous societies have failed to develop, since sexual activity occurs in the context of other parameters such as reproduction, love and investment. Any society that attempted to institute such a practice would be torn apart by feuds, lusts, jealousy etc.  Likewise, Communism, a great idea in theory, fails because it ignores the fact the human nature responds to incentives.

Human nature, being what it is, therefore limits the type of advanced societies that can exist.

What we do tend to see is that amongst primitive peoples there does seem to be more latitude with respect to human nature and stable "society", but as a society becomes bigger and culturally advances, the potential for alternative normative behaviors lessens.

Happiness as a Multiparametric Optimisation.

Men usually find some degree of happiness in the satisfaction of their desires. The hungry man is a happy when fed, the thirsty man, after a drink, the poor man in the achievement of wealth. Human nature being what it is, is made up of a multitude of desires which are frequently in conflict with one another. For example, our desire for leisure is against our desire for for wealth which we achieve through work. Our desire to look attractive is opposed to our desire to eat lots of sweets, and so on.

Our happiness then can be thought of as the degree to which we have satisfied our desires. Considering the multifaceted nature of our desires, each "facet"being a parameter of happiness, our degree of happiness can be considered as a sort of reflection on the  multiparametric satisfaction of our desires.

As said before, some of our desires are in conflict with each other and therefore satisfaction of parameter X may come at the expense of parameter Y.  Philosophically speaking, the task at hand is similar to that of the engine designer; how do you optimise for happiness given conflicting human desires.

From a systems point of view, system optimisation will occur somewhere between the extremes of the conflicting parameters. In other words, total system optimisation will occur at a point where the individual component parameters may not be completely satisfied. Now this is very important, since it explains a lot of human cognitive pathology and folly.

Consider human sexual satisfaction. The hedonist may argue that sex is the ultimate pleasure and that satisfaction of this one parameter will lead to happiness. (This of course is a simplification, but bear with me). Consider the following "Sexual Happiness Decay curves", for three hypothetical women, a 10, an 8 and a 5 respectively.

We see that sex with a "10" is much better than sex with a "5" but over time, due to factors such as familiarity and habituation, over time  the pleasure from each act tends to diminish. There is nothing like the rush of the new. The natural strategy to then to optimise sexual pleasure is to try and recreate the "rush" of the new.  The following graph illustrates this strategy. (Each new curve is a new partner)

The theory being that by changing the partner a recreation of the initial satisfaction state can be achieved. In reality, the easier the "prey" is to catch the less pleasure that one gets from it. The strategy then for the sexual hedonist is to achieve a steady supply of new lovers to keep his sexual satisfaction at a high state. The problem is though, most humans do not live on sexual satisfaction alone, and need other things such as companionship and love from others. Now true abiding love, seems to be a time dependent phenomenon. A love/satisfaction curve could hypothetically be drawn as below.
(N.B love as opposed to infatuation)

Now consider a man who meets a "10" and sticks with her, a graph of the sexual pleasure/love curves could be visualised as follows:

Now note, his system happiness is greater than his potential sexual happiness after a while. Compare this to the "player approach":

By optimising for one parameter, sexual satisfaction, he has traded this off for deep abiding love. The rapid turnover of partners never lets deep abiding love develop. There is no doubt that he may be sexually more satisfied than than the man above, but his total "system" happiness is less than in the above graph. This is the dark side of "Game"; it's a uniparametric optimisation of the multiparametric human system.

Of course these graphs are simplifications, but they illustrate the logic behind a lot of human folly. The systemically optimised man, at any given point finds that any one of his particular desires remains unsatisfied, if he is unable to see the "big picture view" of his condition, he may be tempted to focus on one parameter at the expense of all the rest.

The thing to realise about earthly happiness is that it is not a satisfaction of every human desire, but a balance of them. A lot of human misery is caused by seeking a uniparametric solution to the problem of unhappiness. In trying to satisfy every one of our desires, or even one fully, happiness eludes us.

Supercharger.

In the post on engine design, commentator R Brockman made the following comment;

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points. What happens when a society goes outside the set of parameters that it was "designed" for? Advanced technology has radically changed our life -- do the Old Design Rules still work?

I think that this warrants some further elaboration. It's my belief, and a cursory examination of history will confirm, that it is possible to have different type of societies (i.e equilibrium points) but only only within certain limits. The whole point about the "Tao of Life" is that there is more commonality amongst enduring societies than than there are differences.


I suppose the reason why there is limited range of equilibrium points within a human societal "system" is because the material from which human society is built, human nature, puts constraints on types of societal structures that can be maintained.  Human capabilities with regard to jealousy, trust, fear, love, friendship, etc. are the limiting factors with regard to human interaction.  In the same way that the parameters of car performance are derived from the properties of materials, so is human society limited by human nature.


A classic example of this is with regard to sexuality.  Most men naturally desire variety, and it would be expected that given this nature, societies would develop which would cater to this fact. Yet it's pretty obvious that any advanced polyamorous societies have failed to develop, since sexual activity occurs in the context of other parameters such as reproduction, love and investment. Any society that attempted to institute such a practice would be torn apart by feuds, lusts, jealosy etc.  Likewise, Communism, a great idea in theory, fails because it ignores the fact the human nature responds to incentives.


What we do tend to see however, is that amongst primitive peoples there does seem to be more latitude with respect to human nature and stable "society", but as a society becomes bigger and culturally advances, the potential for alternative normative behaviors lessens.


Indeed a theoretical plot could be made with regard to a societies proximity to the Tao Ideal and its advancement.

What we see here is the closer a society approximates the Tao point the greater its advancement and stability. Ancient Rome at its apogee possessed a different culture to Ancient Rome in its decline. It appears that in order for a society to survive and flourish it has to overcome a certain degree of barbarism or primitiveness. But once it establishes itself, it has to protect itself against decadence which destroys societal stability. Note, that a bit of primitiveness or decadence may not be too bad, but once the line is crossed, so to speak, the rot sets in. The trick in keeping a society stable, is in keeping it within a proscribed deviation from the "Tao point".


However, another point needs to be considered. Getting a society to within the desired range of the Tao point will get it only so far.  What I mean by this is, with the exclusion of Western Civilisation, the level of societal and technological advancements of all the other advanced civilisations of the world were roughly the same. The Chinese may have eaten and dressed differently to the Romans, but their societies were more alike than different. No, the one society that really stands out of the pack with regard to its "performance curve" is Western Society, compared to the others, it's supercharged.

Several books have been written about this phenomenon. What's so special about the West that made it the predominant power, not just militarily but intellectually, economically and artistically as well over the past five hundred years?

Well the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was asked by their government to look into this very thing. An anonymous scholar provided their conclusions:

He said: “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.

“We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

A Digression.

To tell the truth, I'm not actually that interested in the Dominiqe Strauss-Kahn controversy. High powered officials have a long history of being stupid, especially when it comes to sexual matters. However what really struck me as absurd, is that the head of the IMF is a Socialist. In fact; a former communist.

It would be like putting Trotsky in charge of the Fed.

Life is stranger than fiction.

Engine Design.

Modern auto engines are marvelously complex pieces of machinery. Over a century of improvement has resulted in engines that are lighter, more powerful, more fuel efficient and more reliable than their original predecessors.

The engine designer has a hard task. He is usually given a design brief which on closer inspection is contradictory. For a given engine capacity, his engine must produce maximal power and yet he is also told to minimise fuel consumption, which is directly related to power output. He is told that the engine must be light and reliable, but in order to improve reliability he must make some of the parts heavier than what is needed. The engine must be cheap and simple to manufacture, but the high temperatures and pressure needed to achieve fuel efficiency mean more expensive alloys and cooling. And so on.

In the end, engine design like most other mutiparametric design, is an exercise in compromise amongst competing independent parameters. Things are a trade off.

Once a multiparametric system has been optimised for a certain state, system integrity is dependent upon the system operating within certain design parameters. Operating mulitparametric systems outside their design parameters may result in loss of system integrity,  reduced system life or suboptimal system performance. Now most robust systems usually allow for some minor variation outside design criteria, but this becomes harder the more complex the system is.

For example and engine may have the following design criteria. (I've made these up)

1) Fuel consumption of 20mls @ minute at idle.
2) Cylinder head temperature not to exceed 160 degrees Centigrade.
3) Coolant flow at 10 liters a minute.
4) Oil temperature not to exceed 90 degrees Centigrade.
5) Maximum 9:1 fuel compression
6) Oil change every 200 hours of operation.and so on. 

The system, in order to be viable, has to stick to its rules of operation.

Car engines, for a given class of car, are more similar than different since the parametric constraints placed by by materials science and thermodynamics mean that there are only a limited number of compatible mutiparametric solutions to the engine design problem.

This does not apply just to cars. Cake mixers, bicycles, pens, passenger aircraft, etc. are more alike than different, its because as the state of the art improves and matures, it becomes apparent that there are only a limited number of viable solutions to the design problem. Initial ideas which were promising are found to be impractical from a variety of perspectives.

(There is rumour that the Volkswagen 1.4 TSI engine, a novel solution to engine design requirements, is going to be discontinued because it is too expensive to make. )

Now the point about all this is that society can be considered a multiparametric system, being composed of multiple competing and interacting elements, and as such, society can be looked at from a systems engineering perspective.

It was Jim Kalb's writings that got me thinking about looking at society this way. His battle against modernism is based upon a traditionalist perspective. The argument, as I see it, being that traditional cultures such as Islam and Chinese Confucianism have lasted because they cater towards human beings better than modernism does. After reading this, I asked myself the question, given the stability of Confucian and Islamic society, what sort of rules of operation produce a systemically stable society?

When you look at it from a systems engineering point of view you see that stable and relatively advanced societies seem to operate under a relatively narrow systems of rules; what C.S. Lewis called the "Tao of Life." In fact these rules can be don't actually have to be divinely inspired, rather they are relatively self evident to any man of moderate reflection. Christian writers would have called these operating parameters Natural Law. Anyone who is really interested should have a read of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man, where he quotes similar passages from Hindu, Norse, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish, Greek and Chinese texts.

Some of these rules of system operation can be summed up as follows:

The existence of a morality which is independent of the individual.
A belief in objective truth.
Censure of some kind for transgression of the rules.
Benefit of some kind for concordance with them.
Just and fair dealings with others
Consideration of others in our actions.
Preference for our own kind.
Sexual restraint.
Magnanimity.

The fact that these cultures, which lasted for centuries, separated both temporally and spatially should have broad common approaches to their operation suggests that stable complex societies may only be possible if run according to these broad principles. The fact that large scale promiscuity, institutionalised lying and moral relativism have not stood out as organising principles amongst surviving cultures suggest that from a systems perspective, these operating rules may be inimical to system stability. Relatively advanced stable societies may only be possible under a narrow set of system parameters.

Engine Failure.

In the previous post, I tried to illustrate, using the engine example, of how optimising for one paramenter in a multiparametric system, may result in a deterioration of the the system itself. The question is, why does this occur?

Most stable systems have negative feedback loops, in that any perturbation from the designed state is met with immediate corrective action by the system itself to ensure its stability. The real danger arises when there is no negative feedback system, here the system progressively deviates from the desired state to a point of self destruction.

Now an engine motor, like society, is a human designed thing, and its operation is effectively under supervision. It follows then that the human operator is part of the system itself and being a intelligent and sentient being, why doesn't the human recognise the dangers beforehand and take corrective action?

In the first instance, the human operator may not care about the system integrity at all, and may actually wish the system to fail. Marxists, for instance, pursued active policies to destroy traditional bourgeoisie society which were wildly successful. The Marxists believed they could build a better engine.

In the second instance, the operator of the system may be operating it under ignorance, either deliberate or innocent, and does not recognise that the system is in dangerous territory.  Perturbations from the desired state which are obviously malignant are easily recognised and corrected, but perturbations which in the short term appear benign, or positively beneficial, are the most dangerous. Here the danger is not recognised, and in instances where there is apparent positive benefit, actually encouraged, accelerating the system decline.

All societies recognise the socially destructive effect of murder and make prohibitions against it. Very few societies see the socially corrosive effects of inflation and sexual liberation, seeing them as a benign or even positive perturbations of the system.  Improvements in the same way that "chipping the engine" improves system performance.  Its all win-win until it isn't.

Here in Australia, we are very sexually liberated. Our statisticians tell us that only 75% of people will marry, and of those that do 50% will divorce. That's a lot of emotional pain, loneliness, disrupted childhoods, domestic violence, etc. Most people cannot see the link between "bonding failure" and sexual liberation, but it's there.  Great party, hell of a hangover.

Sexual repression was in many ways a bad thing, but sexual liberation, may in the long run, turn out to be a very, very bad thing. The problem with long run damage is that it is not noticed by short term minds.  Especially whilst the corrosion is "pleasant".

"Pleasant" corrosion is perhaps the most dangerous corrosion at all. In democratic societies, the mob, fixated on the here and now, refuse to believe that what is pleasantly beneficial and without consequence currently, will turn out to be malignant.

America's economic golden age spanned from the beginning of the 50's to the end of the 60's. The chairman of the Fed at the time was William McChesney Martin, Jr.  He was the man who saw the Fed's role as "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going". (Negative feedback against popular approval). He was your classic mulitparametric analyst. He did not believe that the Fed could simply base its policy on a single indicator, rather its policies should be based on a thorough analysis of the economy. He was big picture man of fierce independence. Check out the Wiki link.  This point struck me as rather pertinent:

Martin was a graduate of Yale, where his formal education was in English and Latin rather than economics.

Big picture long term man.

Chipping the Engine.

Modern passenger car engines, such as this one, are conservatively designed.  Their components are not stressed to their limits in order to preserve engine life and reliability. The fact that components are not pushed to their limits gives after-market component manufactures the opportuinty to exploit this phenomena to change the parameters of the engine operation. By reprogramming the engine's computer management system, frequently large boosts in power can be achieved.

(notice the parabolic "return" curve)

An engine that has been "chipped" usually has it warranty voided. As the "boosting" of the engine usually comes at the expense of engine life and reliability.

A primitive form of "chipping" was used during  WW2.  Some military aircraft had War Emergency Power setting. This setting pushed the engine beyond its intended design parameters with the following results;

In normal service, the P-51H Mustang was rated at 1,380 hp, but WEP would deliver up to 2,218 hp.^[3] The Vought F4U Corsair, not originally equipped for WEP, later boasted a power increase of up to 410 hp (17%) when WEP was engaged.^[2] ............. All WEP methods result in greater-than-usual stresses on the engine, and correspond to a reduced engine lifetime. For some airplanes, such as the P-51, use of WEP required the plane to be grounded after landing and the engine torn down and inspected for damage before returning to the air. (My italics)

The point about all this is that engines are mulitparametric systems and stability and long life expectancy is achieved by designing the engine within conservative parameters. The inbuilt "margin of saftey" in component design can allow at times for quite significant excursions from the usual design parameters but come at the expensive of system life and integrity.

Now human society can be considered a multi-parametric system that only maintains its long term cohesion as long as its constituent parts operate within conservative limits. The conservative limits can be pushed for a time, and given the large degree of "conservatism"in the system, can appear "apparently stable", much like an engine that's been chipped.  With the same consequences: the engine breaks down suddenly and without warning.

The intrinsic problem with systems with a large degree of component redundancy is that fatal changes in system operating parameters can occur and initially appear quite innocuous and beneficial, their true malignancy being manifest sometime later on.  Intelligent men who understand the system will try to take corrective measures to restore it to its initial state. But to the man possessed of a short time horizon or inability to extrapolate in the future(most of humanity), the "boost in system power" is without consequence as he cannot see that the "engine" is rapidly wearing away. Likewise many social changes are accepted by the bovine masses because they are pleasant and unable to see how they can be harmful in any way. When the critics of the social changes point out that the system is going to fail, they look around them and see everything working perfectly and dismiss them. Until it doesn't

The Law of Parabolic Returns.

There are several intellectual assumptions which I feel are at the root of many of society's maladies. One of the them is what I would call is the misattribution of linearity.

The erroneous logical process runs as follows. Let's say something called X is good, then even more by implication, is better. It's  runs on the assumption that systems are linear and predictable. It's common error that's seen in many facets of life. Take for example vitamins.  Small doses of vitamins are definitely beneficial to individuals who are vitamin deficient, but at ever greater doses, the effects become  negligible and some instances harmful.  Likewise with exercise, many people,  especially sportsmen, are of the the opinion if a little bit of exercise is good for you even more is better and you can never really get too much of it. Public policy makers, who view education in the same light as motherhood, extrapolate its benefits in the same way.

It's a common intellectual pathology and it exists amongst both the left and right to varying degree.

Very few systems of any complexity are linear in their effect. In fact, most systems obey what I call the law of parabolic returns. Here, what happens initially, is there is a bit of a linear effect which after a while peters out and then finally becomes negative. The more you think about complex systems, the more you recognise the effect.

My interest is as to why this phenomenon exists in the fist place. After thinking about it for a while I believe that it is due to three things:

1) Limitations in intelligence. (That is the ability to process information)
2) Limitations in knowledge, which can either be from ignorance or from a lifetime of specialisation.
3) Superficial thinking. (Sentimental thought)
4) Ideological bias. (Thought-filtering)

Understanding multi-parametric systems is hard and therefore, given the relative scarcity of deep and broad thinkers in our community, linear thinking is more likely to be the predominant mode of thought. Hence, in community based decision systems, there will be a deep bias towards linear explanations of complex phenomena. The simple solution is more easily grasped than the complex one, especially when it needs to be explained by the moronic media to the bovine masses.

Ontologically, linear models frequently bear some relation to reality under some conditions, in other words, there usually is a degree of truth to them. This is why some of the claims of Marxists, Libertarians, Keynesian's etc have some validity; they are not outright fantasy. The problem is that their model is only valid under a limited set of conditions.  Conservatives err when they dismiss leftist claims reflexively; sometimes there is a degree of truth to their claims.  In doing so they make themselves look stupid.

The phenomenon of linearity also explains a lot of the idiotic polarisation in our society at the moment.
Take for example, the two extremes: Communists and Libertarians.

Both of them engage in a denial of reality. The communists fail to see that collectivisation has negative consequences just as much as the rabid libertarians can't see that individualisation is just as socially destructive. In many ways they are similar having the same cognitive blinders, just different cognitive models.  As the general levels of intelligence decline and Facebook becomes the information source for the majority of the voting population,  simplistic solutions to complex problems will assume greater political force.

Charles Munger, Warren Buffet's partner, was a meteorologist prior to him becoming a lawyer. Meteorology is hard probably the ultimate multi-parametric discipline He describes the problem of linearity as the problem of "the man with a hammer". To a man with a hammer every problem is a nail. He has written and excellent and easily readable essay on the importance of multi-parametric knowledge: Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary needs. It's well worth a read.

An Interesting Article.

One of the reasons why I think the Modern West is in decline is because the political theory upon which it is premised is based on a misunderstanding of human nature. One of the great fallacies which is incorporated into western political and legal theory is the myth of the "rational man". By which I mean, the theory that the average man is a sober and reflective judge when it comes to political judgment. The myth is actually a composition of two fallacies:

1) The effective doctrine that each man's political deliberation is just as valid as another's. This denies the validity of experience, study and IQ.
2) The myth that men are impartial judges of data. Whereas in reality both conservatives and liberals "filter" away data that is inconvenient and effective have a rationalisation hamster that justifies their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence.

One of the hardest things to do, when attempting to think, is to try and eliminate one's biases from one's reasoning. It is possible, but what it requires is a devotion to the totality of data present and not filtering data away which is inconvenient.

For example, I am an anthropogenic climate change skeptic. Not because I have some emotional agenda which I want to keep intact, rather its because the totality of the data that I have seen makes the CO2 argument appear a bit weak. Now the Medieval warm period had lower CO2 levels than today. This in itself does not invalidate the CO2 argument, since it is quite possible that there are several mechanisms of climate change, and good scientist  trying to understand how climate actually works will acknowledge this. He will not try to deny data which is inconvenient to his preferred theory, rather he will modify his theory to incorporate the data. When a scientist tries to "hide the decline" I know that he is more committed to his ideology than to understanding the truth.

Its not a scientific paper but a good article (from the left wing perspective) of how a lot of people are "biased" when it comes to processing information.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the population "feel-think" instead of "truth-think" and and any political theory or constitution which fails to take this into account is a bit like an civil engineering course which neglects soil mechanics: It's going to eventually fail.

Our political process has not been corrupted as a result of outright conspiracy, the problem is more fundamental. As political power is passes from the few to the many, the likelihood of policy being decided on sentiment instead of reason becomes greater. Feel good policies become predominant over are-good policies. 

Perhaps the reasons why democracies eventually fail is because, by becoming every more inclusive, they become incapable of making the hard decisions that ensure their survival. Universal suffrage paves the way for political instability.

Speculation on Beauty.

A week or so ago, Roissy linked to another series of female facial composites. Here, beautiful actresses were paired together over several iterations to produce a final result. ( See below)

Looking at the pictures, I get the impression that while the final facial composite is attractive, she is not as attractive as nearly all of the originals. I suppose what I'm getting at is that true beauty is perhaps some  ideal proportion combined with some unique markers of identity. These unique markers i.e. shape of nose, eyes, lips etc may be the finishing touches which make a woman exceptionally beautiful rather than just pretty.

Homophily and Psychological Entropy.

Following up on the previous post I thought I would link a few studies on the subject of homophily.

(I've decided not to provide an exhaustive list of references because this is a blog post and not a formal paper. People interested in pursuing the subject in more detail can try putting the term homophily into Google Scholar and more than enough references can be found)

Homophily is the preference for things which are similar to ourselves. Sociological studies looking at how humans form relationship networks show that humans, nearly always, prefer to associate with people who are similar to themselves. Be that in race, class or custom. Furthermore this preference is observed from a very early age and across all races, well before the affects of socialisation kick in.

An interesting review paper, Childrens Developemental Understanding of Ethnicity and Race is long but worthwhile reading. Paralleling their cognitive development from concrete to more abstract, it appears that children become aware of the differences between individuals from as young as three years of age, and as they mature they become more specific with their understanding of differences. With further cognitive maturity they are able to abstract and  generalise these differences upon groups. It appears that this process is natural, in that it is not the result of parental education or socialisation but rather something that is innate. Attempts to try to thwart this process by trying to de-emphasise the differences only seems to exert a paradoxical effect, in that it results in a greater awareness of them.

McPherson et al, performed a rather large review of the subject, and their findings indicated that:

Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order.

It therefore appears that when we compare other individuals to ourselves we compare them against some predetermined hierarchy of values. It seems that we seem more attuned to racial differences than we do to educational ones and the fact that differential traits can be stratified in their importance is intself an interesting fact. I imagine that evolutionary biologists would invent some explanation to account for the phenomenon. I myself, prefer to acknowledge its existence and leave unto others speculations as to why it exists.

It appears that we are genetically biased to prefer "similars" overs "differents" and whatever the mechanism involved, there must be some form of cognitive/biochemical imperative that drives this: The selection is favoured by "psychological entropy", in other words, there is some psychological benefit for these choices.
 
This does not mean that this psychological imperative cannot be overcome. Other studies have demonstrated that in small groups, where there is limited choice in friendship formation, there is less homophily than in large groups. In other words, given a small group of people, a fellow similar person may possess traits which are in the net repulsive, and hence the individuals repulsion may overcome any homophillic tendency towards them, while a different may posses multiple attractive traits which overcomes the homophillic bias.  

I'm white but Halle Berry possess more than enough positive traits for me to choose her over Meryl Streep: always.

However in large groups, where there are more homophillic "choices" available, statistical probability prevails and people tend to gravitate towards similar individuals

An anonymous commentator sent me a fascinating link to a "turtle and frog experiment";

The social implications of this model are easier to see than the zoological ones. And the most interesting observation to come out of it is that even a moderate preference for living among your own kind can give rise to a dramatic pattern of segregation. What starts out as a salt-and-pepper mixture gradually evolves, over a few hundred iterations, into large blobs of almost uniform composition. Even though none of the individuals insist on racial purity, most of them wind up living with a very high percentage of neighbors like themselves.

It is a human tendency to extrapolate from the particular to the universal, thinking what works locally will work globally, and I think this is source of many of the problems in the West. Because Bill (the Black man) is very good friends with Peter (the Asian) whom he met at work( where there is a limited pool of homophilic choices), we generalise from this particular instance to assume that Asians and Blacks will naturally want to live together.  But this generalisation is flawed because given more choices, Bill and Peter will as a group, chose similars over differents en masse. The natural psychic energy works towards differentiation, even though there may be local areas of mixing.

What these latter processes have in common is that they tend to minimize surface area (or the area of interface between phases). It's not implausible that racial segregation also shares this tendency, and the discovery of a connection between a social process and certain physical systems would be illuminating.

The minimisation of surface area is an attempt to minimise the "energy" of the system. Now I think that there is this analogous "psychological energy" in human beings and it affects human behaviour in such a way that humans drift towards the lowest energy state (Happiness, calmness, etc) I imagine that when people are grouped with other similars,  it results in a low psychological energy state and are hence happy, while when grouped with differents (all other things being held constant) they exist at a higher energy state. There being a psychological imperative towards a lower state which results in happiness and less anxiety.

Now while relationships with similars results in a lower energy state. a similar who has other disagreeable features may may result in a higher "psychological energy state" than a different with lots of agreeable features. In this instance, a relationship with a different is relatively favoured. But this relationship would be at a higher energy state than a relationship between two compatible similars and hence still more prone to separation. This is confirmed in the studies which show that mixed groups have higher rates of dissolution than similar groups. The worker and the capitalist may join forces against the Nazi, but once the Nazi threat disappears they separate into their " entropically favoured" groups.

Now dissimilar groups can be bought together, but it comes at a cost. Since the psychic energy required to live amongst similars is lower than with differents, there is a natural tendency of dissimilar groups of people to seperate and self-identify, the only way to bring differents together is by pushing them together. An overriding power has to push against their natural inclinations and furthermore, the greather the dissimilarity between the two groups, the greater the overriding power that needs to be applied. Take away that power and the groups will seperate again.

Contrary to popular belief, the Serbs and the Croats do not have a long history of bloodshed with each other. Nearly all of it happening in the 20th Century, when they were joined together as a result of a variety of cultural and political forces. Within the former Yugoslavia, the differences between the two groups became more marked as the result of a bloody history and it required the repressive communist state to keep the country together by the application of extremely harsh penalties. When the Communist Government failed and this force was removed, the society reverted to its "least psychic energy" state, it broke apart. Paradoxically, the "ethnic cleansing" may have contributed to some of the stability of the region by separating the dissimilar groups. The only area of the former Yugoslavia that is still relatively "tense" is Bosnia where the groups have been forced to live together.

A multicultural state will only survive as long as it is strong enough to overcome the natural tendency of its constituent members to seperate, the more diversity the stronger the government needs to be to "keep it all together". Should the government fail, the state fractures.

Conservative thinkers have for too long been looking at multiculturalism as a racial issue instead of a human nature one. Pitting race against race instead of the realities of human nature against the fantasy of Leftist thought. People are homophillc in the same way that women are hypergamic, it's a fact of life.

Apologies and Commentary.

Apologies to my readers in not getting back to you earlier. Let's just say its been an incredibly hectic few weeks and jet lag has not helped.

The first thing that I want to say is that after putting up the post I realised that I had made an error. As some of the commentators correctly pointed out, Sammy Davis Jr was sitting down when compared to the others, this therefore biased the experiment, as he is both black and sitting down, therefore he was more likely to be picked, biasing the result.

There was no correct answer for this experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to see who people identified as different when asked to make a choice. From the comments section, it appears that some individuals differentiated people by their prior knowledge of them. As some commentators mentioned, Peter Lawford was born in England and the rest of group were born in the U.S., and yet, there is no way you could tell that just by looking at the picture. In other words, people were differentiating on the basis of their pre-concieved knowledge of the subject material. They weren't differentiating on what they saw they were differentiating on what they knew.

What's interesting to see is who wasn't picked as different:  Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford.  Dean Martin appears the tallest standing member and yet he was least likely picked. Why?
Frank Sinatra is the shortest guy standing so one would suppose that at least a few votes would have gone his way.

Joey Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr were the most likely to be picked. Clearly Sammy Davis Jr. is black and the only guy sitting down. While Joey Bishop doesn't have a tie.

As I said, this experiment was biased and therefore it's difficult to draw many conclusions from it but perhaps we could say that stature is less of a discriminating factor than clothing and skin colour.

......................................

The reason I put this post up was because of reflection upon the events in the New Orleans Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.  It was set up as a refugee center and it soon became apparent that people who were complete strangers associated on the basis of skin color. Colin Powell, who has probably been America's best and most dignified Secretary of State recalled that that during his time as a national security advisor:

KING: Were you ever racially profiled?

POWELL: Yes, many times.

KING: And didn't you ever bring anger to it?

POWELL: Of course. But, you know, anger is best controlled. And sure I got mad.
I got mad when I, as a national security adviser to the president of the United States, I went down to meet somebody at Reagan National Airport and nobody recognized -- nobody thought I could possibly be the national security adviser to the president. I was just a black guy at Reagan National Airport.
And it was only when I went up to the counter and said, "Is my guest here who's waiting for me?" did somebody say, "Oh, you're General Powell." It was inconceivable to him that a black guy could be the national security adviser.

KING: How do you deal with things like that?

POWELL: You just suck it up. What are you going to do? It was a teaching point for him. Yes, I'm the national security adviser, I'm black. And watch, I can do the job. So, you have this kind of -- there is no African-American in this country who has not been exposed to this kind of situation.
Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? You protest, you try to get things fixed, but it's kind of a better course of action to take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse.

 My point here is not to get into the rights or wrongs of racism but to try and understand the phenomenon. It would appear that tallness and shortness is less of a discriminating factor than clothing or skin colour. And why, in the Superdome, where people were complete strangers, did people divide  themselves spontaneously according to skin colour? I have difficulty believing that all the Blacks in the Superdome were bad and that all the Whites good.

What I'm getting at is that our brains may be wired to weight certain differences more than others  and that there may be default associative behaviours based solely upon appearances. Racism may be more about appearances than genetics. In much the same way females are wired to respond sexually to alpha traits, perhaps people are wired to respond positively to people who appear similar to themselves and negatively to people who look different. That is not say that this attraction/repulsion cannot be overcome, rather it's a force that may be ever present in the human psyche that needs to be taken account of by any student of human nature.

These maps of U.S. cities are stark illustration of how racially divided the country is, and yet I image many people have friends from different races. Here is an interesting map of London. These maps may not necessarily be reflections of a deliberate policy of racial segregation, rather they may be the natural effect of human beings wanting to associate with similar individuals because it is psychically beneficial.  Prolonged personal contact with individuals of different races may be able to overcome our wired genetic bias, but it is a bias that remains each time we are confronted with an unknown individual/s. What this means is that while we may like and feel comfortable around a  particular example of a people who look different,  we may still be uncomfortable with the rest.

Experiment.

I want to perform a little experiment.

Pick the odd man out from the picture below. It's not meant to be a trick question and spend less than 20 seconds on your answer. (Click on the polling widget in the right sidebar)

 

Commentary in two days.

Housekeeping.

Just want to let my readers know that I will be away for the next two and half weeks. Will resume blogging after then.

Kamikaze

Many Australians don't like the Japanese for what did to our Servicemen and their behaviour towards our allies. Still the generation that wrought those atrocities is nearly dead and guiltless generation has taken its place.

Whilst I have my reservations about Japanese culture, I've been quite impressed by the way in which the Japanese have handled the disaster. Where's the looting? Instead, the images that keep coming back are that of dignified people taking it on the chin.

I'm quite the proponent of nuclear power, especially of this form, and I don't suffer from the anti-nuclear hysteria that the majority of the population seem to possess. Still, it's one thing to overplay dangers and yet another to minimise them, and facts are facts, being around the Fukushima's nuclear plants at the moment is not likely to be conducive to one's health.

The Daily Mail reports on the Fukushima Fifty, a group of men who've stayed at their posts, at real danger to themselves, to try and limit the damage at the nuclear power plant. Officially they are being exposed to "regulated" amounts of radiation, but in reality, the doses they are being exposed to are probably much higher. What will happen to them, who knows for certain, but I image there will be a lot of early deaths from cancer.

I can express nothing but admiration for these men, most of whom it would appear, are volunteers. Tonight before I go to bed, I face towards Japan and raise my glass to them.

I can recognise courage when I see it.

Caveman Love: Some Interesting Papers.

It been a rather busy few weeks and so I have not been able to blog as much as I would like.   But I found a few papers that are quite interesting and might be worth a few comments.

The first article I quickly want to look it as by Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge,


The Cultural Supression of Female Sexuality.

Interesting paper from the evo bio point of view. I'm not a fan of this approach to psychology and the frame of reference from which it approaches things. Still Baumeister and Twenge put forward a good case that it is other women who have the strongest influence on female sexual behaviour. An interesting quote

The researchers reported that women cited external pressures of gossip and reputation as forces that pushed women to hold back sexually.

The crucial items, however, concerned where the support for the double standard was perceived to reside. Millhausen and Herold (1999) asked their respondents “Who judges women who have had sex with many partners more harshly?” (p. 363). The answers reflected a strong perception that women enforce the double standard. The most anti-sexual of women’s groups advocated the single standard of sexual purity for both genders. Thus, support for the double standard is not a matter of anti-sexual feeling or an instance of the general pattern of lower female permissiveness. 

and

Only 12% of the women responding to the survey stated that men were the harsher judges, whereas 46% identified women as harsher. (The rest reported that men and women judged equally harshly.) The authors seem to have concurred that their findings pose a challenge to the theory that men stifle female sexuality: “Why is there a belief that men are controlling women’s sexuality, yet women perceive other women to be the harshest judges of their own behavior?” (p. 367).

Women's social psychology can best be understood from the dynamics of the herd. The alpha females of the pack set the rules and "inclusion" in the group  is dependent upon adopting their norms. The pressure to conform it just a woman's natural tendency to belong to the group.

Another interesting paper is by Critelli and Bivona;

Women's Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and Research.

Rape fantasies tend to be surprisingly common by Women. Just in case there are any Aspergoids reading this,  This does not mean women want to be raped. A fantasy is a controlled mental excursion, not an uncontrolled physical act. For the retards out there, there is a difference. Still, what the rape fantasy implies that female sexual pleasure is in someway stimulated by loss of control, compulsion and and a sense of being dominated. Now it needs to also be understood that in the fantasy the woman is raped by a man of her choosing, in other words, she gets to vet the "rapist". Still what the fantasy shows is domination by a desired man.

Following this theme is another interesting paper based on a small sample of women;

Turning on and Turning Off: A Focus Group Study of the Factors That Affect Women's Sexual Arousal

Some interesting comments were made in this study, particularly the following:

Style of Approach/Initiation and Timing

Women described various styles of approach/ initiation
as potential turn-ons or turn-offs but the importance
to their own arousal of how a partner approached them
was a key theme:

P: I want to say his “game” . . . you know, how the man
approached you, how did he get me to talk to him
longer than like, five minutes? How did he get me to
be interested in him and the ways he went about it.
[African American group]

Being “surprised” or “overpowered” by a partner was
described as arousing by a number of women:

P-1: It could be because I was raised Catholic and
everybody jokes to me, comes up behind me, you
know “I’m not responsible” then, and he comes up
behind me and puts his arms around my waist and it’s
like, well “it’s not my fault.” If they’re going to take
me from behind, it’s not my fault.

P-2: I’m not Catholic and that is very sexually arousing.
P-3: I totally agree. [46+ group]

A potential turn-off was a partner who was too “polite” or
who asked for sex:

P: If somebody askedme to do something. I hate that. Like,
“will you go down on me?” and stuff and like blatantly
ask me . . . It will eventually get there, they don’t have
to ask me, but like the asking is . . . the biggest turn-off
ever. [18–24 group]

Although being able to communicate about sex with a
partner was often seen as positive, particularly in the older
age groups, a partner verbally “asking” for sex was widely
regarded as a turn-off:

P-1: My husband, as long as we’ve met . . . he’s just a very
polite young man and he just would, you know, while
we are in the throes of sexual passion, he would just
say “May I have sex?” or something like that, and I
wish [he] wouldn’t ask. That’s a turn-off.
P-2: It’s like, just do it.
P-3: Even now. . . he’ll say something like . . . “Well,
tonight can we have sex?” or something like that, and
I’m like “Why don’t you just come and you know,
kiss me and like that.”
P-4: Make love to me.
P-5: Exactly.
P-6: Seduce me.
P-7: Don’t make me say okay.
P-8: It’s not something that’s a turn-on. [25–45 group]
 were less aroused

I this age of equality, when it comes to life's more primitive functions a man's gotta lead.

Finally,  another interesting paper (which I couldn't get the PDF link to) by DeMaris, 

Elevated sexual activity in violent marriages: hypersexuality or sexual extortion? 

This is a fascinating paper with several interesting links. DeMaris basically notes that couples in abusive marriages have intercourse approximately 4.33 times a month more than non-abusive couples. It would appear that DeMaris explains this discrepancy by postulating that this increased frequency is due to male coercion of the women.

Although conflict and violence are positively correlated (DeMaris, 1993), conflict per se diminished sexual activity. Nevertheless, at a given level of conflict, the use of violence by husbands served to elevate sexual frequency. This appears to make most sense only when one assumes that a husband's violence has a coercive effect. Otherwise, if conflict generally "turns partners off" to sex, it would not be reasonable to assume that violence--often the result of conflict--turns them back on

He does however issue this caveat,

Another limitation of the study is that sexual coercion has only been inferred but not measured directly. Essentially, the analyses have relied on sociological "detective work" to build a case based on circumstantial evidence alone. I have argued, based on theoretical reasoning, that sexual coercion, or extortion, should be revealed by an interaction between sexual frequency and violence (including injury) in their effects on wives' depressive symptomatology. To the extent that this was found, that reasoning is supported. However, without wives indeed acknowledging that they were coerced into having sex, that inference remains somewhat speculative.

Personally, I think DeMaris's theory needs some more work. Arguing, which is a rational phenomena seems to turn women off sex, where as violence and agression operates on a more "primitive" level seems from the data available.  DeMaris assumes a cognitive model of aggression where it is the end point of a series of deliberately escalating chosen activities. Information is interpreted through one channel.  Perhaps a better understanding of this phenomena is made by considering a two channel (I'd say three) model of female cognition. Here women filter information through  rational and primitive  channels where on the rational level women are repulsed by violent men but on the other more primitive channel women are aroused by overt machismo.  This approach easily explains how a woman can be both repulsed and yet attracted to a man. It also explains why the "nice guy" is percieved as "rationally good" but the primitive channel is not stimulated by his actions and as such the relationship is viewed as asexual.  Another interesting paper, looking at sexually inactive marriages, 

Sexually Inactive Marriages, by Denise Donelly (Sorry could only get the abstract) noted that low sexual activity was correlated with low violence .   Now it is possible that all the increased coital frequency is a product of coercion, but interesting paper posits and alternative hypothesis. Shitty marriages may be kept together with good sex. In other words, a woman may not like her marriage but the sex may be good.

Exploring Relationships Among Communication, Sexual Satisfaction, and Marital Satisfaction, by Litzinger and Gordon seems to suggest so.

Now there are other studies which show that women are sexually unhappy in abusive relationships but one of the fundamental problems with abused women is getting them to separate from the abuser. They quite frequently go back. I my limited experience, women have no trouble leaving a nice beta but seem to have a hard time leaving an abusive bad boy.  Perhaps the "psychic benefit" that keeps women in abusive relationships comes about from stimulation of primitive centers of the brain by alpha behaviour.

Now I'm not suggesting that the way to fire up a flagging marriage is for a man to beat his wife, rather displays of over displays of traditional masculinity and some playful physicality, (throwing her over your shoulder etc) may help.

Good Post by Roosh V.

I think Roosh V gives the definitive account of why some men are refusing to "grow up". I think there's more to life than screwing in Dad's basement, but if I had his philosophy..........