So, let me see if I understand this right—you’re contending that human behaviour is constrained to behaviour that best benefits the genes? That is to say, that human goals are really sneakily disguised genetic goals?
Then what about people who take a vow of celibacy, who deliberately choose not to have descendants, and therefore subvert any possible genetic goal? How is that possible?
Well, for the particular case of vows of celibacy, let me put it this way:
Will you, personally, take a vow of celibacy?
How would you explain the reasoning of people who do take vows of celibacy?
Are there any errors or mistaken beliefs in their reasoning?
More generally, humans have values and heuristics that, taken together in the ancestral environment, usually increase genetic fitness. Sometimes they don’t, especially when technology and a modern economy provides ability and incentives for people to add superstimuli to the environment. For example, the guy who plays so many video games that he never meets women, or the guy who drinks one Big Gulp(TM) a day until he weighs 300 pounds. Or the guy whose concern for his personal safety, combined with a belief in Heaven and Hell, convinces him to protect his long-term interests with a vow of celibacy.
I don’t want to be happy because that increases the likelihood that I’ll have lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren. I want lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren because I believe that would increase the likelihood that I’m happy. My desire for grandchildren may change, especially if I think they would be unhappy. My desire for happiness will not change. This is not an error or a case of messed up priorities or me making decisions based on faulty assumptions, it’s just how my values are.
These are values you consciously have. But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in genetic fitness. Your not being conscious of that doesn’t change it.
The cause of my having these values doesn’t really make a difference to what my values are. The values I’m conscious of is all that matters to me. I have no moral or emotional commitment whatsoever to reproductive efficiency. That is not one of my values.
Atoms don’t influence the evolution of a species or its values in any particular direction. The system we’re looking at is bounded at “the bottom” by selection.
Evolution is a super slow optimization process, and the environment changes. I’m equally “genetically fit” (i.e. I was born to survivors) to any thing alive today, but have a very different goal set.
I don’t want to be happy because that increases the likelihood that I’ll have lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren. I want lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren because I believe that would increase the likelihood that I’m happy.
It is not clear to me that you’re using “happy” in the way that most people use “happy.” Specifically, the things that people enjoy and the things that people pursue are often different, and whether or not people are pleased in near mode or far mode are different things. It could very well be that you pursue children but they decrease your enjoyment of life, and yet you pursue them despite knowing that.
I use the formula engagement + meaning + enjoyment to calculate happiness. Children may well be a net negative to enjoyment at times. Whether or not I decide to have them depends on whether I believe that’s going to be outweighed by engagement and meaning most of the time.
If your own celibacy somehow helps your relatives (who have a partial copy of your genes) reproduce, then the needs of your genes have been served. In general, genes have ways to pursue their agenda other than have their host reproduce. Sometimes genes even kill their host in an attempt to help copies of themselves in other hosts.
Your own celibacy would have to massively benefit others—for instance, if you were going to have 2 children, your celibacy would have to allow your sibling to have 4 extra children.
Of course. I’m not recommending to any genes to have their host go celibate. I just disagree with the deduction “if you’re ceilbate you can’t have children, so there’s no way your genes could benefit from it, QED”.
Well, it works in ants that share 75% of their genetic code with their siblings, but in humans… while its not impossible that celibacy could increase genetic fitness, its highly unlikely.
On average, that’s true. But I’ve started wondering if maybe the standard gene-centered view doesn’t take high variance in reproductive success into account.
Lately I’ve been reading some stuff by Napoleon Chagnon, who did a lot of (massively controversial) ethnography of the Yąnomamö people in the Sixties and Seventies. One of the things he tracked was the parentage of children in his area of study. It turns out there are enormous differences there, especially along the male line—particularly prominent men might have as many as twenty or forty children, balanced out of course by correspondingly lower fertility among others. (The Yąnomamö are polygynous, and sometimes polyandrous, but for obvious reasons a wife with many husbands cannot produce as many children as a husband with many wives.)
If that sort of thing’s typical of the EEA (a hypothesis, again, that’s massively controversial), then it’s not impossible that there could have evolved behavioral adaptations diminishing potential fertility, if they kicked in under conditions of expected low fertility—the downside loss is low enough that aid to your siblings or cousins could make up for it. That’d be consistent with cultural traditions like younger sons going into the clergy.
That’d be consistent with cultural traditions like younger sons going into the clergy.
Do younger sons have extremely low evo fitness?
I think I’d have to see some really strong evidence of celibacy increasing genetic fitness, otherwise I’m just going to assume this is a case of memes overpowering genes. There could of course, for example, be a gene for religiousness that generally increases evo fitness, but occasionally causes someone to take a vow of celibacy. This would on average increase evo fitness.
I don’t know how exactly genes translate into behaviour. But I would guess that its possible for genes to code for religiousness, but coding for or against a religious vow of celibacy is impossible, as this is far too specific a behaviour.
That’s extremely culture-specific. I was talking about cultures like medieval European nobility, where you’d typically want an heir and a spare, both of whom you’d go to some effort to marry off, but where subsequent sons just got in the way and often ended up in the clergy. Other cultures would have their own analogous situations.
At the gene level, what I’m talking about wouldn’t look like something that universally codes for a +kin, -self fertility tradeoff regardless of environment; for more or less the reasons you gave in the grandparent that’s quite unlikely to be selected for. But if you throw environmental interactions into the mix you can do more interesting things. One pathway for example might start by modulating hormone levels in response to mate availability, for example to encourage higher-risk mating strategies in rich environments. That gives the biochemistry something it can work with, and opens up more complicated strategies, some of which might include kin-centric strategies gated by specific hormone levels.
Even that isn’t going to look like a gene coding for a vow of celibacy. But it might translate to a vow of celibacy given a certain cultural context and personal history.
So, let me see if I understand this right—you’re contending that human behaviour is constrained to behaviour that best benefits the genes? That is to say, that human goals are really sneakily disguised genetic goals?
Then what about people who take a vow of celibacy, who deliberately choose not to have descendants, and therefore subvert any possible genetic goal? How is that possible?
Well, for the particular case of vows of celibacy, let me put it this way:
Will you, personally, take a vow of celibacy?
How would you explain the reasoning of people who do take vows of celibacy?
Are there any errors or mistaken beliefs in their reasoning?
More generally, humans have values and heuristics that, taken together in the ancestral environment, usually increase genetic fitness. Sometimes they don’t, especially when technology and a modern economy provides ability and incentives for people to add superstimuli to the environment. For example, the guy who plays so many video games that he never meets women, or the guy who drinks one Big Gulp(TM) a day until he weighs 300 pounds. Or the guy whose concern for his personal safety, combined with a belief in Heaven and Hell, convinces him to protect his long-term interests with a vow of celibacy.
I don’t want to be happy because that increases the likelihood that I’ll have lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren. I want lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren because I believe that would increase the likelihood that I’m happy. My desire for grandchildren may change, especially if I think they would be unhappy. My desire for happiness will not change. This is not an error or a case of messed up priorities or me making decisions based on faulty assumptions, it’s just how my values are.
These are values you consciously have. But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in genetic fitness. Your not being conscious of that doesn’t change it.
The cause of my having these values doesn’t really make a difference to what my values are. The values I’m conscious of is all that matters to me. I have no moral or emotional commitment whatsoever to reproductive efficiency. That is not one of my values.
But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in atoms. Your not being conscious of that doesn’t change it.
Atoms don’t influence the evolution of a species or its values in any particular direction. The system we’re looking at is bounded at “the bottom” by selection.
Evolution is a super slow optimization process, and the environment changes. I’m equally “genetically fit” (i.e. I was born to survivors) to any thing alive today, but have a very different goal set.
It is not clear to me that you’re using “happy” in the way that most people use “happy.” Specifically, the things that people enjoy and the things that people pursue are often different, and whether or not people are pleased in near mode or far mode are different things. It could very well be that you pursue children but they decrease your enjoyment of life, and yet you pursue them despite knowing that.
I use the formula engagement + meaning + enjoyment to calculate happiness. Children may well be a net negative to enjoyment at times. Whether or not I decide to have them depends on whether I believe that’s going to be outweighed by engagement and meaning most of the time.
If your own celibacy somehow helps your relatives (who have a partial copy of your genes) reproduce, then the needs of your genes have been served. In general, genes have ways to pursue their agenda other than have their host reproduce. Sometimes genes even kill their host in an attempt to help copies of themselves in other hosts.
Your own celibacy would have to massively benefit others—for instance, if you were going to have 2 children, your celibacy would have to allow your sibling to have 4 extra children.
Of course. I’m not recommending to any genes to have their host go celibate. I just disagree with the deduction “if you’re ceilbate you can’t have children, so there’s no way your genes could benefit from it, QED”.
Well, it works in ants that share 75% of their genetic code with their siblings, but in humans… while its not impossible that celibacy could increase genetic fitness, its highly unlikely.
On average, that’s true. But I’ve started wondering if maybe the standard gene-centered view doesn’t take high variance in reproductive success into account.
Lately I’ve been reading some stuff by Napoleon Chagnon, who did a lot of (massively controversial) ethnography of the Yąnomamö people in the Sixties and Seventies. One of the things he tracked was the parentage of children in his area of study. It turns out there are enormous differences there, especially along the male line—particularly prominent men might have as many as twenty or forty children, balanced out of course by correspondingly lower fertility among others. (The Yąnomamö are polygynous, and sometimes polyandrous, but for obvious reasons a wife with many husbands cannot produce as many children as a husband with many wives.)
If that sort of thing’s typical of the EEA (a hypothesis, again, that’s massively controversial), then it’s not impossible that there could have evolved behavioral adaptations diminishing potential fertility, if they kicked in under conditions of expected low fertility—the downside loss is low enough that aid to your siblings or cousins could make up for it. That’d be consistent with cultural traditions like younger sons going into the clergy.
Do younger sons have extremely low evo fitness?
I think I’d have to see some really strong evidence of celibacy increasing genetic fitness, otherwise I’m just going to assume this is a case of memes overpowering genes. There could of course, for example, be a gene for religiousness that generally increases evo fitness, but occasionally causes someone to take a vow of celibacy. This would on average increase evo fitness.
I don’t know how exactly genes translate into behaviour. But I would guess that its possible for genes to code for religiousness, but coding for or against a religious vow of celibacy is impossible, as this is far too specific a behaviour.
That’s extremely culture-specific. I was talking about cultures like medieval European nobility, where you’d typically want an heir and a spare, both of whom you’d go to some effort to marry off, but where subsequent sons just got in the way and often ended up in the clergy. Other cultures would have their own analogous situations.
At the gene level, what I’m talking about wouldn’t look like something that universally codes for a +kin, -self fertility tradeoff regardless of environment; for more or less the reasons you gave in the grandparent that’s quite unlikely to be selected for. But if you throw environmental interactions into the mix you can do more interesting things. One pathway for example might start by modulating hormone levels in response to mate availability, for example to encourage higher-risk mating strategies in rich environments. That gives the biochemistry something it can work with, and opens up more complicated strategies, some of which might include kin-centric strategies gated by specific hormone levels.
Even that isn’t going to look like a gene coding for a vow of celibacy. But it might translate to a vow of celibacy given a certain cultural context and personal history.