July 30, 2018--The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

I continue struggle to understand more fully why so many Americans believe Donald Trump when so much of what he says is blatantly false. What causes them to suspend the ability to think clearly and instead simply believe.

One explanation put forth by some is that there is a belief gene, a wired human propensity to believe bold narratives and follow without questioning charismatic leaders and non-verifiable doctrines. This would be one reason all peoples through all of history appear to have powerful belief systems that they eagerly follow.

For early humans, some claim, this was essential to survival. Hominoids on their own would be easy prey in a survival-of-the-fittest environment so to increase their chances to thrive it was important for them to band together into hunting and gathering groups. And to coordinate their defenses against those other animals who saw them as potential sources of protein. 

In these kind of tribal realities, to assure working together rather than struggling on their own, various forms of coordinated activity were beneficial. Important to that was the ability to identify and follow capable leaders. To subsume aspects of oneself for the sake of our species living on. 

Tribes not only required strong leaders but also willing followers. Hierarchies emerged as a result and it was helpful if individuals found ways to fit comfortably within them. In contemporary terms this meant the willingness to "sacrifice" aspects of one's individuality and freedom of action. All presumably for the greater good.

It helped if proto-leaders were charismatic, shamanistic, and thus could appeal to the emerging consciousness of the human spirit and that proto-followers, over evolutional-time, would develop the capacity to feel secure when submitting to leaders' origin narratives, promulgated codes of behavior, and ultimately to tribal belief systems.

All aspects of this that added to the likelihood of survival and propagation, over millennia, likely led to natural selection with these survival adaptions entering the human gene pool.

To survive our distant ancestors needed to learn to believe.

Another way of thinking about how this works when most effective is from an insight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As a poet and aesthetic philosopher, in 1817 he of course was thinking about the force of artistic narrative--how we willingly suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment.

He suggested that if a writer could infuse "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, readers would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative.

There also is a potential dark side--"cognitive estrangement" can take advantage of a person's ignorance to promote the suspension of disbelief.

Either way, at the level of literature or in regard to human social behavior (including the propensity to believe things that are not based on truth or evidence) these capacities are pervasive and powerful. 

To bring this to today we can see the same mechanisms occurring in our politics; and though we no longer need to believe to survive, we may be seeing these residual instincts still operating. And if cognitive estrangement is in play, there are forces at work to manipulate and control our thinking and behavior.

April 6, 2017--Human Mutations

I have been thinking recently about my hand.

My right hand since it has developed a tremor. My doctors, particularly my neurologist is attempting to figure out its cause and to suggest ways both natural and medicinal to calm it.

I tell him I have come to like it. It to me is a sign of animal vitality, a kind of second heart that trembles rather than beats.

He tells me I'm crazy.

I tell him I have another doctor for that. And tiny crumbs of klonopin.

We both laugh. I need to laugh.

But the thinking about my hand has me thinking about human evolution. What a wondrous thing the human hand. How did it evolve from a fish's fin to become, over 600 million years, this most wonderful of appendages?

Slowly and, considering its complexity and anatomical differences from our aquatic ancestor, it required at least millions of steps, imperceptible mutations. Some led our proto-hand down some not helpful branches to so-called "bad mutations" that the struggle for survival between the fit and less fit were resolved in bloody ways.

How many modifications were needed to bring us, it, to this remarkable point? How many countless rolls of genetic dice?

And, as I ponder my trembling fingers, I wonder what else still might be occurring. Is Nature's job completed or are there still more surprises awaiting? Some of which might turn out to be beneficial?

Perhaps a sixth finger? Would we have use for that? Would one more digit make us less vulnerable, additionally able to survive? Perhaps a second thumb? Sprouting next to the pinky that also would be opposing and in tandem with our current thumb make us more powerful and adaptable?


Do geneticists have their eyes on mutational developments underway about which we should be concerned . . . or hopeful?

Surely we cannot be at the end of the evolutionary road.

And so with my fluttering hand I did some research. And found there are mutations occurring that we could well do without--the gene called Titin, for example, that can trigger heart failure--as well as others that hold the promise of progress.

For example, Apolipo-protein AI-Milano. Surely you've heard of this.

In case not, here is the detail from Adam Lee's "Four Beneficial Evolutionary Mutations Underway Now"--

Heart disease is one scourge of industrial countries. It's the legacy of an evolutionary past which programmed us to crave energy-dense fats, once a rare and valuable source of calories, now a source of clogged arteries. But there is evidence that evolution has the potential to deal with it. 

All humans have a gene for a protein called Apolipo-protein AI, which is part of the system that transports cholesterol through the bloodstream. Apo-AI is one of the HDLs, already known to be beneficial because they remove cholesterol from artery walls. But a small community in Italy is known to have a mutant version of the protein, named Apolipo-protein AI-Milano, or Apo-AIM for short. 

Apo-AIM is even more effective than Apo-AI at removing cholesterol from cells and dissolving arterial plaques, and additionally functions as an antioxidant, preventing some of the damage from inflammation that normally occurs in arteriosclerosis. People with the App-AIM gene have significantly lower levels of risk than the general population for heart attacks and stroke, and pharmaceutical companies are looking into marketing an artificial version of the protein as a cardio-protective drug. 

There are also drugs in the pipeline based on a different mutation, in a gene called PCSK9, which has a similar effect. People with this mutation have as much as an 88% lower risk of heart disease.

I know that with my hand nothing beneficial is going on that, in evolutionary terms, is "adaptive." But my doctor is happy that I am dealing with it so well. Or about which I am, in my more familiar mode, in denial.