We all appreciate that human individuals progress through stages of cognitive development on the way to adulthood. A toddler is simply not equipped to run a country (hold your quips): the brain hasn’t fully developed. Infants love the game of peek-a-boo precisely because they have not yet cemented the idea of object permanence. Language capability improves over many years—decades, actually. Brains are not “fully” developed until the late twenties (yet assert mastery starting in the teen years).
But, what does “fully” developed mean? It means significant further development in structure or capability is not to be expected. Does it mean that brains reach some theoretical ultimate capability—no more improvements possible—or do they maybe stop short of perfection? Why would evolution produce anything substantially better than what provides sufficient selective advantage in an ecological context, in simultaneous consideration of all other organism attributes and the biodiverse and social environments in which they operate? The tangled difficulty of that sentence barely hints at the immense contextual complexity involved.
So, every last one of us ceases brain development well short of some notional limit. Does that stopping point cross the threshold of being able to master all knowledge or understanding about Life, the Universe, and Everything? Of course not. Evidence abounds. So, we will never comprehend it all, given our limited meat-brains.
All this echoes things I’ve said before. What’s new in this post is what I hope will be a helpful analogy to how adults present ideas to children possessing less-developed brains—thus the Nursery Rhyme title. Since adult human brains also stop short of “full” development, how might we expect our imperfect brains to interact with what we can’t fully understand? We encounter this conundrum all the time in giving “sufficient” accounts to children that are effective, even if they must be over-simplified or distorted to get the point across. So, how would a hypothetical species possessing far more wisdom explain the incomprehensible to us, as if we were children to them?
Which way will the coin decide to land? Image by ICMA Photos.
In my continuing pursuit of humility as an antidote to modernity’s human supremacy illness, the atoms that constitute who I am take issue with lofty and self-aggrandizing concepts of idealism, dualism, and free will—replaced by the unflattering material world and its staggering wealth of emergent complexity. I have argued that opposite of lacking imagination and being reductionist, such a view far exceeds our imaginative capacity and is in fact rather expansive and open-ended next to facile short-cut cop-outs that sweep mind-boggling complexity under the rug by pretending that constructs like mind, consciousness, soul, God, or Santa Claus are real.
One stubborn sticking point is the beguiling illusion that “we” are separate from “our” corporeal bodies, owning and controlling them, somehow. This notion is prevalent, despite zero evidence that we are anything but corporeal, and heaps of evidence to the contrary. A less supremacist variant allows that all life, down to microbes, are endowed with this material override to exert control and autonomy over their environments, but still demand a line of separation between life and inanimate collections of matter. An amoeba suddenly changing course in reaction to its environment is, in this view, ontologically different than a hurricane changing course in reaction to its environment.
Granted, life is amazing and exhibits unambiguous behavioral differences compared to, say, rocks (hint: check the complexity of internal structure). A materialist, mechanistic basis does not in any way diminish life, although that’s often the regrettable reaction from someone who takes it on faith that transcendent mystery accounts for life’s splendor—rather than intuition-busting eons of emergent material fabulousness. Well, it turns out that life is incredible no matter what inconsequential thoughts we form about it. In any case, the point that I will develop in this post is that “decisions” are carried out at every level from electrons to ants, but are at no point fundamentally operating on a different basis.
Depending on how one defines “decisions,” either electrons and bats carry them out by the same rules, or neither can be said to be making “free” decisions. Whatever the case, electrons and bats are on similar footing when it comes to “decisions,” albeit at vastly different scales of complexity. Given enough information and background, the decisions by either are not surprising, even if not precisely predictable. Now, I do identify a difference between living decisions and inanimate decisions, importantly, but it’s a subtle one that I’ll wind my way toward.
Happy Newt Year! Those who have followed me for a long time have probably noticed a marked uptick in the frequency of newt mentions in the last few years. What’s the deal with that? It seems so random. Am I engaging in occult practices that require eye of newt?
The simplest version is that when I moved from San Diego back to the Pacific Northwest (had lived in Seattle prior to being “rented” by California for 18 years), I landed in newt territory.
My street is largely undeveloped, leaving plenty of forested critter habitat. A slow-moving creek—dammed by beavers into more of a pond—runs a few hundred meters away, which anchors the local newts. When it rains, especially in fall and spring, we find newts slowly prowling the area. Just as lost keys are more likely to be found under a lamp-post simply because light allows them to be seen, newts are frequently found on streets and driveways because they stand out on such plain surfaces. I suspect it goes deeper than this, in that they also hunt worms, which find their way onto pavement during the rain, and are also perhaps easier for the newts to spot. Rainy time is dinnertime!
I could never have predicted it a few years back, but my wife and I find ourselves smitten by the newts. We love and adore them. I hope this post provides at least a little appreciation as to why.
It’s Tuesday morning and I didn’t prepare a new post, having been busy helping birds and bats. Maybe, though, the holidays have given you more free time than usual, so that you can afford to take in a podcast episode or two. If so, this post introduces two conversations I’ve had that do a decent job of capturing my recent perspectives. Below, I provide links and overviews of the content of each, in the form of the questions I was asked. Do you already know how I’ll answer each one?
Human Nature Odyssey: Astrophysics for a New Stone Age
About a year ago, I recommended a fantastic podcast called Human Nature Odyssey, by Alex Leff. If you haven’t listened to it, the previous link allows you to get up to speed on past episodes. Alex reluctantly read an assigned book at age 14 that changed his life, as the book has a tendency to do. That book is Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, which I have touted in a number of posts. It was a key part of the Reading Journey I laid out a while back, further expounded in a dedicated post, and formed a large part of the inspiration behind my proposed Religion of Life.
Alex and I have had a few exchanges over the last year, and he honored me with a spot in his season 2 lineup of Human Nature Odyssey, titled Astrophysics for a New Stone Age. Alex edited the conversation into a tight dialog, adding his customary soundscapes to create a podcast having a higher-than-normal production quality. Paraphrasing Alex’s questions, here is how the flow went:
What initially drew you to astrophysics?
Why do you call yourself a “recovering” astrophysicist?
How do you view science, now from the outside?
What inspired you to start Do the Math?
Wait: we’re not going to colonize space?
How can you say that your “space laser” is far less impressive than a simple amoeba?
How were you influenced by Daniel Quinn’s writings?
Could you describe your cancer diagnosis for modernity?
Why use the vague term “modernity?”
The modernity cancer has perks: can’t we keep those?
Are you suggesting that we go back to the Stone Age?
Do you still lament losing astrophysics if modernity collapses?
Are you using a map and compass on your journey?
What aspects of science are valuable in a post-modernity world?
I like the conversation that emerged, and hope you do as well. It should be available through most podcast apps, including this Apple link, and also via YouTube (audio only).
Marriage Proposal (Teaser)
The second conversation was with Josh Kearns on Doomer Optimism (episode 246). And, yes, a marriage proposal pops up. This is a longer conversation than the previous one, happening to cover some similar ground (astrophysics, lunar ranging). But it also delves into religion, which I’m not sure I’ve discussed in other podcasts. It then touches on the fertility decline story and demographic modeling. Near the end, I think Josh implies that I’m fat, or will soon become so. Here is a paraphrased list of questions Josh put to me:
What does it mean to be a recovering astrophysicist?
How could you do lunar ranging if the landings were faked?
What’s at stake in the potential collapse of modernity?
What’s it like to shed the mythology of progress, and does that make you an outsider now?
You define modernity as starting with agriculture: is that going too far?
What’s your plan? Can this be a curriculum? Who’s your audience? Youth salvation?
Are we preparing today’s students for yesterday’s world?
What are your triage priorities: institutional or individual?
Can you explain what human supremacy is and why you focus on it?
What is your religious background and journey?
You seem to have arrived at a new religion of sorts: can you describe this?
Are there inroads to transform religions by carrying forward their best parts?
Big shift: why is fertility rate falling rapidly and globally?
How many completely wrong predictions can experts make before they give up?
How can global energy use peak before global population peaks?
What is the economic impact of declining energy use?
If facing near-term demand-driven decline, should we start prepping now?
Is there anything people fret over that they really don’t need to worry about?
As it happens, I speak slowly enough that playback at 1.5x speed is well-tolerated.
Two Others Coming Soon
Two other recent interviews are in production, and I might decide to append them here if they’re out soon. I’ll send an e-mail note to subscribers if/when that happens. If you have not yet subscribed, you can do so on the right-hand panel (or at bottom on some interfaces). I don’t share your e-mail address with anyone, and send an alert every time I put new content on the site (may need to check spam or “promotions” and instruct your client to accept them).
We’ve all heard the outrageously skewed statistics. The top 1%, or 0.1%, or even 0.01% of humans control an outsized fraction of total wealth (something like 30%, 15%, and over 5%, respectively). Because our culture values the fictional construct of money far more than is warranted, and the ultra-rich have a hell of a lot of it, they acquire status and access to power unavailable to almost everyone else. How can such a small fraction of the population possess such a disproportionate share of this resource—one that we’ve decided bestows influence and power? It doesn’t seem at all fair.
But, money isn’t the only disproportionate power-conferring asset on this planet. What else does our culture value above almost all else? Brains. What—are we zombies?! Large brains are what (we tell ourselves) set us apart from mere animals—taken to justify a sense superiority. Earth belongs to us. We can do whatever we want, because we’re the ones with the big brains: the self-declared winner of evolution—as if it’s even possible to have a winner in an interdependent community. Through innovation and technology development, we now wield god-like power over the rest of life on Earth—for a short time, anyway, until it becomes obvious that “winning” translates to “everybody loses.”
Given our similar tendencies to overvalue money and brains, I was motivated to compare inequality in brain mass within the community of life to the gross inequality we abhor in financial terms. Is it as bad? Worse? Humans constitute 2.5% of animal biomass, and 0.01% of all biomass on the planet. We are also one of perhaps 10 million species, which in those terms means we represent only 0.00001% of biodiversity. Any way you slice it, we are a small sliver of Life on Earth—while managing to dominate virtually every ecological domain. As our culture tells it, humans are the deserving elites.
What fraction of the planet’s brain wealth do we possess? To be clear, in performing this analysis, I am not making the case that brains are what matters—far from it. But in our culture, our brains are cherished and essentially worshiped for their unique capacity in terms of ingenuity, allowing us to defy the limits that all other species “suffer.” What is our disproportionate share of brain mass? Is it as bad as 15% or 30%, like our egregiously-lopsided wealth inequality?
Brains. What are they good for? Why do we—and loads of other animals—have them? What is the point of evolving increased neural complexity? Brains obviously confer advantages, or they would not survive the gauntlet of evolution. They must also exact a cost, or every creature would boast a headpiece of enormous potential. If every living being had a giant brain—or even a modest one—the ecological web of life would surely fail, so that brains are a niche evolutionary strategy possessed by a small minority of species, enabled only by the presence and support of the whole.
Early brains—and I’m thinking worms, here—facilitated regulation of bodily functions, and humans preserve those essential features in the brain stem. Reptiles developed the capability for more complex calculations, assessing a number of simultaneous inputs to guide decisions of fight or flight, for instance. Selection (evolution) saw to it that these calculations were, on average, functionally “correct,” becoming more nuanced over time. We, too, preserve these well-honed instincts deep in our brain structure. As animals evolved (e.g., mammals, but not exclusively so), they developed a cerebral cortex and limbic system to navigate social arrangements and better adapt to varying conditions. This is where emotions originate. Some mammals then doubled-down on this nifty cerebrum thingy to develop a neo-cortex with all sorts of cool lobes (like the frontal one) capable of forming ever-more sophisticated mental models of the wider world—allowing flexible adaptation informed by years of development and model-building during a long process of individual maturation. Among other things, culture arises from this cerebral capability (culture being socially-learned behaviors that are not stamped in genetically, as practiced by many social animal species).
In short, brains serve to form mental models of the world that help us flexibly adapt and survive. Our models are not constrained to be correct, as long as they are useful in some functional, adaptive, average sense. I’ve taken to using the term “meat-brains” to help drive the point that brains are just organs—however sophisticated—and to poke at our cultural worship of brains, to the point of being dismissive of any life not boasting comparable cognitive capacity. But having a large brain is not everything, and in fact has demonstrated itself to be one of our greatest liabilities—by conceiving and enacting modes of living not ecologically contextualized and vetted to, you know, actually work in the long term—to the tune of initiating a sixth mass extinction. Like any evolutionary adaptation, it can be taken too far.
Incidentally, I wrote this and last week’s post roughly in parallel a few weeks back, and did not carefully coordinate their order of appearance: they might have been arranged either way. Some themes are common to both, but they might be thought of as siblings that belong together.
As I settle into and continue to explore the perspective that modernity is destined to fail, was never a long-term-viable idea, and therefore represents a giant blunder, I keep running into thoughtful writings about what exactly went wrong, at its foundations.
A recurrent culprit—and I tend to agree—involves human supremacism (anthropocentrism), connected to a perceived separateness from nature. This separateness relates to a dualism that began with agriculture, eventually finding full expression during the Enlightenment. Its Enlightenment framing, chiefly associated with Descartes, drives a wedge between mind and matter—as different “substances,” for instance. Thus, while not my main interest, I keep getting routed back to the question of “mind,” as it continues to be a sticking point in dismantling the dualism that is generally agreed to get in the way of appropriate ways of living on this planet.
So, this post is about mind and consciousness, offering my reactions. Now, I should be clear that it doesn’t really matter if we arrive at the Correct Truth on this issue, to the extent that the recommendations emerging from whatever framework result in better alignment to the living world. Any prescription that advocates humility, right-relationship, reciprocity, being part of a whole—fantastic! I may have suspicions and disagreements about the underlying metaphysics, but who cares, in the end? Surely multiple paths can lead to similar ends. Thus, I don’t want to die on that hill, or subvert migration to a better way of living in a crossed-arm philosophical sulk. Nor do I wish to see efforts that claim theirs is the only way, rooted in Truth. Who are we to demand knowing the ultimate truth, anyway? Why should we—or any creature of evolution—expect to? Humility, remember?
Indigenous cultures adopted a diverse universe of stories upon which their well-integrated practices rested, and that’s all for the good—even if the stories are not True in a modern sense. What matters is the practices and attitudes the stories motivate. I suspect that we can likewise tolerate a diversity of metaphysical underpinnings, to the extent that they allow compatibility with the community of life.
That said, I will now address what I see as an unfortunate tendency in the drive to abolish dualism. Maybe it can lead to similar, good outcomes, but I worry that it preserves a tinge of supremacy, while failing to destroy the chief horcrux of dualism. Be prepared to lose your mind, as I have done.
No matter which candidate won the U.S. Presidential election, about half the citizens were set to fear the end of the country. Rather than argue about whether each side’s concern is similarly credible, I’ll address a broader question. What, exactly, does a voter/citizen imagine the goal to be, and—given modernity’s transient status—is the goal anything more than unfounded fantasy?
I have difficulty listening to political rhetoric of any stripe, carrying as I do the conviction that the entire modernity project is an incoherent amalgam of stunts that is inherently incompatible with ecological health, and thus fated to self-terminate. Besides offering promises of more houses, more jobs, more money, more material comfort—which only moves us closer toward ecological collapse—the dream being sold is such a self-deluded fantasy as to sound like Santa Claus and Easter Bunnies to my ear. It has a similarly infantilizing effect on the population.
My apologies for abandoning a regular posting cadence. I helped my mother move across the country and have been distracted by a number of other worthy activities, like building all manner of nest boxes from on-site materials. Several ideas for posts are brewing, so I am unlikely to remain silent for much longer.
In the meantime, some may be interested in checking out a few of my latest media appearances. The most recent is an interview by Derrick Jensen for Resistance Radio.
The second plug is an appearance on Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification, in a joint discussion with DJ White—whose heterodox insights I have long appreciated.
I am doing another podcast interview later today, and will post it here (rather than making a new dedicated post) when it’s out. [Update: ended up making a dedicated post after all.] I’ll test the new subscribe feature to alert folks when it’s available. So, consider subscribing to get e-mail alerts about new Do the Math content (information absolutely not shared):
I would appreciate some feedback as to whether e-mails from the subscription service are working from this site (i.e., not blocked). Please use the comments to let me know if you did or did not receive an e-mail (by mid-day Tuesday). I will delete these housekeeping comments, once they serve their purpose. Thanks!
A while back, I came across a fascinating paper from 2007 by Gurven and Kaplan on longevity among hunter-gatherers that helped me understand aspects of what life was (and is) like outside of modernity. My interest is both a matter of pure curiosity, and to gain perspective on how desperate life feels—or doesn’t—to members of pre-agricultural (ecological) cultures.
I wrote last year about the perceived perils of early human life in Desperate Odds, in the context that to us members of modernity, having never been weened from the teat of agricultural output, it seems like life without agriculture (and supermarkets) would be a virtual death sentence. Add to this a perceived vulnerability to predation from lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), and the mental image that emerges—as depicted by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael—is of a stressed and starving hunter following the tracks of elusive prey as twilight darkens, while a predator is close on his trail, audibly breathing. It feels like a knife edge of survival: everything has to go just right, but teeters on all going horribly wrong.
The core argument from the Desperate Odds post was that surviving to reproductive age was obviously common, or our species would wink out. This simple fact makes daily survival a near-guarantee—enough so that fear of death is not top-of-mind most of the time, allowing most brain cycles to go toward less-troubled, routine activities.
It was either in preparing that post or in connection with A Lifetime Ago that I ran across the aforementioned paper. In this post, I dig in to see what insights can be gained from survival models for various human cultures.
The Attention-Grabber
Let’s start with the plot that caught my eye and drew me in, which is Figure 3 in the paper.
