tantalus

Not all advocates for climate action are 'green/left' and not all are anti-nuclear. Not all advocates for nuclear are 'conservative/right' and not all are against strong climate action or oppose renewables. Yet that divide looks strong. Open and direct opposition to nuclear is well known and broadly popular - even if I think distrust of nuclear is not so deeply held that many would abandon it were there compelling need for it. And there is compelling need for low emissions solutions and it seems unreasonable to me that somehow such advocates can have set the energy agenda in the face of it. Something else has to have been going on - or perhaps not going on - for them to have gained such extraordinary influence and for the issues to be framed in nuclear vs renewables terms, rather than nuclear and renewables vs fossil fuels.

 

With a large proportion of those identifying as conservative being climate science denying and obstructive of the proposals of others who don't share an optimism for nuclear, can we expect they would actually commit to fixing the climate problem if "green politics" supported nuclear? Should their own commitment to nuclear as climate solution (or to fixing climate using nuclear) be dependent or predicated on such support? And, importantly, to what extent has 3 decades of commitment to preventing and delaying strong climate action by conservative right politics - which seems to also represent the greatest bloc of support for nuclear - prevented the "critical mass" of support nuclear requires being achieved, both within their own ranks and within the community at large?

 

(Noting that the politics may have a different flavour elsewhere). Here in Australia we are most likely to hear "should use nuclear/only nuclear good enough" from people who doubt, deny or downplay the climate problem. It's a rare proponent of nuclear that has the public profile to get mainstream media notice who is unequivocally committed to fixing the climate problem. That essential contradiction leading me to the conclusion that our allegedly nuclear supporting conservatives lack the fundamental motivation to really fight for nuclear as climate solution and lack the sincerity necessary to make the politically persuasive case necessary. Crucially, their opposition to climate policies like carbon pricing, emissions caps, moratoria on new fossil fuel projects and emissions reductions by other means look to have a strong and practical "every day and every way" commitment whilst the support for nuclear is sporadic, weak and lacking needed depth of commitment. It looks a lot like their alleged support for nuclear is primarily a rhetorical exercise intended to weaken support for "green politics" - they may have no objection to, even a liking for nuclear but have no real commitment to it either.

 

The kinds of policies that would see nuclear become a major part of climate action don't seem possible from conservatives whilst they hold such incompatible and antithetical positions. To what extent has the politically expedient choice to oppose and obstruct climate action by a large part of mainstream politics diverted and muted influential voices, like those from captains of commerce and industry, that - if addressing the climate problem were not, via political influence, being treated as optional - would strongly support it? In other words, would nuclear be in the hole it's in had mainstream conservative politics sought to strengthen community concern over climate rather than diminish it? Would commerce and industry given strong and persistent support for nuclear if they had not been enticed away from demanding effective climate action back when nuclear appeared to be the only viable option, by the least cost (short term) option of not fixing it at all?

It's a strange angle your taking on it Fabian imo. Conservatives aren't blocking nuclear energy, I suppose their apathy towards political action on climate change would reduce their motivation to give the industry new life moving forward, if such funding stemmed from a motivation to tackle carbon emissions, nevertheless, that would be a poor account of the state of the industry.

The reasons Nuclear failed to materalise on its early promise (1960s onwards) has nothing to do with climate change and the blame doesn't rest with the right which never has possessed a strong inclination to environmental protection or regulation. Nuclear has been weakened by several factors over the last 3 decades, and those historical reasons give a reasonable account for the present scenario. Several disasters didnt help with the perception towards the industry and ever changing regulations damaged the industry and led to very expensive and drawn out construction phases. A company might commit hundreds of millions to a reactor , and halfway through, regulations change in response to an accident, or court cases, and it takes a decade longer and millions more to complete, this was not good business and eventually the life got sucked out of the industry.

At times it has seemed like nuclear might make a return, but then the cycle returns and fossil fuels get very cheap again for a period, undermining nuclear investment which takes a lot of time to get to market from the outset, and the market is often very different by the time you get there. Nuclear requires huge capital investment from the outset, has been historically unpopular and challenged in court and by mutating safety regulations, and undermined by variable fossil fuel prices.

To get it off the ground today public perception and capital are key. Just look at what happened recently in Japan, very difficult to convince private companies to risk that kind of investment, when it seems clear cheap fossil fuel has a some battery life in it yet, especially with the development of the fracking industry and the re-emergence of Iran into the global market.

I think nuclear has missed its day, and not sure at this point climate change can bring it back. That said public perception might shift if people could be convinced that the new generation reactors are infinitely safer than in the past, but naturally nobody wants one in their own backyard.

Ultimately we burned more coal over nuclear in the 80s and 90s, and that was far more damaging to the environment and human health.

I think ice age and tropical as word choices are misleading.

The theories for the wave of extinction during your stated period are climate change, human arrival and hunting, disease (linked to human arrival), comet impact, or some combination. Also discussed is ecosystem shift due to key singular extinctions that also may have altered fire regimes.

Interesting over the last couple of years, the clovis first theory (that the clovis people first settled the americas) has finally been put to bed. That theory dominated the field for decades and nobody has a wining theory to replace in at the moment. We know now that there were people pre-clovis, from where, when, how many, where they big game hunters?, is yet to be established. This has potential to significantly alter conclusions on the megafaunal extinctions.

Personally, I favour human arrival as the significant factor. Maybe I just have a bias for correlation. The timing is very good, and the existence of pre-clovis, on first thought, seems to strengthen the case, and weaken the argument human populations couldnt have grown fast enough, with the clovis first theory. However, it has been argued (through mathematical modelling) that the clovis people could have hunted at the necessary levels to bring about the extinction wave in the time period required. There were not too late or too few to do the deed.

Also, Interesting new paper.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/886.full.pdf?sid=78082c56-76a7-46a1-8248-a0c6d1760c4e

However this focuses on the clovis people, despite the fact we know of pre-clovis (the paper mentions this). But it can't be ignored that clovis arrival, migration and technology may still be the key cause, even with the presence of pre-clovis humans. The paper attempts to establish a geographical pattern of extinction through time that could only fit the clovis theory. It is suggestive, although I would question the idea that extinctions will neatly occur in space and time to fit any theory. If such kind of evidence is found, great, but its absence doesn't necessarily destroy a theory imo.

I also like human hunting as a cause when you look at megafaunal extinctions globally over last 100,000 years, where they were occurred rapidly, they seems to coincide with human arrival (with previous isolation), Americas, Australia, New Zealand , Madagascar, less so and further back in history for the Old World. To expect perfect fits and neat patterns of extinction doesn't fit with reality, so I feel some of the criticism are unreasonable when one finally needs to draw conclusions, or hedge bets, whatever of the process.

Other suggestive evidence is large species surviving on islands when extinctions where occurring on the americas. The eventual extinctions correlated with the later arrival of humans.

Of course the clear pattern of extinctions of large species over small ones is suggestive of hunting as a major factor.

Hi, I am new here! So excited to be apart of this. I currently am in college studying biochem! Although, I love science as a whole! except math isn't my favorite or my strongest, but I can deal with it!

 

Anyways, I came onto the astronomy and cosmology to ask what books are best to read about the universe! This can be everything from actually physics to the stars. I am looking for a book that kind of has it all, or at least some you all can recommend.

 

I am really more so looking for a book where I can LEARN, and educate myself. I'm not looking for a textbook, like they use in school. Nor am I looking for a "novel". I want a book to read that has info/theories where I can learn and better educate myself about everything around us.

 

I am kind of a science junkie. I want to start off with the universe, then slowly get smaller after that, and head to earth! Read and learn about biosphere, ecosystem, community, population, organism, organ, tissue, cell, organelles, macromolecules, molecules... You get the gist, levels in the heiarchy of life! I wanna learn it ALL...just so very intrigued by life and the complexities around us!

I would recommend A brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking ad Leonard Mlodinow. It is actually very short and concise and and provides an overview of many of the key issues studied and discussed by physicists over the last century. It is remarkably accessible given the difficulty of the subject matter.

Evolution is often said to have no direction, it can't plan ahead. However, after careful consideration, I think that evolution has an inevitability about it. For example, given our environment, is it any surprise we have things swimming in the water, flying in the air, and walking on the ground?

 

For example, you could have a process like natural selection/mutation that generates new life forms (evolutionary theory or another mechinism) however given the environment, is there not an inevitability that the perfect wing evolves?

The language we use when we discuss evolution, and the way we conceptualise and find meaning in events and processes is where the difficulties begin here.

I think choosing the word direction is not preferable, blind might be better, or vision, or the idea of forward planning. The neat trick is that you can still get biological machines of high complexity from such a process.

Personifying evolution as an entity is a useful trick in furthering understanding, but it's also a double edge sword that can lead to confusion. In the sense you are using evolution, it seems reasonable to define it under the terms of natural selection as the differential survival and reproduction of individuals. If we could leave the argument of what is the unit of selection in evolution to the side for the moment.

All this really means is that some individuals survive, others die, some reproduce, others fail. Then you have the next generation, who have inherited the genes of their parents. It all happens again. But those who die and those who reproduce is not random when we consider their genes and when we consider their environment. Yet, a very large number of small events influence who dies and who reproduces. For the sake of this discussion, it is meaningful to consider those events as largely separate and independent of each other. It follows that we are not inclined to give all the events that influences who dies and who reproduces a single name or describe them as a single process when we start to thing literally, step by step, what is actually happening in the real world. In this way evolution is not a thing, and it can't have a direction, it's a name that you re trying to give to a very large number of events that combine to produce the differential survival and reproduction of replicating entities. But someone doesn't die of pneumonia to direct evolution, or get caught by a lion to insure faster generations, yet these events happening alters the composition of the next generation.

There may very well be an inevitability as you state, but it doesnt stem from design or direction. The counter-intuitive element is that you can get complexity, design without a designer.

But without a designer you may have some difficulty achieving perfection. This ignores the difficulty of achieving perfection when your competitors, enemies and environment are in constant flux, the criteria for perfection changing rapidly. The difficulty of the absence of a designer is that that what produces change from one generation to the next, who dies and who reproduces is influenced by the now, the very large number of small independent events...The large number of small mutation events required to get to a better design, towards perfection are likely to get you killed on route. It's what happens now that matters.

So you could say that evolution has no direction, there can be no perfection, yet that doesn't mean prevent intricate design and it doesn't mean there aren't events that are more likely, highly probable, even inevitable compared to other alternatives.

Was the OP just about mammals? it wasn't clear there is even talk of birds in the OP.

Your right, I am not sure now that you point it out. Although viviparity is mostly associated with placental mammals in which their particular form of viviparity has a common evolutionary origin.

OK, Viviparity (live-bearing) evolved from Oviparity (egg-laying) to times via egg retention and eggshell thickness due to colder climates.

 

How Oviparity ended and Viviparity just begun the very first time?

 

Did the off-spring decided to stop Oviparity, and begins to Viviparity immediately for the next generations to come?

 

If this is an adaptation to colder climates evolves by transition, there must be a later or final step where the very thin egg is laid vulnerable to cold. (Maybe mother protects it by incubating like birds, or young is ready for cold before laying?)

 

I cannot find simple explanations, as well as videos and images.

 

Thank you!

Ovoviviparity is a mode where the egg is retained longer in the body (your intermediate of sorts), one obvious benefit is to protect the egg(s) from predation, not just thermoregulation. The process would have probably been gradual, as the amount of retention time increased over the genrations. Eventually species would have evolved that retained the egg the entire reproduction period. This would have provided the opportunity, or perhaps it co-evolved with increased retention time, of the evolution of the substitution of some and then more and then most of the nutrients in the egg for those directly from the mother.

That is an interesting question.

 

Marsupials have pouch and a short gestation period, so there would be intermediate species and steps along that process.

 

Marsupials have a different lineage than placental mammals having diverged in the cretaceous

I was wondering if this was reflected in our genetics. Memes is a word I heard yesterday as a solution. I don't see that concept of memes being used much on the forum.

Just look at twin studies on religiosity, they are consistently finding significant genetic effects on the likelihood of being religious, upwards and over 50% of the variance.

This speaks to the influence on genes, whatever of the adaptive or non-adaptive history in evolutionary terms.

There is also research indicating the increased influence of genes on religiosity into adulthood, probably as people leave their parents homes and their influence dwindles, the most powerful environmental factor.

"thinking of religion in terms of the evolution and adaptive uses of morality can be a very productive means of providing useful speculations on potentially adaptive causes of religion."

 

How? How is a "God of the Moral Gaps" adaptive in terms of evolution? I'm trying to keep my thoughts here on evolutionary biology. One can make all sorts of arguments of how a "God of the Moral Gaps" might be adaptive in a sociological sense but they don't propose any evolutionary mechanisms to account for it. They do give a nod to others (Guthrie, Atran, Barrett) who suggest that detecting agents is adaptive. That is almost certainly true, but it is also true that humans are not alone in this ability - most animals are capable of it yet (as far as we know) we are the only animals that have religion. Mistakes in identifying agency doesn't really explain *religion* anyway except as a spandrel. But they claim (rightly, IMO) that mistakes in identifying agents don't entirely explain a belief in God either. They go on to say that God is derived from a theory of mind and that may well be true but it still doesn't suggest an adaptive reason for religion; how does thinking that (in this case) a supernatural agent has a mind like ours provide a selective advantage? They don't say, though I suspect they would attribute it to some kind of group selection. That would open up the debate (now mostly settled) about whether or not group selection actually exists.

You misunderstand me, HADDs may possibly explain why religion is a spandrel, by postulating the adaptive evolution of mental machinery that inadvertently favoured the cultural evolution of religion.

God of the moral gaps goes further than that however, tying the idea to God to our clearly adaptive moral tendencies , and discusses the possible evolution of a belief in God with the evolution of our morality as discussed by Gray and Wenger. Some may prefer to separate such a belief from religion. under such a framework as they outline in may be difficult to separate the adaptive evolution of morality from a belief in god.

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I want to summarise an excellent article which I consider informative http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345965/

Part of the difficulty is defining religion and morality, and separating evolutinary/biological elemets from cultural ones which have developed later in shaping religion and its function.

many current investigations suffer .... a tendency to conceptualize morality or religion as clusters of eithercognitively or culturally evolved features rather than both

This leads people to suggest a simplistic, singular cause, where multiple are required

...approach that fractionates both religion and morality while carefully distinguishing cognition from culture ...

 

Separating the evolved underlying mental mechanism that facilitate religious thinking, from cultural effects that have influenced the development of religion as a social phenomenon.

First the article attempts to the define the question and how to handle the question, when handling the diversity of religion and separately moral behaviour.

These considerations point to the arbitrariness of the “religion” designator. Tendencies to postulate bodiless agents such as ghosts and gods and to participate in rituals may seem to warrant some overarching label, but in reality their cognitive causes may be quite unrelated. For example, afterlife beliefs and rituals may be explicitly connected by more or less shared systems of meaning, expressed in discourse at social events like funerals and wakes; and they may form part of larger cultural systems that are transmitted across populations and handed down over generations. But the psychological mechanisms that generate and underpin afterlife beliefs may operate quite independently from those inducing us to perform rituals (Boyer, 2001; Whitehouse, 2004). We should not, therefore, expect the different component features of “religion” each to bear the same connection to morality.

 

If true this would be an example of the futility of trying to find a single explantion of the evolution of religion, as opposed to the idea if breaking religion up into separate components of religious behaviour, each potentially having a different cause or combination, evolutionary or culturally, adaptive or by-product...

Evolutionary theorists standardly categorize the causal and developmental whys as forms of “proximate” explanation, and the functional and phylogenetic whys as forms of “ultimate” explanation (see Mayr, 1961). In this context, “ultimate” does not mean final or superior, but refers to the evolutionary forces that sustain the psychological or physiological mechanisms in question. Thus, if the pigmentation of butterfly wings in industrial areas becomes darker over successive generations (Haldane, 1927), it is because darker variants have a selective advantage in smoke-stained environments, but that does not dispense with the need to explain the physiological mechanisms by which individual butterfly wings acquire their coloration, darkness, and hue.

 

This is important because I think we have seen some discussion on the thread about various possible advantages of religion in terms of group selection and tribal benefits etc. Now there may be merit here evolutionary, and there may not be (I favour the latter), but that's not to deny these functions are not real, and not useful, and not realised consciously by individuals, groups, tribes, religions, it's to say they might not be the adaptive reasons for their emergence, an ultimate explanation.

Finally, an evolutionary model should clearly specify the adaptive advantage conferred by the candidate foundation upon individuals who bore it in the ancestral past (as Graham et al., 2013, note, a good evolutionary theory will not invoke biological group selection without adducing a great deal of additional support). Fairness meets this criterion nicely. For example, Baumard, André, and Sperber (2013) have compellingly argued that fairness preferences are adapted to an environment in which individuals competed to be selected and recruited for mutually advantageous cooperative interactions (see also Trivers, 1971).

We should seek to find an adaptive reason that finds its selective pressure lower than that of the group,at the individual, or gene, which may favour group benefits in practice, culturally,

Here we discuss five strong candidates for religious foundationhood: (a) a system specialized for the detection ofagents; (b) a system devoted to representing, inferring, and predicting the mental states of intentional agents; © a system geared toward producing teleofunctional explanations of objects and events; (d) a system specialized for affiliating with groups through the imitation of causally opaque action sequences; and (e) a system specialized for the detection of genetic kinship. Like proponents of MFT, we do not claim that this list is exhaustive, and future research may suggest alternative, or additional, candidates (when relevant, we discuss current alternate views). Our commitment, born of doubt that there is any “distilled essence” of religion (Gray et al., 2012), is primarily to a pluralistic approach. Nevertheless, based on an extensive review of the cognitive science of religion literature, the following represent the most plausible candidates for universal religious foundations, on current evidence.

 

Second is Theory of Mind (ToM). I skipped over HADDs as I previously discussed them.

Notions of supernatural beings as psychological entities with beliefs, preferences, and intentions—intentionalagents—are also likely to be compelling for humans in light of their expertise in representing, inferring, and predicting the mental states of others ...The root of this, Bering argues, is that humans have dedicated cognitive machinery for reasoning about mental states, which, unlike our capacities for reasoning about the mechanical and biological properties of bodies, cannot conceptualize total system failure.

 

If we embrace the earlier of point of breaking religion up into different elements, the theory of mind has potential with dealing with one element in particular, the afterlife. Given humans ability to process the world, consciousness and reflect on their existence, difficulties potentially emerge for an biological individual that can realise its own death, and such a realisation could prove destruction to that individual for achieving maximum evolutionary fitness. Could certain modules be adaptive in proving religious explanations of an afterlife to provide innate coping mechanisms to such a self-ware biological machine???

Third is teleofunctional Explanations

...a broad inclination to view objects and behaviors of all kinds—including features of the natural world—as existing for a purpose....an underlying tendency to construe the world in functional terms is present throughout life (Kelemen & Rosset, 2009). If so, this tendency may render notions of intelligent supernatural designers, who have created the world and everything in it for a purpose, especially compelling (Kelemen, 2004).

Fourth Rituals

...yet by meticulously conforming to arbitrary social conventions, human groups bind themselves together into cooperative units facilitating cooperation on a scale that is very rare in nature...One of the many clues that ritualistic behavior is written into our species’ evolved biological makeup is the fact that it emerges early in development (Nielsen, 2006). Even infants show considerable interest in causally opaque behavior and will try to copy it...to help children acquire complex technical skills in the absence of a fuller understanding of their underlying causal structure (Schulz, Hooppell, & Jenkins, 2008). Another possibility is that overimitation is designed to help children learn arbitrary group conventions or “rituals.” Such behavior may be motivated by a desire to belong, rather than to learn anything technically useful...

Its important to not evoke group selection, you can have gene and individual level selection that favours group co-operation behaviour.

Fifth- Kin selection

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that organisms will behave in ways that preferentially benefit kin, with more benefits conferred as the degree of genetic relatedness between the actor and the recipient increases (Hamilton, 1964). ...As Pinker (2012) points out, kin recognition in humans depends on cues (in particular, linguistic cues) that others can manipulate...Cultural manipulations of kinship detection machinery may be rife in ritualistic behavior. As Saroglou (2011) notes, religious rituals serve to bond ritual participants together...

The paper offers a summary in the section :The Religion–Morality Relationship in Biological Evolution which discusses their preferences in regard to different ideas they summarise from the literature. They state

As we have seen, Guthrie’s (1993) proposal is that biased agency-perception mechanisms (assuming they exist) are an adaptation for avoiding predators. If the functioning of such mechanisms led to conclusions about the presence of invisible, supernatural agents, this was (at least initially) merely a by-product—a biological spandrel

 

 

Note the choice of the word initially, leaving open the door to the idea that adaptive functions of various religious behaviour may have followed in time...

The evolution of these various mechanisms (morality-related -inserted by tantalus) would have occasioned a novel set of selection pressures—in particular, the costs associated with being caught violating foundational moral principles. According to D. D. P. Johnson, Bering, and colleagues, the evolution of linguistic and mentalizing capacities would have ramped up these costs, as moral transgressions could be reported to absent third parties, exacerbating reputational damage for the transgressor. The conjunction of these various mechanisms, therefore, may have increased the premium on mechanisms that inhibit moral transgressions. Intuitions about punitive supernatural observers—a short xcursion through Design Space (Dennett, 1995) for mechanisms that are already generating ideas about invisible supernatural agents as a matter of course—would fit the bill here: “What better way [to avoid the fitness costs associated with the real-world detection of moral transgressions] than to equip the human mind with a sense that their every move—even thought—is being observed, judged, and potentially punished?”

 

I would love to know what Dennett thinks of this creative speculation...

The paper conitunes on the back of such a speculation to discuss empirical evidence of religiosity and increased “moral” behaviour. (we could call this a sixth avenue of exploration) As an atheist, as an anti-theist, this subject makes for fascinating reading for me.

Surveys indicate that people who score higher on indices of religiosity (e.g., frequency of prayer and religious service attendance) reliably report more helping behaviors, such as charitable donations (Brooks, 2006; Putnam & Campbell, 2010). As Norenzayan and Shariff (2008) have persuasively argued, however, this “charity gap” could occur because of an important confound: It may be that religious individuals aresimply more motivated to maintain a moral reputation than nonreligious individuals......

Note. They also discuss methodological and bias challenges to some of this research.

...those primed with supernatural concepts are more cooperative in experimental economic measures, such as dictator games (Ahmed & Salas, 2011; Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007; cf. Benjamin, Choi, & Fisher, 2010), public goods games (Ahmed & Hammarstedt, 2011; Benjamin et al., 2010), common-pool resource games (Xygalatas, 2013), and prisoner’s dilemma games (Ahmed & Salas, 2011).7Moreover, primed participants evince greater intention to help others (Malhotra, 2010; Pichon, Boccato, & Saroglou, 2007; Pichon & Saroglou, 2009), less willingness to cheat (Aveyard, 2014; Bering, McLeod, & Shackelford, 2005; Carpenter & Marshall, 2009; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008; Randolph-Seng & Nielsen, 2007), and greater self-control (Friese & Wänke, 2014; Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012; Rounding, Lee, Jacobson, & Li, 2012; Toburen & Meier, 2010; cf. Harrison & McKay, 2013).

 

See article for discussion on limitations of such games such as conflicting moral motivations in game design. They also briefly discuss religiosity with negative moral traits, but morally good or bad, is of course not informative against something being evolutionary adaptive.

Overall, we think that religious priming studies provide at least tentative evidence that activating intuitions about supernatural agents curbs moral norm violations.

 

Although they provide caveats, see article.

...in these small-scale hunter–gatherer societies that explicit doctrines about moralizing, punitive supernatural agents are conspicuously absent (Baumard & Boyer, 2013a;Boehm, 2008; Boyer, 2001). For example, the Hadza of northern Tanzania and the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert are contemporary hunter–gatherer societies with gods who take little interest in human wrongdoing (Norenzayan, 2013).

 

In our judgment, therefore, it is unlikely that our evolved cognitive systems produce stable intuitions about omnipresent supernatural punishers. What we think more plausible is that we have a genetically endowed sensitivity to situational cues that our behavior is being observed. Experiments demonstrate that people—even young children—are “strategically prosocial,” behaving more generously and cooperatively when they know others can observe their behavior (e.g., Gächter & Fehr, 1999; Leimgruber, Shaw, Santos, & Olson, 2012; Wedekind & Milinski, 2000). A burgeoning literature indicates that even very subtle cues of surveillance influence adherence to prevailing moral norms.

 

The upshot of all this work is that evolved agency-detection mechanisms may serve to deliver intuitions about observing agents and to regulate our behavior in the presence of those agents. We doubt, however, that such mechanisms deliver intuitions about moralizing, punitive supernatural agents—instead, we think that the relevant intuitions are more basic (just concerning the presence of agency per se). Triggered in the absence of any visible intentional agent, however, such intuitions may be reflectively elaborated into conclusions about supernatural watchers (Baumard & Boyer, 2013b). And drawing on intuitions about fairness and the psychological characteristics of intentional agents (ToM), such supernatural watcher concepts may morph into more complex, compelling, and culturally transmissible notions of moralizing gods—notions which, when made salient or activated (as in priming studies), serve to promote adherence to the perceived norms of those gods.

 

Important concluding point

we can often make no principled distinction between religion and morality at the level of culture or cognition....A thoroughgoing science of “religion” and “morality” may ultimately dispense with these terms, exhaustively mapping the relations between evolved cognitive systems and cultural representations without recourse to vague overarching labels.

The next section discusses how the cultural evolution of religion may be informed and directed by already occurred biological evolution...

They then discuss a cargo cult (modern religion) under the context of the framework they have outlined.

Scholars in the cognitive science of religion tend to agree that many globally and historically recurrent features of religious thinking and behavior are by-products of cognitive machinery that evolved for reasons that have nothing to do with religion ...What distinguishes the adaptationist perspective on religion, however, is the view that at least some of these religious by-products became useful for the survival of individuals and groups in the course of cultural evolution. Most commonly, this argument has been applied to the growth of large-scale societies

We are now dealing more heavily in cultural evolution. Although the discussion of the cultural evolution of religion is interesting, it does drift from the idea of adaptive biological reasons for religion so I will ignore that section of the paper.

Effectively they seek to crush the idea that the OP question is a meaningful one, and set about to create a conceptual framework that can stimulate a meaninful discussion on the biological and cultural evolution of religion and moral based behaviour.

I favour biological mechanisms that had adaptive functions that gave arise (edit. subsequently) to much religious behaviour, evolutionary speaking the evolutionary origins of various of types of relgiious behaviour may be evolutionary separate. The idea that a belief in god is linked to the evolution of morality and the evolution and successful function of a highly intelligent self-aware being is definitely an interesting idea imo.

"To understand the later quote fully you'll need to read the article in full which covers a lot of ground and it would be pointless for me to summarise it."

 

I have read this before. Very interesting and thank you for posting it but (IMO) it doesn't actually address the question here. It doesn't give an answer to how religion may be adaptive. It makes a good case for the nature of religious thought; that God -or gods as he is careful to say- can be characterized as "God of the Moral Gaps" but it doesn't propose any mechanism for how religion may have arisen.

It's difficult for me to evaluate your post as I am not sure what you mean when you refer to religion.

It doesnt address it directly, but thinking of religion in terms of the evolution and adaptive uses of morality can be a very productive means of providing useful speculations on potentially adaptive causes of religion.

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I am in the process of trying to summarise this very long article for the thread on the issue

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345965/

One that attempts to analyse the difficulty in defining the question and the framework, and provide a literature view (further down) of the different possible evolutionary causes of religion that are currently popular in the field, not just the byproduct/spandrel theory.

 

 

This insightful passage touches on several aspects of this topic that have been addressed by the likes of S.J.Gould, Richard Lewontin, D.S.Wilson, Richard Dawkins and others. Despite the heat between the Gouldian camps (the individual is the unit of selection) and the Dawkins camp (the gene is the unit of selection), they do agree that spandrels in biology are real and that Wilson's group selection ideas are not supported by the evidence.

There are a lot of different ways modern religion could be a spandrel in evolutionary terms. The underlying mechanisms that facilitate religion would be adaptive, possibly more adaptive than Dawkins would care to admit. I like the spandrel theory, one possible link is the idea of HADD's (Hypersensitive agent detection devices).

The idea that humans possess mental modules which favour the assumption of the existence of agents in a given scenario. Human hears a rustle in the jungle, assumes there is a lion, takes preemptive measures, even if the vast majority of times there is no lion, evolutionary speaking it pays to assume the presence of an agent, as the safety measures cost far less valued against the loss of being eaten. This mathematical imbalance would lead to humans evolving to assign agents to events and scenarios even when they don't exist. The speculation is such a mental module predisposes humanity to believing in God.

The high cost of failing to detect agents and the lowcost of wrongly detecting them has led researchers to suggestthat people possess a Hyperactive Agent Detection Device, acognitive module that readily ascribes events in the environ-ment to the behavior of agents (Atran, 2002; Barrett, 2000).This inclination toward agent detection is likely one founda-tion for human belief in God (Barrett, 2004).

 

Gray and Wenger discuss this idea, linking it to the evolution of moraility in their excellent article, extending HADDs into the evolution of moral reasoning.

The research reviewed inthis article suggests that God may be more accurately char-acterized as “God of the Moral Gaps,” a supernatural mind introduced into our perception of the world because of the underlying dyadic structure of morality. Seen in this light, God stems not only from agent detection but from patient detection as well, both of which arise from a persistent need to maintain the moral order of a universe consisting of moral agents and patients.

 

To understand the later quote fully you'll need to read the article in full which covers a lot of ground and it would be pointless for me to summarise it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/32966805/Blaming-God-for-Our-Pain

This is just one of a half dozen theories on the evolution of religion, I will post up on the others shortly.

If the whole story is determinded by prenatal hormon exposure, does this mean that an exact set of genes are in gay mem epigeneticaly different programized compared to straight men.

 

If sexual orientation is an inborn instinct and gynephilia is the result of prenatal testosteron exposure and androphilia the lack of testosteron, so we can say in the brains of all gay men(doesn't matter how masculine they act or look) there is something not masculinized. In other words genes which are upregulated by testosterone weren't compared to straight men.

 

So we can say in Jodie Foster's brain there is something masculinized cause of high prenatal neuroendocrine exposure or/and epigenetic reasons genes (those exact set of genes) were to strong expressed!?

I think prenatal hormone exposure is the most important factor in explaining variation of masculinity, femininity in the personalities of people of all sexual orientation. This factor has both underlying causes based on genetic variation and non-genetic factors, although I would guess genetic causes being the most significant.

Extending this to explaining variation in sexual orientation is an altogether different matter, but maybe, maybe there is a link...

I'm not sure how important epigenetic factors are in regard to homosexuality, but when you look at twin studies on the matter, and the number of twins that do not have the same sexual orientation despite identical DNA, it is very suggestive of something very important going on apart from genetic factors that hold steady to development of sexuality.

I am not saying anything specific just to be clear (Jodie foster et al.), just speculating on fruitful areas to direct thoughts on the matter.

 

You can only speculate whether life was likely to form so quickly or not, because you have only one case of life originating. That's not enough data to be making such assumptions, especially given that abiogenesis is still very poorly understood.

 

But the fact is that the oldest known banded iron formations, which were created largely with the help of photosysnthetic organisms are as much as 3.8 bya and potentially biogenic carbon was discovered in rocks 4.1 billion years old. If that's the case, life in the most primitive forms should have come to be almost instantly (by geological time scales) after Earth had attained favorable conditions.

 

If, hopefully, we do eventually find signs of life on Mars, this will be a lethal blow to "life was unlikely" idea, since on Mars conditions favorable to life would have existed only early on and only for a few hundred millions of years.

 

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151019/us-sci--earliest_life-a400435d0d.html

Yes, mars could be a game changer.

I hadn't heard of that finding from 4.1 billion years ago, interesting. It does seem very early, but I know there is some shift in the narrative of the early earth and its condition. It may even spark renewed interest in panspermia (although I doubt it).

Although caution must be urged.

I know a lot of people want to use such data as evidence of life, but this is governed more by what they want the outcome to be rather than scientific principles,” NASA astrobiologist Thomas McCollom tells Barras.

This skepticism in part comes from a study published in 2008 that claimed to have similarly found microscopic diamonds embedded in 4.25 billion-year-old zircon crystals. After their results were questioned, the scientists discovered the diamonds were merely contamination from grit used to polish the crystals.

While Bell and her team were careful to prevent similar issues, other researchers remain wary that graphite could have formed during the Hadean. Some suggest the graphite could have even been encapsulated at a later date by zircon melting and recrystallization.

“That one negative experience doesn’t mean nobody should try again,” California Institute of Technology geologist John Eiler tells Rosen. “But let’s just say, I’m cautious.”

While Bell and her colleagues are excited by their find, they aren’t ruling out non-biological explanations for the graphite either. In the meantime, the best support for their theory would be replication—whether it is from other graphite-containing Hadean zircons or ancient Martain life, which has rocks even older than the Earth, Rosen writes.

“Hopefully we didn’t just chance on the one freak zircon that had graphite in it,” Bell tells Rosen.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-life-really-start-41-billion-years-ago-not-so-fast-180957006/?no-ist

To add to already mentioned cooling down from its molten state and appropriate conditions developing through abiotic processes that would have accounted for much of the time, can probably add a long period of chemical evolution that was surely a precursor to the evolution of life as we loosely define it, along with the time that was required for the unlikely in the short term to become the inevitable in the long term.

There is a perspective that life was not inevitable, maybe even statistically unlikely, even over the time scales available, and that luck may have brought it about, in so much as you can define an unlikely event that actually occurred as luck. I wouldn't subscribe to that perspective. Deterministic processes and physics and all that...

Wolf populations are low density and they track long distances to make kills, it hard to imagine it being a practical strategy for humans to steal wolf kills if that's want you mean.

Tapping the potential of dogs in such a manner does seem like a good strategy but they have to be familiar with the concept, obviously it occurred eventually, with or without the wolfs having become tamer initially.

I wonder if it was not companionship and human curiosity that drove this early dog domestication more so than hunting and warning potential...

Competition usually occurs most fiercely intra-species, so I imagine dogs would have been more useful in fighting other humans...but still I would speculate all this occurred after the fact...

If you were in search of a new, disease-fighting antibiotic, where might you start? In a swamp? A remote island? Well, how about combing beards?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35350886

Which do you think is more likely, that a faster, likely more efficient predator species followed our ancestors to prey or that our ancestors commandeer and shared the slaughtered prey of these efficient hunters? I think it more likely that our ancestors were wise opportunist who took advantage of the skills of lesser intelligent species. I welcome your further thoughts.

I would lean towards an initial phase of evolution that saw few benefits for humans, but that's just a personal intuitive guess, nothing more. It also seems likely it would have occurred multiple times, though not necessarily that more than one lineage made it to the modern era.

The difficulty (I imagine) is the genetic isolation needed from their wilder wolf counter parts, that would be required to allow the wolfs to continue evolve more dog-like over time.

I would caution against the idea of a "more efficient predator". Humans intelligence and tool use made them fairly efficient if the megafaunal extinctions across various continents over the tens of thousands of years were indeed caused by human migration and hunting. Plenty of scraps to be had off those waves of slaughter.

Also, its not the entire species that followed humans into hunter-gather suburbia, the common wolf and other wolf species continued to be successful predators across north america and eurasia, its that some individuals and populations favoured human habitation as a source of food, when you look at how hard a life is for a wolf, that pup mortality is often around 50% in the wild in the first year, and that many adult males never even breed despite making it to adult hood, it certainly is plausible that some individuals that were inadvertently predisposed with tamer personalities or reduced flight responses could do better with this alternative lifestyle.

We are in the minority of species who prefer in privately.

Imagine hunter gather times, imagine social interactions between a small, closely connected band of people, imagine a human who has sex in public all the time, imagine a human who has sex in private all the time, extrapolate...

There are reasons to think the individual who has sex in private forms stronger monogamous bonds, has additional sexual partners in secret, avoids violent conflict more regularly and makes fewer non-violent social enemies.

edit.This allows private people to outbreed and outcompete public people, or more realistically favours the evolution of sexual behaviour as a private behaviour as the more common activity and social norm.

Great article, great co-operative effort.

Given the ambiguity (as discussed in article) separating intermediates along a wolf-dog spectrum, additionally confused by possible multiple evolutionary origins, it will be impossible to have a real meaningful starting date, especially if wolves slowly adapted themselves to human settlements. Still, actual DNA provides snapshots of amazing insight that fossils could never provide. It's great to read about it.

Humans have inadvertently had lesser known domestication-like effects on the evolution of many other wild animal populations outside of the traditional domesticated species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synurbization

Why do some lesbians look like men without beard and some gay men do look like women? What's the biological reason?

 

It seems for me that there is something biochemical and genetically going on.

I think the pattern may be exaggerated by observational bias. It's worth pointing out that any differences have no moral basis either, as people may get upset by implying differences.

It's worth noting that heterosexual men and women vary in how feminine or masculine they are, there is a spectrum. Is there an increased chance of a lesbian women being more masculine than a heterosexual women, I would like to see research showing such a pattern but it is a suggestive idea. Prenatal hormone exposure has long been suggested as biological trigger for homosexuality, but it definitely is an explanation for why all people vary in how feminine or masculine they are. If there is a correlation like you suggested, I think you could expect to find some statistical difference in how gay people's hormonal development, timing and exposure in their prenatal development occurs, from that of heterosexuals.

Either way, feminine and masculine features are the result of the secretion of hormones during development, which is coded by genes. You shouldnt rule out random environmental effects altering the pathway, or the exact types of variation in the process that produces variation also observed in heterosexuals unless substantial variation is found between people of different sexual orientation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeminization_and_masculinization

Assuming a great many things, one certain way is the way it actually did happen on earth (anaerobic cyanobacteria), and without needing to wait for evolution you could speed it up a little. Your certainly looking at tens of millions of years this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

 

It’s not a fair comparison, to point at some “tipping point” at the end of this several thousand-year-long Younger-Dryas event, and then compare it with the 20^th century; especially when the science describes the present and near future to be “in the early stages of a warming”

I was't trying to compare AGW future impacts to the younger Dryas. . Future climate change was outside the original point of contention. (if you re-read from post 67- you will get the context) If you want to assess effects of AGW on extinction and compare to the younger dryas, I agree the present time would be a fairly useless time to do it.

There wasnt rapid climate change that had a significant effect on species in the 20th century. Even the IPCC talk about about carbon forcing really having a measurable effect on surface temperatures until 1970-2000, and it's the feedbacks in the models (indirctly due to CO2) that produce the real changes moving later into this century, not the direct additional heat trapped by the co2.

Usually, radical changes to the climate are caused by one-time events, while all of the primary drivers creating climate will continue operating as usual. As long as the primary drivers continue on as usual, cycling around some long-term average, then the climate will eventually return to a point nearly the same as before the radical, one-time, change.

.

You'll need to offer a temporal scale to contextualize that point.

There are so many factors that influence the climate, on scales that range from weeks to presumably billion of years to talk of returning to an average point only makes any sense when you discuss a time period, and the shorter the better.

By changing the primary drivers, as significantly and continuously as we are now doing, we should expect to see significant, or extreme and persistent and global, change …and over “decadal to centennial time scales.”

 

That statement provides a lot of wiggle room, I would agree that we should expect the outcome to be within it, although it would be better to break into multiple statements.

 

Ok, read. The following statement agrees with it completely, and is what I have found elsewhere: the global changes that track the dramatic fluctuations in the North Atlantic were much smaller, and much slower. You can see that in the map, you can read it in the prose if you are careful.

AGW is a global imposition of large, rapid, semi-permanent climate change. That is a different, more significant, and more dangerous circumstance.

btw: edited in some stuff above, in the earlier post

 

Ya, I got the edit. no worries.

The context of the discussion is 20th century climate change, that is what I am comparing younger dryas too. They summarise it as a strong event with a global footprint that started rapid, but ended especially rapidly.

No, it doesn't. Careful reading is important, because that article is deceptively written for some reason.

 

No, it wasn't. Not globally. Globally, the changes were slower and smaller than the ones in progress now and predicted for the near future from AGW.

 

IIRC this exact issue - the global influence of the North Atlantic climate fluctuations at the end of the last glaciation - came up a couple of weeks ago on this forum, and I happened to have a reference handy. I've lost it. But if I get a minute I'll try to find it again - and of course, you could do some research yourself.

 

The first article is from the American institution of physics and refers to widespread agreement among american and european scientists of the event being more significant than anything mankind faced in the 20th century. I provided that quote on post 75. The article documents at length the slow building of evidence built on younger dryas over several devades.

The second link is a long report on abrupt climate change from a large committee of scientists that documents extensively the proxy evidence gathered thus far illustrating the global effects of which I posted several of, and indicates that the event was abrupt.

Merged post follows:

and of course, you could do some research yourself.

 

You should read through Chapter 2, from page 24. It's a very quick read.

http://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/4#24

Merged post follows:

 

... and predicted for the near future from AGW.

 

That's not strictly relevant to the point of contention

[mp]

the changes were slower and smaller than the ones in progress now and predicted for the near future from AGW.

 

It's seems important to point out that was especially abrupt about younger dryas was not its onset but its end.

I made no reference to my own education, just the level of education in most fields where this set of skills is taught. I didn't say that people with a science education are misled. To the contrary, actually. People without a background in research are easily misled when research is misrepresented.

"Those of us with a science background".

I forgot the word "not", as in I meant to say "when they do not have".

Why don't we get back on point. What did I fail to address in regard to 20th century climate change not being a key driver in extinction thus far, drivers of extinction generally, past abrupt climate change has been greater than 20th century change but failed to drive extinctions rates like other anthropogenic triggers (notably habitat loss) in the 20th century, the points of discussion since post 68.

I'm not making an assumption. You are making arguments beyond the scope of the research you are citing. That is fact. If you are educated to interpret or evaluate research, you are not following your training.

 

You have been provided several examples by others already of how you have misused this research to support your claim. Please address them.

 

The argument from authority is not what is happening here. No one is suggesting that an authority be accepted without question because of their authority. People, myself included, are saying we have looked at the reports, and see they have used appropriate methodology, and the conclusions are based within the scope of certainty that these methodologies support. Nothing unethical, or misleading is being promoted. This is good science.

You made reference to having an undergraduate degree and how that provides you with the ability to assess the report I quoted, you offered no specific comment on what I quoted (this is argument from authority), you also implied that people are easily mislead when they do that have an education in science. You are clearly making assumptions about my education.

Why don't you re-quote what I failed to address since the latest point of discussion since post 68.