Tuesday, 15 December 2015

Why is group selection necessary? To solve the fundamental problem of life, which is error catastrophe/ mutational meltdown

The situation where group selection is a necessary explanation, is in order to solve the primary problem of life - which is the sustaining of life in the face of the tendency to mutational meltdown (which is the biological special case of the general phenomenon of error catastrophe).

The main problem of life is not in the initial arising of replicating entities - but in their remaining alive across generations given the intrinsic tendency of informational errors to occur and to accumulate - leading to extinction.

The problem of error in information can be diminished by better quality replication, and by repair of errors - but to do this requires relatively complex adaptations, and these must arise in a context where errors are accumulating all around.

It seems that the simplest and most reliable - and indeed, ultimately always necessary - mechanism for controlling informational errors is selection. In other words, there must be reproductive suppression (preferably elimination) of those entities which have accumulated significant informational errors - these errors must be eliminated from reproductive lineages before the information becomes so corrupted that extinction occurs.

This is the basic role of group selection. All living things need to develop networks of inter-individual communications; that is the individual entities must become a complex system. Complex systems are - by their nature - able to act to maintain and continue themselves; and the first and necessary self-perpetuation of the system is to suppress individuals with corrupt information.

In biological terms, individual entities gain deleterious mutations; and the first job in sustaining life is to eliminate individuals with deleterious mutations. This is most straightforwardly done by suppression of reproduction of mutationally damaged individuals (up to and including killing them).

This is a classic, indeed archetypal, situation of group selection. The reproductive interests of the group (that is the lineage) must prevail over the individuals - the group benefit is imposed upon the individuals - and this happens because the group has itself become an entity (i.e. the group has become a complex system) due to its relatively dense network of inter-individual communications.

So, the necessary step in the evolution of any potentially multi-generational form of life is that group selection must apply.

Absent group selection, and life will be snuffed-out by mutation accumulation and mutational meltdown almost as soon as it has arisen.

Hence, group selection is absolutely necessary to life.

Group selection does not require competition between groups

An important consequence of reconceptualising group selection in terms of complex systems theory is that group selection no longer requires competition between groups.

this was a serious constraint on old concepts of group selection, because it was a stringent criterion for groups to replicate, over multiple generations, the kind of competition which is so often seen between individuals - with additional problems of group cohesion, and the need for the spread of adaptive mutations (beneficial for inter-group competition) within a group.

Instead, group selection is assumed to occur whenever there is a sufficiently dense network of communication and interaction between individuals sustained across a sufficient number of generations (how many generations are required for group selection to have a significant effect depends on the density, hence selective strength, of the system of communications) - remembering that 'the system' is abstract and consists of communications, and the system is not the physical individuals.

(The physical individuals are termed 'communication units' and are strictly regarded as outside of the abstract system - not a part of the system - but their function is instead to generate and receive the communications.)

So group selection can occur even when there is only one group.

Group selection should therefore be conceptualised as something that happens individually, to each group - rather than as a consequence of competition (or any other form of interaction) between groups.

The divergence between group characteristics is a consequence of the different selection pressure operating on each group - as a consequence of each group having a different system of dense inter-communications.

Monday, 14 December 2015

Reconceptualizing group selection in terms of complex systems theory

Group selection can roughly be defined as a form of natural selection by which the fitness (probable reproductive success) of the group is maintained or enhanced, even at the cost of reduced fitness of individuals in that group.

It is generally considered, within current or recent evolutionary biology, that group selection is an error, a misunderstanding, the explanation or last-resort or so rare in nature as to be insignificant.

By contrast, I regard group selection as necessary for any other kind of selection - in other words, without group selection there can be no build-up of complex adaptations: group selection is necessary in order to maintain complex entities - indeed group selection is necessary to the sustainability of life itself.

So, group selection - far from being insignificant or a last resort, is ubiquitous, found everywhere.

However, in arguing this I am engaging in a re-conceptualization of group selection - in particular I am using definitions derived from a particular theory of complex systems: that associated with Niklaus Luhmann.

[See Appendix and associated references in:

In considering group selection it is worth having a definition of what constitutes a group of the type capable of acting as a selection pressure on the individuals composing the group; since the minimal requirement of group selection is the presence of a suitable group that is stable (in those key respects which enforce selection) over a sufficient number of generations.

(Most of the ways of conceptualizing groups selection are, I believe inadequate)

This question can be reduced to the definition of a biological entity.

A biological entity is a (relatively) concentrated and sustained network of communications and interactions. Thus a single cell, a multicellular organism, an organ (such as the heart, or a gland) within a multicellular organism, and the social group in social organisms may all be considered to be entities.

For example, in social animals (including humans) that which makes them social animals can be defined as a sufficient density of particular types of communications and interactions between individuals - sustained across sufficient numbers of generations - such that this acts upon the individuals to shape behaviour by mechanisms that are transmissible between generations (for example, by inducing genetic, or some types of epigenetic, change of individuals).

In other words, the group itself displays a system-autonomy from the individuals which compose the group - therefore the group itself is a selection pressure on the individual animals within the group.

What is meant by autonomy? That the group entity operates to sustain and expand and/or reproduce itself - this being a defining property of all complex systems.

If an emergent complex system (occurring by chance) were to lack the ability to sustain and reproduce itself, it will soon simply cease to be - and would not be observable (or only momentarily so).

This is because a system is defined in contrast to its environment, and the basic property of a system is to separate itself from the environment in a context where chance/ entropic change will tend to assimilate the system into the environment (e.g. this happens after death).

Therefore any complex system which is sustained, must have the ability to sustain itself - to re-make and re-produce itself in the context of its environment - and for social groups individual organisms are a part of its environment. Therefore, social groups are buffered against the individuals which constitute it - but this is not a paradox, because what makes the social group definable as a complex system is the interaction of inter-individual communications, therefore not the actual physical individual organisms.

This may clarify the current confusion about what is 'doing the selecting' versus what 'gets selected' - the so-called levels of selection problem (with levels such as genes, organisms or groups). Instead, of physical things, the problem is reconceptualized in terms of communications; instead of physical things, the problem is reconceptualised in terms of abstract systems; instead of hereditary information conceptualized in terms of physical things, the problem is reconceptualised in terms of systems having the intrinsic property of self-sustaining and reproduction.

Instead of looking at things such as gene frequencies in populations, the focus moves to things like the density, frequency and complexity of communications and interactions.

This, of course, represents a 'paradigm shift' in discussing selection in biology - and it is notoriously difficult to argue in favour of a paradigm shift - especially when the current paradigm is yielding security, status and funding.

Nonetheless, if the new complex-systems paradigm can be grasped, I think its explanatory superiority - especially in terms of clarity, and in terms of explaining some of the key problems of biology such as 1. the origins of biological life and 2. the major transitions in evolution (e.g. evolution of the cell, the eukaryotic cell, multicellular organisms, sexual reproduction, social organisms) is very clear.

What makes a human group capable of group selection - including the role of agriculture in the evolution of geniuses

So, when we consider group selection of humans, we should be looking at the frequency and complexity of communications between individuals. from this perspective, I think we can see that the emergence of complex agriculture will have had the effect of increasing the density of inter-individual communications by expanding both the size of the social group and also the necessity for planning, specialization and coordination of agricultural (and also industrial) economic activities - with the extra communications necessary to enable this.

What about the industrial revolution? From a communications perspective, the key factor about the industrial revolution is expansion of the population, and a much more extensive but less concentrated network of communications. I would conjecture that the switch from face-to-face to written (and later digital) interpersonal communications was associated with a great reduction in the complexity of communications.

Direct, face to face communication is informationally far richer, far denser, than the abbreviated, abstract, precise but simplified communications of electronic media (or than the preceding bureaucratic communications such as 'memos' and the 'minutes' of meeting). So, it is likely that industrialization is associated with a reduction in the complexity of group-level entities, and a reduction in the strength of group selection - and therefore with the re-emergence of individual level selection.

Hence, modernity is characterized by increased atomism of individuals, increased individual versus individual competition; and a loss of the strength of 'communities'. This will lead onto changes among individual humans, to make them more individual and less adapted to group cooperation.

In conclusion, it is reasonable to assume that in human history, group selection was strengthened by at least some forms of agriculture; and that individual humans in complex agricultural societies are more strongly group selected than the individual humans in 'simple' hunter-gatherer societies (i.e. 'simple' hunter gatherers are those without either food storage or complex technologies).

In terms of genius, which Dutton and I argue (in our forthcoming book The Genius Famine) to be a group selected phenomenon (with the genius serving a specialized function to benefit the reproductive success of the group), this fits with the historical evidence that some types of complex agricultural society seem to provide the optimal selective environment for producing the highest density of geniuses - since these are probably the most group selected of societies.

Monday, 7 December 2015

Where to look for group selection (globalization reduces the strength of human group selection)

The 'standard' attitude to group selection in mainstream evolutionary biology is that it is an explanation of last resort - which should only be invoked when the possibilities of organism-level selection (by 'selfish gene' mechanisms) have been exhausted.

But from a complex systems theory perspective group selection should be investigated, as the first line of enquiry, whenever certain conditions prevail - as follows:

A complex system can be identified when there is a concentrated and lasting network of communication-interaction between entities - when we find such a situation in biology (or elsewhere), then we may assume that we have an entity which may be selected.

For example, such dense communication-interactions may be identified within a single cell, between the cells of a multi-cellular organism, or between the organisms in social organisms.

Therefore each relatively discrete human group (of whatever size) - where there is a much greater density of communications within that human groupings than exists between such human groupings - is a situation where group selection would be expected.

Group selection was therefore usual through much of human history when there were groups that had little or no communication-interaction between them (for example, when geographically separated, or separated by any other 'barrier').

But the strength of group selection is reduced by any significant increase of communication-interaction between groups.

Therefore (all else being equal) 'globalization' is expected to reduce the strength of group selection for whatever groups are included; since globalization refers to a significant increase in the communication-interaction between groups.

The modern 'globalized' world is therefore a world in which levels of local and national group selection has been weakened; and the most modern parts of the world are those in which group selection has most been weakened for longest.

In such a situation, it can be assumed that individual level selection will have been weakening group selected traits for several generations - with the effect of diminishing the instinctual basis of social cohesion.

In summary; group selection is not so much a consequence of competition between groups, as it is an intrinsic aspect of dense communication-interactions within groups in a situation with little communication-interaction between groups.

Reference - see Appendix of: http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/modernization-imperative.html

Monday, 30 November 2015

Religion as the proximate method of Group Selection in humans - implications of its removal

It seems reasonable to regard religion as the proximate method of group selection in humans - in other words, when humans groups compete and evolve group adaptations, these are instantiated by means of religions. Individual humans have adapted to live in a context of religion; and when religion is absent, human behaviour becomes maladaptive - because human instincts are 'designed' to function in a religious environment.

It has long been a consensus among (secular) social theorists that the main (secular) function of religion is social cohesion - that is, religion can enable larger and more complex forms of social functioning; including the stimulation and enforcement of motivation, altruism, long-termism.

Since all humans - until recently in The West - have evolved in the context of religion; therefore religion must, over multiple generations, have had gene-selective consequences that shaped individual instincts and behaviours.

Group selection entails that group behaviour be referenced to something outside the group. This is what groups cohere-around, organize around, cooperate to promote. Throughout history this 'something' has been religion - variously the spirits, the gods, or One God.

Since this has apparently been the case throughout all known history and stretching back into pre-history, individual humans have evolved to be coordinated by religion: religion is a built-in, innate expectation for each individual human; and if religion is absent, then individual behaviour lacks a necessary adaptive context.

Having been under group selection for so long, where each individual functioned as a 'component' part of a religious society; then individual level instincts will relatively have atrophied. So, remove the religion from an individual human being, and the behavioural rules and patterns lack context, and are maladaptive.

Individual humans absent religion are un-equipped to pursue their own reproductive success.

Religion is therefore the medium for, and regulation of, altruism - which is the propensity of individuals to sacrifice their own short-term comfort and pleasure, health, survival, and ultimately their reproductive success, to that of the group.

In sum: Humans just are adapted to serve the group via religious structures which reference individual behaviour to some-thing outside the group.

Clearly, 'the group' in group selection will be bounded - and cannot be scaled up or down, made larger or smaller, indefinitely; since there must be mechanisms for rewarding group-helpful, and suppressing group-harmful, behaviours - and such mechanisms (like status or material rewards, shaming or physically-coercive sanctions) differ between religions, and these do not scale indefinitely in either direction.

Group selection is strong: it must be stronger, in significant respects, than individual selection: group selection must be strong enough to overcome individual preferences.

This means that group selection operates to affect the nature and strength of individual preferences - individual preferences have until recently always operates in the context of religiously-mediated group imperatives; because, over many generations, selection will (overall) tend-to mould individual preferences significantly to serve the needs of the group.

While group selection has been significant on all humans everywhere and at all times; European populations (also probably East Asian populations, perhaps to an even greater extent?) have been strongly group selected for large-scale cohesion over many dozens of generations; so that the effects of group selection are more significant in those of European descent than in most other populations.

This implies that the selection effects of religion on individual behaviour has been more significant in those of European descent than in most other populations.

European populations had Christianity as the proximate mechanism of group selection for hundreds of years; shaping the instinctual basis of the individuals. And Christianity must have been an extremely powerful mechanism of group selection, because it enabled what are, by world historical standards, very large cooperating groups persisting over multiple generations.

(By contrast, simple animistic religions are able to enforce cooperation of some scores of people; more complex totemistic religions can enable the cohesion of thousands; and the complex and literate Temple religion of Ancient Egypt enabled some millions of people to cohere for three thousand years! Christianity seems to have been similarly powerful to the ancient Egyptian religion, sustaining complex cooperation among millions of people.)

It may therefore be assumed that the people of Western nations inhabited by those of European descent evolved to become extremely dependent on Christianity in order to be adaptive.

These same people, with the same instincts that operated within a strongly Christian context for so many generations, now find themselves in a society from which Christianity has been (all but) deleted.

Individual behaviours now have a very different environment in which to operation - indeed, the environment is in multiple respects and increasingly anti-Christian. Little wonder that grossly maladaptive behaviour is currently rife - indeed mainstream.

Sans religion, Western populations lack the instinctual basis for individual level survival and reproduction, since these instincts long since atrophied - and atrophied to a more extreme degree than in most populations.

Now basic instincts such as reproduction, group survival, defence, long-termism for group goals, self-sacrifice for the group are defective or absent. The interaction between individual instincts and the non-religious environment is producing multiple, population-lethal pathologies. Voluntary subfertility is nearly universal; native population-replacement is advocated and celebrated; maladaptive forms of sexuality are common and actively-promoted; self-mutilation is escalating, normal and admired; the clamour for on-demand, comfortable, 'assisted' suicide grows greater with each year...

Living without religion, but with a genetic makeup that had evolved to assume religion, to expect religion, and to live-within religion; the instinctual basis of Europeans, including their powers of evaluation and judgement, are revealed as both ineffective and inappropriate.

Of course, under current conditions and continuing present trends; eventually and after many generations individual level selection may lead to the evolution of new effective and appropriate instincts that aimed-at individual survival and reproduction - then, presumably, large scale societies would break down into much smaller competing units, since such individuals would have evolved to be resistant to the social cohesion mechanism of religion.

Alternatively, the adaptiveness of European populations may be strengthened by the restoration of Christianity.

The 'scientific method' of genius - Attention, Intuition, Imagination

THE big problem in the philosophy of science is: Where do valid hypotheses come from?

The problem is that the 'search space' for valid hypotheses is vast, and nearly all possible hypotheses are wrong.

So how do creative scientists discover true hypotheses - that is, hypotheses that are basically valid explanations, suitable for research and development by standard methods?

Another problem is that most of what gets called science is not primarily creative, but uses already-made/ discovered hypotheses to extrapolate and interpolate (fill the gaps between) their assumptions, by deploying fairly standard methods of 'trial and error' in the domain of 'research and development'.

In other words, creative science corresponds closely with what Thomas Kuhn termed 'revolutionary' science (although the creative and paradigm-changing 'revolution' is mostly at a much smaller and more specialized scale than the example Kuhn used); while non-creative science corresponds to what Kuhn termed 'normal' science.

In practice, I think creative science uses something like the following 'method':

1. Focus
2. Effort
3. Honesty

Focus: The scientists focuses on some problem or topic - this is in one sense chosen by the scientist; but in another sense the problem chooses the scientist: he is firstly gripped by a problem and secondly consents to work on it and thirdly he is able to do this.

Effort: The scientist then puts in a sustained and considerable effort directed at the problem. This requires motivation, since it is seldom that external influences will be pushing him to pick this specific problem, and to keep working on it in the face of distraction and discouragements.

Honesty: The scientist must be honest - he must want to know the truth, must behave truthfully, and must communicate his findings and beliefs truthfully. Creative science is difficult and rarely accomplished, and unless the individual is honest he will find it much quicker and easier to fake a discovery (more or less) than actually to make one; easier to hype or otherwise distort a discovery rather than to communicate it as clearly as possible.
     Also, an attitude of honesty is necessary in order that the phenomenon comes more clearly into view; to clear-away the clouds and distortions that obscure it. The ability to know is typically prevented by wishful thinking and other types of preconception - unless there is a honest desire to know the truth, then the truth will not be known.

Given the above general set-up - which as-it-were places the scientist into a position from which creative science can be done - what then is the micro-method of the creative scientist?

1. Attention
2. Intuition
3. Imagination

What happens with creative science is that the scientists is paging attention, is absorbed-by the phenomenon; then looking within himself (intuition) he apprehends the reality of the situation by his imagination.

In effect, the 'answer' appears in the scientists imagination - or, to put it more exactly, the answer is communicated to the scientist's imagination by non-perceptual means.

Negatively expressed, creative understanding does not come via the senses (vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell); it does not come via the perceptions; it does not come from memory.

How then does the answer arrive in the imagination? I imagine it as a process akin to sympathy or empathy - in which an understanding of the phenomenon induces the same phenomenon in the imagination (or rather some kind of 'model of the phenomenon).

This entails either that the scientist has some sort of built-in prior understanding which is elicited by the process of contemplating the phenomenon (rather as Plato said that 'learning' was actually a matter of making explicit what was already known) - or else that the understanding is communicated-to the imagination from some external source (which would correspond to 'inspiration').

So, the primary source of creative understanding is located in the imagination of the scientist, and by this account it is valid - the understanding is valid, albeit neither complete nor undistorted due to the constraint of any phenomenon being more complex than the finite representation of it in the imagination).

But so far, the understanding is 'subjective' in the sense of being private, inside the mind of the scientist - the scientist must then communicate this understanding into the public domain via language - and in doing this there will inevitably be selection, distortion and also the possibility of misunderstanding from those trying to understand the phenomenon from its public description.

That is about as far as I can go in describing what happens - and it leaves open (or, at least, open to dispute) some fundamental aspects of the problem - such as where the imaginative understanding comes from and what makes it valid.

It creates the apparent paradox, that real, creative science comes from outside science - but this is surely true, in the sense that this is also found in other creative realms such as literature, music and art.

I think it would be found that the above psychological description fits the actuality of valid discovery - when such things are known. In my own experience I have found that my successes at valid creative breakthroughs - such as 'the malaise theory of depression' came after a sustained period of focused attention and contemplation of a phenomenon to which I was spontaneously drawn.

And when I failed to make a breakthrough in understanding (for example, I have not been able t understand Anorexia Nervosa) this was because I was not spontaneously interested and had failed to regard the matter with sustained attention.

Plus, of course, there is no guarantee of my reaching an imaginative understanding of any given topic - since I may have may have been insufficient attention so far (and the breakthrough still lies in the future), or I may personally be incapable of understanding for numerous reasons - or the phenomenon may be too difficult for anyone to understand, or I may have failed to be sufficiently honest and devoted in the nature of my contemplation.

But my point here is that the true 'scientific method' for creative discovery is not an algorithm or protocol - following which will yield breakthroughs; but rather a psychological, and indeed somewhat mystical, thing.

And that it involves a match-up between the scientist and the phenomenon which could be termed 'destiny' - a scientist may have a destiny to solve a particular problem, or a limited set of problems - but others will not be possible for him, since he lacks not just competence, but the necessary deep-motivation absolutely required in order to embark on focused, effortful, sustained contemplation of a particular phenomenon - a thing that may be discovered, but cannot be manufactured or imposed.

Friday, 20 November 2015

Negative emotionality, hyper-emotionality and hypo-emotionality as potenital causes of depression

Bruce G Charlton and Joseph Shaw

The broad diagnostic category of DSM Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) was established in 1980 – in practice it seems that MDD can be interpreted as inclusive of patients with a wide range of dysphoric feelings including depression, anxiety, mood swings and emotional blunting/ unemotionality [Watson 1988a, Nutt 2007]. In other words, depressive symptoms may be regarded as a consequence of more than one emotional state; rather as pain may be a consequence of many causes [Charlton 2009].

It has been argued that Major Depressive Disorder is therefore heterogeneous, and can be subdivided into at least three groups, each characterised by a distinctive emotional state.

Negative-emotionality (Negative-E) describes the most obviously depressive group, who mainly experience strong negative emotionality such as misery, anxiety, guilt, fatigue etc.

A second group would be Hyper-emotional (Hyper-E) who experience strong emotions in both negative and positive directions (e.g. they are emotionally unstable, hyper-responsive, subject to mood swings).

A third group would be Hypo-emotional (Hypo-E), with weak or blunted emotions in both negative and positive directions (e.g. they are ‘flat’, demotivated, unresponsive) [REF 1 Charlton].

These states may be characterized by each having a different pattern of
1. emotional strength and 2. Emotional direction (i.e. positive/ negative, both or neither).

As a first test of this hypothesis we conducted an internet survey on 251 subjects recruited through advertisements posted on several depression-related online communities (www.reddit.com/r/depression; www.nomorepanic.co.uk; www.depressionforums.org; http://talk-depression.org). Strength of depressive symptoms was measured using the Beck Depression Inventory [Beck et al 1961], while the strength and directionality of emotions was measured the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Scale) [Watson 1988b].

217 subjects were classified into groups of Controls, Negative-, Hyper- and Hypo-Emotionality by using the Positive-Affect (PA) and Negative-Affect NA) sub-divisions of PANAS:

Controls n=27, Lowest 25% NA, Highest 25% PA
Negative-E n=50, Highest 50% NA, Lowest 50% PA
Hyper-E n=76, Highest 50% NA, Highest 50% PA
Hypo-E n=64, Lowest 50%NA, Lowest 50% PA

Severity of depressive symptoms are shown in Table 1:

BDI Mean
BDI       SD
Positive-E Control

The results show that despite the ‘control group’ being in the Mild range for depressive symptoms on the BDI; all three of the hypothesized emotionality groups scored were significantly more severe in depressive symptoms than Controls; indeed within the ‘Severe’ depressive symptoms range for BDI scores.

These preliminary results seem clear and consistent with the hypothesis that depressive symptoms may be a consequence of at least three different emotional patterns – Negative-E, Hyper-E and Hypo-E. This conclusion, of course, requires replication in a clinical subject sample evaluated by face-to-face diagnostic interviewing. If correct, one potential implication may be that different emotionality sub-types could benefit from a different therapeutic approach; for example Hyper-E from a trial of serotoninergic agents, and Hypo-E from noradrenaline/ dopaminergic agents [Nutt et al 2007; Charlton 2009].

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Carey, G. (1988a). Positive and negative affectivity and their relation to anxiety and depressive disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology97, 346.

Nutt, D., Demyttenaere, K., Janka, Z., Aarre, T., Bourin, M., Canonico, P. L., … & Stahl, S. (2007). The other face of depression, reduced positive affect: the role of catecholamines in causation and cure. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 21, 461-471.

Charlton, B. G. (2009). A model for self-treatment of four sub-types of symptomatic ‘depression’ using non-prescription agents: neuroticism (anxiety and emotional instability); malaise (fatigue and painful symptoms); demotivation (anhedonia) and seasonal affective disorder ‘SAD’. Medical Hypotheses72, 1-7.

Beck, A. T., Ward, C., & Mendelson, M.  (1961). Beck depression inventory (BDI). Archives of General Psychiatry4, 561-571.

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988b). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology54, 1063.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Genius as the ultimate altruist

Genius emerges from individualism - the genius just is an individual who is significantly and personally responsible for some major human accomplishment.

So the seedbed of genius is a society, or a kind of person, who is individualistic - and such societies and persons have been absent for much of human history. When the individual feels himself to be immersed in the group - genius is not possible; only when persons are self-aware, at least somewhat differentiated from their social group is genius possible.

This is presumably partly a matter of genetic change - but it is surely a matter of historical and cultural change: to all appearance, there has been evolution (in the sense of change) of consciousness. Socrates would not have been possible in most of the human world up to that time - perhaps in no other part of the human world until some parts of Ancient Greece?

But the genius is Altruistic as well as individualistic - and I mean, here, altruistic in terms of differential reproductive success (or 'fitness'). The average genius seems, as a matter of measurement, to have lower than average reproductive success - especially when we consider that throughout most of human history it was necessary to produce more than four children for the minimum replacement number of two of them to survive to adulthood in a sufficiently healthy state to reproduce. Not many geniuses had five children; many had none.

And aside from the estimated numbers; it is clear that the genius has less than usual interest in social and sexual success - and that this is intrinsic to genius, since the genius must have (at least during the years of his greatest accomplishment) a focus on his work that is intense and often obsessive - and such an investment of time, energy and resources entails a major shift in priorities away from those of normal (non genius) people.

Consider the sheer impact of a genius - of that one single person. The impact of a genius on the reproductive success of his group may orders of magnitude faster and greater than that of any possible person operating via natural selection. Some high status men may have had hundreds of children; but some geniuses have affected the survival and reproduction of millions of people.

As a recent example, Alan Turing (presumably) had no children and made zero genetic impact on the species; but without him the German Enigma code would not have been solved and the 1939-45 World war would have lasted longer and the casualties on the Allied side would have been significantly greater - without Turing the development of the computer would also have been delayed or impaired, with large and widespread effects.

My point is that (when his work is beneficial) a genius has an effect on a broad population of genetically unrelated and mostly unknown people which far outstrips the genetic level of impact. So the genius is both an individual yet, in effect, he is 'working for' other people (in the sense that any personal gains he may make from his work are likewise utterly dwarfed by his contributions to the larger group).

The situation therefore seems to be that when there occurs an increase in the incidence of genius, this arises from a human population in which individualism has been intensified; but that the genius does not pursue individualistic goals for individual benefit - it is as if the genius had been called-forth or created by the group in order to serve the group (not just his kin, not just those in the group who have a relationship - but a much wider group).

It is as if the genius is set up so that as an individualistic-individual, he willingly and by choice and effort, sacrifices his own (relatively modest) chance of genetic success in altruistically attempting to generate a much greater success in terms of survival and reproduction of his group.

Since altruism in biology is defined as acting to increase the reproductive success of other at cost to oneself, this makes the genius the ultimate altruist.

Monday, 9 November 2015

General properties of Group Selection and the 'group mind' (in relation to the adaptive production of geniuses)

The major function of group selection is presumably directly to promote the sustained reproductive success (lineal survival) of the group, in face of the spontaneous tendency for random change to promote the individual (and other lower level, below group) levels of selection.

For example, group selection would be of value in sustaining the cell in face of the tendency of cell components (for example the nucleus, or of evolvable organelles such as the mitochondria, chloroplast or centriole) to become 'free-riders' or parasites (taking net reproductive benefits from the cell, while contributing less than this to the cell, or nothing, or actively-harming the probability of the survival and ultimately reproduction of the cell).

A more clear cut example is the individual specialized cell in the context of a multicellular organism; there is a tendency for individual cells to evolve towards 'opting out' of the coordinated cooperation of the whole organism  - and taking more than they give. This is termed neoplastic change, and the tendency is what leads to cancers - cancers constitute an internally-generated cellular parasite.

But the main posited role for group selection has been in the context of animal society - especially in social animals (social insects such as ants or bees, and social mammals such as many primates including Man - as well as other mammals with differentiated social roles such as naked mole rats or meerkats).

The problem for the sustained survival of social animals over many generations is that individuals tend to evolve to enhance their personal reproductive success at the expense of the group - taking benefits from social living while avoiding the costs and duties of social living - thereby destroying the social structure.

The fact that social animals are known to have existed over many generations is evidence that his problem has been solved historically - and the underpinning mechanism is usually regarded to be kin selection (aka inclusive fitness) together with reciprocity (the mutual benefits of cooperation).

The difficulty with such individual level mechanisms as kin selection is that they must themselves evolve in a context where the spontaneous tendency is for adaptations to be lost - on top of the spontaneous tendency for kin selection and reciprocity to be damaged by spontaneous mutations. In other words it is very difficult to evolve a high level mechanism of social living on top of all the other layers of cooperation at sub-cellular and cellular levels - all of which are vulnerable to destruction by spontaneous mutations.

This is presumably one reason why social animals have been a late arrival on the evolutionary scene, in the past couple of hundred thousand years - however, once a stable and sustainable adaptation had arisen to enforce sociality, these animals have more-or-less taken over the earth by becoming the dominant species. Thus ants and termites dominate the tropical regions (in terms of biomass) while more recently humans have come to dominate the temperate zones.

Clearly sociality is a tremendous advantage - the difficulties are in evolving it, and sustaining it in the face of continued spontaneous mutations with each generation; and the tendency of sub-lethal deleterious mutations to accumulate generation-upon-generation; plus any environmental change and variety which is itself a consequence of the high adaptiveness of these species.

However, the very success of social animals, their dominance, would be expected to contain the seeds of destruction - since the conditions for free-riding and parasitism are greatly increased by the expansion in numbers and the relative autonomy from environmental constraints such as food supply and predation.

(This can be seen very clearly in modern human society, where the large surplus of modern economies above subsistence allows for unprecedented levels of parasitic behaviour by individuals, and also groups - such as bureaucracies.)

A successful social species can therefore find itself in the situation when the main proximate constraint on reproductive success is competition within the species - and this creates many niches for more-or-less parasitic and exploitative behaviours (the individual profiting at the expense of the group).

In the short-term, the fastest and most secure route to enhanced reproductive success is to exploit other humans (rather than cooperate with them) - and this would tend to destroy the social structure by reproductively favouring the least social individual animals.

Group selection entails that the group has an identity, that this identity must have integrity over time, and that it be transmissible between generations. This group identity must be able to sustain itself and should also be potentially further-adaptive to some extent.

Group identity needs to be of a cognitive and behavioural nature - in other words there must be strategizing knowledge and also some kind of reasoning from this knowledge. In sum, group selection requires a group identity; and group identity requires a teleology, aim or purpose; and that purpose should 'know' (with better than random probability) how to implement itself in individuals within that group.

This is probably the basis of the intense modern suspicion of and hostility to group selection - this idea that group selection entails something like a group purpose, memory and 'mind' - which superficially sounds like a non-biological, maybe even supernatural, kind of thing.
However, social animals are based on communications between networks of individuals, and the idea of conceptualizing the complex interactions of individuals in terms of being a type of 'computational' or 'cognitive' process is actually fairly mainstream - for instance in the theories of complex systems, the mathematics of chaos and complexity and elsewhere.

So, in principle, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that webs of complexly interacting social animals can be considered as higher level, group entities - which have a tendency to sustain and reproduce themselves.

Furthermore, these networks of communications fall into patterns, and these patterns may be self-sustaining and with a tendency to expand - so there is a potential mechanism for non-genetic inter-generation transmission.

In other words, the group-level entity is a pattern of communications which is both influenced by and also influences the communications (and behaviours) of the individual components of that patter: the individual organisms. And this pattern of communications will tend to fall into relatively stable forms, forms that resist change.

(Such a stability of forms is something which has cropped up in many areas of science over more than 2000 years - since at least the time of Aristotle with his elaboration of a finite number of archetypal 'forms' or relatively stable conformations into which all things will tend to 'fall; modern conceptualizations of the same basic idea include 'strange attractors' and 'morphic fields'.)

I do not see any fatal difficulty in supposing that relatively stable and 'cognitive' patterns of inter-individual, group communications would be transmissible between generations of social animals - given that these generations are overlapping (with new group members incrementally arriving and maturing, while others are leaving and dying - but without a break in the continuity of communications).

Such a concept of 'group mind' would have implicit purpose (survival and self-propagation) implemented by problem solving and strategizing properties including memory and intelligent processing.

Therefore, in principle, this group mind entity could identify problems among individuals within the group, and (to a significant extent) suppress selfishness at the individual level - also it could foresee (with better than random probability) the need for (or potential benefits from) certain types of individual which would be useful to the group survival and reproduction. Then individuals of this type might be induced to arise from the group - perhaps by the kind of developmental switching posited by Life History theory.

So, for the putative example of genius - it seems possible that the group mind might detect and appreciate the need for, or potential benefits from, an increase in the production of geniuses (i.e. those individuals characterized by what I have termed an Endogenous personality comprising a triad of high intelligence, intuitive thinking and inner motivation).

Having calculated that such individuals would probably be of value to the group - it seems possible that either the developmental trajectory of individuals might be directed towards becoming a genius - or more fundamentally that suitable pairs of individual parents (especially those characterized by high intelligence - low mutational load) might (perhaps by broadly 'epigenetic' means, by affecting gene switching, activation, suppression etc) lead to the sexual conception of more potential geniuses who are designed to benefit the group survival and reproduction, even when this tends to reduce the probability of reproductive success in the individual geniuses.

So this above scheme could, in broad brush terms, provide a group selection mechanism by which the group benefits of genius might be acquired when the group circumstances require, despite that many or most geniuses have below average reproductive success due to their energies and efforts being directed at non-reproductive, non-social goals.

Monday, 26 October 2015

Sexual selection has been done mostly by the bride's parents - i.e. middle aged couples - hence it is much more economically-rational, and culturally sensitive, than is generally supposed

Mate choice, throughout human evolutionary history, has been mostly done by parents, that is by middle aged people - and especially the woman's parents:

Therefore, there has not been much in the way of natural selection for women to be good at choosing their sexual partners or husbands - and it should not be surprising if modern women are in fact not good at this.

(Which, clearly, they aren't.)

This means that it is not a valid test of sexual selection in humans to ask young women to rate men for attractiveness - from an evolutionary perspective this is all but irrelevant.

If modern young women happen to prefer to choose 'hot' young men as sexual partners or husbands (charming men, dominant men, men with strong jaws and big shoulders and narrow hips in a V-shape, 'guns' or 'six pack' etc...) this kind of preference is highly likely to be a contingent and ephemeral cultural artefact - resulting from women's instinctive susceptibility to peer pressure, as amplified and distorted by the modern mass media.

The fact is that modern young women - instinctively speaking, in terms of evolved adaptations - haven't a clue about how to choose a good sexual or marriage partner! Indeed - why should they? since such preferences had little or no impact on human evolutionary history.

(Sex outside of marriage may lead to children being born, but in the past - in a context of average child mortality rates of more than a half - these children lacking the support and resources of a long-term marriage type relationship would almost certainly have died before maturity, and/ or been unhealthy and low in status.)

To test for what traits have been sexually selected, a far better test would be to ask middle aged parents to choose what kind of men they would want as a husband for their daughter - because that decision is the one that was under strong selective pressure over many generations.

I think it would be found that parents chose - on average - rationally, on the basis of whatever (unglamorous!) traits best indicated a faithful, steady and good provider for their grandchildren.

In other words, sexual selection as it actually was would quite often (in many types of economy - although not all situations) favour 'Dads' not 'Cads' - and if their daughters found the Dad type of man was not much of a turn-on... well so what! There are more important things when life is harsh and very few children survive to maturity.

Under most ancestral conditions, the sexual preferences of young women would not make any difference - one way or the other.

Reference: Apostolou, M. (2012). Sexual selection under parental choice: Evidence from sixteen historical societies. Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 504-518. This paper makes clear why, in traditional societies, Dads need not fear spousal infidelity with Cads. Apostolou looked at the level of punishment when a woman is discovered to have committed adultery. Three levels were coded: No punishment/ light punishment; moderate (!) punishments including beating and divorce; severe punishment such as beating to death. No punishment/  light punishment were found in 5 out of 54 of agropastoral societies; while severe punishments for adultery were found in about two-thirds of these societies - a large majority of 35 out of 54.

Sunday, 18 October 2015

The relationship between Asperger's syndrome and Genius

Asperger's syndrome arose to public awareness very quickly during the 1990s, and without a clear or coherent underlying basis. It has remained as a kind of short-hand way of describing boys and men of high intelligence who are socially uninterested but instead focus upon abstract, nerdy or geeky topics.

It has been noticed that many of the archetypal geniuses of the past seem to be, more or less, of this type: for example, Alan Turing was depicted as such in the recent movie The Imitation Game - and this links Asperger's to the cult English actor Benedict Cumberbatch's other famous role as Sherlock. Turing was, of course, a real-life Aspergery-genius; and Sherlock is a fictional example.

And the most famous media depiction of Asperger's is probably Sheldon Cooper in the sit-com Big Bang Theory - and this character refers to himself, and is often referred to by others, as a 'genius'. Much of the humour in the series comes from Sheldon's ineptness in social situations - he is blind to, as well as uninterested by, other people's intentions and emotions; he takes things literally instead of as they were meant.

But there is an ambiguity in the way that 'genius' is used in popular culture. Strictly, the term ought to mean creative intelligence - as seen in such Asperger's types as Turing, Isaac Newton and Kurt Godel; but it is perhaps more often used in popular culture to mean precocious ability in childhood; as when a young teenager excels in university admissions-type examinations.

Precocious intellectual ability is usually a predictor of high adult intelligence; and high adult intelligence is necessary to creative genius - but it is not sufficient. Most precocious children do not turn-out to be creative geniuses - merely adults of higher than average ability.

But some precocious children do turn out to be creative geniuses - the philosopher John Stewart Mill was a well documented example; and DNA structure discoverer James D Watson was notably precocious - appearing on a radio quiz for smart children, attending the elite University of Chicago at 15, and getting his PhD (supervised by a Nobel Laureate) at 22.

On the other hand, Watson's co-discoverer Francis Crick shows that some geniuses are not at all precocious, but on the contrary are late developers - Crick went to his second choice university, got a second class degrees, started and dropped out of two PhDs and changed fields's three times when in his mid thirties he finally found 'his problem' and became one of the greatest and most creative biologists of his generation. Einstein was also of this late-flowering type, although less extreme than Crick.

So preciosity cannot be equated with genius.

As well as high intelligence, genius also requires a personality type which I have termed the Endogenous personality

This is an intuitive, inner-motivated type of personality - and people who get called Asperger's are usually inner-motivated but they are not usually intuitive; indeed perhaps they are stereotypically ultra-logical and mistrusting of intuition.

And there is an ambiguity in the way that Asperger's is defined and discussed. Sometimes it is seen as a person with a deficit in social intelligence; at other times as someone with a lack of interest in social matters.

The difference can be important, because the genius is primarily someone who is (relatively) uninterested in social (including usually sexual) things - mainly because he is so intensely interested in his 'work' - is focused and concentrated on his work, pours most of his effort into work. The genius is best understood as specialized for creativity, rather than as merely having a deficit (although, in a sense, specialization in one area does almost inevitably show-up as at least a relative deficiency in other areas).

Sometimes the Apserger's person is depicted at lacking in emotion - but if so, this would be fatal to genius.

Because the genius absolutely requires emotion in order to be creative at the highest level: he uses emotions in evaluating. (Intuition can be defined as using all aspects of psychology in thinking - not just reason and logic - therefore necessarily including the emotions.)

In sum: unemotional = uncreative; and the reason is that the emotions are necessarily used in creativity: creativity requires intuition; and emotions are part of intuition.

Therefore a Mr Logic or Mr Spock kind of person cannot be creative - and the same applies to a personal labelled as Asperger's who is lacking in emotion - he will not be able to use intuition.

Furthermore, lack of emotion also entails lack of inner motivation - it is our emotions which motivate us; and anything which blunts or reduces emotions will be demotivating (for example, the antipsychotic/ neuroleptic drugs are horribly demotivating, or more weakly the SSRI antidepressants).

And geniuses must be highly motivated if they are to accomplish work at the highest level.

In conclusion - the genius will often be an Asperger's type of person, in the sense that he will tend to be relatively un-interested by social and sexual relationships; as a side effect of being internally driven to focus and work on that which is his creative destiny (e. Shakespeare's poetry and plays, Rembrandt's painting, Beethoven's music, Einstein's physics - or whatever it may be).

So the true genius will usually appear to be Aspergers-like to the normal person.

On the other hand, most people with Asperger's syndrome are not geniuses (not even partial or potential geniuses), even when they have exceptionally high intelligence - because they lack the intuitive style of thinking which is vital for real creativity.

Here is some further background reading, to explain the reason why Asperger's syndrome and Genius share the trait of lack of interest in social matters.

The following passage comes from the chapter "Identifying the Genius" from my forthcoming book The Genius Famine - by Ed Dutton and Bruce G Charlton, University of Buckingham Press (2015, in the press).

The Asocial genius

But a genius is not like this. The genius does not have a single, stereotypical, positive personality type (because Endogenous personalities are very various in terms of traits such as likeableness, helpfulness, and personal warmth) – but geniuses are characterised by not being primarily social animals. A genius is one whose main focus and motivation is not social, nor sexual; but instead abstract, asocial – whether artistic, scientific, technical, or whatever it may be.
Could it then be that the genius uses for abstract thinking, those brain-systems which in most people are used for social intelligence? That in the genius the social intelligence system is wired-up to internal stimuli instead of to social situations? It seems that the genius deploys the social intelligence parts of the brain for other purposes – and that therefore the usual spontaneous motivation and attention that goes to social material is instead – automatically – being harnessed and deployed to deal with other and inner-generated material. This seems to us very likely; although such aspects of brain structure have not yet been reliably measured. But given that the genius brain seems to be hard-wired for both creativity and intelligence; it is plausible that this may be made possible by functional re-deployment of at least some aspects of social/ sexual circuitry.
So, it is not that geniuses lack social intelligence (the genius is not ‘autistic’ in the sense of having a deficit or defect in social intelligence); rather that geniuses have all the ‘equipment’ necessary for social intelligence, but are ‘wired-up’ to use their social intelligence for other and not-social purposes.
Specifically, the genius’s social intelligence may be wired-up to internally-generated material (instead of attending to actual people in the environment and from memory). The spontaneous interest and concern with ‘‘other people’’ that is characteristic of most people is, in the genius, directed to whatever ‘abstract’ subject the genius has a vocation-for.
Another way of thinking about this is that the genius may be able to deploy extra ‘‘brain power’’ in problem solving, by ‘‘co-opting’’ the brain regions normally used for social intelligence. And not only brain power – but the distinctive ‘‘theory of mind’’ mode of thinking which characterises social intelligence. So the genius often thinks about ‘‘his subject’’ in a social-like way – as a world populated by entities with motivations and dispositions and each having a purpose.
Social intelligence could be much of what is creative about creativity; because to think about abstract things ‘anthropomorphically’ with social intelligence, or animistically as if they were sentient social agents, perhaps opens-up a new and probably more creative, intuitive and flexible way of thinking.[1]
The Endogenous personality also has very high intelligence. This may be apparent through good exam results in a ‘g’-loaded evaluation, but may require formal intelligence testing to detect, if the individual has either suffered from poor or absent education, or else lacks the conscientiousness to apply himself to his studies. And sometimes intelligence tests won’t do justice to the genius’s abilities.
That the intelligence of the Endogenous Personality can sometimes not be identified in a conventional way is of crucial importance. Often, the genius will have extremely pronounced abilities in one area of intelligence – such as verbal intelligence – but will be less skilled in other areas.

Einstein, for example, had such high mathematical abilities that he developed an original proof of Pythagoras’ theorem at the age of 12. However, his linguistic abilities were so deficient that he failed the entrance exam for the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.[2] Consequently, though an IQ test can capture general intelligence it will not necessarily be able to capture genuine genius.

So, the Endogenous personality may be recognized not just by their relative autonomy – that is, their lack of need for social validation and consequent lack of interest in social and sexual matters – but also by their high intelligence and positive motivation to do (or to find) ... whatever it is that they are equipped by their nature to do.

[1] Charlton, B. G. (2000). Psychiatry and the Human Condition. Oxford: Radcliffe.
[2] Miller, A. (1999). Albert Einstein. In M. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds). Encyclopedia of Creativity. New York: Academic Press.

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Rate of deleterious mutations per generation, expected decline in fitness per generation - estimates from Michael Lynch

From Michael Lynch. Rate, molecular spectrum and consequences of human mutation. PNAS 2010; 107: 961-8.

What is the likely magnitude of the per-generation loss in human fitness caused by recurrent introduction of deleterious mutations? From the present results, we infer that an average human gamete acquires approximately 38 de novo base-substitution mutations, approximately three small insertion/deletions in complex sequence, and approximately one splicing mutation. Transposable-element insertions, microsatellite instabilities, and segmental duplications and deletions of total or partial gene sequences will almost certainly sum to several additional events per gamete, so it is likely that an average newborn acquires a total of 50 to 100 new mutations at the diploid level, a small subset of which must be deleterious.

The net fitness consequences of human mutations remain unclear and will likely continue to be a major challenge, but some general arguments allow an order-of-magnitude assessment of the situation. Using rather different approaches, Yampolsky et al. and Eyre-Walker et al. have derived similar estimates of the distribution of fitness effects of new amino acid altering base-substitution mutations: approximately 11% cause fractional reductions in heterozygote fitness with s < 10−5, 12% with 10−5 < s < 10−4, 50% with 10−4 < s < 10−2, and 27% with s > 10−2, with an overall average selective disadvantage of approximately 0.04. Only approximately 1.5% of the human genome consists of coding DNA and approximately 25% of coding sites are silent, so we expect approximately 0.86 novel amino acid altering mutations per newborn. Approximately 5% of such mutations will lead to nonsense mutations, many of which will likely be in the category of s > 10−2, but the remaining 95% will be missense in nature, with deleterious fitness effects averaging approximately 4% or less according to these results. Thus, with a complete relaxation of natural selection, the expected decline in fitness associated with mutations in coding DNA alone appears to be on the order of 1% to 3% per generation.

Less clear is the added contribution from other forms of mutations. The vast majority of point mutations reside outside of coding regions (on the order of 40 per gamete), and it is likely that most of these will have very minor fitness effects, with average s almost certainly << 10−2. Nevertheless, Eöry et al. make a compelling case that approximately 4% of intergenic, 15% of UTR, and 22% of silent sites are under weak purifying selection in humans, which is consistent with the arguments presented above for base-composition selection. Most major deletions and splicing mutations are probably highly deleterious, as they will generally render their host genes nonfunctional. Most transposable-element insertions and gene duplications appear to be at least weakly deleterious; the average deleterious effects of such mutations are likely to be at least 1% per event, and as noted earlier, at least one such event is likely to arise per zygote per generation. Thus, although there is considerable uncertainty in the preceding numbers, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the per-generation reduction in fitness due to recurrent mutation is at least 1% in humans and quite possibly as high as 5%.

Although such a mutational buildup would be unnoticeable on a generation timescale, over the course of a couple of centuries (approximately six generations), the consequences are likely to become serious, particularly if human activities cause an increase in the mutation rate itself (by increasing levels of environmental mutagens). A doubling in the mutation rate would imply a 2% to 10% decline in fitness per generation, and by extension, a 12% to 60% decline in 200 years...

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that most of the mutation load is associated with mutations with very small effects distributed at unpredictable locations over the entire genome, rendering the prospects for long-term management of the human gene pool by genetic counseling highly unlikely for all but perhaps a few hundred key loci underlying debilitating monogenic genetic disorders (such as those focused on in the present study)…


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Effective communication is essential for any organization to function. Have you ever had the feeling that you aren't being understood, that your message is falling on deaf ears? Well, we all have. Your business can't afford to be plagued with missed opportunities or mistakes because of bad communication. Everyone in your organization needs to be an expert communicator. This means sending as well as receiving information.

A key reason communication between individuals and teams fails is because the sender and the receive are not connecting. This often happens because they have completely different modes of communication. This can be corrected if everyone understands what type of communicator the other person is. This also applies to groups.

You will often need to know which people will make a great team, who to hire to put on your team and what gaps exist in your current team(s). I am going to share a service with you that makes understanding how each individual on your team not only communicates but views the business world. Taking the time to understand your team and how they communicate can transform your business into a well oiled machine.

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Regardless of your presentation subject matter, passion and practice make perfect.

Leonard Bernstein worked for days on his Young People’s Concert scripts and rehearsed them several times so that when he was talking it would sound as if he were just having a calm, casual conversation with the children.

Bernstein tried to anticipate everything while he rehearsed and refined his presentation scripts. He planned every word and audience reaction carefully. He developed his scripts to the point of anticipating multiple audience responses—even writing alternate sections based on how people might react to the previous point. He even made notations of where and how he would stand while on the stage. The New York Philharmonic archives contain copies of scripts that show as many as ten revisions (in addition to the rounds on his yellow pads), which is a reflection of the thoroughness of Bernstein’s thought process and rehearsals.

Bernstein wrote about his Young People’s Concerts experience in 1968 using words that can stand as his credo. “These concerts are not just concerts—not even in terms of the millions who view them at home,” he wrote. “They are, in some way, the quintessence of all I try to do as a conductor, as a performing musician. There is a lurking didactic streak in me that turns every program I make into a discourse, whether I utter a word or not; my performing impulse has always been to share my feelings, or knowledge, or speculations about music —to provide thought, suggest historical perspective, encourage the intersection of musical lines. And from this point of view, the Young People’s Concerts are a dream come true, especially since the sharing is done with young people—that is, people who are eager, unprejudiced, curious, open, and enthusiastic.”

This excerpt from the script for “What is Classical Music?” shows how carefully Bernstein and his team planned.

presentation notes from Bernstein

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Introduction to Algebra

Introduction to Algebra

Peter J. Cameron

Language: English

Pages: 350

ISBN: 0198569130

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

Developed to meet the needs of modern students, this Second Edition of the classic algebra text by Peter Cameron covers all the abstract algebra an undergraduate student is likely to need. Starting with an introductory overview of numbers, sets and functions, matrices, polynomials, and modular arithmetic, the text then introduces the most important algebraic structures: groups, rings and fields, and their properties. This is followed by coverage of vector spaces and modules with applications to abelian groups and canonical forms before returning to the construction of the number systems, including the existence of transcendental numbers. The final chapters take the reader further into the theory of groups, rings and fields, coding theory, and Galois theory. With over 300 exercises, and web-based solutions, this is an ideal introductory text for Year 1 and 2 undergraduate students in mathematics.

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is an ideal. So the operations on R/I are indeed well deﬁned. Now the rest of the proof involves verifying the axioms, which is routine. The closure laws need no proof, since we have well-deﬁned operations. For the associative law (A1), we have ((I + x) + (I + y)) + (I + z) = (I + (x + y)) + (I + z) = I + ((x + y) + z) = I + (x + (y + z)) = (I + x) + (I + (y + z)) = (I + x) + ((I + y) + (I + z)). The proofs of (A4), (M1), and (D) are very similar. The zero element is I +0 = I, and the inverse of

to a contradiction, so this assumption must be false; there must be inﬁnitely many primes. The second theorem was proved by Pythagoras (or possibly one of his students). This theorem is surrounded by legend: supposedly Hipparchos, a disciple of Pythagoras, was killed (in a shipwreck) by the gods for revealing the disturbing truth that there are ‘irrational’ numbers. √ 2 is irrational; that is, there is no number x = p/q (where p Theorem 1.2 and q are whole numbers) such that x2 = 2. Proof Again

Not every group is cyclic. In the ﬁrst place, cyclic groups are necessarily abelian: for g m g n = g m+n = g n g m for all m, n. And not all abelian groups are cyclic. The Klein group V4 (see Example 5 in Section 3.2) is abelian but not cyclic. Indeed, we can recognise cyclic groups as follows: Proposition 3.7 A ﬁnite group G of order n is cyclic if and only if it contains an element of order n. Proof If g has order n, then the elements g 0 = 1, g 1 = g, . . . , g n−1 of g are all distinct; since

dependence relation, the coeﬃcient of v must be non-zero (else X would be linearly dependent); so we can use the relation to express v as a linear combination of X. So X spans V , and is a basis. (c) implies (b): If X is a basis, then no element of X is a linear combination of the others, so no proper subset is spanning. Vector spaces 157 (b) implies (c): If X is a minimal spanning set, then no element of X is a linear combination of the others (or it could be dropped without losing the

1)n > m). Let q be the last integer x for which xn ≤ m; that is, nq ≤ m but n(q + 1) > m. (It may be that q = 0.) Put r = m − nq. Then r ≥ 0 but r < n; and m = nq + r. The integers As we have seen, subtraction is not always possible for natural numbers. To get round this, we enlarge the number system to include negative numbers as well as positive numbers and zero, giving the set Z = {. . . , −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .} of integers. Thus, we can add, subtract, and multiply integers. The laws we

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After anti-government protests rocked Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok, storming the nation’s army headquarters and offices of the ruling party, demonstrations have ended peacefully.

After a week of compounding tension and protests aimed at ousting the current prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, hundreds of demonstrators forced their way into Thailand’s Royal Thai Army headquarters in central Bangkok for a few hours before peacefully dispersing. According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, though the army command center had already been moved to a different location in anticipation of growing public unrest, which involved protests at other ministry departments, demonstrators entered the building to give speeches, demanding that the army pick a side in the faceoff between the government and protesters.

Protests are aimed at unseating Shinawatra, the sister of powerful former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Though Thaksin has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 following accusations of corruption, critics still believe that Thaksin is pulling the strings behind Yingluck’s leadership. For many, this was evidenced when a bill in parliament was proposed to grant amnesty for Thaksin last month. Though the bill was eventually blocked by senators, critics saw this as a key sign despite the corruption accusations aimed at Thaksin. “Thaksin only wants to make himself and his family richer,” one protestor named Sarapee Nilwichien told the L.A. Times.

Other protests in the city included a group marching to the ruling Pheu Thai party’s headquarters as another group of several thousand headed to the American embassy, where one demonstrator delivered a message appealing to the U.S. to denounce the Shinawatra family. “We ask the American people to see with your own eyes the thousands of people gathered here,” Korn Chatikavanij, a former finance minister and prominent critic of Yingluck’s leadership. Demonstrators wanted to get peacefully “what Americans have taken for granted, which is a legitimate government and a country where everyone has the same status under the law of the land,” Chatikavaij added, according to the report.


• Can we still hold clean and honest elections?

    This, rather than who should be running for President or Vice President, is the real question before us now. Is a clean and honest (and hopefully intelligent) Philippine election still possible? What can we do, and what should we do, to make it happen? Is the idea of a clean and honest election compatible with the use of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine?

    Since the Supreme Court voided the Commission on Elections’ P269-million contract with Smartmatic for the repair of 82,000 PCOS machines to be used in 2016, some of us seem to believe that our battle against the PCOS machine is over, and that we are but a few steps away from holding a non-farcical election.

    This feeling is understandable, but it seems entirely wishful. The Court decision ended a “midnight contract” which probably meant fat commissions for some Comelec officials or former officials; but in what way has it advanced the cause of clean and honest elections? This is what we must examine.

    We cannot do away with the old PCOS units without doing away with automated voting. Without the voting machines, we would be forced to revert to manual voting, which may not be easy to do at all. It would mean repealing the automated voting law, which has developed its own constituency among our mostly transactional politicians. Should we fail to change the law, we cannot go manual even if it were the only remaining option. We will have to make do with the 23,000 new PCOS units which the Comelec is leasing from Smartmatic now.

    This would mean an overload of several thousand voters per PCOS machine. The technical complications are unimaginable. They could lead to a possible failure of elections, which some Aquino supporters could exploit to argue in favor of extending his “term.”

    The PCOS machine is not our only problem. But our discussion must begin here because of its critical role in any automated election. The corruption of the PCOS machine has rendered completely questionable not only the validity of the last two elections, but also the use of the PCOS in any future election.

    Under Chairman Jose Melo, the Comelec removed all of the PICOS machines’ security and safety features and accuracy mechanisms, in violation of law and without regard of public opinion. In 2010, this produced the de facto presidency of B. S. Aquino 3rd. In 2013, this produced the “60-30-10” senatorial slate led by the hitherto unheralded Grace Poe. In 2016, unless corrected, it could produce another de facto president.

    Deleted from legal existence were the mandatory review of the source code, which contains all the operational instructions to the PCOS machine; the ultra violet scan of every ballot paper to be used by every voter; the voter verification mechanism, which allows the voter to see that the machine is reading and recording his vote right; the digital signature on every report coming out of the machine, certifying its origin, timelines, and authenticity of its content; the certification by an independent authority of the perfect condition of the machines before they were used; and the random audit of the machines once they were operational.

    The Court ruling does not discuss the legal castration of the PCOS machine. But until the Court requires the Comelec and Smartmatic to restore all the security features and accuracy mechanisms that had been taken away from the machine, we cannot begin to talk of a clean and honest automated voting. This point is important because while the Court nullified the defective repair contract between the Comelec and Smartmatic, it did not ban the infected machines from the next elections.

    Nothing prevents the parties from entering into a new contract that is free from the legal defects of their nullified agreement. In fact, the Court did not say anything about the 23,000 new PCOS units the Comelec is leasing from its favored supplier.

    This means that if the failed contract were properly rebidded, in accordance with the national procurement law, the 82,000 old PCOS machines could still be repaired and used in 2016, even without restoring the features that had been illegally removed in 2010 and 2013. So the PCOS machine would be back in action, while remaining the dirty word it had become in the last two elections.

    It is therefore absolutely necessary that if a new repair and maintenance contract were to be drawn up between Comelec and Smartmatic, the word “repair” should be understood to mean restoring all the necessary features that had been illegally removed by the Comelec.

    Together with this, our judicial system should be able to support our campaign for clean and honest elections by acting with reasonable dispatch on the various petitions and complaints that have been filed against those who have committed serious electoral offenses since 2010. These include those filed with the Ombudsman against Comelec officials responsible for disfiguring the PCOS machine, and those filed with the Supreme Court seeking the nullification of the results of the 2010 presidential elections.

    The first set of complaints appears to have slept the sleep of death at the Office of the Ombudsman, while the petition before the Supreme Court against the 2010 presidential election, according to petitioners Homobono Adaza and Herman Tiu Laurel, has been “given due course,” but has not really moved at all. The entire government needs to get involved in this enterprise; but where the government is indifferent or antagonistic, the people must weigh in. For this involves the highest national interest.

    The life of our democracy is a life-and-death issue for every patriot. And we must all be prepared to be patriots. As such our first duty is to stay focused, especially when others seem to be more occupied with what is superficial and meaningless than with what is truly meaningful and substantive, with ideas that could help us find a way out of the prevailing darkness. Nothing illustrates this better than what we read daily in the media about non-entities who seem to be completely preoccupied with their ambition to become president.

    I cannot seem to understand why despite the sincere effort of the National Transformation Council to point out that our constitutional order is broken, and needs to be fixed first before we should start talking about people who should be running for the highest office, the most ambitious of them would not risk saying that they too would like to help fix the system before talking of their interest in any office. Even more distressing is the tendency of some people to name some senators as possible materials for the highest office.

    It is simply the wrong place from which to draw any material for president or even vice-president. Why? Because it is an institution that has completely destroyed itself. In the presidential bribery that took place during the impeachment trial of then Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, 19 of the 20 senators who had voted to convict Corona received a bribe of P50 million to P100 million. This was so many times more than what Judas got when he sold his Master to his enemies. At least 16 of those senators remain seated in the Senate. The newcomers are not among those who had taken a bribe, but they were also part of those who were benefitted by the 2013 Hocus PCOS that gave us the 60-30-10 winning senatorial slate.

    We need to see that our reigning emperors are naked.

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    1. I dont think so as long as the country has so many stupid, self serving uneducated voters ( bobotante )!

      REPLY: Election honesty does not depend on what the voters do. It depends on whether the votes of even the most stupid and greedy voter who sol;d his or her vote is properly read and counted at the precinct and then accurately transmitted to the canvassing centers. Then the canvassing centers must also be moral and honest. The dagdag-bawas does not happen in the precincts. It happens in the canvassing centers.

    2. The title seems to suggest that we once had a clean and honest election.

      Let’s qualify ‘Clean’ to mean debating according to ideologies and issues including character integrity but not character assassination.
      ‘Honest’ means votes are counted properly for at least 95% of the total.

      Now Myth or Fact?

      Re PCOS, if so much essential parts of the automation law requirements have already been discarded for ‘convenience’, what is stopping us from totally ignoring automated voting altogether.

      Only canvassing needs to be electronic.

      • I think we could have an honest election and it is within our control. It starts with the person who is voting. If one says he has voted honestly then that’s one small step to honest election. The machine should work and if guarded by honest officials or at least under a CCTV surveillance.
        Let’s not go back and associate the honesty in the ruling on Corona – he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt and it was not just the senators or congressmen who watch but the entire nation.
        If you think most people in our country is corrupt why not hold the election in the US, ME and Europe were Filipinos are not susceptible to vote buying?

        REPLY: hOW YOU CAN HAVE faith in the Smartmatic PCOS machine when it creates lines n your ballot that renders it wrong and different from the one you filled up with shaded ovals? Also the PCOS machines sometimes decides not to trasmit the results. Anyway the results it has in its belly are wrong!

      • That is exactly correct. Automation for canvassed (summary) manually counted votes seen by poll watchers, certified by BEI and the parties concerned. It’s still automation.

    3. Bonifacio Claudio on

      Senators Joker Arroyo, Merriam Santiago, & Bongbong Marcos VOTED AGAINST the impeachment of ex-CJ Renato Corona. Congress dirtied & put down & trodden upon the honor of the ex-CJ, The People (from which all sovereignity emanates) cleansed and upheld the dignity & integrity of ex-Chief Justice Renato Corona. Congress is AGAINST The People’s Will — abolish Congress. NOW NA !!!

    4. sonny dela cruz on

      If the Filipino people has learned their lesson from B.S. Aquino who has no plans and did nothing for the Filipinos and the country, they should all be honest now to vote for somebody like Richard Gordon for president and Alan Cayetano for vice president. The Philippines is in a deep hole right now, its time for the people to wake up and choose somebody who will uplift the economic condition of everybody not for himself alone. Huwag na kayong magpapakamay sa isang kandidato na corrupt at walang silbi kundi mangurakot lang sa pera ng bayan. Kilalangin ninyong mabuti ang mga kandidatong mayroong gagawing mabuti para sa Filipino at sa Bayan.Maawa naman po kayo sa mga naghihrap at hindi kumakain ng wasto lalong lalo na yuong mga bata pa. Marami rin na hindi nagaaral, wala ng ginawa kung hindi mag-rugby araw araw para lang maidaos ang kanilang kagutuman. Pls. lang, MAAWA PO KAYO SA MGA NAGHIHIRAP.

    5. Alejo Rosete on

      Very good argument Senator Tatad
      I believe you – go on
      MABUHAY- Senator Tatad

    6. Dominador D. Canastra on

      But the baddies are still trying to use the unrepentant and victorious scofflaw Smartmatic’s AES/PCOS machines as they are!!!!
      How can any sane person–who is not working for the corrupt and dishonest gang now ruling the Philippines and who were elected only thanks to the illegal, fraudulent, manipulated PCOS machines–still think correct election results reflecting the will of the citizens will come out in 2016????

      • that is why to me cardinal tagle and bishop villegas together with de villa of ppcrv are a big let down. they want to wait for election of new president instead of forcing boy sisi to step down, resign or force him to get the hell out of malacanan. they refuse or do not care if the automated election law is not being followd by the comelec from the time of melo up to six-two and present. as mentioned by kit tatad, the safeguards provided for by the law were disregarded by these personalities in the comelec. without the safeguards, how can you, the voter, be assured that what you wrote or shaded in the ballot would be correctly read by the hocos pcos machine???

    7. We can still hope for a Clean, Honest, and Orderly elections if we channel the same money used in buying PCOS machines to train our teachers who occupy the Board of Election Inspectors the tenets of Honesty,Integrity and Patrotizme in the discharge of their election duties. Election Registrars must also be trained to work for what they are supposed to do for their pay instead of practically all absent in their offices especially after elections. Go around these offices of election registrars, you will notice absences, closed office, registrars who are the protegees of politicians in the areas of assignments. A closer look into the manual operation of voting is not hard to learn, what are needed most are: HONESTY< INTEGRITY, LOVE OF COUNTRY.

      • jason bourne on

        Walang power ang mga teachers. Tatakutin lang sila na matatanggal sa trabaho – ayon checkmate na.

        Ang terrorism na ganyan sa precinct level ay hindi MASSIVE. At ang count na terrorist ay hindi na isasali sa bilangan, most of the time–di ba ganoon in our experience? Pero with the PCOS machines from president down to the mayor pwedeng i-program and PCOS machine na palabasin ang kabndidato ng mga RULING power sa Malacanang at sa Comelec tulad ng nangyari in 2010 and 2013.


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Medical malpractice lawsuits begin with the filing of a complaint with the court in the appropriate jurisdiction. Once the process begins, both sides undertake discovery in an effort to uncover as much relevant information and evidence as possible prior to trial. This information must be shared between the two parties, as to avoid any surprises by the time the case reaches trial. Plaintiffs and defendants are able to negotiate before the trial in an effort to reach a settlement. If no agreement is reached, the parties will be forced to argue their case at trial. Medical malpractice attorneys strongly believe that plaintiffs need to fight for just compensation due to negligence, whether it is through a settlement or trial.

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new jersey philadelphia medical malpractice attorneys proving negligenceDuring discovery, each party will conduct interrogatories, depositions, and file many requests for documents, in an effort to get to the bottom of the controversy. The plaintiff is required to prove each and every element of negligence (by a preponderance of evidence in civil court) in order to prevail in his or her medical malpractice claim. The first element is that the defendant (the physician, nurse, or hospital) owed a duty to the patient, such as caring for them or providing treatment.

Medical malpractice attorneys say that the second element of negligence is that the defendant breached his duty of care. When a defendant fails to live up to his duty as a professional caretaker, this duty is breached. Third, a plaintiff must show that the actions of the defendant, through the breach of his duty, directly caused the injury that has been sustained.

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Speak Your Mind


Imperious Presidency Increasingly Reckless and Lawless

06/27/2012 09:10

by Judy Kent

Washington, DC - The National Center for Public Policy Research issued the following statement following reports that the White House will ignore the ruling by the Supreme Court in the Arizona Immigration case upholding Section 2:

"If reports that there will be reprisals against the State of Arizona are true, this Administration has taken reckless and lawless to a new level," says legal commentator Horace Cooper, an adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. "
Kicking Arizona out of the 287(g) task force program and stripping its existing officers of their authority to enforce federal immigration violations because Mr. Obama doesn't like the Court’s ruling isn't just pedantic and priggish, it challenges Constitutional construct of the separation of powers."

Section 2, the mainstay of the Arizona effort, requires police to conduct immigration checks on individuals they arrest or merely stop for questioning when they suspect are in the U.S. illegally, was upheld by all 8 justices that participated in today's decision.

"After having brought Arizona to Court, now the White House refuses to be bound by the decision? If the Administration didn't plan to accept the Court's ruling, why waste time and energy forcing Arizona to justify its actions?," Cooper asks.

"Refusing to issue detainers merely because the referrals come from Arizona smacks of retaliation and threatens to damage our federalist system," Cooper adds. “It is the height of irony that the DOJ would bring Arizona to court and then, when the Court sides with Arizona, the White House would decide that they unilaterally had the authority to resolve the dispute," Cooper explains.

"Litigants that successfully challenge the Federal government shouldn't be subject to reprisals, and the President as the chief law enforcement officer should stand foursquare with them. This smacks more of political expediency than any commitment to civil rights. This action is yet another example of the 'imperious presidency' pushing White House power past the stretching point and doing so for political ambitions rather than support for the rule of law," Cooper concluded.


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These days whatever you purchase you can find a label with thin, black lines across it, along with a variation of different numbers. These labels are known as barcodes. These barcodes, when scanned, returns the item's description and it's price automatically.But the question is how does it work? Today we will find out right here...

Barcodes are basically a machine readable form of information on a scannable, visual surface. They are also often known as Uniform Product codes (UPC). The barcode is read by using a special scanner known as barcode reader or scanner,also known as Point of Sale (POS). This special scanner reads the information directly off of it. The information is then transmitted into a database where it can be logged and tracked.

Each black and white lines on barcodes has a width of between one and four units. The units are not a standard width, as the image can be blown up or shrunken to different sizes. Instead, the widths of the stripes are proportional to each other. At the very beginning of a barcode, there are always three bars. There is a thin black bar, then a thin white bar, and another black bar. This is called the start code, and it is a signal to scanners and computers so that they know where to begin reading. Every four bars or stripes on a barcode corresponds to one of the numbers below. These four stripes always add up to seven units wide. For example, the code for the number four is one, one, three, two. Whenever there is a number four on the bottom of a UPC label, the bars above it will be a black or white line that's one unit wide, another line of the opposite color that is one unit wide, then a three-unit line, and finally a two-unit line. These numbers add up to a total of seven and each digit from zero to nine has its own similarcode. On one half of a barcode, the scanner reads the black bars. On the other half, it reads the spaces or white bars. There are a series of ones in the middle that serve as a signal to begin reading in the opposite way. This is done to cut down on errors.

The two other types of barcodes besides UPC include EAN and Code 39. They are based on similar principles, but some use characters other than numbers, and each character may be given more than four bars.

Merchandisers and other companies pay an annual fee to an organization called Uniform Code Council (UCC), who then generates special barcodes specific to that particular company. Barcodes are very useful for maintaining accurate information about inventory, pricing, and other important business-related data.


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