LifeGame

Evolution and Natural Selection: The Card Game

Lots of people think that natural selection is a system of random chance. A bunch of random mutations happen and, wham-o, a dinosaur appears. This is a total misunderstanding and is a big reason why there's so many people that think it's "too unlikely" and there must be some kind of purpose, or intelligence, that created life (disregarding the problem that this intelligence must be created by something as well).

I was thinking about this in terms of a card game. Let's say that a bunch of us are playing cards. We don't know the rules, we don't know how many cards or what kinds of cards. We also don't know the rules of the game. We only know one thing... which hand wins. In this game the winner gets to exchange none, some or all of his cards. Over time, enough players will discover which combination of cards will beat and be beaten by other combinations of cards. Of course, in evolution there are many combinations of cards, billions of players playing many billions of hands in a game where the rules change from time to time.

The key point here is that simple combinations of trial and error over long periods of time will create winners... not by chance, but by slow improvement towards an optimal solution - the opposite of chance. The reason I think this is hard to immediately grasp is that we intuitively believe that to improve we need to be conscious of the rules, direction, restrictions and goals. This is not so. As with the card game above, the players do not need to know the rules at all. All they need to know is if they won or lost, if their situation improved or didn't improve. Over enough time, hands will emerge that are consistent winners. In retrospect it will look like those "players" are better... as if they were created or "destined" to win the game.

To go back to a natural example, I often hear detractors of evolution talk about how "half an eye" or "part of a wing" would be useless and so without the complete finished product, these things are useless - thus they must have some purpose. Just like the card game, this is not so. Although 5 Aces is better than 3 2s, 3 2s will still beat 2 2s nicely. Likewise, while half a wing won't let a primative bird-like creature fly, it might help it survive a 20 foot fall. As it gets slightly better wings, it can survive a 30 foot fall, and so on.

I believe this principle, and error in judgement, extends to many other applications. My own area of professional interest, software development, for example. Many times we don't know exactly what we're making, or what the rules for success might be. Trying things and seeing if they are "better" or "worse" is at the heart of what we call "research and development" which is just a risk diminshed way of saying try something and iterate, see if it works and people use it. The difference being that we apply scrutiny and intention to the result; decreasing the iteration time significantly - at least, in theory. Sometimes our intention blinds us, however. Many major discoveries are the result of directly challenging "obvious" things: the earth is flat, the sun moves around the earth, time is linear, and so on. It takes a certain kind of madness to navigate onto a sea without knowing exactly where you are going and playing a kind of insane version of marco-polo in hopes of discovering something... even if it's not exactly what you were looking for. In the end, many pieces of successful software may appear like they were created for precisely what they are used for, but quite frequently they were intended to be something completely different and they just kind of moved in that direction.

I doubt very much that Mark Zukerberg knew what would make Facebook work... he just thought it was this cool thing to try out and probably that it would catch on in some way. They he saw his hand beat a few other hands, exchanged a few cards and saw that those beat still more hands and so on. He, of course, had the advantage of evaluation and scientific testing which nature doesn't necessarily benefit from - at least not at the same iteration level... but the system is the same. In the end Facebook (arguably) looks like a complete, well designer, functional piece of software that delivers satisfaction to many millions of people at high scale and near 100% availability. While some people may say that it's amazing that it was able to achieve this without being designed that way from the ground up; I think the way that it was built is the only way it could achieve this result. It would be impossible to think of the millions of little things that had to happen to make it work - responses to competitors, user feedback, performance, available technology, etc. Trying to figure all that out in advance would have stifled the innovation and prevented Mark et. al. from reacting to what was going on around them. The only way it could possibly work is through keeping and exchanging cards over many millions of hands watching which one wins and which one doesn't...

Does Truth Matter?

If you're bored... read this: http://smg.media.mit.edu/library/DePauloEtAl.LyingEverydayLife.pdf

About 50% of conversations have some sort of deliberate lie in them. Almost all of these are done to prevent embarrassment, inconvenience, discomfort or other social problems. Also, most of us don't really feel guilty about this at all. When asked afterwards, most people say they would tell the same lie again. Only a small number of lies are told to deliberately harm someone. This is especially true when a person likes us more than we like them - not just the boyfriend/girlfriend like... any kind of like.

Basically, we want to create a complicit and affirming world, but we don't feel complicit or affirming as much as we wish we did.

This, to me, is the key point. We think of ourselves as this person walking around. A single entity. A being with purpose, ideas, feelings, goals, etc.

Yet. In this case there is our "true" self that says "God, I hate that guy, he's SOOOO annoying" and then the "deceitful" self that says "Hi! How are you? Yes, it's nice to see you to!"

Now why isn't it the internal voice that is the deceptive one? Why is the outer one that is covering the inner one the "lie." Couldn't it be that our inside negative feeling is the actual lie, and the cover up is the truth?

What's going on here?

Also, it seems like we have a kind of two-world system. There's the world in our minds. This world is full of inappropriate thoughts, gestures, actions, feelings and so on. Then there's the world we create. This is the world of social graces, self-restraint, and "manners." But both were created by "us;" these unified beings with centralized control. Or were they?

It seems to me the "social" world is one of normalized hospitality. In our inside mind we are self-serving and decisive; but that has survival drawbacks. If you always act on your internal mind, you aren't very open to working with others. In order to manipulate others for your survival benefit you have to become "socialized." This means learning which things in your inside self are comforting and which are disturbing. Of course, the other beings you interact with are doing the same thing. The end result is a kind of normalized social world of implicit rules. In order to enforce them, violators are removed from the socialized world by other members. This creates a strong incentive to comply; and through death vs. reproduction that incentive is passed on over generations.

So now we have this normalized social world with all of it's internal daemons inhabiting our minds... begging to be released.

So  are these evolutionary suppressions of internal desires that prevent us from succeeding with others "lies" any more than the evolutionary origin of those internal desires are "truth." In fact, isn't what is "true" and what is a "lie" something of a construction. I understand that there are "facts" and "non-facts" such as the world is round or not round. But what I'm talking about is the thing that you say that you know inside you don't REALLY believe.

We do it many, many times a day and will continue to do it many more. And it will work to our advantage, and we want others to do it to us. The whole social world, in fact, requires that we suppress our inside voices and color them with our socially acceptable outside voices. So is our world a lie? Or is our inside something to be tamed?

The Last Disciple

Great Master Shen was overseeing the training of a group of students. One day one of them was found stealing from the school's treasury. The other students asked Master Shen to expel him immediately. Master Shen said nothing to their request.

A few days later, the same student was found to have stolen property from another students. Again, the students requested that Master Shen expel the troublemaker. And again Shen did nothing.

A third time the student was caught stealing. This time from a merchant in the nearby villiage. Fed up with Master Shen's inaction the students signed a petition and presented it to the Master. If he refused to expel the troublemaker, all the other students would leave the school.

The Great Master frowned "I regret that I will be losing so many of you."

The students were surprised "You would really lose all of your students to defend this thief?"

Shen replied "You all are so wise and enlightened but this poor man does not even know that stealing is wrong."

Hearing this the thief broke down and never stole again.

Time Management: Great Lecture from Randy Pausch ("The Last Lecture" guy).

Just fantastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0

The Monk and The Warrior - A Tale of Heaven and Hell

Shaun the mighty warrior was troubled and went to seek out the wise monk Shem. Upon finding him near a tranquil river Shaun asked "Oh wise and nobel Shem, I am troubled by thoughts of the afterlife and all the things I have done. Good and evil... is there truly a heaven and a hell?"

Shem replied dismissively "YOU are a warrior for the king? Truly only a great fool would trust the kingdom to someone as foolish as you. I suppose you can take solace in knowing that there is at least one in the land even more foolish than you."

Shaun replied angrily "Why do you say this? How dare you call me a fool! How dare you insult the king! I am a great warrior. I have done you no wrong. Apologize or I shall slice off your head!"

Shem remaining silent.

Shaun growled impatiently and began to un-sheathe his sword. "Very well, I shall make you pay for your disrespect!"

Without moving, Shem said "...and thus do open the gates of hell."

Stunned, and realizing his foolishness, Shaun put his sword back into it's sheath.

Shem replied "...and thus do open the gates of heaven."

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All There Is, Is All There Is

Consider when you are driving down the freeway...

consider that you are in the traffic, among the cars, driving to your destination - be it work - be it home. Where are you going? Where are all the other people going? I mean, where are they going - really.

We all have these kinds of thoughts... it's as if, for a moment, the fabric of what we see and experience is kind of peeling away and revealing behind it something more. As if what we experience is kind of like bad wallpaper or the walls of a hollywood set. It's like those stars that shine in the corner of our eyes only to disappear when we gaze directly at them. Once in a while, we see how thin the veil is.

Then we "snap back" into reality. We go to work, we go home, we pay our bills, go to bed and forget about the experience. But it leaves behind a nagging sensation - a burning question. I believe this is a cause of great anxiety and ultimately a loss of "meaning." This idea that meaning is this thing out there somewhere, but we are stuck in here somewhere. But this disintegration is ultimately an illusion. The traffic, the bills, work and home, the wallpaper and the stars in the corner of our eyes is all and everything. It is simultaneously the something more and the disintegrated meaninglessness.

This is because our instruments for comprehension and experience are selective and limited. The process of experience and understanding is by definition discriminatory. These words I write and you read travel through at least 3 stages of limitation. The first is me using my instruments to understand (my senses + my brain). The second is the technology (i.e. language) I use to express it. The third is your comprehension of the second. I have to pick and choose and in doing this I leave out most of everything. It's very clumsy system.

To imagine this limitation, we can do some experiments. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to see the world through heat differences. No sound. No feeling. All you can sense is differences in heat. How different your commute would seem now! Perhaps you would notice the hotness of the cars compared to the coolness of the grass. Your fellow commuters would show up as red masses - their clothes and makeup would not matter - their choice of car would not be noticeable (outside of engine heat, perhaps).

This exercise may seem pointless, but in going about your day thinking about what is being missed in both experience, understanding and expression - we can consider how much more there is. People often intuit that there must "be more." This can be afterlife, or a hidden world of some kind. But all there is is all there is - and there's a lot.

 

Holding on and Letting go

Shem and Shaun are two monks walking along the road to their destination. Ahead of them appears a washed out bridge and a woman standing in front of the rushing stream. As the two approach they notice that she is quite beautiful. She asks the two monks if they can help her across. Shem hesitates remembering his vow to never hold on to beauty too closely, but Shaun quickly grabs her by her waist in a tight embrace and carries her across the rushing torrent.

A few miles down the road Shem, unable to contain his frustration and confusion, demands to know why Shaun was so quick to forget his vow and hold on to the beautiful woman so tightly.

Shem looked at his friend with confusion in his face, "I let her go on the shore of the river long behind us, I wonder, brother, why you are still holding on..."

Happiness for the Holidays and the Importance of Zen

We wish it to each other at this time of year, perhaps more than any (at least if you are a member of Western Civilization), but what is it we're wishing?

Intuition and behavior are parallel for a while but then diverge strongly. When people are "poor" more things do indeed make them happier. Once above that threshold, however, it doesn't make much difference. In fact, nothing much does. Here's some books explaining why. 

I'm interested in something different, though. I want to know why people are so interested in happiness as a state. We're obsessed with it and I think it's an outgrowth of conspicuous consumption which began around the 1920s (it existed before, but not at such scales). Amazon returns about 2700 non-fiction books with the word "happiness" in them (about 800 for "satisfaction," 516 for "productive" and 280 for kindness). Ok, so aside from a non-scientific study of Amazon's book choices, why does this matter?

We tend to see our lives as a state rather than a process. We are happy or we aresad or satisfied or whatever. But this is not how it happens in experience. Happiness, sadness and satisfaction are relative measures of change over time. They are emotional calculus. You can't "be" happy, you can only transition your relative happiness index, if you will. Thus, you need to actively integrate unhappiness and dissatisfaction into your life. I'm not saying you have to do things that cause that, but rather that changes in happiness and satisfaction are just part of the human experience.

In Zen, there's this kind of constant idea that seeking zen results in physical punishment. Walking up to a zen master and asking him how to find enlightenment will result in him smashing you on the head. In this way Zen seems like a kind of gag religion where the "master" provides you with a near endless list of meaningless tasks to perform. But something else is going on here. "Looking for" something implies that you and the object of your desire are somehow separated. This separation is created by your mind - it doesn't exist in the "external" world (which we only know through our senses anyway). The act of "looking for [x]" is what separates you from [x]. Thus, the idea is to find something you have to not look for it. Of course, the zen master is smart... he understands the difference between you not looking for something and you trying to not look for something. Trying to not look for it is still looking for it, which creates the separation - and the requisite knock on the head.

What you do is create barriers that you then have to break down. If you think you need a zen master to give you 10,000 meaningless tasks to do before you think you "earn" enlightenment, then that's what he's going to let you do. If you don't think you need that, then you don't. It's already there and you're just playing a game that it isn't. You think that he is the one playing the game, but really you are. If you say "why do you keep making me do these stupid tasks" he'll smack you on the head again - because it's you making yourself do those stupid tasks and he's just frustrated that you keep insisting you need to do them.

It's not that happiness is the elusive thing we need books and studies to find. It's just a part of the rich human experience - always there, ready to be experienced, we just need to convince ourselves to not build up the barriers in the first place.

So, going back to the start. Intuitively we know that more stuff and more money and more whatever will not make us happy (neither will less). In practice, though, we spend most of our lives in pursuit of precisely those things. This dichotomy creates a kind of psychosis from which there appears to be no escape. I think the more compelling model is to stop looking for what will make us happy or satisfied and instead just see it as a series of different experiences all of which have value.

C G Jung saw this in his treatment of undesirable human psychological behaviors. For years people would hide from their "evil" similar to how we avoid "unhappiness." His idea was to "integrate the evil" by bringing it to the forefront. Repressions and ignorance only make these negative experiences stronger. Until we understand them to be another part of the human experience it's difficult to get out of this psychotic state.

This manifests itself in nearly every culture in the form of popular myth or religious text. I would argue that Jesus' confrontation with Satan is this act of integrating the evil, though we have now confused it with suppressing the evil. Jesus doesn't run away or suppress Satan, he directly confronts the temptations the lie before him and in doing so dispells theillusion. Eating, power and even surviving a fall are not important once you have integrated yourself into everything else. The idea of having dominion over the earth is rediculous if you see youself as integrated into it. I'm not going to go into a long monologue about this but I think that what we see here is the intuition that we see one thing at the expense of not seeing another. I think it's a great and basic human myth that echos in our minds.