Debt: First 5000 years.

David Graeber is my new man http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-08-20-graeber-en.html not read yet but seems to fit exactly into my own embryonic thoughts that society (& economics) is the means by which the powerful try to keep themselves powerful and the poor remain slaves.

Brave v Coward & Sexual Selection

Thought up a genetic model on holiday. I always call my automata “bugs”. So each bug has two binary genes. Gene1 decides whether on seeing a predator the individual signals to the group or not, giving us a brave allele and a cowardly allele. Gene2 decides who you wish to mate with a brave or a coward.

The bugs were distributed in a 15x15 grid, with a 10% chance of moving to adjacent squares randomly, and with a 1% chance of mutation in the genes. Bugs died if they were preyed upon or ran out of energy. The total amount of energy in the group was kept constant by scaling each bug up when the energy fell.

The chance of being caught was determined by the number of braves in your square. Let a solitary individual not see a predator (and get predated) on 70% of occasions (p=0.7) then a group of B braves will be predated on 0.7^B of occasions. If you are a coward in a group of braves you benefit from the braves and yourself so 0.7^(B+1) the extra protection is the benefit of cheating.

2DO-- Originally I wanted to create an expression in the classic style of economics and ecology to express the marginal point at which cheating became less beneficial to being brave. A coward having a lot of non-mobile cowardly children will not benefit as much as a brave having lots of brave children so a dispersal factor will be needed to determine the probability of meeting your offspring.

Instead I did a model. Interestingly being 11 or 00 means that you can produce a self sustaining population since 11 are braves who breed with braves, and 00 are cowards which breed with coward. However as explained under heavy predation groups of braves do much better than groups of cowards.

If you are 01 or 10 then you wish to breed with a different type from yourself. This means that only a mixed population strategy works and is more complex and liable to failure than the simple 11 or 00 strategies.

In the few test runs I performed the 11 quickly became the most dominant type, but then entered population dynamics due to other factors. This eventually gave an opportunity for other types to take over, which usually lead to extinction of all the bugs. One notable feature is the prevalence of type 10 i.e. brave bugs who seek to mate with cowards. As the 11 population falls away and cowards become more frequent it is beneficial to mate with a coward. However under heavy predation large groups of cowards get decimated, so braves are selected for which benefits 10s. However as the cowards fall away 10 run out of mates and if 11s can’t respond fast enough the system collapses.

The program worked by setting the probabilities of each bug, and then throwing dice to select individuals into the next generation. Thus it was not that whole squares got selected for (as in reality) but rather than probability of being selected was increased in good squares. I thought this would reflect general dynamics better.

2Do The model doesn’t have proper diploid sex. A proper diploid genome with sex (genetic mixing) and dominance effects will complicate this logic.

Hereness & Existence

Slowly condensing an awareness of “hereness” and existence.

While working in the Walthamstow FoodGiant in 1994, washing my hands and looking in the mirror, I suddenly experienced that the “thought” that I had a brain (the mental picture so to speak) was better illustrated by the fact I was having the thought. That is the existence that we attribute to other brains was in my case proven by the existence of the world. To put it again: if we survey the objective world we can identify any number of objects, all of which occupy the same status of being part of the world. Then there is the question of which object is myself, it is as though I then need to “enter” the world and when I do I discover that the object of my “brain” corresponds to my experience of the world itself. The existence of my perceptions and my world is the same as the existence of my brain – there is only one level of existence. This is the identity theory which states that brains are consciousness, rather than cause it. Now this runs into problems so expressed but is the beginning of the awareness.

Yesterday came a similar awareness that the existence of the Universe is the same as my existence. It followed from thoughts inspired by a hypothesis on TV that Jack the Ripper was a known criminal with a mental illness that occasionally made him need to kill. This raises that ancient question of freedom and choice and evil once again. If he “needs” to in a way that he cannot control then is he culpable for his crimes? I believe, and have it supported in Buddhist teaching and others, that there is always choice. However if we sink to such a low level of consciousness that we can’t gain perspective on our desires then indeed it will seem to our consciousness that we are overwhelmed by forces beyond our control. Indeed he quite possibly had a desire to kill and mutilate women (this is after all only an extreme type of hatred and greed), but that he “needed” to suggests that his mind was already in a very low state when the desire hit. Once the awareness hits that we always have the possibility to escape the confines of our genetic and mechanistic programming (our body that is) the question arises about the nature of our experience of the world: is this the result of our genetics and mechanistic programming or does this transcend these? What we sense is purely mechanistic—the colours we see depend upon the receptors in our eyes and the wiring of our brain and even the language we speak—but the fact we sense is beyond this. Like Kierkegaard trying to separate the dancer from the dance it is hard to separate the actions of the mind from the mind itself. But if some people might want to say that the ability to see is only the sum of colours and other perceived elements, they might also want to say that a dance can exist without a dancer. Yet and this is crucial the dancer can’t be another type of dance! If we speak of transcending our experience of the world we are going outside experience. Now it is at that level that I realised we are no longer separate from the world. To use Heideggar’s metaphor, the light that shines through our experience is the very light of the Universe. To experience our existence is to experience the existence of the Universe.