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Turtles all the way down

Started by Ishkur, April 13, 2012, 07:05:43 PM

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Ishkur

The great golden digger wasp has a peculiar behavioral pattern whenever she returns to her nest with her prey. Like any sensible burrow dweller, she first inspects the nest to make sure nothing has occupied it in her absence, leaving her paralyzed prize near the entrance. When she's satisfied that the coast is clear, she comes out, grabs her quarry and buries it alive for her brood. If she comes out and notices that her prey has moved, she will drag it back to the original spot and re-inspect the nest. If she comes out and the prey has moved again, she will drag it back and re-inspect the nest again. And over and over. As if stuck in a feedback loop, she keeps re-inspecting the nest even when she just checked it a few seconds ago. It never occurs to her to just pull the prey straight it.

This specific pattern of behavior is so hard-coded, so autonomic, and so damn funny that the wasp can be held in this state indefinitely, constantly rechecking the nest every time prankster scientists push her prey around with a pencil. She is not able to logically deduce what is happening. This behavior, called genetic fixity, is otherwise known as sphexishness after the digger wasp's scientific name sphex because this is a pretty famous experiment and scientists don't get out much.

As it turns out, this type of hardcoded behavior is pretty common in the animal kingdom. Pigeons, for instance, are slave to patterns just like the digger wasp however they will only repeat patterns that lead to good results. There's another famous experiment that affirms this because pigeons are just as fun to mess around with as digger wasps.

If some pigeons are placed in a box with a button that dispenses food, they will quickly figure out how to use the button. If the button's conditions are changed so that it dispenses food every third push, the pigeons will still figure out how to use the button. But if the button's conditions are changed so that it dispenses food after a random number of pushes, the pigeons will exhibit odd, patterned behavior. For instance, if a pigeon scratches its feathers a certain way before pushing the button and food is dispensed, the pigeon will repeat that scratch every time it pushes the button hoping for identical results. Before long, an elaborate repertoire of rituals occupies each pigeon. Some turn counter-clockwise twice while others stretch their wings and push the button while standing on one foot. Without understanding why the button sometimes gives food and sometimes doesn't, their brains give way to superstition. They are desperately looking for a pattern in something that is inherently patternless, using themselves as the qualifier.

This is also true with humans. Our tendency toward pattern recognition and adherence is no different than the behavior of wasps or pigeons, albeit with layers of abstraction on top. The first time we do something is results-oriented: We just want to get it done. Each subsequent time is process-oriented: We want to get it done faster, better and more efficiently. This is every student's first day at school or an employee's first week at the job.

The good news is the natural world is pretty well-patterned so being an overly-aggressive pattern-finder isn't a terrible handicap.

Probably the one thing man does that no animal does to a complete extent is anticipatory behavior – the ability to detect causes and consequences in events. Humans plan based on what they think will happen next, not on what is happening now. We observe, examine, extrapolate, record, and react to changing conditions. And we pass on this knowledge to future generations for continuity (but don't feel too special because man is also the only expert at killing large quantities of itself).

Anticipatory behavior was a crucial first step toward security, stability and comfort in ancient living. Neolithic man developed an awareness of weather patterns when he noticed that certain rivers always flooded on certain days of the year, naturally irrigating the land. By hanging around these floodplains and building permanent settlements, a replenishing supply of food was secured.

But sometimes the rivers didn't flood and people panicked because it broke the pattern that they were so reliant on, leading to anxiety, famine and chaos. Man wondered if there was something he needed to do to solve the riddle of the capricious weather. Maybe a rain dance or two would work. Or a human sacrifice. And sometimes, just by coincidence, his kooky actions did work. So he repeated those actions every time he needed the weather to cooperate, unaware of what true effect his actions had if any. This is known as a false positive result, an error in logic and reason, and is the basis of every superstition, religion, and belief that humans have ever had. Superstition is a form of ego – people believe that their actions are causal.

Human anxiety comes from trepidation about the future. We are built to anticipate future events and one of the strongest human fears is uncertainty about what happens next. When things change, it is a common tendency of man to resist these changes. We cannot anticipate the dangers the changes may bring us. We develop false positives in attempts to find order amidst chaos, because what we can control cannot hurt us. And we do it without even trying or noticing. Try it: Turn your television to a channel with all snow and watch it intently for a bit. After awhile you'll start to see patterns but they're not really there. It's pareidolia – your brain attempting to organize the mess in front of you into something orderly and recognizable. A psychotic delusion brought on by your own mind fighting with reality and trying to make sense of it.

The point of this tl;dr is that dischord -- pure Erisian Dischord -- is ultimately futile. However anarchic and free you may feel yourself being, at a fundamental level you are still a slave to your own pattern-worshipping thought processes. You want order. You love structure. Over time, you tend toward routine and regimen, a microcosm of the Universe tending toward thermal equilibrium or entropy. You cannot ever embrace chaos however much you prefer it. Like a gyroscope returning to equilibrium whichever direction you push it one way or another, your brain simply won't let you.

navkat told me to post this.


navkat

I said post an introduction, yes.

YAAAAY!

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Ishkur on April 13, 2012, 07:05:43 PM
The point of this tl;dr is that dischord -- pure Erisian Dischord -- is ultimately futile. However anarchic and free you may feel yourself being, at a fundamental level you are still a slave to your own pattern-worshipping thought processes. You want order. You love structure. Over time, you tend toward routine and regimen, a microcosm of the Universe tending toward thermal equilibrium or entropy. You cannot ever embrace chaos however much you prefer it. Like a gyroscope returning to equilibrium whichever direction you push it one way or another, your brain simply won't let you.

navkat told me to post this.

1.  What's "dischord"?

2.  Chaos includes order and disorder.  You seem to have us confused with anarchists.
Molon Lube

navkat

He's Canadian...they spell things funny.

Also, he's got 20 more posts before you're allowed to run the current through that cattle prod.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: navkat on April 13, 2012, 08:27:57 PM
He's Canadian...they spell things funny.

Also, he's got 20 more posts before you're allowed to run the current through that cattle prod.

I'm originally Canadian.  We don't spell "discord" with an h.
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

Quote from: navkat on April 13, 2012, 08:27:57 PM
Also, he's got 20 more posts before you're allowed to run the current through that cattle prod.

Who's firing up the cattle prod?  I mean, it's hard to get excited about "YUR DOIN' IT WRONG" introductions, anymore.  Dead Kennedy sort of beat that to death.  I was only saying.
Molon Lube

Cain

Biological determinism is so 1970s.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if humans seek order or not.  What they'll produce is chaos.  As soon as you have humans with conflicting interests, chaos will occur.  Human opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Your anthropocentrism is cute, though.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on April 13, 2012, 08:36:41 PM
Biological determinism is so 1970s.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if humans seek order or not.  What they'll produce is chaos.  As soon as you have humans with conflicting interests, chaos will occur.  Human opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Your anthropocentrism is cute, though.

The law of unintended consequences is what makes all this shit FUN, after all.
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

Also, I wouldn't worry too much, Navvie.  Your friend just has a case of "-ism".  Remember when you got here?  It was all about LibertarianISM.  Now Ishkur has a case of biological determinISM.

There's a cure for that, as you may recall.  Each and every one of us had to go through that cure.

It's just part of The Process™.
Molon Lube

navkat

FUUUN. Didn't I tell you?
BTW, did anyone show you the pool? We have a pool here! And benefits! You sign up for them after you've toured the pool!

SOMEONE SHOW HIM THE POOL.

Most of us opt out of the "benefits package" though. You'll see what I mean.


Cain

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 13, 2012, 08:37:42 PM
Quote from: Cain on April 13, 2012, 08:36:41 PM
Biological determinism is so 1970s.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if humans seek order or not.  What they'll produce is chaos.  As soon as you have humans with conflicting interests, chaos will occur.  Human opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Your anthropocentrism is cute, though.

The law of unintended consequences is what makes all this shit FUN, after all.

That too, but I was thinking basic game theory.

In fact, it goes even further than what I said above.  Even if you get two humans who agree that they themselves staying alive is in their interest, you can still have a zero-sum system in play where killing the other is the best way to secure that goal.  Now imagine a zero sum game with six billion players.

Applied mathematics FTW.

Bruno

I'm disappointed that there were no turtles in the story.  :sad:

I like turtles.
Formerly something else...

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on April 13, 2012, 08:43:24 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 13, 2012, 08:37:42 PM
Quote from: Cain on April 13, 2012, 08:36:41 PM
Biological determinism is so 1970s.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if humans seek order or not.  What they'll produce is chaos.  As soon as you have humans with conflicting interests, chaos will occur.  Human opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Your anthropocentrism is cute, though.

The law of unintended consequences is what makes all this shit FUN, after all.

That too, but I was thinking basic game theory.

In fact, it goes even further than what I said above.  Even if you get two humans who agree that they themselves staying alive is in their interest, you can still have a zero-sum system in play where killing the other is the best way to secure that goal.  Now imagine a zero sum game with six billion players.

Applied mathematics FTW.

What happened to the other billion?
Molon Lube

navkat

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 13, 2012, 08:40:36 PM
Also, I wouldn't worry too much, Navvie.  Your friend just has a case of "-ism".  Remember when you got here?  It was all about LibertarianISM.  Now Ishkur has a case of biological determinISM.

There's a cure for that, as you may recall.  Each and every one of us had to go through that cure.

It's just part of The Process™.

Oh yeah...The Process™. I liked the funny sausage-looking stuff that came out the other side of The Process™. Didn't we like, fry it up and feed it to those screeching rat-looking creatures at one point? Or  :?

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Emo Howard on April 13, 2012, 08:45:07 PM
I'm disappointed that there were no turtles in the story.  :sad:

I like turtles.

That was meant to be an obscure Feynmann story reference, used to establish Ishkur's cred.

And I like turtles, too...But they give me gas.
Molon Lube