My So-Called Penis

The evolution of grouping

Most of us understand or at least appreciate the concept of “grouping” in art e.g. showing reoccurring patterns or colors. I recently came across an interesting article that offers a theory as to why man evolved to appreciate aesthetic grouping. First the author defines the grouping concept:

Grouping is a well-known law frequently used by both artists and fashion designers. If you look at the classical Renaissance painting in figure 5, you will notice how the same azure blue color repeats all over the canvas — the sky, the robes, and the water. And the same tint of brown is used for clothes, skin, soil, etc. The artist uses a limited set of colors rather than an enormous range of colors.
…
The same holds for fashion. When you go to Nordstrom’s to buy a red skirt the salesgirl will advise you to buy a red scarf and a red belt to go with it…. what’s all this really about? Is there a logical reason for doing this? Is it just marketing and hype, or is it telling you something fundamental about the brain? This is the why question.

Yes, why? The question is enough to drive one mad.

…think of one of your arboreal ancestors trying to spot a lion hidden behind a screen of green splotches (a tree branch in front of it). What’s visible is only several yellow splotches — lion fragments. But the brain “says” (in effect): “What’s the likelihood that all these fragments are exactly the same color by coincidence? Zero. So they probably belong to one object. So let me glue them together to see what it is. Oops! It’s a lion — let me run!” This seemingly esoteric ability to group splotches may have made all the difference between life and death.

Earlier in the article, the author makes an inadvertently funny comment.

Chennai (Madras), the city in Southern India where I was born, dates back to the first millennium B.C. I often return to it as a visiting professor at the Institute of Neurology to work on patients with stroke, with phantom limbs following amputation, or a sensory loss caused by leprosy. During one three-month visit, we were going through a dry spell; there weren’t many patients to see.

Yes, it’s really a shame that stroke, phantom limb pain and leprosy are on the decline.

The deficiencies of the social marketplace

In the past, I’ve spoken about what I term the “social economy” — the concept that human social interactions can be thought of as an exchange of favors. It’s the idea that we keep tabs on who we’ve done favors for, and who has done us favors, and are less inclined to help people who we feel have shortchanged us. It’s what evolutionary biologists call “reciprocal altruism.”

There’s one pronounced downside to the system. As individuals, we love to be complimented, and hate to be criticized. As such, if someone gives us an empty compliment, we feel we owe them a favor. (You often see this in the interaction of women. “Oh, Judy, I love your blouse!” “Thank you, Margaret. You have the cutest shoes!” (Men are usually too busy dealing with important pursuits, such as thinking great thoughts or running the world to be bothered with such trivialities.)) Conversely, if someone gives us honest and useful criticism, we are prone to being angered.

This often leads to an “Emperor’s new clothes” scenario. A person who has great wealth and power will find it hard to get an honest opinion out of his sycophants because they are hoping their empty compliments will be returned in gifts of actual money or power. This is probably what happened to Egypt’s soon-to-be outgoing Pres. Mubarak. None of his counselors were willing to tell him that the people were growing restless, and thus, when riots broke out, he was caught by surprise. I’m also reminded of Keith Richards. A friend of mine recently saw him perform live and said he was just plain awful. Of course, the crowds loudly applauded each horrible guitar solo and Richards himself seemed unaware of his deficiencies. He too is probably surrounded by an entourage unwilling to inform him that his abilities have waned.

Thus the powerful suffer in the social economy. But so does one other group. Great thinkers — such as myself — who think outside the box, who challenge the conventional wisdom of the moment are seen as threats precisely because we do not offer up empty platitudes or meaningless compliments. The stinking, snoring mediocrities that make up most of the human population remain determinedly oblivious to our greatness; they ignore, even ostracize us. And we are deprived of the steady access to wealth, fame and large breasted Asian school girls in bondage we so richly deserve.

Good-looking people also more intelligent

Refuting every dumb bimbo joke, a new study confirms what one would presume to be obvious: attractive people are smarter. The gist:

Lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa said: “In the samples, physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence, both with and without controls for social class, body size and health. The association between physical attractiveness and general intelligence is also stronger among men than among women.”

Why would this point seem obvious? It follows the rules of evolutionary psychology, as explained by the researcher.

Kanazawa added: “If more intelligent men are more likely to attain higher status, and if men of higher status are more likely to marry beautiful women, then, given intelligence and attractiveness are heritable, there should be a positive correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness in the children.”

Doubtless some social critics will make the argument that attractiveness is not an absolute quality, but rather one determined by changing standards of the culture and time period. But you can’t help but notice how unattractive those critics are.

Of course, if you need a specific example of the attractiveness/intelligence correlation, you need look no further than your humble blogger. I’m often mistaken for Johnny Depp, and my advanced cognitive abilities are beyond dispute.

Patterns or consistency

I was recently talking about a Ted talk delivered by Steven Pinker. He commented on a number of things, including the idea that the human brain is wired for certain aesthetic preferences, particularly patterns. He argued that much of the highbrow art and music of the 20th century ignored these preferences, falling under the spell of the “blank slate” hypothesis — the idea that humans are born with no innate biases. As such, much of that art and music never caught on with the public.

As I noted, this makes a lot of sense in terms of atonal music (by composers such as Stravinsky, Webern.) It’s music without discernible patterns such as repeating rhythmic phrase, or recurring structures (like four chords over and over for a verse.) Pattern loving humans should be frustrated by atonal music’s lack of patterns, and thus one would predict that atonal music would be only appreciated by tiny crowds of music nerds — exactly what has happened.

However, I’m not quite sure that it’s patterns which humans have a preference for. I think a better term might be consistency. If I see a plant with several leaves, and all the leaves are green, then there is no real pattern, but it is consistent that all the leaves have the same color. And if there was one purple leaf, it would stand out (e.g. that’s the inconsistently leaf.) I would propose that for much of evolution people were analyzing the consistency of their natural surroundings and became wary of inconsistency (“don’t eat the purple leaf!”) and now we apply this preference for consistency to our art forms.

The mystery of oral sex

Sex has always been a mystery to me. Not in pertaining it — women flock to me like grizzled prospectors rushing to the latest river reported to have a shiny bounty. Nor is sexual practice a mystery — my skills at pleasuring women are legendary. Rather, sex is a mystery from a perspective of the evolutionary sciences. Why did we evolve to practice it?

Some might say that the sex act fulfills the most basic desire of any creature — to replicate its genes. And it does, sometimes, though months past the actual date of the event. The more correct answer is that our biology rewards sexual acts with pleasure. The resulting children are merely a side effect.

But what about oral sex? It makes sense that the person to whom oral sex is being applied would enjoy it since it’s pleasurable in a way similar to regular sex. But often the person performing the oral sex enjoys the act. Why would this be?

One theory might be that the person realizes that they are “warming up” his or her partner, and will receive some sexual payback eventually.

But here’s what I wonder about. Do the sex organs exude some kind of olfactory treasure, a smell that turns us on? If that were the case, then we would have a general interest in burying our noses in each other’s crotches. Of course, we live in a culture where burying your nose in another person’s crotch is considered unseemly (unlike dogs.) So how do we convince another person to let our nose near their crotch? We essentially say, “while I’m down here, I’ll use my mouth to stimulate your genitalia.”

The meaning of life

After my life basically imploded due to my repetitive strain and vestibular issues, and I had to move from Los Angeles to San Diego, I spent a lot of time wondering about the meaning of life. More specifically, I found myself asking the question, “what do I do with my life now?” I’d basically just transitioned from a life of financial comfort, a rich peer group and steady access to pussy towards not knowing anybody, being celibate and spending a lot of time aimlessly walking around.

Mankind has, of course, grappled with these questions throughout its history. The presumption is that we should do what makes us happy. What makes us happy? Conventional answers might be having a relationship or family, generating wealth, accomplishing something (like writing a book) or earning celebrity. But those answers don’t ring so true these days. Families break up all the time, the miserable millionaire is a cliché and the joys of accomplishments and celebrity are fleeting.

In those early months of pondering the subject I noticed two things that gave me pleasure. One was continuing my lifelong dissection and exploration of music, the second was reading as much as possible as I could about the mind and the brain. It was the challenge of understanding some of the infinite mysteries integral to both subjects that gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

This idea, that man likes a challenge, is nothing new. Biologists presume our natural curiosity helped us evolve, and psychologists and neuroscientists argue that it’s built into our DNA. Think of it this way: a primitive man sees a rabbit. He takes a guess at how hard he needs to throw a rock to hit the rabbit on the head. He overshoots and the rabbit runs away. The next day he sees another rabbit, under shoots, and again loses it. The third day, he sees yet another rabbit (or maybe even the same one, your choice.) He muses on what he learned the previous two days, throws a rock, and hits the rabbit on the head. He’s just figured out how to add rabbit to his diet which will only benefit him and his species. His willingness to embrace challenges is passed down to his offspring etc.

But I don’t think it’s any challenge that gives us a sense of fulfillment. We have to be faced with challenges that we have a reasonable chance of overcoming. If you challenge yourself to learn everything about post-Newtonian physics by Friday, you’re going to be frustrated and overwhelmed. But if you challenge yourself to get a decent understanding of molecules by Friday, you just might achieve it. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist I’ve talked about in the past, has discussed this. When people are presented with insurmountable challenges, they stress out, and stress is not pleasant or particularly effective for accomplishing anything. But people thrive in an environment where they face reasonable challenges. And this idea of challenging people in a benevolent environment is especially applicable to learning. Sapolsky states…

… educators call this the x+1 rule. We take kids wherever they are now (level x) and then challenge them with x plus 1, not x plus a thousand. There has to be a good chance of success from the beginning.

If we return to my list of potential happiness inducers, we might conclude that relationships are, in fact, a viable pursuit in life, because they are challenges. Figuring out how to have a mutually beneficial and exciting relationship with someone is, in itself, a challenge. And you often hear marriage counselors say that successful marriages consist of partners who continually surprise and intrigue (e.g. challenge) each other.

But here’s the rub. As a heterosexual male, my only option is to seek a relationship with a heterosexual female. And figuring out what a woman wants is clearly an insurmountable challenge because they defy all laws of logic. Their emotional state undulates for no discernible reason, their sexual desires are fickle, and their personal demands fluctuate with all the predictability of the weather on one of Jupiter’s moons (which we all know is very unpredictable.) Someone such as myself — intelligent, good natured, quite reasonable — is doomed in any attempt to placate the wild beast we call woman.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of taking a thoughtful, perhaps even profound blog post, and appending to it a malicious slander against all women.

Our innate artistic preferences

I happened across this interesting Ted talk last night, featuring Steven Pinker discussing his then current book, “The Blank Slate.” He has some provocative thoughts about the arts, alleging that the decline in high arts during the 20 century was influenced partly by the popularization of the idea that human behavior is determined entirely by the environment and is not innate. If you accept this theory, you might theorize that since humans have no built-in preference for classic artistic concepts like patterns or repetition, they can be “programmed” to like anything including atonal music and non-representational art (think Jackson Pollock.) However, the blank slate hypothesis has largely been debunked — humans do have innate tendencies, including preferences for patterns and repetition etc. (I’m not sure that’s actually been proven without a doubt, but seems intuitively true.) Thus, art that flies in the face of these preferences will fail.

(I was recently reading about the theory that humans prefer uncluttered, non-busy forms of visual art because they remind us of the open savannas we lived in for most of our evolutionary history, savannas that gave us ample opportunity to see approaching predators.)

That seems to be exactly what happened with atonal music. Humans seeking discernible patterns in the music cannot find any in atonal compositions and thus the music is popular with only a tiny subset of people. (Occasionally, I find it quite interesting in a “horror music” sort of way, but it would probably drive me up the wall if it was the only thing I listened to.) 20th-century non-representational art seems a little more welcoming. I find some of it interesting look at in the same way it’s interesting to look at clouds or fields of plants in nature. But, nonetheless, it’s fair to say most people prefer art that “looks like something,” and gives their eyes something to hook into.

I’d have to read Pinker’s book to really think through the ramifications of all this, but I’m always interested in the way that ideas in the sciences can affect the art world, which tends to hold itself as being above such distractions.

On a complete tangent, I’ve noticed that Flo, the Progressive Insurance girl, is looking a bit peaked in recent commercials. I hope they’re not working her too hard.

The bound God

Occasionally, I’ve mocked followers of intelligent design in this blog, accusing them of being mentally incompetent retards, or feces stained morons, or dull-witted nimrods. Just good-natured razzing, really. But I have to concede that as I’ve been reading a lot about DNA and genetics and the cellular construction of the human body lately, I find it’s complexity so overwhelming that I have to wonder whether the only explanation for life is an intelligent designer.

Of course, on the flipside, I find the human body rather un-elegantly designed. The pathways which with the brain communicates to the rest of the body are often meandering and convoluted, and the system is rife with inefficiencies.

But an interesting thought struck me today. Man himself may not be far off from creating machines capable of complex processing such as learning. It may well happen that these devices — be they software or robots — will eventually develop some crude form of consciousness, and may wonder whether they themselves were created by a higher being or evolved “naturally.”

The answer will be that they were created by a god of sorts e.g. man. Of course, they would not be so much created as constructed out of existing parts. Man would not be willing the atoms and molecules these robots would be created from out of thin air. This opens up the interesting idea of a “bound God.” A god who can create life, but is still limited by the materials at hand and the laws of the universe.

Perhaps one day I could become a bound God. And use my power to destroy my enemies.

The bigger question

One of the more important questions I feel science can tackle is whether women prefer bigger penises. (“The answer is an incontrovertible YES!” I recall an advertisement in an old Penthouse announcing. I tend to agree, but then I have reason to be biased in the matter.) It basically gets down to a matter of evolutionary psychology. Women are attracted to attributes that will help in their innate goal of replicating the genes for the next generation. For example, there was an interesting study noting that women are attracted to the smells of men who have a high immunity to diseases the woman herself is not immune to. Obviously mating with such a man would result in a child with a tendency to be immune to a lot of diseases, and thus have a greater likelihood of survival.

So what would the advantage of a large penis be? Well it’s take a look at your average hunter/gatherer female. She’s probably had sex with five or six guys today, and their spunk is currently swimming through her uterus. Along comes a guy with big schlong. He nails her, and because he’s bigger, ejaculates deeper in her vagina, thus his boys get to go to the front of the line, so to speak.

Okay, so we can totally see the advantage of a big penis from the guy’s point of view. But what’s the appeal to the woman? I argue that she sees a guy with a big penis, and realizes that any sons she has with him will have big penises, and therefore have a greater chance of giving her grandchildren e.g. replicating genes.

So, we should expect to see longer and longer penises on human males as they engage in a evolutionary game of one upmanship. Is it possible that within 100 years men will be dragging along 3 foot pythons which will have a tendency to get caught in nearby electrical sockets, waffle irons, staplers? I would argue that it is not only possible, but very probable.

Ape logic

I’ve been greatly enjoying an interesting video lecture series by Robert Sapolsky on the biological origins of behavior. (10 years ago, my nights were spent banging strippers and snorting crystal meth off their boobs, now I enjoy video lecture series.)

In a segment I watched recently, Sapolsky described some interesting behavior on the parts of gorillas (or baboons, or some other kind of ape.) These apes live in a kind of harem culture where there’s one boss ape and he gets to have sex with all the chicks, while the other apes have to go jerk off in the forest. However, every couple years or so, a younger, tougher ape, will dethrone the top ape, and then this new ape gets all the women. And what does he do then? He kills all the infants sired by the previous ape. Why? Because these infants are nursing, and as a result, their mothers can’t get pregnant. If this ape seeks to pass on his genes, he needs to make sure that the apes he rapes (hey — that’s poetry!) can be impregnated. Thus his behavior — infanticide — is programmed by the demands of natural selection (e.g. apes that kill the babies of nursing mothers and then have sex with them will pass on their genes, the ones that don’t, won’t.)

That kind of explains the genetic programming, but I’m curious what the ape is actually thinking. It seems unlikely he’s thinking, “nursing mothers can’t get pregnant, so I better kill off their babies.” (I’m not sure I was even aware that nursing mothers can’t get pregnant until watching the video, and I’m a pretty smart ape.) But I also doubt he’s just filled with some robotic urge like “must… kill… infants…” Natural selection may explain the behavior, but how does the ape experience the behavior?

And this raises the rather obvious question: To what degree are we humans subject to these biological urges? Let’s say you find that your wife is sleeping with you. You get pissed off, maybe you kill her (paging OJ Simpson.) You might say your anger is justified, but why? So she slept around… who cares? Are you merely sensing a biological directive and then confabulating a rationale for your behavior? And if humans do that, are apes essentially doing the same thing in their heads — coming up with an excuse to kill the kids? (“These babies are ugly!”)