Thursday, March 29, 2007
Concrete and generalized ideas
Here I post my ideas on several ideas of three professors in their paper on Neuroeconomics, I really think that specifically these two posts are worth reading. Think when you read it.
NUMBER ONE
Relative isolation of group of humans
Information, genetic information, memetic information, information processing, homeostasis, tolerance, genetic island, language island, political island, economic island, neuroeconomics,
In this paper neuroeconomics (this PDF file has 56 pages and is written in English) several extremely interesting topics joining psychology, neurology and economics can be found. One of such topic, at least for me, is the evidence that there is a huge difference between emotionally and cognitively triggered responses. There also seem to be strong evidence for the fact that cognitively driven actions appear later in the whole process of brain data processing, where at the beginning it seems to be just only the pleasure, which in turn might be the simple product of homeostasis. How this works can be explained easily:
Consider following situation: A friend of yours has bought a new SUV and you would like to have it too, in order to be like him spite the fact that you really do not need such a huge car, you only transport yourself because you work as a professor and your friend needs that SUV as a strong car for pulling cars damaged in accidents as he lives on repairing such cars.
So what happens first is emotional, as a part of homeostasis; emotions guided to protect you and your social position in the hierarchy in the groups of humans around you. Much later when you slowly realize that you do not need this car, you slowly begin to define your exact requirements your have on your car. That is the cognitive, logical part of our brain logic. The first one, the illogical, the emotional part, was the one to force you to get the same or even bigger car as your friend has.
Actually, I believe that envy might be a product of homeostasis, the process which strives for stability and functions as corrective system if it finds too severe differences, and tries to get rid of these differences.
I believe that people living for relatively long time in relatively severely closed groups, like those on islands, or in “language-islands”; or even political- or economical-islands, might perceive envy more severely when somebody from outside the group comes and “destroys” their homeostatic equilibrium. People living in more differentiated society with many different inputs will have developed more “tolerant” homeostatic system and do not envy so severely.
Here I would like to explain my terms “language-island”, “political-island” and “economical-island”, and also compare these a bit with population really living on an island like Icelanders, who are being used for tracing down “bad” genes; as it is easier to do such genetic project in population relatively isolated from the influences from the outside world.
Experts in genetics are involved only with biological, genetical information, but humans developed the second way of evolution, the mental or as I call it, memetic evolution. There is already evidence that even such memetical, mental information gets written into DNA, specifically to that part of DNA that does not code for proteins, formerly called “junk DNA” and today being subject to great scientific efforts, under the name epigenetics
So it seems that also this mental, memetic information is extremely important for evolution, and it might reveal itself as the second stage of evolution, leaving the sexually selective stage of evolution behind. If this really is so, and I strongly believe it is, then, of course, mental, memetic information “behaves” the same way as genetical information. In this case, when tracing down the beginning of some genetic disease is easier in population living on an island, then, tracing down beginnings of some mental, memetic disorders, or just only differences between groups of people, it must be much easier to search for the differences in populations that are relatively isolated.
Relatively isolated groups of people, from memetic point of view, are people who put barriers around their groups. Such barrier can be language. Why some languages are perceived as barriers and some are not, depends on the context in which the language exists. English e.g. poses no barriers; actually everybody tries to learn English as much as possible nowadays. Some other languages can act as barriers - Czech e.g. - there is little sense in learning Czech for people from other nations, but some do, but only really few. So Czech language works as a barrier around the nation and so relatively it is isolating the nation from the memetic information. Mostly, languages that are extremely difficult or languages spoken only by few individuals, or languages spoken by a nation that seems not to contribute to the wealth of mankind may be perceived as barriers, not worth the effort to learn them. Therefore such nations live in “language islands”, the memetic, cognitive information is not passed over to them and their development slows down and remains at lower level, or there might be some memetic information passes over to them, but it is in low quantity, maybe even low quality due to miserable translation or it is processed in improper way. Language islands so isolate the group of people in the same way as water isolates the people on an island in the sea.
Similarly, political island or economic island are terms describing the relative isolation of group of people, they do not get certain type of cognitive, memetic information, for the reason, of being politically prevented from getting such information; examples might be all nations under the reign of communists in recent history, or nation or groups so poor that they cannot afford any kind of books or other reasonable media carriers. Another example can be any group of people living relatively far away from towns, taking care only of their cow herds, having no books, no schools, no TV etc. There are stages of such isolation, the language-, political- or economic islands are never as absolutely isolated as a real island in a sea. There is always a possibility of getting “some” information, but mostly too little and not good enough and the processing of such information is also full of mistakes.
Sometimes there are country people who can afford to visit their capital only once in their lives. Such people of course, also suffer relative isolation and are subject to slower mental, memetic or cognitive evolution. This would be then the example of economic island, or group of people living on such an “economic island”, being economically deprived of or cut off information stream, and thus being slowed down in their individual as well as in their group development.
NUMBER ONE
Relative isolation of group of humans
Information, genetic information, memetic information, information processing, homeostasis, tolerance, genetic island, language island, political island, economic island, neuroeconomics,
In this paper neuroeconomics (this PDF file has 56 pages and is written in English) several extremely interesting topics joining psychology, neurology and economics can be found. One of such topic, at least for me, is the evidence that there is a huge difference between emotionally and cognitively triggered responses. There also seem to be strong evidence for the fact that cognitively driven actions appear later in the whole process of brain data processing, where at the beginning it seems to be just only the pleasure, which in turn might be the simple product of homeostasis. How this works can be explained easily:
Consider following situation: A friend of yours has bought a new SUV and you would like to have it too, in order to be like him spite the fact that you really do not need such a huge car, you only transport yourself because you work as a professor and your friend needs that SUV as a strong car for pulling cars damaged in accidents as he lives on repairing such cars.
So what happens first is emotional, as a part of homeostasis; emotions guided to protect you and your social position in the hierarchy in the groups of humans around you. Much later when you slowly realize that you do not need this car, you slowly begin to define your exact requirements your have on your car. That is the cognitive, logical part of our brain logic. The first one, the illogical, the emotional part, was the one to force you to get the same or even bigger car as your friend has.
Actually, I believe that envy might be a product of homeostasis, the process which strives for stability and functions as corrective system if it finds too severe differences, and tries to get rid of these differences.
I believe that people living for relatively long time in relatively severely closed groups, like those on islands, or in “language-islands”; or even political- or economical-islands, might perceive envy more severely when somebody from outside the group comes and “destroys” their homeostatic equilibrium. People living in more differentiated society with many different inputs will have developed more “tolerant” homeostatic system and do not envy so severely.
Here I would like to explain my terms “language-island”, “political-island” and “economical-island”, and also compare these a bit with population really living on an island like Icelanders, who are being used for tracing down “bad” genes; as it is easier to do such genetic project in population relatively isolated from the influences from the outside world.
Experts in genetics are involved only with biological, genetical information, but humans developed the second way of evolution, the mental or as I call it, memetic evolution. There is already evidence that even such memetical, mental information gets written into DNA, specifically to that part of DNA that does not code for proteins, formerly called “junk DNA” and today being subject to great scientific efforts, under the name epigenetics
So it seems that also this mental, memetic information is extremely important for evolution, and it might reveal itself as the second stage of evolution, leaving the sexually selective stage of evolution behind. If this really is so, and I strongly believe it is, then, of course, mental, memetic information “behaves” the same way as genetical information. In this case, when tracing down the beginning of some genetic disease is easier in population living on an island, then, tracing down beginnings of some mental, memetic disorders, or just only differences between groups of people, it must be much easier to search for the differences in populations that are relatively isolated.
Relatively isolated groups of people, from memetic point of view, are people who put barriers around their groups. Such barrier can be language. Why some languages are perceived as barriers and some are not, depends on the context in which the language exists. English e.g. poses no barriers; actually everybody tries to learn English as much as possible nowadays. Some other languages can act as barriers - Czech e.g. - there is little sense in learning Czech for people from other nations, but some do, but only really few. So Czech language works as a barrier around the nation and so relatively it is isolating the nation from the memetic information. Mostly, languages that are extremely difficult or languages spoken only by few individuals, or languages spoken by a nation that seems not to contribute to the wealth of mankind may be perceived as barriers, not worth the effort to learn them. Therefore such nations live in “language islands”, the memetic, cognitive information is not passed over to them and their development slows down and remains at lower level, or there might be some memetic information passes over to them, but it is in low quantity, maybe even low quality due to miserable translation or it is processed in improper way. Language islands so isolate the group of people in the same way as water isolates the people on an island in the sea.
Similarly, political island or economic island are terms describing the relative isolation of group of people, they do not get certain type of cognitive, memetic information, for the reason, of being politically prevented from getting such information; examples might be all nations under the reign of communists in recent history, or nation or groups so poor that they cannot afford any kind of books or other reasonable media carriers. Another example can be any group of people living relatively far away from towns, taking care only of their cow herds, having no books, no schools, no TV etc. There are stages of such isolation, the language-, political- or economic islands are never as absolutely isolated as a real island in a sea. There is always a possibility of getting “some” information, but mostly too little and not good enough and the processing of such information is also full of mistakes.
Sometimes there are country people who can afford to visit their capital only once in their lives. Such people of course, also suffer relative isolation and are subject to slower mental, memetic or cognitive evolution. This would be then the example of economic island, or group of people living on such an “economic island”, being economically deprived of or cut off information stream, and thus being slowed down in their individual as well as in their group development.
# posted by Dalibor @ 12:37 PM 
