Saturday, July 21, 2007
HIERARCHY V
This might be rather lengthy post, but I have just expressed here my ideas on hierarchy, comparing and repeating as the basic pillars of evolution
Hierarchy, Comparing and Repeating
After several years of research in the fields of few sciences like, memetics, semiotics, evolutionary psychology, biology, ethology, genetics, epigenetics, physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, neurology, linguistics and some others sciences I have come to conclusion that that what drives a man can be reduced to only few essential factors. On the other hand these few factors have an incredible multitude of facets, forms of appearance.
Here I would like to mention just two of them, as I believe they are the two main factors guiding human beings, and not only that, these two factors are – as I see it – valid for all live on earth, though I realize that it can sound too highbrow, and spite the fact that I realize that right now it might happen to be to difficult or totally impossible to prove my statements.
Hierarchy appears always when there are more than one individual in a group. And it does not matter whether it is a group of humans or group of some animals or even plants or only cells. Because of this hierarchy is on the second place of these two factors, and therefore I am going to discuss the phenomenon of comparing first and hierarchy afterwards.
Repeating is also absolutely necessary to allow for better responses to signals from our environment. Repeating can be thought of as the third factor needed for creation of systems that provide organisms with the abilities to react properly to their environment. Repeating reinforces the patterns stored in brain that are used for filtering out the proper reaction. Therefore I will give some small excurse to this topic too.
Comparing
What is difficult about explaining this phenomenon of comparing is that we do it without knowing that, the next problem is that all living creatures do that but we are unaware of that. Next problem is that different researches on this field come up with different terms. Somebody speaks of patterning, where I prefer the term filtering. So actually, semiotics, with its subpart linguistics is severely confusing the whole matter as different people use different terms to describe basically the same phenomenon.
So, what do I mean by comparing? And how should I explain that? I will try to start like this: All organisms constantly and without stop do check on their environment. We, people have our 5 senses that give us information about our environment. These senses never stop functioning. Even in the night when we sleep, our senses provide our brain with information about the position of our body in bed and therefore we never fall from our bed. Sometimes a man totally drunk can fall of his bed because alcohol blurred his senses and the ability of brain to process the delivered data.
Next example how comparing functions in humans would be this one: Just imagine you are sitting with me in a pub and I ask you to do the following: for only one second you turn your head and watch a picture on the wall, then you turn back to me and you answer my question whether you like or dislike the picture. Funny thing is that you will give me straight answer. You will say either “I like it” or “I do not like it”; and that after only one second of seeing the picture. How is this possible?
It is easy; your brain does the work for you. It compares all the colors from the picture with all the colors you have ever seen, it finds whether these are colors you usually like or dislike. Your brain also compares all the forms and shapes of objects on the picture with all the objects your brain has stored and the brain then decides whether the forms and shapes of objects are appealing to it. Your brain also compares the “mood” coming from the picture, and decides whether it is a good mood or a bad mood. This everything is done in less time than one second.
Next thing to show might be this comparison: A human being, as well as all, other creatures receives constantly signals from the “outside” world. Outside world means here their environment. It can be compared to a submarine. Submarine needs sonar and several other devices to be able to understand where it is, where it is heading to. If these devices were out of order the submarine would not know where it is and where it should go to. Of course, I mean the people inside of submarine and not the submarine itself.
Another example that could be used to explain this would be the case of anxiety in the dark streets. Usually every person feels uncomfortable when crossing or entering park, streets or some neighborhood where there is poor light only. The feeling is as that of the people in the submarine with non-functional sonar. Why do we feel uncomfortable? It is because our brain has too little information about the environment. The unpleasant feeling is actually a signal of brain that it cannot guarantee for our safety because it cannot check fully on our environment and cannot warn us against upcoming dangers. That is basically the same signal as pain. Pain is also only a signal that tells the organism:”Hello, buddy, you got hurt.” The unpleasant feeling we have when deprived of one of our senses, especially seeing or hearing is nothing but a pain signal of our brain saying: “Hello, buddy, here I cannot guarantee for your safety, get out of here, so that I can again take care of your safety.”
So here human brain has learned a lesson, not only that it can warn us when some danger is approaching us, it also warns us when it cannot fulfill its duties. It is only us who do not know what all our brain is doing for us. Extremely often we misinterpret the signals of our brain, and even more often we even do not know that our brain send signals to us.
Another good example how to explain the comparing function of our brain is car driving, or sports. Actually we could take whatever human activity known to us as an activity that requires some or thorough training. So, let’s start with car driving. When a person sits behind the steering wheel for the first time, one can see how the person’s brain is working hard: trying to catch and compare all the information coming. This is impossible and so the person reduces the speed of the car. Slower speed means slower influx of information to brain. Then after many miles driven the same person can drive 200kmh on German autobahn and listen to music or have a nice talk with the other persons in the car. This would have been impossible to master on the first day behind the steering wheel.
So what happened? Well, the brain has learned, minimally two things: first, it learned, stored situations, pictures of traffic, it created patterns, it had recognized and stored patterns. Second it has also learned to omit information that is not necessarily needed for driving. Based on these two things our brain is capable of driving car fast. All the situations that are delivered to our brain as signals about the outside world are processed, that means compared to all the stored information be it in form of patterns or not, and our brain give us always the best possible solution.
The same functions with sports. I like to use the example of ice-hockey goalkeeper. A puck shot at the goalkeeper usually has the speed of about 150kmh. That is 41.66 meters a second. Usually a puck is shot from a distance of 5 meters. That means that the goalkeeper has only one eights of a second to react, it is 0.125 seconds, and the normal human reaction time is approximately 0.2 seconds. That means the goalkeeper has basically no chance to catch the puck, but he does in the majority of cases. How is this possible? The goalie has learned through training to recognize other signals, like the speed of the attacking player, the angle he is coming from, the way he carries his stick, etc. All these information contribute to proper solution of the problem. And the problem is to catch the puck, and the goalie catches it.
One might think of hundreds of such examples, a basketball player throwing the ball to the basket is another good example, when we compare what a basketball player is doing and what a we do when we shoot a rifle. When shooting a rifle we have put three points into one line and we hit the target. When playing basketball we do not have any aiming devices, nevertheless we hit the basket too. Our brain makes all the necessary computations, it computes the distance the height, and the parabolic trajectory of the ball, and the strength we must apply to give the ball the correct momentum so that we are not to short and not too long for the basket.
From the evolutionary point of view comparing had to occur already several billion years ago. Even prokaryotes had to “understand” some signals. These signals were only the ones we know from physics, radiation of sun light, radiation of warmth, radiation of sound waves etc. AS they did understand these signals they could then develop into prokaryotes, and later on start to form more complex organisms. As prokaryotes are extremely simple organisms it took them so long to develop into prokaryotes, more than 2 billion years. From eukaryotes to first higher organisms it took then less than one billion years, and the real boom in the development and evolution of new organism took place a bit more than 500 million years ago.
Thus comparing is one of the most powerful systems applied by evolution. Actually it is logical that comparing can be the only system that brings us forward in understanding our lives and our surroundings. Every science compares, astronomy does that too, weather forecast models are based on comparing, any learning is based on comparing. Very often we compare without knowing that we are doing any comparing. Just recall the case with the picture. Hardly any person you give the task will realize what kind of work their brain is doing. It performs comparing but hardly anybody knows that or feels that. Usually we just only answer the question, without knowing what it takes to produce the answer.
To show how complex this all is I would like to mention the case that really happened when studying the brain. Several doctors making neurological research on one woman with slightly damaged brain after some brain surgery were testing responses when they touched her laugh center in her brain. The woman burst out in laugh. When asked why she laughed she answered: „Because you are standing so funny around me.”
This seems and also is pretty illogical answer. But the only one her brain was capable to produce. What actually happened? Well, the woman’s brain “knew several things. It knew that it was asked a question. It knew that it gave signals to lungs, to lips, to face muscles and other body organs to produce laugh. But it also did know that there was no reason to laugh. So the brain had to “invent” a reason for laughing. The only reason it could make sound plausible was that the doctors seem to stand there I a funny way. Her brain was desperately looking for something that might remotely resemble some good reason for laughing.
So, what brain is capable of performing is not only comparing but also evaluating; but evaluation is nothing else than comparing again. Here we can see ho complex and how simple our brain is at the same time. Our brain is really a champion in comparing; it compares signals emitted or broadcasted by our environment, always and constantly, and by this activity it also creates and stores patterns for faster filtering the proper reaction next time. The aim of making and storing patterns and using them as a filter for future actions is the necessity of fast reaction.
Let’s show a clear example for the need of fast reaction. One of such cases of bad need for fast reaction is the male fight for the position in hierarchy or the fight for females. In a fight all responses to the actions of the rival must be fast. Imagine what chances a male would have in such a fight when he would ponder how to hit his opponent. Most probably his chances would tend to nil. He would lose. But the purpose of such a fight is not to lose, it is to win. In such a case it is necessary to respond fast, and hit the opponent so fast and so severe that he cannot respond anymore. This can be done only by training. One must train how to hit. And by repeating that is by training, doing several times the same movement, our brain creates patterns. The more we train something the better we usually get. Of course, because we have trained we have reinforced not only our patterns and but also the activities of our brain while training. That means our brain learns how to compare and how to store and how to recall particular patterns. Thus repeating becomes also extremely important from the evolutionary point of view.
Repeating
It is not only humans already equipped with relatively highly developed brain and nervous system who need to repeat in order to be better at fast response. Animals must learn this too. Let’s imagine the case of a rabbit and an eagle. Eagle is a predator and wants to catch the rabbit to get its meal. A rabbit, of course, does not want to get eaten up. Both of them then must do some training, some repeating. Eagle must get better at flying and catching the rabbit and the rabbit must get better at fleeing. One of the decisive factors for a successful escape is to be well-informed about one’s environment. The first signal the rabbit should realize is the size and the speed of something approaching him. Size is important as when something is bigger then me I can get eaten up, as I am not strong enough to win a fight with somebody who is bigger. Bigger organisms are usually stronger. Speed is important for fleeing. If something bigger is approaching me and it is really much slower as I am, well, no problem, I can wait until this something comes closer and decide later whether I must flee or not. If something is remarkably bigger than me and also remarkably faster than me, then, I have a problem. I cannot fight and I cannot escape.
What does this has in common with repeating? Well, the organisms, in our case the rabbit had to learn to judge the size and the speed from distance. They had to realize that something that is in a large distance and appears as small might be really big, they also had to learn to judge the speed, as something that is close to us appears as moving fast and something that is far away appears as moving slow even though both objects are moving at the same speed. This learning process, this creating of patterns is possible only by repeating.
Organism perceiving something small and slow in a huge distance might be really surprised at he size and the speed of the predator when it comes closer. This experience must be stored and a pattern must be created and stored. A pattern will be only created when the same phenomenon repeats. Our brain and all the nervous systems have learned not to store ballast for ever. The only signal of importance for a particular phenomenon is the number of repetitions of this phenomenon.
Out of it I would conclude that our brain has created a memory system that I call M-L-M, multi-level memory. The less important some phenomenon is the lower the level of memory in which it is stored. The more important such a phenomenon the higher the memory level where it is stored by brain. Now this question must come: how does brain decides whether some phenomenon is or is not important? Brain makes this decision on the bases of number of repetitions of the phenomenon. That is, if some phenomenon repeats very often then it is shifted to the next higher level of memory an is more easily accessible for brain, which is good as it can produce really fast reaction to signals. If some phenomenon appears really sporadically, it is stored in some lower levels of MLM and is not so easily accessible, because it is not so important to be able to have a super fast response to something that is not so important. Brain is saving his capacities for the important stuff.
Therefore also some information and patterns that had been stored a long time ago and for a long time there was no use for them are shifted to lower levels of memory. One can easily observe this when leaning foreign languages and then not using the acquired knowledge. This knowledge slowly disappears.
Repeating is the system enabling evolution; it is the gauge for measuring the importance of some phenomenon. The importance of some phenomenon and its storing on different levels of memory is actually the first hierarchy; hierarchy of memory, hierarchy of important and less important signals. This hierarchy allows for safety and also for further investigating the environment. I we were always only terribly afraid of whatever were happening around us we could not go any further, we could not explore our surroundings, we would stay were we are not proceeding. We would be shock-frozen because of everything. In order to be able to do some exploring organism must recognize whether some signal is really dangerous or not. There must be hierarchy of signals, hierarchy of patterns and hierarchy of fears.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy is a simple system; one organism is higher than the other. What makes hierarchy so tricky is the tremendous number of forms of appearance. How people express their hierarchy is also not simple. Sometimes some status symbols are used to demonstrate one’s place in the hierarchy, sometimes it is the way of speaking, etc. The row of means of manifesting one’s own position in the human hierarchy is sheer endless. Sometimes it is the way of behaving.
Again there is endless number of examples of demonstrating the level in hierarchy among animals. Dogs for example like to sleep on sofas or some higher elevated places. The reason for such behavior is hierarchy. In a group of wolves the chief of the group sleeps on the highest place, and then all other wolves according to their place in hierarchy sleep below him, lower. The lowest dog sleeps on the lowest place. If a dog is with humans it automatically knows that it is lower than humans, so the hierarchy is no problem, only there is a rule that nobody likes to be constantly the last one, the one on the lowest level of hierarchy. And so dogs like to sleep higher to “escape” their lowest level in hierarchy, to get a better feeling of their own importance.
Quite recently I read and article in Malta Independent Online, there was an article where one could see that so called “boat people”, the refugees from Africa, constitute the absolute bottom of society on Malta. Interesting was that Maltese people from the very bottom of Maltese society feel a level higher than these refuges. In such a way we see that hierarchy is omnipresent. It functions on Malta as it did in the times of Roman Empire, or in ancient Egypt.
Hierarchy can be very easily observed in a classroom. A good teacher in a class of some vocational school can see all the tricks the kids are using in fight for their position in the hierarchy of the class. Why vocational school is a better place for such observations? It is because the kids from lower layers of society usually attend such schools and these kids are less “socialized”. They act more guided by their emotions than logic, and therefore it is easier to observe and notice what they actually do.
There are different kinds of hierarchy. One is among males and females. This is extremely interesting field to study and observe. In ethology one can get information about hierarchy of males and females among animals. Let’s take a lion. A male lion does not catches prey, it is the task of lioness to do so, then, when some antelope is caught she “calls” her lion and “master” and he gets his stomach full, she can get something to eat after he is full and something remains. Well, we humans have developed a bit since these times and we can eat at the same table, men and women. In some societies of this world this is still a stage of evolution that has not been reached. In such societies women are very often treated worse then stock. Just think of ritual mutilation of female genitals, and the way they must do all the work while men usually do only little, close to nothing.
We, humans, have pretty complex system of hierarchy. One is between men and women, other are for example king and his knights, knights and their servant, and then come slaves. At each level we have other levels. Just think of some teams in a league. There are several basketball leagues in each country, in every league we have many teams, in every team we have many players, and all these pieces are organized in hierarchy, some nations play basketball better than the other nations, in every nation there is some top league, whatever it is called, in every league there are teams and only one team can be the best, the number one in that league, and in every team we have players who also are organized by their abilities into hierarchy.
Let’s go back a bit to the kind of demonstrating one’s hierarchy level. As I have written before, dogs have the signal of hierarchy according to the place where they sleep. We have actually also accepted this elevated place as an expression of hierarchy in our human society. Knight and kings used to build their castles on hills, and all of their servants used to live under the castle. One can still see this organization when visiting a village with a castle. All today bosses usually have their offices on a higher floors, if a boss is speaking to his personnel, he usually does that from some elevated place, just think of trade unions leaders, or politicians during their election campaigns, think of sportsmen being honored, the first one is on the highest step, the second a bit lower and the third one stands on a step still a bit lower, the fourth one is not allowed to stand on the winner steps. In such a way we can see that elevated place is expression of hierarchy not only among dogs and some other animals, but also in human societies.
I will try to give here several examples of other expressions of hierarchy in human societies. The list of such examples can never be full and complete, as the tricks used to acquire the higher position or pretend having the higher position also develops, there is no standstill in evolution.
Once when working for chamber of commerce in one small Czech town I went to introduce myself to chiefs of different town and state offices. One of them reacted in a way I did not understand for along time. When I introduced myself with my name and my function as a professor of economics at one American university, he said approximately this: “We are not going to build here some university for you.” I was shocked as this had nothing to do with normal personal introduction. Only years later, I got it. It was his reaction to his disturbed perceiving of his own position in human society. He believed that his position is higher as the boss of one state office in the town. When I told him I was a professor, he perceived his position as lower than mine; this made him feel uncomfortable and he felt the need to correct this feeling of discrepancy. He could not elevate his position so he needed to sink mine. How could he possibly do it? He could say what ever what lowers my rank in the town. And for sure, if there is no university in the town so I am a professor of nothing and his position is again a bit higher. And that’s what he really did. Funny thing about such human responses is that they are incredible fast.
This would mean that we are pre-wired for such responses. How can this happen? The answer is the repetition. The man was used to fight, instead of helping other people he was the one who fights them to be the boss. His brain was trained at fast responses in protecting his position.
One could conclude that people who behave like this had experienced mostly fights for position in hierarchy, most probably they were never too good at school, and most probably they had to substitute the knowledge and altruism by fight for position. Such people are in general very dangerous. Think of Hitler, Stalin, and basically all “great” man in our history. Instead of helping they wanted their own feeling of being at the top of hierarchy.
A man or a woman can be on the top of hierarchy when helping others. The problem is that not so many people will understand this. Most people will fight for their position in hierarchy. This shows the level of “socialization” of individual persons within on society and of single societies among all societies. One can notice these differences when traveling among nations and staying a while to get the feeling for the respective society. In each society different systems of fight for hierarchy will by applied. The more these fights appear in one society the more the society is closer to animal realm than to human realm. There are no exact steps in evolution, evolution is developing without stop and there are no stages, in our sense. We only make these steps or stages or levels in order to get a better grasp of evolution.
Hierarchy has something to do with authority. There are several types of authority, for my purpose it is enough to use just two. These two are related to the power. One is power of knowledge, the other one is power of punishing, causing pain or death. The first one is positive the other one is negative but alas also needed. There are human beings that for different reasons are not capable of submitting to the power of knowledge and therefore they must be brought to order by power to punish. Just recall the myth of Moses, as he got the stone plate with Ten Commandments on it. Most probably he just did not know what to do so that his wild troops start to behave, as they refused to obey him. So he used the trick with the God giving him the plate saying how the people should behave properly. And they did, they accepted the commandments. I was about 2000 years ago, and we still need them to make people behave as people and not as animals.
Of course, as everything, also hierarchy can be misused. Originally designed for getting the opportunity to mate, now it is used for similar and different purposes. Every top man in human history who ruled some nation usually had many women. So we do not differ so much from wild horses, crocodiles, dogs and so on. The reason is evolution. If we were something really special we would not have these animal traits that we have in multitude, because we have developed from all these experiences several hundred million years ago. And our biological information system, DNA has stored all the necessary information, and we behave accordingly. Though not realizing it.
Hierarchy, Comparing and Repeating
After several years of research in the fields of few sciences like, memetics, semiotics, evolutionary psychology, biology, ethology, genetics, epigenetics, physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, neurology, linguistics and some others sciences I have come to conclusion that that what drives a man can be reduced to only few essential factors. On the other hand these few factors have an incredible multitude of facets, forms of appearance.
Here I would like to mention just two of them, as I believe they are the two main factors guiding human beings, and not only that, these two factors are – as I see it – valid for all live on earth, though I realize that it can sound too highbrow, and spite the fact that I realize that right now it might happen to be to difficult or totally impossible to prove my statements.
Hierarchy appears always when there are more than one individual in a group. And it does not matter whether it is a group of humans or group of some animals or even plants or only cells. Because of this hierarchy is on the second place of these two factors, and therefore I am going to discuss the phenomenon of comparing first and hierarchy afterwards.
Repeating is also absolutely necessary to allow for better responses to signals from our environment. Repeating can be thought of as the third factor needed for creation of systems that provide organisms with the abilities to react properly to their environment. Repeating reinforces the patterns stored in brain that are used for filtering out the proper reaction. Therefore I will give some small excurse to this topic too.
Comparing
What is difficult about explaining this phenomenon of comparing is that we do it without knowing that, the next problem is that all living creatures do that but we are unaware of that. Next problem is that different researches on this field come up with different terms. Somebody speaks of patterning, where I prefer the term filtering. So actually, semiotics, with its subpart linguistics is severely confusing the whole matter as different people use different terms to describe basically the same phenomenon.
So, what do I mean by comparing? And how should I explain that? I will try to start like this: All organisms constantly and without stop do check on their environment. We, people have our 5 senses that give us information about our environment. These senses never stop functioning. Even in the night when we sleep, our senses provide our brain with information about the position of our body in bed and therefore we never fall from our bed. Sometimes a man totally drunk can fall of his bed because alcohol blurred his senses and the ability of brain to process the delivered data.
Next example how comparing functions in humans would be this one: Just imagine you are sitting with me in a pub and I ask you to do the following: for only one second you turn your head and watch a picture on the wall, then you turn back to me and you answer my question whether you like or dislike the picture. Funny thing is that you will give me straight answer. You will say either “I like it” or “I do not like it”; and that after only one second of seeing the picture. How is this possible?
It is easy; your brain does the work for you. It compares all the colors from the picture with all the colors you have ever seen, it finds whether these are colors you usually like or dislike. Your brain also compares all the forms and shapes of objects on the picture with all the objects your brain has stored and the brain then decides whether the forms and shapes of objects are appealing to it. Your brain also compares the “mood” coming from the picture, and decides whether it is a good mood or a bad mood. This everything is done in less time than one second.
Next thing to show might be this comparison: A human being, as well as all, other creatures receives constantly signals from the “outside” world. Outside world means here their environment. It can be compared to a submarine. Submarine needs sonar and several other devices to be able to understand where it is, where it is heading to. If these devices were out of order the submarine would not know where it is and where it should go to. Of course, I mean the people inside of submarine and not the submarine itself.
Another example that could be used to explain this would be the case of anxiety in the dark streets. Usually every person feels uncomfortable when crossing or entering park, streets or some neighborhood where there is poor light only. The feeling is as that of the people in the submarine with non-functional sonar. Why do we feel uncomfortable? It is because our brain has too little information about the environment. The unpleasant feeling is actually a signal of brain that it cannot guarantee for our safety because it cannot check fully on our environment and cannot warn us against upcoming dangers. That is basically the same signal as pain. Pain is also only a signal that tells the organism:”Hello, buddy, you got hurt.” The unpleasant feeling we have when deprived of one of our senses, especially seeing or hearing is nothing but a pain signal of our brain saying: “Hello, buddy, here I cannot guarantee for your safety, get out of here, so that I can again take care of your safety.”
So here human brain has learned a lesson, not only that it can warn us when some danger is approaching us, it also warns us when it cannot fulfill its duties. It is only us who do not know what all our brain is doing for us. Extremely often we misinterpret the signals of our brain, and even more often we even do not know that our brain send signals to us.
Another good example how to explain the comparing function of our brain is car driving, or sports. Actually we could take whatever human activity known to us as an activity that requires some or thorough training. So, let’s start with car driving. When a person sits behind the steering wheel for the first time, one can see how the person’s brain is working hard: trying to catch and compare all the information coming. This is impossible and so the person reduces the speed of the car. Slower speed means slower influx of information to brain. Then after many miles driven the same person can drive 200kmh on German autobahn and listen to music or have a nice talk with the other persons in the car. This would have been impossible to master on the first day behind the steering wheel.
So what happened? Well, the brain has learned, minimally two things: first, it learned, stored situations, pictures of traffic, it created patterns, it had recognized and stored patterns. Second it has also learned to omit information that is not necessarily needed for driving. Based on these two things our brain is capable of driving car fast. All the situations that are delivered to our brain as signals about the outside world are processed, that means compared to all the stored information be it in form of patterns or not, and our brain give us always the best possible solution.
The same functions with sports. I like to use the example of ice-hockey goalkeeper. A puck shot at the goalkeeper usually has the speed of about 150kmh. That is 41.66 meters a second. Usually a puck is shot from a distance of 5 meters. That means that the goalkeeper has only one eights of a second to react, it is 0.125 seconds, and the normal human reaction time is approximately 0.2 seconds. That means the goalkeeper has basically no chance to catch the puck, but he does in the majority of cases. How is this possible? The goalie has learned through training to recognize other signals, like the speed of the attacking player, the angle he is coming from, the way he carries his stick, etc. All these information contribute to proper solution of the problem. And the problem is to catch the puck, and the goalie catches it.
One might think of hundreds of such examples, a basketball player throwing the ball to the basket is another good example, when we compare what a basketball player is doing and what a we do when we shoot a rifle. When shooting a rifle we have put three points into one line and we hit the target. When playing basketball we do not have any aiming devices, nevertheless we hit the basket too. Our brain makes all the necessary computations, it computes the distance the height, and the parabolic trajectory of the ball, and the strength we must apply to give the ball the correct momentum so that we are not to short and not too long for the basket.
From the evolutionary point of view comparing had to occur already several billion years ago. Even prokaryotes had to “understand” some signals. These signals were only the ones we know from physics, radiation of sun light, radiation of warmth, radiation of sound waves etc. AS they did understand these signals they could then develop into prokaryotes, and later on start to form more complex organisms. As prokaryotes are extremely simple organisms it took them so long to develop into prokaryotes, more than 2 billion years. From eukaryotes to first higher organisms it took then less than one billion years, and the real boom in the development and evolution of new organism took place a bit more than 500 million years ago.
Thus comparing is one of the most powerful systems applied by evolution. Actually it is logical that comparing can be the only system that brings us forward in understanding our lives and our surroundings. Every science compares, astronomy does that too, weather forecast models are based on comparing, any learning is based on comparing. Very often we compare without knowing that we are doing any comparing. Just recall the case with the picture. Hardly any person you give the task will realize what kind of work their brain is doing. It performs comparing but hardly anybody knows that or feels that. Usually we just only answer the question, without knowing what it takes to produce the answer.
To show how complex this all is I would like to mention the case that really happened when studying the brain. Several doctors making neurological research on one woman with slightly damaged brain after some brain surgery were testing responses when they touched her laugh center in her brain. The woman burst out in laugh. When asked why she laughed she answered: „Because you are standing so funny around me.”
This seems and also is pretty illogical answer. But the only one her brain was capable to produce. What actually happened? Well, the woman’s brain “knew several things. It knew that it was asked a question. It knew that it gave signals to lungs, to lips, to face muscles and other body organs to produce laugh. But it also did know that there was no reason to laugh. So the brain had to “invent” a reason for laughing. The only reason it could make sound plausible was that the doctors seem to stand there I a funny way. Her brain was desperately looking for something that might remotely resemble some good reason for laughing.
So, what brain is capable of performing is not only comparing but also evaluating; but evaluation is nothing else than comparing again. Here we can see ho complex and how simple our brain is at the same time. Our brain is really a champion in comparing; it compares signals emitted or broadcasted by our environment, always and constantly, and by this activity it also creates and stores patterns for faster filtering the proper reaction next time. The aim of making and storing patterns and using them as a filter for future actions is the necessity of fast reaction.
Let’s show a clear example for the need of fast reaction. One of such cases of bad need for fast reaction is the male fight for the position in hierarchy or the fight for females. In a fight all responses to the actions of the rival must be fast. Imagine what chances a male would have in such a fight when he would ponder how to hit his opponent. Most probably his chances would tend to nil. He would lose. But the purpose of such a fight is not to lose, it is to win. In such a case it is necessary to respond fast, and hit the opponent so fast and so severe that he cannot respond anymore. This can be done only by training. One must train how to hit. And by repeating that is by training, doing several times the same movement, our brain creates patterns. The more we train something the better we usually get. Of course, because we have trained we have reinforced not only our patterns and but also the activities of our brain while training. That means our brain learns how to compare and how to store and how to recall particular patterns. Thus repeating becomes also extremely important from the evolutionary point of view.
Repeating
It is not only humans already equipped with relatively highly developed brain and nervous system who need to repeat in order to be better at fast response. Animals must learn this too. Let’s imagine the case of a rabbit and an eagle. Eagle is a predator and wants to catch the rabbit to get its meal. A rabbit, of course, does not want to get eaten up. Both of them then must do some training, some repeating. Eagle must get better at flying and catching the rabbit and the rabbit must get better at fleeing. One of the decisive factors for a successful escape is to be well-informed about one’s environment. The first signal the rabbit should realize is the size and the speed of something approaching him. Size is important as when something is bigger then me I can get eaten up, as I am not strong enough to win a fight with somebody who is bigger. Bigger organisms are usually stronger. Speed is important for fleeing. If something bigger is approaching me and it is really much slower as I am, well, no problem, I can wait until this something comes closer and decide later whether I must flee or not. If something is remarkably bigger than me and also remarkably faster than me, then, I have a problem. I cannot fight and I cannot escape.
What does this has in common with repeating? Well, the organisms, in our case the rabbit had to learn to judge the size and the speed from distance. They had to realize that something that is in a large distance and appears as small might be really big, they also had to learn to judge the speed, as something that is close to us appears as moving fast and something that is far away appears as moving slow even though both objects are moving at the same speed. This learning process, this creating of patterns is possible only by repeating.
Organism perceiving something small and slow in a huge distance might be really surprised at he size and the speed of the predator when it comes closer. This experience must be stored and a pattern must be created and stored. A pattern will be only created when the same phenomenon repeats. Our brain and all the nervous systems have learned not to store ballast for ever. The only signal of importance for a particular phenomenon is the number of repetitions of this phenomenon.
Out of it I would conclude that our brain has created a memory system that I call M-L-M, multi-level memory. The less important some phenomenon is the lower the level of memory in which it is stored. The more important such a phenomenon the higher the memory level where it is stored by brain. Now this question must come: how does brain decides whether some phenomenon is or is not important? Brain makes this decision on the bases of number of repetitions of the phenomenon. That is, if some phenomenon repeats very often then it is shifted to the next higher level of memory an is more easily accessible for brain, which is good as it can produce really fast reaction to signals. If some phenomenon appears really sporadically, it is stored in some lower levels of MLM and is not so easily accessible, because it is not so important to be able to have a super fast response to something that is not so important. Brain is saving his capacities for the important stuff.
Therefore also some information and patterns that had been stored a long time ago and for a long time there was no use for them are shifted to lower levels of memory. One can easily observe this when leaning foreign languages and then not using the acquired knowledge. This knowledge slowly disappears.
Repeating is the system enabling evolution; it is the gauge for measuring the importance of some phenomenon. The importance of some phenomenon and its storing on different levels of memory is actually the first hierarchy; hierarchy of memory, hierarchy of important and less important signals. This hierarchy allows for safety and also for further investigating the environment. I we were always only terribly afraid of whatever were happening around us we could not go any further, we could not explore our surroundings, we would stay were we are not proceeding. We would be shock-frozen because of everything. In order to be able to do some exploring organism must recognize whether some signal is really dangerous or not. There must be hierarchy of signals, hierarchy of patterns and hierarchy of fears.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy is a simple system; one organism is higher than the other. What makes hierarchy so tricky is the tremendous number of forms of appearance. How people express their hierarchy is also not simple. Sometimes some status symbols are used to demonstrate one’s place in the hierarchy, sometimes it is the way of speaking, etc. The row of means of manifesting one’s own position in the human hierarchy is sheer endless. Sometimes it is the way of behaving.
Again there is endless number of examples of demonstrating the level in hierarchy among animals. Dogs for example like to sleep on sofas or some higher elevated places. The reason for such behavior is hierarchy. In a group of wolves the chief of the group sleeps on the highest place, and then all other wolves according to their place in hierarchy sleep below him, lower. The lowest dog sleeps on the lowest place. If a dog is with humans it automatically knows that it is lower than humans, so the hierarchy is no problem, only there is a rule that nobody likes to be constantly the last one, the one on the lowest level of hierarchy. And so dogs like to sleep higher to “escape” their lowest level in hierarchy, to get a better feeling of their own importance.
Quite recently I read and article in Malta Independent Online, there was an article where one could see that so called “boat people”, the refugees from Africa, constitute the absolute bottom of society on Malta. Interesting was that Maltese people from the very bottom of Maltese society feel a level higher than these refuges. In such a way we see that hierarchy is omnipresent. It functions on Malta as it did in the times of Roman Empire, or in ancient Egypt.
Hierarchy can be very easily observed in a classroom. A good teacher in a class of some vocational school can see all the tricks the kids are using in fight for their position in the hierarchy of the class. Why vocational school is a better place for such observations? It is because the kids from lower layers of society usually attend such schools and these kids are less “socialized”. They act more guided by their emotions than logic, and therefore it is easier to observe and notice what they actually do.
There are different kinds of hierarchy. One is among males and females. This is extremely interesting field to study and observe. In ethology one can get information about hierarchy of males and females among animals. Let’s take a lion. A male lion does not catches prey, it is the task of lioness to do so, then, when some antelope is caught she “calls” her lion and “master” and he gets his stomach full, she can get something to eat after he is full and something remains. Well, we humans have developed a bit since these times and we can eat at the same table, men and women. In some societies of this world this is still a stage of evolution that has not been reached. In such societies women are very often treated worse then stock. Just think of ritual mutilation of female genitals, and the way they must do all the work while men usually do only little, close to nothing.
We, humans, have pretty complex system of hierarchy. One is between men and women, other are for example king and his knights, knights and their servant, and then come slaves. At each level we have other levels. Just think of some teams in a league. There are several basketball leagues in each country, in every league we have many teams, in every team we have many players, and all these pieces are organized in hierarchy, some nations play basketball better than the other nations, in every nation there is some top league, whatever it is called, in every league there are teams and only one team can be the best, the number one in that league, and in every team we have players who also are organized by their abilities into hierarchy.
Let’s go back a bit to the kind of demonstrating one’s hierarchy level. As I have written before, dogs have the signal of hierarchy according to the place where they sleep. We have actually also accepted this elevated place as an expression of hierarchy in our human society. Knight and kings used to build their castles on hills, and all of their servants used to live under the castle. One can still see this organization when visiting a village with a castle. All today bosses usually have their offices on a higher floors, if a boss is speaking to his personnel, he usually does that from some elevated place, just think of trade unions leaders, or politicians during their election campaigns, think of sportsmen being honored, the first one is on the highest step, the second a bit lower and the third one stands on a step still a bit lower, the fourth one is not allowed to stand on the winner steps. In such a way we can see that elevated place is expression of hierarchy not only among dogs and some other animals, but also in human societies.
I will try to give here several examples of other expressions of hierarchy in human societies. The list of such examples can never be full and complete, as the tricks used to acquire the higher position or pretend having the higher position also develops, there is no standstill in evolution.
Once when working for chamber of commerce in one small Czech town I went to introduce myself to chiefs of different town and state offices. One of them reacted in a way I did not understand for along time. When I introduced myself with my name and my function as a professor of economics at one American university, he said approximately this: “We are not going to build here some university for you.” I was shocked as this had nothing to do with normal personal introduction. Only years later, I got it. It was his reaction to his disturbed perceiving of his own position in human society. He believed that his position is higher as the boss of one state office in the town. When I told him I was a professor, he perceived his position as lower than mine; this made him feel uncomfortable and he felt the need to correct this feeling of discrepancy. He could not elevate his position so he needed to sink mine. How could he possibly do it? He could say what ever what lowers my rank in the town. And for sure, if there is no university in the town so I am a professor of nothing and his position is again a bit higher. And that’s what he really did. Funny thing about such human responses is that they are incredible fast.
This would mean that we are pre-wired for such responses. How can this happen? The answer is the repetition. The man was used to fight, instead of helping other people he was the one who fights them to be the boss. His brain was trained at fast responses in protecting his position.
One could conclude that people who behave like this had experienced mostly fights for position in hierarchy, most probably they were never too good at school, and most probably they had to substitute the knowledge and altruism by fight for position. Such people are in general very dangerous. Think of Hitler, Stalin, and basically all “great” man in our history. Instead of helping they wanted their own feeling of being at the top of hierarchy.
A man or a woman can be on the top of hierarchy when helping others. The problem is that not so many people will understand this. Most people will fight for their position in hierarchy. This shows the level of “socialization” of individual persons within on society and of single societies among all societies. One can notice these differences when traveling among nations and staying a while to get the feeling for the respective society. In each society different systems of fight for hierarchy will by applied. The more these fights appear in one society the more the society is closer to animal realm than to human realm. There are no exact steps in evolution, evolution is developing without stop and there are no stages, in our sense. We only make these steps or stages or levels in order to get a better grasp of evolution.
Hierarchy has something to do with authority. There are several types of authority, for my purpose it is enough to use just two. These two are related to the power. One is power of knowledge, the other one is power of punishing, causing pain or death. The first one is positive the other one is negative but alas also needed. There are human beings that for different reasons are not capable of submitting to the power of knowledge and therefore they must be brought to order by power to punish. Just recall the myth of Moses, as he got the stone plate with Ten Commandments on it. Most probably he just did not know what to do so that his wild troops start to behave, as they refused to obey him. So he used the trick with the God giving him the plate saying how the people should behave properly. And they did, they accepted the commandments. I was about 2000 years ago, and we still need them to make people behave as people and not as animals.
Of course, as everything, also hierarchy can be misused. Originally designed for getting the opportunity to mate, now it is used for similar and different purposes. Every top man in human history who ruled some nation usually had many women. So we do not differ so much from wild horses, crocodiles, dogs and so on. The reason is evolution. If we were something really special we would not have these animal traits that we have in multitude, because we have developed from all these experiences several hundred million years ago. And our biological information system, DNA has stored all the necessary information, and we behave accordingly. Though not realizing it.
# posted by Dalibor @ 8:06 AM 
