Rational Philosophy

The psychology and philosophy of familiarity.

My new baby was born last Friday. My four year old son was born on a Friday, too. And so was I. My mother noted the coincidence. I like coincidences even though rationally I don’t believe they signify anything.

Stephanie Rosenbloom writes in the NY Times about an odd phenomenon — that people identify with people and things that remind them of themselves. Research has shown that, for instance, people with the name Virginia tend to be more likely to move to Virginia (36% more likely than those not named Virginia). “It’s what we call implicit egotism,” says Dr. Pelham, a writer and researcher for the Gallup Organization. “We’ve shown time and time again that people are attracted to people, places and things that resemble their names, without a doubt.” The same effect revealed itself in those who contributed to Bush versus Gore — more Bs for Bush, more Gs for Gore. (Maybe the Democrats should investigate whether more registered independents in the US have surnames that start with an O or with a C…)

This associative effect seems curious but ultimately uninteresting until we dig a little deeper. I wasn’t convinced by Pelham’s easy conclusion that we can chalk this up to implicit egotism. Evolution, it seems to me, wires us to make associations. Making associations helps us connect parallel or related ideas and concepts. If we weren’t wired to make associations, we’d have a much tougher time grappling with abstraction and comparison.

As a case in point, researchers have created a drug that seems to be able to block the lethal effects of radiation by mimicking the action of cancer cells. Andrei Gudkov, of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, led development of the drug (code-named CBLB502). Once Gudkov and his team realized that radiation kills because of an effect called apoptosis — by which reparable cells die off because they have been damaged — they made the association with the actions of cancer. Cancers block apoptosis so that they can replicate. Gukov’s team developed a drug that mimics the malignant trick of cancer cells to block apoptosis for those exposed to radiation, thereby protecting them from cell death.

As with many of the traits that evolution bestows, the mental process of association has pluses and minuses. We have the wonderful, valuable power of association that permits us to draw analogies, extrapolate new ideas, and investigate and solve problems. But we associate even when the association is purely coincidental and signifies nothing. (An extreme example may be obsessive compulsive disorder by which people associate sets of activities or combinations of signifiers with good or bad outcomes.) Looking for one’s Googleganger is a mild side effect, as is the self-satisfaction with the idea that one and one’s sons were all born on the same day of the week.

Let’s Make a Deal — Probability Insight.

Yesterday I posted about how our intuition can mislead us. I spent a good while pondering the mathematical problem related in the post — that in a Let’s Make a Deal situation, one will be twice as successful if one switches consistently.

I thought later, too, about the reason the correct answer isn’t intuitive. And, after a couple of thought experiments, I realized that one can generate an intuitive conclusion to a similar problem.

In the Let’s Make A Deal example, the host gives the contestant a choice of three doors, behind one a car, behind two, goats. The contestant chooses, the host then reveals a goat behind one of the doors the contestant didn’t pick and gives him the option of sticking or switching. Counter-intuitively, if he switches the contestant will be twice as likely to win the car.

The trick to this problem is that there are three doors, and in revealing what’s behind one of them, the game tricks us into thinking that the problem is a a simple fifty-fifty shot.

But think about a similar thought experiment: We have a hundred doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the other ninety-nine are goats. We pick a door out of the hundred. The host then opens 98 of the doors to reveal 98 goats. The chance that the car is behind our door is still one in a hundred, but the chance that the car is behind the other door is now 99 out of 100. We’d be foolish not to switch…

The three door game fools us because it’s just three doors. Our minds have trouble processing the likelihood because the probability differences are, relatively, small. But after revealing a goat the method of arriving at the actual probability is just the same as the example with 100 doors — the chance that the car is behind the door we picked originally is still one in three, but the chance that it is behind the other door is two in three.

Perhaps this tells us something about the mind’s approach to processing statistics and risk. In life, we need to process and discard a lot of information. Some choices in life have high probability outcomes. Some have low probability outcomes. For these, the mind needs to have a clear sense of what to expect. For everything else the outcome is a bit of a crap shoot, and we have a much better chance of improving our lot if we work on avoiding dire outcomes. The brain isn’t wired for nuanced probability questions, because, even if it were, this wouldn’t really help us survive. We’re much better at avoiding or mitigating risk by anticipating and avoiding problems. That’s where the high value exists in life.

On intuition and how it can fool us.

In pointing to the problems with what we think we deduce, Dan Ariely, (Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, principal investigator of the MIT Media Lab’s eRationality group, and author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions) points to a study showing that whether someone opts to donate his or her organs depends on whether the question asks them to opt-in or opt-out. People will tend to stick with the default presented to them. Not because they don’t care, but because they care deeply but don’t feel able to decide from fundamental principles.
Similarly, a mathematical analysis of the game show “Let’s Make A Deal” reveals that people aren’t very good at intuiting the correct answers to probability problems. When choosing between three options, knowing that one option is wrong affects the likelihood of one’s secondary choice. On Let’s Make A Deal, Monty allowed the contestant make an initial choice between three doors, behind one of which was a car, while behind the other two were goats. Monty would then reveal a goat behind one of the two doors that the contestant didn’t pick. Should the contestant switch or stick? Does it make a difference to his chances of winning? Counterintuitively, the answer is that he should switch. This seems wrong but is born out by the math. (The “reveal” is constrained, effectively tipping off the chooser; if you switch, you win two out of three times; if you don’t switch you win only one out of three times. When explained in this way — 2/3 plus 1/3 = 1, it makes sense, but that is not how it appears intuitively.)

How does this relate to sexism and misogyny? Nicholas Kristof asks whether the routinely brutal and discriminatory treatment of women in many societies is sexist or misogynistic. He gets a lot of comments on his post. But I think that Kristof and his responders maybe miss the point because it offends intuition. Kristof argues that perhaps ritual abuse and discrimination of women is sexist rather than misogynistic.

It seems to me that intuitively we look at the question from a neutral perspective — that women are routinely discriminated against and abused in a ritual fashion yields evidence of sexism or misogyny. But what if it were evidence of something else? Wouldn’t this change the question?

Throughout the natural world, the male and female of the various species exhibit different behaviors. In some species the females raise the young. in others this is the task of the males. In some species the female is multi-hued and splendid, in others it is the male. In mammals, typically, females protect and nurture the young, men protect and feed the group. These are not sexist behaviors, since sexism is a conscious concept; the animals simply behave as they’ve evolved to behave.

Sexism and misogyny begin from but distort the neutral, natural concepts that differentiate females and males of the human species. But why does this happen at all? Humans exaggerate and conceptualize differences in ways that make them feel less threatened, more in control. Men traditionally exploit and codify the differences between the sexes to reduce their fear and feed their self-esteem. Likewise women do the same, but for the most part with less dramatic and harmful results.

Intuitively, we connect the ill-judged and harmful behaviors of abuse, control and humiliation with the concepts of sexism and misogyny, but they are more closely connected with the concepts of fear and defense. We exaggerate and exploit gender differences to counter our fears and bolster our defenses; this happens more readily in societies that have fewer less harmful mechanisms to bring about the same outcome. These defenses then become codified as socially accepted or tolerated or rejected concepts. Enlightenment, insight, education and social change are the only remedies.

In a 1929 interview, Albert Einstein apparently said: “I’m enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination, which I think is more important than knowledge.”

In order to have an opinion on Einstein’s statement, we first need to decide what he means by “more important.” Einstein was speaking of his own process. He had been asked whether intuition or inspiration accounted for his theories. Certainly, when devising a new theory, imagination plays a very significant role, and without it a new theory can’t emerge.

Einstein’s contribution to science was creative. For him, then, imagination was more important that knowledge.

As my wife and I visited our newborn son in the ICU today we talked about the role of the nursing staff. So much of what they do is routine — they learn how to care for the newborns and follow the instructions they’ve been given. But the difference between a competent nurse and a nurse who contributes something important is the degree to which she is engaged with the baby and his parents.

The competent nurse follows the correct procedures, attends to her tasks with care and dedication. The engaged nurse does this too, but also sees things, listens, and reacts.

Artist Mark Rothko said this about art: “It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”

Rothko could have been speaking about nursing. One looks at Rothko’s paintings and one could be forgiven for asking what they are about. But does this mean that they aren’t about something?

Rothko’s children are suing to have his remains unearthed and moved to a Jewish cemetery. I don’t know how Rothko would feel about this. Judged as a creative act, one imagines that he would find it rather obvious. Judged as an action in the world, one imagines he would find it somewhat depressing.

Another child of a famous person — Max Mosley, son of Oswald Mosley the notorious British Nazi — has been in trouble for exploring his imaginative world in a sadomasochistic orgy with prostitutes in London. Apparently, shades of Nazism can be detected in the role-play. Mosley is the chief of the Formula One motor racing federation and has been asked to resign.

The thread that I’m trying to mine is the concept of engagement. A nurse engaged with her role as caregiver. A scientist engaged with his role as a pursuer of new ideas. A painter engaged with the direct communication of otherwise uncommunicable ideas. And a man engaged with his legacy and its demons.

But what does any of this have to do with Bacon? Stanley Fish writes about deconstruction and Sir Francis Bacon.

Bacon predicted that rational thought would eventually win out; that we would one day have a consistent , complete understanding of the world we live in, but that we would go through tough times to get there. He predicted that language would get in the way. That the terms we use to talk about and define things would become recursively problematic.

Rothko sought to eliminate words. Bacon recognized their challenges. Einstein sought to subjugate knowledge.

There is a reason, I think, for such struggle. Rothko, Bacon and Einstein all felt painfully the distinction between ideas and reality. We experience reality, and we conceive of ideas.

Ideas can be consistent and whole and concrete. Reality must be felt and experienced and can never be pinned down. Einstein eluded language, Rothko avoided it, Mosley seeks to bend it, and Bacon wanted to wrestle with it, but found it stronger than him. Language, I would argue, can be accurate and complete when it expresses ideas, but not when it seeks to represent the world and our experience of it.

I was once involved in a philosophy discussion with someone who questioned whether we truly make progress through quantitative or rational analysis. Specifically, she questioned whether one could say that science has made progress. The perspective she argued took issue with the idea that progress can be defined and measured rationally. Or, put another way, that if you define progress rationally, you will inevitably end up with the conclusion that rational analysis leads to progress.

My wife gave birth to our second child this morning (my third). He was born at full term, but in some distress, having taken amniotic fluid into his lungs. The doctor also needed to cut the umbilical cord as it was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Later, as my new son recovered under the careful watch of the NICU doctors and nurses, my wife and I reflected on the way that modern medicine had affected our lives. The son who was born today may well not have made it without the supremely skilled and sophisticated medical care that the hospital provided. Similarly, my first son, at the same hospital, was saved from a life-threatening trachial infection two years ago, and my daughter, who has had an underdeveloped thyroid gland since birth, would have been plagued by poor development and ill-health if her condition had gone undiagnosed and untreated when she was a newborn.

As my wife pointed out, we’re not alone. Many children who thrive today would not have thrived a hundred or more years ago.

Is this progress?

Well, in one way I agree with the rebuke that this is progress only if you define progress as a relative success in one area over time. We’ve also slurried up rivers and lakes. We’ve depleted the fish in the oceans. We’ve unleashed terrible warfare and pollution. And we’ve changed the world’s climate so that species are threatened or wiped out and so that many millions of people and animals may be in danger in the future.

At the moment we’re very good at making specific, focused improvements. For the sake of our children and their children, I hope we get better at making general, far reaching and balanced improvements.

Changing the way we think.

Last week I wrote about the implications of what happens to an animal’s brain when you teach it to use a rake. I was fascinated and excited by the idea that the brain’s genetics may be changed by the way it is used. What might this tell us about our capacity to change the way we think and react?

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write today about the brain’s limited capacity for governing self-discipline. Research going back several years has shown that if you exercise restraint or self-discipline in one activity or area of your life, you will deplete your “self-restraint” resources and find it more difficult to remain disciplined in another activity. Complete a cross-word puzzle and you won’t be able to resist dessert.

The studies implicate blood sugar as an important factor in restoring or maintaining self-restraint. Subjects performed better on disciplined tasks if they were allowed to replenish their blood sugar between those tasks. (If only Spitzer had had a glass of lemonade after a hard day in the legislature!)

But most fascinating for me the research has shown that one can increase one’s self-discipline over time by exercising it. This likely (the article says “must”) reflects “some biological change in the brain.” “Even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity.”

David Brooks uses insights from sports psychologist H. A. Dorfman’s book The Mental ABC’s of Pitching to argue that the prevailing American emphasis on self-awareness and self-discovery has begun to shift back toward self-discipline and the idea of transcending onesself in one’s work. Brooks, not unusually, doesn’t provide any kind of specific context for his assertion, but his unearthing of Dorfman’s ideas proves a fortuitous coincidence.

Brooks quotes from Dorfman’s book: “Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear — and doubt.”

Combine this idea with the concept that we can, by exercising willpower and self-discipline, increase our capacity for it, and we have an even more powerful idea: we can choose to free ourselves from habits that inhibit our performance and self-satisfaction.

People, particularly young people, tend to rebel against the idea of excessive self-discipline. Too often the concept is fused with the idea of mindlessness or blind adherence to rules. Discipline can seem antithetical to freedom.

But we can distinguish between a reflexive adherence to habits, rules and regulations and the choice of adherence for the sake of improving self-discpline. One is passive and undirected, the other active and end-directed.

According to Dorfman, and supported by scientific research, it makes no difference whether we feel, in the moment, that we want to exercise self-discipline. If we act in a self-disciplined way we will increase our willpower. Just as we go to the gym to workout, whether we feel like it or not, we might be much more inclined to exercise self-discipline if we understand that it will make it easier for us to exercise more self-discipline in the future.

The same philosophy applies to other brain functions. If macaques and rodents in learning to use a rake exhibit changes in brain DNA, then we can postulate that people can experience changes in brain DNA by stretching the use of our minds.

(This theory comports with common sense (sophisticated mental tasks seem to make people more capable of performing sophisticated mental tasks) and studies that show brain exercise is linked with mental health in later life.)

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

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On the universal criticality of April Fools Day.

The susceptible age of four seemed to me too young for our son to be introduced to the joys and miseries of April Fools Day. My wife thought otherwise. And so it was that this morning he gusted into our dreams bright and early with a panoply of pranks all aimed at making himself happy at our expense.

April Fools Day is clearly the oldest and most significant holiday of any season, predating any other religious or secular holidays, and resonating so deeply with the very fundamental core of our existence, nay the existence of anything, that it hardly bears talking about. That being said, one still doesn’t need to share its rituals with a four year old.

For those who may not have found time to research the long history of April Fools Day, or who have delved back only so far as to the time of Chaucer and his Nun’s Priest Tale (c. 1400) or to the French and Dutch references dating back to the 16th century, I’ll touch on the foundational aspects of the holiday.

The celebration of a prank is a reference to the creation of something out of nothing. The prankster begins with a fiction, something untrue or fabricated, and ends up with an event of significance — the fooling of someone. This ritual sequence evokes the appearance of something out of nothing, which in turn recalls the origin of existence as we know it. What scientists now call the Higgs Boson — the superheavy particle the appearance of which they believe precipitated the big bang — used to be referred to as the Grande Bufon or, roughly translated, the “Large Idiot.” (This was, of course, in pre-scientific times.)

Archimedes, or the Greek’s geek, as he was known, was fascinated by the idea of the biggest prank of all time, and spent much of his middle and later life trying to perfect a trick on humankind that would last well beyond his death. He finally succeeded by calculating more accurately than any before him the irrational number Pi that relates the radius of a circle to its circumference. Archimedes would have been thrilled to know that even today, thousands of years later, schoolboys and schoolgirls the world over still tie their brains in knots trying to recall Pi to a large number of decimal places.

It was Archimedes, too, who jumped out of his bathtub shouting “Eureka!” This was not because he’d had an epiphany about the displacement of water, which is the commonly held myth, but because he’d figured out how to fool the king into thinking that he’d made him a suit out of golden thread. Hence Archimedes subsequent naked romp through the streets to the king’s palace. Archimedes was a true prankster.

Sadly today very few people think about the original significance of April Fools Day. It’s been turned into a circus of silly jokes and goofy tricks. I see this as a reflection of the times we live in. We spend too much time chasing material possessions, success, love, wealth, redeemable coupons, and not enough time focused on the essential void of meaning that underscores existence. If only we could all take this day to prank one another with a heartfelt sense of life’s irony and insignificance the world would be a better place.

 

 

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On nuanced news, suspect psychology and scientific black holes.

With much fanfare Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. today announced a set of changes to government organizations that regulate and oversee financial markets. Touted by the administration as a sweeping reform that will avoid future mishaps like the sub-prime mortgage mess, it is, upon closer inspection, nothing of the sort. In fact, Paulson’s plan is a market-friendly distraction from the real issues; it has been in the works for a while as part of the Bush administration’s market-friendly momentum toward less regulation. [Since I first drafted this blog entry the NY Times has altered its article to emphasize resistance to Paulson's plan.]

The presentation of Paulson’s plan, however, deliberately aims to make people think that the administration is responding to the current financial crisis by firming up regulation. One has to look twice and read through several sources to uncover the story behind the story. If one just reads the headlines and first paragraph or goes to a less rigorous source, one could be left with the mistaken impression that Paulson is taking swift and effective action.

Reporting on the interface between the worlds of literature and dating, Rachel Donadio manages to make me cringe with embarrassment. Not only have I not read and barely heard of Pushkin, but I’ve raved about Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Both dating faux pas for some of those Donadio interviewed. “When a guy tells me [Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance] changed his life, I wish he’d saved us both the embarrassment,” says Judy Heiblum, a literary agent. It seems that many people believe quite strongly that we can tell a lot about a person and our compatibility with them from what they read. Fortunately I had the emotional stamina to read on and find that Donadio also talked to those who think that such literary snobbishness is either overblown or wrong-headed. Writer Ariel Levy’s partner doesn’t read and Levy likes it that way.

And a judge in Hawaii is being asked to put a stop the work on the new large hadron particle collider in Switzerland’s CERN research facility by two men who claim that the experiments being contemplated could result in the destruction of the world. In countering the idea that high energy collisions between protons could lead to a disaster, one scientist who has studied the theoretical work around the artificial generation of black holes, says: “Maybe physics really is so weird as to not have black holes evaporate. But it would really, really have to be weird.” Comforting, perhaps, to some, but not so comforting, I’m sure, to others.

These three diverse stories all raise the matter of uncertainty in life and ideas. We read the news but how can we rely on what we read with any degree of certainty? People tell us how they make judgments, but how do we know that we can rely on their judgment? And important decisions get made about things that may affect our lives, but how do we know what to think of those decisions?

This difficulty seems to be amplified rather than assuaged by the amount of information available to us. Multiple perspectives on government, dating, and scientific research can lead to a situation in which nothing seems certain. If people with more direct access to information or more informed opinions than ours take diametric positions, how can we know what to believe?

In approaching the uncertain rationally, we should begin by exploring the reason for the uncertainty:

1. Insufficient information: Paulson’s plan seems appropriate if we only have a little information about it. But the more we know about the specifics of the plan and the specifics of the crisis it purports to respond to, the more we can feel certain of our judgment of it.

2. Conflicting experience: If we listen to the daters who care about what someone reads, we may think that we should pay close attention to what we read or to the literature of potential partners. If we listen to those who don’t care, we may form the opposite opinion. The answer to conflicting experience is to dig beneath the response to the reactions. What do the opinions tell us? How does that analysis relate to us?

3. The real unknown: Even well-informed scientists can’t say for sure that running the hadron colider won’t have unexpected and disastrous consequences. They all speak of the extreme unlikelihood of anything untoward happening. What we face in this kind of situation is a risk analysis. If the risk is infinitesimally small we have, relatively speaking, nothing to worry about. The more renowned scientists examine and discount the risk, the more comfortable we should feel. (But let’s not think too hard about whether we could live without these experiments!!)

We don’t necessarily come any closer to eliminating the uncertainty, but we can rest easier knowing that we know why we don’t know.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On cell phones for Cubans and bailouts for homeowners.

As I walked through Manhattan this morning I watched as some buffoon on a cell phone began to cross the street just as the “don’t walk” sign blinked from flashing to solid. He didn’t realize that he was blocking traffic until he was half way across the street. With his phone still glued to his ear he first stopped in his tracks, then loped ahead to the far corner without so much as looking back.

Oh, to live in a world without cell phones! Even Cuba, my last hope of refuge from the cursed devices, has relented to the cell phone tide. Raul Castro — Raul The Reformer, we may as well call him — has declared that ordinary Cubans will be permitted to get cell phone contracts going forward (a privilege previously reserved for key state employees or workers for foreign firms). But since the cell phone contracts will be too expensive for most Cubans, who earn an average of a little less than $20 per month, perhaps it will take a while until cell phones cause traffic accidents in Havana.

But this snippet of communist party friction (Raul’s brother Fidel had held fast to the no cell phone policy for years) got me wondering about whether Raul should be classified as a liberal, allowing for progressive ideas, and Fidel a conservative. And if Fidel is a conservative how does that jive with him being one of the foremost and staunchest communist leaders of all time? Could Fidel Castro and his nemesis George Bush perhaps be sitting on the same side of an ideological fence? And if so, how?

As the current presidential hopefuls put forward their proposals (an odd phenomenon, this, since they’re just running for something, not running something) on fixing or mitigating the mortgage crisis, the stark differences in approach provide a lens through which to examine Democratic ideology versus Republican ideology.

This is a subject that fascinates me. For there to be such a clear division along political lines on so many issues, it seems that the roots of these divisions must live in a fundamental philosophical difference of perspective.

With some differences Obama and Clinton endorse proposals that would provide help to homeowners facing forclosure. McCain (and Bush) oppose any plan for homeowner bailout.

To paraphrase the liberal perspective “let’s help people stand on their own two feet.”

To paraphrase the conservative perspective “let people stand on their own two feet.”

As ideologies, both are rational and consistent. Where and why do they differ?

McCain has made it clear that he believes that homeowners deserve some blame if they’ve bought themselves into an unaffordable mortgage. His perspective is founded on personal responsibility, the freedom to succeed comes with the freedom to screw up. You make your choice and live with it. This same perspective underpins the conservative view on all manner of subjects, such as gun ownership and the death penalty (by all means get a gun, but if you shoot someone you shouldn’t you’ll pay for it with your life).

The conservative philosophy rests on the concept that the individual should have more control over his life and that government should not meddle.

The liberal philosophy rests on the concept that for the good of society, and the good of the individual, government should be ready to step in and provide protection or support.

Obama believes that homeowners need protection from banks eager to foreclose to stem their loses, for instance. While some may get help when they don’t deserve it. Many unwitting victims will be spared. And on gun control, a liberal may say that having the right to bear arms is all well and good unless innocent people are getting hurt by that right.

Is this just a difference of perspective without any deeper significance? I think not.

The roots are evolutionary: As social animals, human beings developed an awareness that while acting for themselves could lead to short term gains, acting for the good of all could lead to long term gains. Sharing your food might make you less well fed in the short term, but when you’re short of food, you’ll be happy for someone to share his food with you.

This is all very rational and common sensical, but even thoughtful people in a well ordered society still feel the pull of self preservation and self-satisfaction. We all experience impulses that lead us to want to act for ourselves, and we all experience impulses that lead us to want to help others. Whether we come out liberal or conservative hinges on the degree to which we believe it’s right and feel the rightness of balancing our own needs with those of others.

(For those who are interested, LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive explores a deeper philosophical basis for this line of reasoning by working from the principles of space and time.)

But what about Fidel and Raul?

Fidel Castro exhibited a deep conflict between his personal feelings about individualism — in which he was a conservative (how could a man who led a revolution and took firm control of a country not be convinced of the power and independence of his individual spirit?) — and his intellectual conviction of the benefits of a collaborative, equalized society, communism after all is liberalism on steroids.

This is perhaps why so many of us have a soft spot for the old guy (Fidel) despite his serious flaws and failings, despite his human rights abuses. We empathize with his internal conflict. We see the numbskull stopping traffic while he gabs on his cell phone and we want him to be delivered a comeuppance not a helping hand. But presented with the intellectual idea of helping those who took on too much mortgage debt (numbskulls, most likely, some of them) we easily fall on the side of assistance.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

How pride evolved as a beneficial trait… with drawbacks.

Over the years I’ve often landed on a great idea for an invention only to find out after the fact that it has already been invented. Audio historians now acknowledge that an inventor came up with the idea of recording sounds, and succeeded in doing so, more than twenty years before Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph. These same historians claim that this finding doesn’t diminish Thomas Edison’s achievement, because Edison went the extra step of replaying the sound he’d recorded, and because he apparently knew nothing of his predecessor’s work. While this perspective probably wouldn’t wash in a patent court, it certainly gives me a renewed sense of pride in my own innovations.

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautogram captured sound in squiggles on a sooty piece of paper. Scott was concerned with visual sound representation rather than sound reproduction, and it wasn’t until a team of researchers unearthed examples of Scott’s recordings and deciphered them with hi-tech wizardry that his phonautogram was proven to have done what he claimed it did. We can now hear some of Scott’s recordings reproduced.

Scott lived to see Edison’s phonograph make a hit, and fumed at the fact that Edison got all the credit. “What are the rights of the discoverer versus the improver?” Scott wrote.

Reference sources differ on the primary meaning of the word ‘pride.’ Dictionary.com prefers to go with the negative connotation first “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.” Whereas the American Heritage dictionary takes a more charitable view, with “a sense of one’s own proper dignity or value; self-respect,” and relegating the sense of an inordinate opinion of one’s self-worth to fifth place in its list of meanings.

Before Edison’s invention, one could say that Scott felt pride in his achievement. After Edison’s famed achievement, Scott’s pride was hurt. He then displayed pride in the negative sense.

I wonder to what extent the two definitions of pride refer to the same philosophical concept revealed under different conditions.

Paleontologists have just dated a jaw fragment found in Europe pushing back evidence of the appearance of human ancestors in those parts from 800,000 to 1.1 million years ago. The bone was found along with remnants of stone tools and butchered animals.

The story of human evolution aches with the concept of valuing achievement. Above all others, two things drive us to achieve — the desire for preservation of ourselves and our like, and the drive to achieve for the sake of having achieved.

From an evolutionary perspective, the former motive will more rarely stretch the species into new areas of achievement. Instead, I would say that it follows rationally that we have evolved to feel an intrinsic sense of satisfaction in achievement for the sake of achievement, for the very reason that this would tend to accelerate the selection of this beneficial trait.

Getting back to pride.

We attempt to achieve because we are genetically predisposed to seek to achieve. We feel a sense of satisfaction in having achieved something, again, because we are genetically disposed to feel this. When someone belittles or seems to belittle our achievements we feel an attack and, if we’re sensitive, a diminishment of this sense of achievement, which then results in either a prideful defense of our value or a pained withdrawal from the attack.

When Edison received acclaim for his invention, Scott’s pride was hurt for two reasons — firstly, he felt that his invention hadn’t received its due attention, his achievement was retrospectively diminished. And secondly, even after he laid claim to the original idea, people chose to continue to heap praise on Edison, adding insult to injury.

Objectively, of course, it doesn’t really matter who had the idea first. So long as Edison didn’t steal the idea, which, apparently he didn’t. Both men were brilliant and inventive. But one can’t help empathizing with Scott’s sense of hurt pride.

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