Chapter 35: The Matthew Principle

 

There has been a ‘progression’ through evolution due to the effects of reality, that brought all organisms into the steady state that we call Survival of the Fittest, and this has evolved a brain that reality ‘locked’ into a pattern that allowed all organisms to live together (somewhat) harmoniously.

 

However, ‘somewhat harmoniously’ is a viewpoint not shared by the participants who actively specialize to isolate themselves within their own specific reality. ‘The same thing that happened to tapeworms has also happened to all other parasites. To begin with they used their brains in a particularly cunning fashion to create a comfortable lifestyle for themselves, and when they finally achieved this, they began to turn into zombies.’ (The Compassionate Brain: How empathy creates intelligence, Gerald Huther, p 30)

 

This seeking of a ‘limited’ reality is an easy means of defence in a real world, but success is tied to the success of another species and is usually an evolutionary ‘dead end’. Another example of ‘isolationism’ is that of the mole that ‘ran the risk of being eaten by bigger animals, it was definitely beneficial for them from time to time simply to bury themselves. If it turned out that they also found enough to eat under the ground, these primordial moles soon no longer had any reasonable motive for ever coming to the surface again.’ (p 30)

 

So, it seems that all organisms seek a ‘niche’ where there is less competition, except one organism that in hindsight could be called a ‘generalist’, and it is that organism that can be followed throughout evolution and is currently called Humans. To continue this thread, in hindsight, it will be seen that certain humans will contribute to the evolving humanity and the vast majority of genetic combinations (in the other humans) will be ‘lost’, and it would seem more efficient if we could ‘concentrate’ the genes into those that are more likely to be of use and this would allow us to reduce the population and its effects on the world. This is seeking Survival of the Best and needs a forward-looking operator.

 

Humans achieved dominance over all other forms of life through changing reality and using an evolving brain to outwit other organisms through the use of technology to breed, fish, farm etc.. Resistance to antibiotics shows that bacteria are fighting back and are doing so, successfully, because of their means of ‘swapping’ genetic material and their short generation periods. The other animals are having problems. However, our reality says that we should get along with everyone else, and the question is does that include the other animals? Do we need billions of humans at the expense of the world’s flora and fauna, when the vast majority will not contributing to our evolution?

 

Consider the following quotation: ‘humanity is a magnificent but fragile achievement. Our species is still more impressive because we are the culmination of an evolutionary epic that was continuously played out in great peril. Most of the time our ancestral populations were very small, of a size that in the course of mammalian history typically carried a probability of early extinction. All the prehuman bands taken together made up a population of at most a few tens of thousands of individuals.’ (The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson, p 13)

 

Again, I ask, do we need the billions of people on this planet, consuming resources, proliferating as they please and pressuring the animals that have evolved with us? I believe that the vast majority of people are consuming resources and contributing little, not even themselves as food for other creatures, and that the planet is large enough that animals and a reasonable number of people can maintain the reality of life, by leaving the animals to Survival of the Fittest and we can use Survival of the Best without exerting too much pressure on them. But, to do this, we have to rid the world of ‘population pressure’ and that means becoming one united people using Survival of the Best because, as shown below, the time has come.

 

To expand a little: ‘in birds, marsupials, and animals, we find many examples of such initial programming that look like genetically determined, inborn behaviours, but when looked at more closely reveal themselves as cases of imprinting occurring early in life.’ (p48) Further, an overcrowded world changes people for the worse. ‘Rats raised by bad mothers, even if some of their siblings are devoured as babies, turn out as adult animals to be more simply structured and more strongly instinct driven than those raised by good mothers. They are more belligerent and brutal and for that reason, primarily in the case of male animals, more successful sexually. The circuitry in their brain is more “primitive”, less complex, and not so densely networked. When the need is for fast, unequivocal, and uncompromising reactions, a rat with such a simply constructed brain has the advantage.’ (p 53)

 

This is similar to the situation seen in chapter 17: Race and Intelligence, and supports the idea that civilization is not helped by over-crowding and especially the importance of a good and stable upbringing of children. ‘If you redistribute the female offspring immediately after birth in such a way that half the young raised by a “good” mother are her own and half those of a “bad” mother, all of them will later turn out to be mothers who take scrupulously good care of their young. Conversely, all the female offspring raised by a negligent mother, even if biologically from a “good” mother, will grow up to be “bad” mothers.’ (p 52)

 

The Rule of Life implies that all animals have a simple physical mind/brain that supports our reality and the evidence is still there because there can be no ‘going back’. The original mind/brain comprised the hindbrain and the cerebellum. The ‘social’ brain that later developed in the fish and through to us, was the formation of the cortex, which grew in size and importance as we evolved.

 

To add weight to the supposition that the cortex is primarily for social interactions, ‘given that play fighting can be a very complex behavior, we might expect, at least for some species, that its generation requires some cortical input. This is not the case. As we mentioned earlier, rats and hamsters that have had their cortex removed surgically (are decorticated) at birth play in a seemingly normal fashion as juveniles and young adults.’ (The Playful Brain, Sergio Pellis and Vivien Pellis, p 46)

 

So the ‘earlier’ mind/brain was advanced enough to allow play-fighting and, presumably true fighting and predation. This is the mind/brain that fosters Survival of the Fittest and the evolution of the cortex is driving Survival of the Fittest in a different direction to that commonly acknowledged. Since the advent of farming, we have moved in a different direction, and I think of animals and humans as ‘flowers’ that present ourselves to the world to spread the genes that make us what we are.

 

‘However, the evolutionary selection process involved here was not the one that has been known since Darwin’s time as the “survival of the fittest”, but rather more particularly a second mechanism that Darwin also recognized but that has hitherto received insufficient attention. This second evolutionary selective mechanism is known as sexual selection.’ (p 55)

 

Sexual selection prompts some of us to paint our faces, wear rings and ear-rings, walk on ‘high heels’ that make us appear taller etc. Others use wealth, prestige, rank etc as substitutes to fighting ability to attract mates, and in fact, monetary success in the modern world equates with success at fighting in the world at large. Thus the best fighting genes were carried on in Survival of the Fittest, whereas business ‘acumen’ is the winner in the modern world. Sexual selection is the fore-runner to being content with your partner, so that after all the competitive partnering, ‘bonding’ leads to a ‘permanent’ relationship.

 

‘Close emotional bonding between the two parents is the prerequisite for the development of the family and thus for bonding between the parents and their children. As this kind of bonding took place, hand in hand with it there occurred a breathtaking increase in the mental, emotional, and social capabilities of the clans that were able to develop this kind of bonding to the greatest extent.’ (p 56)

 

We are heading towards Survival of the Best in the ‘best’ way that we can and that is a form of Survival of the Fittest and Sexual Selection, but there is no limit to the population numbers as technology supplies ‘cheap’ food and no application of an authority to restrict population. We can achieve Survival of the Best in a more optimal way, but first, we have to digress and consider, what is the state of the mind/brain.

 

Computing is a form of mathematics that uses iteration to reach an answer (in the limit). Mathematics does also, but it hides it as differentiation and integration. Computing uses Mathematical Models and I use a simple form of a mathematical model in a share portfolio investment program that I developed. Each accounting variable for the company is assigned an importance, the high and low of a number of companies ‘normalizes’ the figure for a particular company and the sum is compared between the companies to find the highest number and that company with the highest summation is considered to be the ‘best’. That is quite straight-forward and simple, but someone has to determine the method of measurement, or it has to be left to an iteration, which requires an operator. The operator in Survival of the Fittest is simply survival of the fittest.

 

Reality leads to Survival of the Fittest (and Sexual Selection) in humans, and that concept lasted till farming changed the world. Now, as was seen with the growth of the cortex, it is no longer relevant and corresponded to the hindbrain/cerebellum, which worked well using stored senses as memories that probably circulated within the hindbrain (as a means of retaining and comparing sensory information). The cortex uses a different (somewhat) fixed memory that used a lot less energy as well as ‘moulding’ memories in a more subtle fashion to guide future actions.

 

The Rule of Life suggests that the mind/brain is complicated in chemistry and simple in form and can’t ‘go back’. The ‘old brain’ is there for us to see, above, and the form is the Mathematics of the Mind, and as I have said before, it is almost ‘not there’ because it is so simple. The cortex makes this clearer by being larger and showing the ‘lobes’ where speech, hearing etc. are stored for context and mimic the attractors of the Mathematics of the Mind.

 

To repeat, Survival of the Fittest has been moving to Survival of the Best for hundreds of millions of years, but it is doing so by iteration, which is a Truth, but mindless and follows a direction by trial and error. Our mind/brain is built on the Mathematics of the Mind and uses ‘induction’ for creative thinking, which also is ‘mindless’! How much more powerful is the Mathematics of the Mind with one or more minds directing it! This is the Survival of the Best that the mind/brain has been trying to accomplish for hundreds of millions of years, and it now becomes possible, literally overnight! The reason that we can speed-up the process is because we now understand the processes that underlie such concepts and we can use the Mathematics of the Mind to compare instead of iterate.

 

There seems to be a relationship between the fact that measurement influences the universe, probably because logic is one of the dimensions of the universe, and the ability to see our way clearly through the problems of the social sciences, and that could be due to the same effect. The logic of the mind/brain, the logic of the universe, entanglement, the logic of organisms’ behaviour, reality (and the interaction between animals) appear to be related, and the relationship is starting to appear, but, of course, the answer is that they are related through the three Laws of Life! A top down and bottom up relationship or symmetry that we saw in the previous chapter.

 

The example of the mathematical model, given above, needs a direction and a method for it to be of use, and I had to supply that direction. Now, we can direct evolution because we have the means, and the means that we have are the fundamental building blocks of ‘everything’. Existence shows that we live in a probability space which supports logic and Occam’s razor has a fundamental role as is shown in the derivation.

 

Truth and reality define everything through the three Laws of Life, and reality shows that we have to get along together if we are to have a stable system. The converse appears to be occurring that if we don’t get together, reality forces an ‘extinction event’. Some may have occurred in the past when a ‘new’ facet of reality appeared, and I have mentioned the latest caused by us changing reality with breeding and technology. Using the Mathematics of the Mind, we can ‘track’ ourselves into the future by taking over the ‘mindless’ mathematical methods. I believe that we have the theoretical knowledge to forge ahead with Survival of the Best, but are we ‘ready’ for it! This book is trying to make us ready for it. There will be those people that can handle it and move forward and those that can’t. That is part of Survival of the Best, that the ‘best’ people are selected and encouraged to breed and the not so successful, discouraged.

 

This could be a good point to finish, but there is no finish, and everything keeps going around and is intertwined. ‘Under the right conditions, their cortex becomes thicker, it contains more synaptic contacts, its nerve cells have longer extensions with more branches, there are more glial cells, and the cortex even has more blood vessels with more branches to supply blood to these more complex neuronal circuits. As adults, “winged” rats can handle more difficult tasks in a more skilful fashion. They are more competent and have less fear of new things than their cousins who have grown up under “normal” conditions, in the usual kind of cage, and did not have the chance to experience extended family groups, to enter into many-sided contacts with other group members, to dig burrows, and in general to discover a more colourful rodent world with all kinds of different challenges and stimuli.’ (p 76)

 

‘But the most important thing of all does not become visible until these animals have become old, that is, until after two years have gone by. Then we find in the brains of the “normally” raised rats a considerable number of degenerative changes; whereas the brains of the “winged rats” still look quite normal. Some brain researchers call this “the Matthew principle”’ based on the phrase from the gospel, “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given” (Matthew 13:21)’ (p 76)

 

These two paragraphs are suggestive in that, if the stimulated rats are identified with successful people in society and compared with the run-of-the-mill citizen, the stimulated, successful person will produce more, live longer and should, given other criteria, form the basis of the Selection of the Best. The question of the ‘other criteria’ is considered in other chapters, and the quotation might be better remembered as: “for whosoever hath earned, to him shall be given” all manner of things that we strive for, but in moderation.