From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Wed Nov 10 2004 - 21:45:21 MST
At 05:22 PM 10/11/04 -0800, Maru wrote:
>You misunderstand me here-
snip
Probably I do.
I get the impression you don't have a lot of background in evolutionary
psychology. (Correct me if I am wrong here.) EP in turn depends on an
understanding of the big advances in evolution theory over the last 30-40
years by William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and George Williams. Their work
was popularized by the still very relevant book _Selfish Gene_ by Richard
Dawkins. There is a bit of a thumbnail of Hamilton, Trivers, and Williams
here:
http://econ.ucsc.edu/faculty/dan/econ106/notes4.pdf
There is a layman's introduction to the subject here (interesting work by a
non scientist).
I think if you were up on EP/Selfish Gene theory, you would frame your
questions differently, in a way that I could answer clearly. Human
psychological traits such as capture-bonding, attention reward and this
mechanism for adjusting xenophobic meme gain can't be understood unless you
have the context of how they were useful. "Useful" that is to the genes in
terms of reproductive success in the environment of evolutionary
adaptiveness and over evolutionary time.
EP is also one of the major areas of knowledge that contributes to AI
discussions so it is worth understanding.
www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
Be glad to try again if you want.
Keith Henson
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