The Good Old Days Are Now

[jamesq]

The best thing I've read today. Go read it.

In sixteenth-century Paris, [animal cruelty was a popular form of entertainment] Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.

Comments

[ersatz-marduk.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Well worth the time it took to read it.

[pandorasbox.livejournal.com]

The cats did get their revenge though. The rats over populated and brought the Plague with them.. Clever Puss

[jamesq]

Which suggest that violence has been going down in two different categories: man vs. man and man vs. nature.

[snooness2]

Cool thanks. There is only one line in the whole thing I can take issue with and it doesn't change his arguments one iota... but I'm going to point it out... because would you really expect any less of me?

"Even if the meek could inherit the earth, natural selection could not favor the genes for meekness quickly enough."

Actually scientists are finding that the switching on and off of genes and causing an evolutionary push in one direction or another can happen quite quickly. This is a relatively recent finding in plant that up until this year was thought not to happen in animals, and then of course they found a similar system in animals.... and suddenly we (us genetics types) had to accept that perhaps our genetics were not as immutable as we once thought.
DNA used to be called a blueprint - and it was thought to change slowly and in a random manner over a long period of time.

Now it seems that DNA blueprint might be written on velum which can (given enough pressure) be scraped off and rewritten - and while this shouldn't be directly heritable (in the strict sense of the word) may be indirectly heritable for a generation or two before it becomes directly heritable. Which just makes my head hurt to try to focus on all the implications of that.

[jamesq]

Here comes some wild-ass arm-waving. So you're saying that we might be measurably more empathic now then we were 1000 years ago and that this is inheritable. Not that that has actually happened mind you, but that it's possible and could be tested? I certainly accept that empathy is a trait that can be selected for, I've just always been fuzzy on how you get from DNA and proteins to social behavior. I need to read more Dawkins.

Meanwhile, over in the super-science (SCIENCE!) laboratories, a group of decidedly unethical biologists with time machines are selecting a group of stone-age babies and modern babies and are raising each group in isolation. The group with the least caved in skulls after 30 years wins!

[snooness2]

Can I have this time machine you speak of?
:)

The problem with your babies (aside from the obvious time travel technical problem) is that nothing exists in isolation of it's surroundings. Genetics, no matter how hard wired, can change due to environment. I suspect you'd get a bunch of stone age thug babies in one group and a bunch of hannible lector babies in the other group. Babies raised in isolation of other humans are shown to be... broken. really really really broken.

[jamesq]

If I had a time machine, you'd all be addressing me as "God-Emperor Cyr".

Of course, I knew all that. But saying such doesn't bring the funny.

[snooness2]

Please forgive me oh God-Emperor Cyr.
My funny bone is not worthy of your shining radient humor today.

mea culpa, mea culpa
;)

[jamesq]

Such sincere flattery would definitely get you (limited and supervised) access to my time machine, if I had one. Well done.

[snooness2]

They've designed tests that look at the social behaviour in both birds and wolves to determine if there was a genetic component to it. It turns out there is; and this is where some of the theories about the evolutionary benifits to altruism comes from. (ie: why do wolves do things that help the pack and not themselves). This was a series of papers released a couple of years ago.

They've also designed tests that look at the evolution of mouse behaviour.... since you can look at a lot of mouse generations in a relatively short time you can consider evolution. It's not 100% but it's as close as we can get at the moment.

On the other side they've also found that certian human psychological pathologies, which have a genetic component, are not stable and you can switch between them. Depression, Anxiety disorders, and Schizophrenia all fall into this type of disorder - ie the disorder seems to come and go.

In plants we know that sex and stress genes are very quickly mutable and some of those changes can be transfered to the structures that generate pollen, eggs, or even seed at very early stages.

A genetic trait that is mutable in an adult organism is usually not heritable (and is called an epigenetic trait) but there is something called the persistance of epigenetic traits that occurs in plants, and now has also been shown in animals. This is where and epigentic trait has been shown to enter germlines over time, and thus become heritable.

As far as social behaviour, psychology and genetics are concerned...
Genes are the blueprints for proteins.
All hormones are protiens.
Changes in hormones influence mood
Ergo changes in protein levels influence mood.
Turning on and off genes causes changes in protien levels which influence mood.

The more you turn one set of genes on and a different set off causes different pathways to become regularly active.... the more you walk down a pathway the more it's entrenched - exactly like a path you make in the woods... it becomes less of a wild place and more a hardened path.

The longer a path is used the more it is a fixture of a landscape, and the longer it persists after it's use is stopped.

In animals the use of a biochemical pathway (ie: the use of a specific set of on and off genes) can be something that can be passed to the next generation.

[ophelia-is-dead.livejournal.com]

pleasepleaseplease cut the details of that. please.

[jamesq]

Done. Sorry about that.

[ophelia-is-dead.livejournal.com]

thanks.