The end of Intellectual Property

Posted on May 22, 2009

This is great.

Why Accountants are Dull and Guitarists are Glamorous – The End of Intellectual Property

by Adrian Bowyer

Go up to a stranger in the street and ask them to give you the keys to their car, and you will receive an abrupt and unhelpful reply. Go up to a stranger in the street and ask them to give you their most interesting idea, and fifteen minutes later you will be glancing at your watch and inventing fictitious dentist’s appointments.

This prompts a profound biological question: if information is such valuable property, what is the Darwinian selective advantage in the ubiquitous impulse to give it away?

The answer was worked out a few years ago by the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller. He realised that the human mind did not just evolve as a problem-solving device, it also evolved by sexual selection – like the peacock’s tail – to waste resources in a way that cannot be faked. Peahens admire peacocks with fancy tails, because those peacocks are strong enough to waste the resources needed to grow the tail and to drag it about. That peacock has good genes for strength, growth, and endurance, and so is worth mating with.

Parts of the human mind are for wasting glucose in a way that cannot be faked. Your brain dumps about 20% of your body’s energy budget out of your head every second of your life. You cannot pretend to paint a picture well, or pretend to write a quatrain of iambic pentameters well – you cannot pretend to be witty. You need to waste real glucose to do those things, all of which have no utilitarian value.

“But hang on,” you say. “If that were so, then you would expect only men to be talented, because sexual selection works through the power of female choice selecting the best males. But everyone except the most unreconstructed chauvinist can see that women are as clever as men.”

True, normally: it is the peacocks that have to drag around the tail and the stags that have to hold the antlers aloft. But, to choose between them, peahens and hinds just need good eyesight, whereas the only way for a woman to judge if a man is clever is for her to be equally clever herself – the transmitting device and the receiving device are the same: their minds. That is why the most important four letters in lonely-hearts columns are GSOH, why musicians, painters, authors, and actors (who all do nothing actually useful, and so who waste great mental energy) are so attractive to the opposite sex, why bank managers, engineers and computer programmers (who don’t waste their intellect, but use it for gainful things) are considered geeky and unattractive, and why we all want to tell people any inspired idea as soon as it comes into our head. Showing off cleverness by frittering it away is one of the main things our brains are for.

Read the full article at http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/EndOfIntellectualProperty?skin=print.pattern

The Egalitarian Revolution

Posted on October 3, 2008

An interesting article on the evolution of inteligence and it’s impacts on Hierarchy vs. Egalitarianism in early human societies.

… great apes’ societies are very hierarchical with each animal occupying a particular place in the existing dominance hierarchy. A major function of coalitions in apes is to maintain or change the dominance ranking. When an alpha male is well established, he usually can intimidate any hostile coalition or the entire community.

In sharp contrast, most known hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian. Their weak leaders merely assist a consensus-seeking process when the group needs to make decisions, but otherwise all main political actors behave as equal. Some anthropologists argue that in egalitarian societies the pyramid of power is turned upside down with potential subordinates being able to express dominance over potential alpha-individuals by creating large, group-wide political alliance.

What were the reasons for such a drastic change in the group’s social organization during the origin of our own “uniquely unique” species? Some evolutionary biologists theorize that at some point in the Pleistocene, humans reached a level of ecological dominance that dramatically transformed the natural selection landscape. Instead of traditional “hostile forces of nature”, the competitive interactions among members of the same group became the most dominant evolutionary factor. According to this still controversial view, known as the “social brain” or “Machiavellian intelligence” hypothesis, more intelligent individuals were able to take advantage of other members of their group, achieve higher social status, and leave more offspring who inherited their parent’s genes for larger brain size and intelligence. As a result of this runaway process, the average brain size and intelligence were increasing [sic] across the whole human lineage.

Also increasing were the abilities to keep track of within-group social interactions, to remember friends and their allies and enemies, and to attract and use allies. At some point, physically weaker members of the group started forming successful and stable large coalitions against strong individuals who otherwise would achieve alpha-status and usurp the majority of the crucial resources. Eventually, an egalitarian society was established.

from Eureka Alert

And, for all my poli-sci nerds, here’s the link to the original studfy that the article is about: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003293.

chimp inteligence & anthropocentrism

Posted on December 14, 2007

[video http://s9.video.blip.tv/1330001701037/Knews-YouVsTheChimp632.wmv]

Yet another proof for evolution – creationists want to believe humans are special, created unique, perfect, in the image of God, but looking at this it’s pretty obvious that we share common ancestors with chimps and other apes. (i mean, as if it wasn’t already proven by the fact they share something like 98% of our dna….). we evolved more complex linguistic capabilities and the ability to use more complicated tools, they got superior memory skills. we have more processor speed, they have a better hard drive…. it’s a basic evolutionary trade off. we adapted in one direction to be more effective as hunter-gatherers on the plains, using language and weapons to hunt larger more difficult prey. they adapted to be more effective as hunter-gatherers in the deep forest. and, of course, they continue to evolve just as we do. we are not “more evolved” then them, just different.

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