The Knowing Universe by John Campbell

John Campbell's The Knowing Universe is out now.

Readers may be familiar with John Campbell because of his previous works, particularly:

• Universal Darwinism
• Darwin does Physics

Judging by the blurb, the work of Karl Friston is prominently on the menu.

Anyway, I didn't read this book yet, but subscribers may find it of interest.

The technical as a kingdom of life

Biologists categorize life into kingdoms. Animal, vegetable, fungal - and so on. Memetics proposes that culture is alive too. "Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically". Where does culture fit into biology's grand classification schemes? As far as I can tell, it doesn't. I've looked at numerous resources about classifying living things into large-scale categories or "kingdoms" - and none makes any mention of culture.

A pioneer of promoting classification of culture as its own kingdom has been Kevin Kelly. In "The Technium" and "What Technology Wants" Kevin argues that "technical stuff" merits classification as a new kingdom of life. Here is Kevin in 2007:

One way to think of the technium is as the 7th kingdom of life. There are roughly six kingdoms of life according to Lynn Margulis and others. As an extropic system that originated from animals, one of the six kingdoms, we can think of the technium as a 7th.

Technology seems a bit narrower than culture, but it covers many cultural phenotypes, so sure: the technical should be up there with the animal and the vegetable as a large scale kingoms of life. Go Kevin!

While Kevin has basically the right idea, I am more worried about the rest of the world's biologists. How come they are promoting such messed up classification schemes? How can they think culture is not alive? Rocks are not alive, but culture is clearly alive. It reproduces. It exhibits adaptation. Anyone who thinks that culture is not alive has a pretty messed up conception of what life is. Biology is the study of life - by definition. How can that not include culture?

I don't know exactly what has happened, here, but it is obviously pretty messed up. Biologists should be embarassed and ashamed of their crappy classifcation schemes. What were they thinking? How come they have made such an enormous screw up? I don't have all the answers, but I suspect that "the social sciences" might have something to do with it. Apparently, anything to do with humans comes under the remit of the social sciences - and they have got stuck in a murky backwater for decades, with many of the practitioners not accepting the scientific method, not accepting evolution, not accepting cultural evolution, or promoting various other sorts of archaic nonsense. Even so, it takes two to tango. If the social sciences want to monopolize the science of human behavior, other biologists don't have to let them. Biologists should stand up and fight for culture to also be within their remit.

Look at a car - for example. Is it an animal? No. Is it vegetable? No. Is it mineral? No. It is something else. That many biologists can't sensibly classify such a common object into their kingdoms of life reflects badly on them. They have screwed up. It is time for them to make amends.

Male homosexuality

Male homosexuality has long been regarded as being an evolutionary puzzle. Around 4 percent of men are homosexuals. They have on average five times fewer children than their heterosexual counterparts. Why doesn't the behavior die out? A common explanation is that "superwoman" genes spread through the female lineage, while inducing female behavior in males as a side effect. No doubt this explains some male homosexuality.

I previously discussed the possibility of parasites causing male homosexuality in my 2017 "ubiquitous parasites" article.

At the time I discussed culturally-induced homosexual behavior - giving the example of celibate priests and altar boys. However, the possibility of male homosexuality being induced by organic parasites is also of interest.

Homosexual men spend more time having sex and less time raising children. That's a situation favoring parasite transmission. Homosexual men famously have a high parasite burden. Male homosexuality correlates with HIV/AIDS, hepatitis A, B and C, gonorrhea, syphilis, toxoplasmosis - and probably many other infectious diseases. It is widely understood that male homosexual behavior causes parasite transmission. However it also seems possible that causation could run the other way around: parasites could favor the production of homosexual behavior - for example: by interfering with development during childhood.

Many parasites would "prefer" to sterilize their hosts, as a strategy to divert host resources away from producing offspring and towards spreading parasite genes. Male homosexuality is not sterilization, but it drastically reduces reproductive output - and so from the Point of view of parasites, it comes close. Many parasites would "like" to influence their hosts in this direction. Their influences may systematically add up.

Of course, it is not politically correct to say that male homosexuality could be (a symptom of) a disease. It took a long struggle by activists to get homosexuality out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, science doesn't care about what is in fashion - so the hypothesis need to be on the table and the evidence needs to be examined.

I don't have a lot of new evidence to present here. Many lab experiments relating to the topic are probably unethical, so we may have to rely on an analysis of the results of "natural experiments". Epidemiology is an obvious place to look for evidence for infectious homosexuality. My understanding is that homosexuality is fairly evenly distributed in human populations. That doesn't favor the hypothesis the "infectious homosexuality" hypothesis, but it is at least consistent with it - if a widespread parasite is involved.

Regardless of whether "infectious homosexuality" is a thing, science and technology are likely to be able to detect and reverse tendencies towards homosexuality in childhood. However, "infectious homosexuality" might make this outcome happen faster. Then that time comes, it seems likely to be a new controversial dilemma for those involved.

References

INFECTIOUS CAUSATION OF DISEASE: AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Ubiquitous parasites

Why people kiss

I've been reading about kissing - in particular about why people kiss. Kissing is not unique to humans, but humans and chimpanzees seem to do it more than most other animals. The consensus seems to be that kissing is mostly a mating behavior that is useful to humans. However, I am a bit sceptical about that being the end of the story.

A large number of symbiotes are transmitted via kissing. Kissing transmits mononucleosis, influenza, coronaviruses, herpes, syphilis, HPV - and many other diseases. Practically eveyone has at least one of these. It is in the interests of these parasites and symbiotes to manipulate their human hosts into kissing each other. In this picture, human genes take more of a back seat, and the story of kissing hs more to do with how various parasite and symbiont visitors manipulate their human hosts into kissing each other. Just as coughing and sneezing are partly human and partly parasite caused, so it could be with kissing. Kissing would also be a case of a behavior favored by many different sets of parasite genes.

The more sociable a species the more symbionts it has. There's a "spiral of sociality", where symbionts manipulate their hosts into ever closer contact, which in turn provides more opportunities for other symbionts to spread. This is an important theory in memetics - since memes act as social symbionts that induce ultrasocial behavior as part of their reproductive cycle. In other species, this "spiral of sociality" can lead to food sharing, grooming, coprophagia and many other social behaviors. Humans are quite sociable - and kissing seems to be part of the mix.

How might parasites manipulate human behavior to influence kissing frequency? Since parasites are inside their hosts, they are in a good position to influence behavior. Drugs are one possibility. Another possibility is sterilizing the host. Resources spent raising children are resources that could have been spent kissing people. HPV is a famous example of human parasite-induced sterility. It blocks up the tubes of women with cancerous cells, preventing future births. Less well known, but HHV-6A is another common cause of female infertility. It infects saliviary glands, is spread via saliva and it causes infertility. The more partners a woman has, the higher her chance of infertility. Parasites are responsible for this. Men are probably harder to sterilize, but erectile dysfunction is one method. Various STDs induce this. Erection issues make it harder for a man to keep hold of any one partner, but they may make it easier for a man to kiss multiple prospective partners - and that's a situation that parasites might prefer.

What evidence is there for symbiote hypothesis of kissing? Alas, I don't really know much about that yet. The hypothesis makes some predictions. It predicts that kissing frequency is likely correlated with infection with some specific parasites. It predicts that kissing behavior is more likely to be initiated by older individuals - since they will be carriers of a wider set of kissing-inducing symbionts. It predicts parasite-induced infertility - and that at least is known to be fairly common.

The symbiote hypothesis of kissing is much the same as the symbiote hypothesis of sexual intercourse. As with kissing most people assume that sexual intercourse is there to benefit human genes. However a large number of diseases are spread by sexual intercourse, and a good fraction of observed sexual behavior could actually be there to benefit them.

References

HHV-6A

HPV

Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Infertility