Ask A Genius 121 – Maternity Certainty & Paternity Uncertainty
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/03/18
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That explains part of it. I can explain it with, maybe, a metaphor, or an image, or a model.
Rick Rosner: Okay.
SDJ: Two concentric circles [Laughing], if I understand the idea right, and then an infinite expansion out. In the innermost circle, that will represent daily life and activities, and information processing—emotional, cognitive, otherwise—
RR: Yea.
SDJ: Just around that, the comfortable, but semi-fuzzy, areas of life. Where maybe weekly, monthly, yearly, these activities are engaged in that expand an individual. You’re learning how to paint. You’re learning how to play an instrument. You’re learning how to write a joke. You’re learning how to do better on the SAT. Things of this nature.
RR: Okay.
SDJ: Outside of that circle are things completely outside of your frame of reference, the inner circle and the one circle just outside of that. That expanse has infinite aspects, functionally speaking. So at some point, the models—if one is going through a mental illness given information or through circumstance in life comes across information, or is impacted in such a way, that their frame of reference for daily life, and even for the other weekly, monthly, yearly circle, then it is completely outside of the frameworks.
That person is left in a crisis. So what does that person do? How does an organism handle that? So that leads to two questions, and I’ll make it quick. First question, how does this increase survivability? Because an organism in this state, obviously—just by observation—is more susceptible to predators in a survival-based ancestral environment. As well, it might make them less desirable as a partner or a mate.
So they may be less likely to pass on their genes. So not only, how does this affect survivability in an ancestral environment? But also, what mechanisms would then come online through selective pressures to be able to guide an organism functionally, quickly back into a functional state in ancestral, survival environments?
RR: Okay, there’s a thing in evolution. I just read about it. Some characteristics, or some evolved abilities,are highly adaptive in high probability situations and useless in low probability situations, relatively useless. So let’s assume that if you’re in such danger that your life flashes before your eyes, then it’s not likely that an information dump is going to save you at that point. That out of all of that stuff that your brain has dumped on you.
That somehow you’re going to pick out the right things and save yourself, from the sabre tooth tiger or some other Flintstones creature on the savanna.
SDJ: I would add one thing there too. Think about mating partner, statistically speaking, and based on surveys; if you ask a woman, ‘what is more critical as a harm to you?’ I am paraphrasing. Is it emotional infidelity or physical, sexual, infidelity? For women, it tends to be emotional. For men, it tends to be physical, sexual. So the values are flipped by the sexes.
RR: In any case, there’s the unlikely survival in a low probability or low probability of survival in that situation does not have to affect the heritability of a characteristic. That that characteristic, that your brain throws information at you when you’re in danger has been shaped by higher probability of survival situations.
Situations that arise more frequently anyway. The whole information dump, you might get in times of extreme danger is just a side effect of helpful behaviors, brain behaviors, with regard to information in less dire and more probable life situations. It’s the situations that come up over and over and over, and that are survivable that shape how your brain deals with information when you’re in danger compared to the few seconds people might have before their heads sliced off.
So weird information behavior in extreme danger may be less a survival mechanism than a side effect of a survival mechanism that works more reasonably in more reasonable situations. With the emotional versus physical violations, you can probably make sociobiological arguments. Where a lot of sociobiology as applied to humans and other species is whether a male can trust a female to have offspring that are his, then on the other side, whether a female can trust a male to provide a support for the offspring; so that probably helps to determine some of that stuff.
SDJ: There’s a term for it too, in evo-psych. Maternity certainty and paternity uncertainty because [Laughing] a woman knows if it’s her child. A man ain’t so sure.
RR: Yea. So there are behavioral and societal structures in place to reduce that uncertainty.
SDJ: Maybe, as we’ve discussed in previous conversations, it explains the socio-cultural, or religious, restrictions and taboos around sexuality for women.
RR: Well, yea! Some of the sociobiological behaviors we’ve adapted—some of them benefit both men and women. Both men’s genes and women’s genes, say. Since they’re driving a lot of this, almost all of it. Some things oppress one sex more than the other. But those behaviors wouldn’t be in place if they didn’t benefit one gender or another.
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