Tag: Evolution

Advice Monster

Posted on by jabittan
In his book The Coaching Habit, Michale Bungay Stanier suggests that we all have an advice monster living inside us.  The advice monster knows what is best for everyone. It knows how to solve the worlds problems. It is a genius and has no faults. It knows other people so well that it doesn’t need to listen to their problems or thoughts because it already has everything figured out for them ahead of time. In fact, the advice monster knows other people better than other people know themselves and it understands social problems and infrastructure problems and monetary problems better than experts and academics who spend their whole lives and all their time working through and thinking about such problems.

 

The short and more accurate description of the advice monster is this, the advice monster is a jerk. It lives inside us and wants to pop out and shout at every moment. And this idea of the advice monster is backed by science. Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson explain why humans evolved to have advice monsters living inside of us. Speaking takes energy, and sharing advice and insights from what we learn overtime gives away our hard earned knowledge basically for free. We should have evolved to be stingy speakers and eager listeners, hungry to take in valuable information about where there is good food, about what dangers lie ahead, and about who to follow on Instagram. But instead, we evolved to speak and shout knowledge about for everyone to hear.  When someone else is talking rather than listening we spend all our time thinking about what we should say next, rather than listening for any helpful info they can give us.

 

The evolutionary explanation from Simler and Hanson is that we are simply showing off when we speak and we evolved to do this. We evolved to show off our mental  toolbox. The things we have learned, the observations we have made, the dots we have connected, and the insights we take from what we see and learn are valuable, and we want to display that to the group we belong to so that others will see us as valuable allies. We have an advice monster because we are political social animals, and to survive as part of the tribe we needed to show our value, and what better way to be valuable than to have novel information about building tools, about where food can be found, and to be able to tell stories that help improve group unity.

 

Unfortunately today, the advice monster is ruining lives and destroying relationships. Coaches today cannot simply let their evolved advice monster run the show, or the people they coach will never grow. Bungay Stanier offers a quick haiku to describe the way we should be coaching once we cut out our advice monster:

 

“Tell less and ask more.
Your advice is not as good
As you think it is.”

 

Expanding on the idea of the advice monster, he writes, “We’ve all got a deeply ingrained habit of slipping into the advice-giver/expert/answer-it/solve-it/fix-it mode. That’s no surprise, of course. When you take the premium that your organization places on answers and certainty, then blend in the increased sense of overwhelm and uncertainty and anxiety that many of us feel as our jobs and lives become more complex, and then realize that our brains are wired to have a strong preference for clarity and certainty, it’s no wonder that we like to give advice. Even if it’s the wrong advice–and it often is–giving it feels more comfortable than the ambiguity of asking a question.”

 

Listening doesn’t feel good because it doesn’t engage our evolutionary biology. Nevertheless, it is the way to actually solve other people’s problems. We never truly understand them and their problems as well as we think we do, and certainly not as well as they do. The key is to ask questions and encourage others to find the answers they already know exist. This pushes the advice monster aside and helps us actually be useful for the person we are supposed to be helping.

What Racial Indifference and Blindness Create

Posted on by jabittan
It has become common and popular today to say that you don’t see race and that your actions and behaviors are colorblind. Our politicians, celebrities, friends, and neighbors will all say they are colorblind, trying to convey the idea that they do not act like a racist and that they love all people, regardless of race or skin color.

 

In her book, The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander argues that colorblindness and our focus on outward racism is actually what has allowed racial attitudes and racially disparate outcomes to survive in the United States. The type of racism we have to be aware of is not an outward racism perpetuated by individuals, but rather an invisible racism built into our structures, ideologies, and communities. We claim to be colorblind and we tell ourselves and others that we are fair to all races because we have diverse friends, but at the same time we often support policies that impact the lives of black and brown people unequally relative to white people. The New Jim Crow demonstrates the ways in which our colorblind society has not done a good job of preventing racism from influencing our criminal justice system and goes further to show that racism is a consistent factor in the policies and politics that we support.

 

What colorblindness creates is racial indifference. It creates an atmosphere where we assume that if we are not explicitly mean and don’t act in deliberately malicious ways towards others, then those others will be fine and will succeed. Colorblindness does not really mean that we are not racist, but that the concerns, values, and lives of people of color do not matter to us. We cannot see the suffering, the disparate impacts, and the inequalities of society because we are indifferent to the lives of minorities. This is what we are truly saying by calling ourselves colorblind, even if we don’t recognize it.

 

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander quotes Martin Luther King Jr., “One of the great tragedies of man’s long trek along the highway of history has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class or nation.” Humans evolved in relatively small groups, working, hunting, and growing together, but our world today demands that we work as a single global people. Our minds did not evolve to truly understand and connect with billions or even just millions of people across the globe, and along the way we have developed stories to tell us who we associate with. These made up stories of race, nation, and sports give us a sense of community and help us understand who is part of our tribe. The problem, however, is that these stories are fictions and operating based on our tribal instincts hurts the lives of real people. When we cannot move beyond our tribal nature, we create inequities that create social tension and conflict. In the United States we have chosen to ignore our tribal attitudes and have chosen to believe that indifference to other groups is the same thing as supportive inclusion. Unfortunately, this allows racial biases to operate in the background as we favor our tribe over others and push others down in invisible ways. As Alexander writes in the book, “Racial indifference and blindness—far more than racial hostility—form the sturdy foundation for all racial caste systems.”

Profound Connections

Posted on by jabittan
“Profound connections exist between all; interdependency so manifest that perceived separation is a delusion.” Senator Cory Booker writes to start one of the chapters in his book United. Throughout his book, Senator Booker examines the way society is organized, the relation between personal responsibility and to social responsability, and how truly dependent we are on everyone else. We do not exist in a vacuum and no matter how much one may try, we cannot live isolated lives away from other people. We depend on those around us, often much more than we realize.

 

The idea that we are connected drives Booker’s political ideas and shapes the way he approaches the people he represents, the neighborhoods he has lived in and represented, and who he has looked to as role models and mentors. Throughout his book however, he tries to show that recognizing and understanding the power of our connections is important not just for politicians, and not just for professors or people on television, but for everyone, every day. The collective understanding of how much we need each other and the ability to empathize with those around us who face challenges is diminishing as we become absorbed by social media which shows us what we want to see and allows us to share the highlights of our lives, creating misrepresentative online versions of ourselves. In an age of technology and hyper connectivity, we have become less aware of how truly connected we have always been, and how dependent on others our lives have always been.

 

Booker’s quote is important because it runs against our tribal nature. Human beings seem to be able to associate with only a few hundred people at most, a mental hangover from our tribal ancestry. We are constantly, whether we recognize it or not, looking for those who are like us, finding groups that think like us, act like us, and believe the things we believe. We create random borders and develop identities for those living within those borders. Without realizing it, we assign good qualities and traits to the group within our border and negative qualities and traits to the group beyond our border.

 

If instead we bring awareness and reflection to this “us versus them” mental process, we can begin to see how dependent we are not just on the people within our border, but on the people beyond our borders. We can begin to see that we all share one planet, and share more as humans than typically recognized. The connections that run through humanity don’t stop at the gate of a neighborhood, at a freeway exit, at a national boarder, or even on the shores of a continent. We are deeply connected by the entire planet and by years of evolution. Tribalism in our ancestry has geared us to ignore these connections, but just below the surface our connections exist, and the more we search the more we see that we are all united.

Footsteps

Posted on by jabittan
“In the series of things those which follow are always aptly fitted to those which have gone before; for this series is not like a mere enumeration of disjointed things, which has only a necessary sequence, but it is a rational connection: and as all existing things are arranged together harmoniously, so the things which come into existence exhibit no mere succession, but a certain wonderful relationship.”

 

Marcus Aurelius wrote this in his common place book which was published after his death as the work Meditations. In the passage above he is looking at the connections between the world, the people of the world, and the way that everything seems to be connected throughout time. His quote has elements of evolution, of generational succession, and interconnected decisions.  I think this quote is fantastic in our lives today because we become so busy and disconnected that we often fail to recognize how connected we are with everyone in the world, and how interconnected our destinies truly are. It can be easy for us to live in our own individual silos where we see the same people daily, we see the benefits of our hard work, and we enjoy (or become frustrated with) the same daily routines. Looking beyond our every day and taking a deeper look at the decisions we make compared with others can bring us back to our interconnectedness, and keeping Aurelius’ quote in mind reminds us that we are not as far or isolated from others as we may think and sometimes feel.

 

For me, the quote reminds me of the book I am currently reading, United by Cory Booker, and how the author is able to look at his life and decisions, and find ways in which decisions made long before his birth have impacted the life he currently lives. Booker writes,

 

“I’ve said many times of my generation that we drink deeply from wells of freedom and opportunity that we did not dig, that we eat from tables prepared for us by our ancestors, that we sit comfortable in the shade of trees that we did not cultivate. We stand on the shoulders of giants.”

 

What Booker references is how much his generation relies on the previous generations and how important the lives of those he never met have been for him and his generation. He is perfectly aligned with the ideas expressed by Marcus Aurelius who noted how closely tied generations are, even if they seem to be different and split in decisions and ideas.  Everything that precedes us shapes who we become by determining what opportunities we will have and by making decisions that shape what is possible for us.  When we forget how much we owe to those who sacrificed so that we could be here, we develop a false sense of entitlement and begin to think that we are far more awesome than we actually are. It is important to consider those who came before us and how we have benefitted from their actions and decisions so that we, just like Booker, can develop a sense of humility and respect for those who paved the ground that our lives stand upon.

Evolution and Groups

Posted on by jabittan
Looking at how evolution may have contributed to senses and actions of altruism, Peter Singer in his book The Most Good You Can Do, quotes Frans de Waal, a social scientist, “Universally, humans treat outsiders far worse than members of their own community: in fact, moral rules hardly seem to apply to the outside.” Singer uses this quote to show that we tend to be very generous to those who we perceive as having a level of sameness with ourselves while we separate ourselves from those who do not seem to be like us.  In our small group where we actually live and interact with others who are like us, we can be generous and see the payoff from going out of our way to help those around us.  Singer explains that this does not happen as easily with people outside our group and he quotes Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson who have studied altruism, “Group selection favors within-group niceness and between-group nastiness.”

 

The perspective that Singer is building helps us understand the base of the movement he has coined as Effective Altruism, a notion where individuals make an effort to do the most good they can do throughout their lifetime by focusing on ways they can impact and improve the world by aiding those who are the most impoverished or those who face the most suffering on a day to day basis.  Those who travel to other countries building wells, administering healthcare, and those who advocate for education and social improvement for groups in the developing world can be effective altruists under Singer’s definition, but the group he focuses on that can have the greatest impact is the group of individuals who shape their life so that the fruits of their labor, the money they earn, can be directed back towards themselves in a small amount so that the bulk of their financial wellbeing, or at least a significant chunk, can be applied toward making the world a better place. Those who volunteer with charities to travel and provide humanitarian aid are using supplies that were purchased through donation, finding connections that were established through financial assistance, and sometimes only investing their time and effort because the monetary needs of a program were met through donation.  Singer believes that effective altruists change their life in an attempt to reduce their needs  so that the financial benefits of their work can be applied toward charities that have the  greatest impact on the planet. They may still make the trips and spend  the time and effort on the ground, but they see that their skills and abilities give them a chance to earn money in the richest countries that can then be re-directed toward the poorest of the poor in other countries, where their money goes further to assist and save lives.

 

Singer’s quotes from de Waal, Sober, and Wilson show how the altruistic impulses of effective altruists may have developed in our ancestors before being passed along to us. We value the act of aiding others because it helps our group or tribe progress. Our small group will be greatly hindered if one person is falling behind, but if those who are successful can help pull that individual along and provide for them so that they can begin to make returns for the group, then everyone rises together.  Effective altruists are able to see this benefit, but they have managed to expand their idea of the group to which they identify to the whole world. They are part of a global group of humans, not just a national, regional, or local group. They defy the ideas of Sober and Wilson by showing that there does not need to be another group against which we should be competing. For Singer, the effective altruists have capitalized on an evolutionary trait, and pragmatically applied it to areas of our life where it can benefit the world the most.

Our Connection to the Ocean

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Deep, James Nestor describes how he became passionate about the oceans, marine life, and our connections to the water as humans.  When he began his research of free diving and started to study marine mammals and our resemblance to marine life, he was surprised. Nestor wrote, “We’re born of the ocean.  Each of us begins life floating in amniotic fluid that has almost the same makeup as ocean water.” Nestor begins with human life as a fetus comparing human embryonic development to that of fish.  “Our earliest characteristics are fishlike.  The month-old embryo grows fins first, not feet.”  As he continues, Nestor spends a lot of time discussing the similarities in our development to that of marine mammals and marine life to show that somewhere in our human past we began life in the ocean, and evolved from life in the ocean.  His position is strengthened when he compares the chemical composition of human blood to sea water, noting the similarities of our blood PH, and he continues the comparison by examining what many call “The Master Switch of Life”, or the mammalian dive reflex.

 

Nestor first encountered the mammalian dive reflex when he watched a group of people exploit our amphibious reflexes to dive to depths of nearly 300 feet in a free diving competition in the Mediterranean.  He was amazed by the capacities of the human body to adjust in water and accomplish things that seemed impossible below the surface, but he was abhorred by the competition aspect of free diving that pushed people beyond their limits and often left competitors bloody and semiconscious.

 

Throughout his book Nestor continually refers back to the idea of human closeness to the ocean. By describing our developmental similarities and evolutional ties to marine life in the quote above, he sets a foundation for the rest of his book that shows how natural free diving and unassisted human exploration of the ocean can be.  He rejects the competition aspect of free diving because it leaves the competitor at a point where they no longer focus on the ocean and their connection to it, but rather push through the water ignoring all senses until they reach a desired depth.  For Nestor, understanding our connection to the ocean means understanding human beings and life in a more intimate way.  Seeing ourselves as evolutionarily bound to the ocean allows him to paint a new picture of the oceans importance for us, and became truly captivating for Nestor who had previously never given the ocean a second thought.

The Mamalian Dive Reflex

Posted on by jabittan
A couple of months back I finished the book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells us About Ourselves written by James Nestor.  The author got into the idea and world of free diving after being assigned to cover a free diving competition with divers reaching depths of over 200 feet on just a single breath of air.  The competition is gruesome and not for the faint of heart, but Nestor was captivated.  He did not enjoy the competitive aspect of free diving, but the fact that humans have the ability to stay underwater for over three minutes on a single breath and can become super connected to the ocean while doing so amazed Nestor.  Regarding this incredibly ability Nestor writes, “Scientists call it the mammalian dive reflex or, lyrically, the Master Switch of Life, and they’ve been researching it for the pat fifty years.”

 

What Nestor is discussing when he mentions the Master Switch of Life is the human body’s ability to change its physiological functions while under water unassisted by scuba gear.  But, as Nestor explains, it is not just humans who accomplish this feat. The term mammalian dive reflex is the most accurate because there are many marine mammal species, whales, dolphins, sea lions, who have the same physiological reaction to the icy depths of the ocean that humans do.  If a sea lion can live on the surface and dive hundreds of feet into the the ocean to hunt for food, then clearly life has found a way to adapt to these intense changes of environment. Restricting the mammalian dive reflex to marine mammals seems far more natural than extending the body’s reactions to humans, but Nestor explains what physiological changes take place.

 

During a dive the lungs are forced inwards by the incredibly pressure outside the body and the fact that there is not enough air in the body to hold the lungs out to their normal size.  Around 30 feet down the lungs are half their normal size, and close to 300 feet down they shrink to the size of baseballs.  As this happens our bodies force blood away from our extremities and back towards our chest and brain.  The heart is slowed, but blood is brought back from our arms and legs to make it easier for our heart to pump.  In this state, we can survive the massive pressures of the ocean on just a single breath of air.

 

Nestor also explains that during the dive our lungs change shape so dramatically that if we were to inhale oxygen in a tank filled at normal atmospheric pressures, that air would blast into our lungs so rapidly that the force would burst our lungs. While it sounds terrifying to dive so deeply and not be able to take a breath of air while we are under or as we ascend, it gives the body a unique advantage.  A free diver with their single breath of air can dive incredibly deep and shoot back to the surface as quickly as they would like.  Their body adjusts naturally for the changes in pressure both inside and outside the body, and as soon as the diver breaks the surface they can take a deep breath.  Scuba divers on the other hand must stop to decompress as regular intervals as they ascent from the ocean depths.  This is because the compressed air breathed in under water by divers cannot adjust to the changes of pressure as a diver surfaces.  Nitrogen will bubble out of the blood in a scuba diver if they ascend too quickly, because there will be less pressure on the body and the cardiovascular system to keep the nitrogen dissolved within the blood.  Divers must stop at regular intervals to assure that their body is able to handle the process of pulling nitrogen out of the blood in a safe manner, without it rapidly bubbling up and building up in their joints.  This symptom is called the bends, but it only affects scuba and assisted divers, not free divers. The mammalian dive reflex evolved millions of years ago, and solved the problem that scuba divers must be cautious to prevent.