A player always tells a lady that he loves her

Life is about choices made in the context of scarcity and constraint. In an ideal world (OK, my ideal world) I would be dictator, and all would do my bidding and satisify most proximate desires. Alas, it doesn't work that way. We all have to jump through hoops to get where we want. Whatever our core, or ultimate, values, most people have to compromise to fulfill them. If you are a religious soul for whom God and family are the summum bonum of your existence, well, by the nature of your two ultimate ends you can't go into the cloister or spend all your waking hours with your family. You have to work, usually at least 40 hours of the week. Many people do find their work, their careers, satisfying, but many do not. The time spent at the office, or in the restaurant, or out on the construction site, is time away from their life. Sometimes the proximate & ultimate aspects of life do not conflict in such a trade off. We enjoy sex in the ultimate adaptive context because sex results in procreation. Obviously the more sex you have the higher the probability of procreation (within limits). But the long lens of evolution and its ability to reshape our preferences and biases does not operate on the smaller, more banal, aspects of our everyday life. We exercise so we can be healthy, though many of us find the former onerous. Fitness in the sense of scaling a mountain or running a 4 minute mile is not what the long hand of evolution moulds, it is fitness in terms of reproductive value. Stepping back into an evolutionary context it makes sense why we crave sweets and fats, even though now they are unhealthy for us due to modern plentitude. On the one hand we have our ultimate ends, on the other hand we have the proximate behaviors that work toward the ultimate ends, and finally we have the facts of the universe around us which dictates to a great extent what the nature of the proximate behaviors will be. If you want to have sex with a woman the nature of females often tells males ("players") that the verbal affirmation and behavorial cues that suggest you love them will yield up the sex you so desire. Though the example maybe crass, I think the lesson is real, and a thoughtful Machiavellianism is to some extent the basal state of our species.

In this post I will address one of my primary ultimate ends: the furtherance of the study of evolutionary processes (broadly taken, science). As a given I must take the nature of the universe, the social human cosmos, into account because the funds and infrastructural scaffolding are dependent on the whole society more or less. From these givens and considering the ends we shall be able to constrain our models and develop a set tasks we may engage in to fulfill the ultimate goal.

The first consideration is to remember that humans are more than their covers, don't take them at their word. Our species is characterized by cognitive processes that operate "under the hood" which we are not aware of. The famous, and cliched, "subliminal" messages are classic examples of what I am speaking. When asked why humans make choice A they may reflectively give obviously implausible answers because the underlying cognitive dynamics are encapsulated and sealed away from them. As you ascend up the layers of social and cognitive complexity you encounter realms more familiar to you. At the antipode from the basic psychological element you deal with broad social and political groupings which mold policy and your own life because of the power of insitutions in human affairs. But there are stages between the basal cognitive atom and the complex tertiary and quaternary social structures. For example, the rational and reflective mind which neoclassical economists love so much. Of course, the problem with the rational and reflective mind is that vast majority of humans are rather dim. A significant minority of modern Westerners believe that the sun revolves around the earth. 'nuf said. Not surprising that 50% of Americans reject evolution. In contrast, 80% of the individuals in the former GDR accept evolution. Obviously Americans are dumb, and Ossies are smart, right?

No, I don't think that's what it is. Not only are people dumb, they are buffeted by sociological forces. As much as 90% of Ossies seem to reject Christianity. A significant subset of Christians object to evolutionary theory, so once the obstacle of Christianity is removed evolution is the "default" state. Sociological parameters matter. Let me reiterate this by quoting myself:

It is somewhat rambling, but it should be viewed in light of the fact Ronald L. Numbers in The Creationists recounts that 'In 1935 only 36 percent of the students at the Mormon's Brighman Young University denied that humans have been "created in a process of evolution from lower forms." By 1973 the figure had risen sharply to 81....' The results at BYU might be due to decreased sample biasing as the student body increased in size, but, I think there is a real sociological process going on here: between 1930 and 1970 Mormons became, more or less, part of the American mainstream.¹ And, to some extent they identified sociologically with conservative Protestants, who have been at the forefront of the "War against Evolution" since the rise of Darwinism in the United States.

Are BYU students less intelligent? Less educated? I doubt it. Most people do not believe in evolution because they've read Origin of Speciess, just as they don't accept Newtonian Mechanics because they've read The Principia. They learn it in school, they memorize it, and they defer to the expertise of specialists. Most people "believe" in General Relativity without knowing anything about it on more than a superficial level. And unless you are a hard-core Objectivist you probably accept Quantum Mechanics too. It so happens that a counter-cultural movement has hit upon anti-evolutionism in the United States and coupled it with evangelical Christianity. This movement has swept others along in its wake, a minority of American Catholics for example accept Creationism when their own Church implicitly rejects it. The point is that acceptance of Creationism, or rejection of evolution, is not just a function of the reflective mind, and its innate aptitudes and subsequent refinements due to education, it is socially contextualized. If you've read Mark Ridley's Evolution, you know about the process. But for most people evolution is a magical transformation of one species into another, dinosaurs long dead and fluttering moths. Some cognitive psychologists even assert that Creationism is "hard-wired" into our brains, and only later learning suppresses our essentialist streak. This shouldn't surprise us that much, it isn't like we are born with an intuitive knowledge of Newtonian Mechanics or the Grand Unified Theories.

Which brings me the issue of how to go about making the American public acede to the legitimacy of the study of evolutionary science when it seems to have an ideological aversion to this. First, we need to disabuse ourselves (evolutionists, generally secular minded people with few demons roaming our mental universe) of the notion that other people think like us. They don't. We need to stop living in the fantasy land of let us pretend and face as it is. Over at the Evolutionblog Jason says:

Arguing that strident atheism hurts the cause is remarkably condescending towards religious people. It's saying that they are too emotional to understand and think seriously about the evidence. It's saying that those people can't be expected to provide an honest assessment of the evidence because mean old Richard Dawkins made a snide remark about their religious views.

This is a really bizarre assertion, I've been involved in atheist organizations, and used to post a lot on newsgroups like alt.atheism.moderated and alt.atheism. Isn't it a given that atheists are condescending toward religious people? I mean, for God's sake, religious people believe in some really weird shit. If you believe that there is a supernatural agent who incarnated himself in a human, died and resurrected himself and is now playing a Great Game with your immortal soul, well, I don't know. It just seems weird.

But really, it isn't. I have posted about religion enough here, I won't repeat myself. Rather, I will simply assert that religious belief is a cognitive phenomenon that likely derives from innate predispositions of the human mind. It can't be dismissed by saying that it is proto-science, or mental illness, or the byproduct of class manipulation. It is more than a reflective ideology, to some extent it is within us all. One problem is that atheists tend to engage with rationalistic theology when much of religion is non-theological. The idea that people don't use emotion to reason and sift through their world seems ridiculous. People aren't computers who run precise and deterministic algorithms, no matter the heuristic value of a the computationalist cognitive paradigm. Emotion and coalition matter. As I've noted before, to make an argument it is important to know the starting point of your opponent so you can appeal to the appropriate authorities. It might not be fair or reasonable, but St. Augustine will carry more weight with a Christian that W.V.O. Quine. Paul Krugman's opinion on evolution will matter to most on the political Left to a far greater extent than H. Allen Orr's.

I wish it weren't so. I wish that everyone read The Origin of Species, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and Evolution and the Genetics of Populations. But it isn't going to happen . We have to deal with the facts of the universe.

• Most people are probably too stupid to get through The Origin of Species, and surely too stupid to work their way through Fisher or Wright
• Most people who are intelligent enough don't have the time or inclination to understand the process of evolution at a deep level

Moral: not everyone is like you. I don't begrudge someone with a passion for money studying up on the market on their free time as opposed to the splendid beauty of science. They are they, I am I. But, I do keep the ultimate goals in mind, and want to make sure that the money-lovers allow us science-lovers our due, and perhaps even dole some surplus monies our way. The point is that most people's opinions of evolution will be shaped by social factors, appeals to authority, what their uncle believes, etc.. In some ways this is similar to religious affiliation, people aren't Southern Baptist in Georgia and Hindu in Bihar because they independently reasoned their way to these religions, they simply swim along with the zeitgeist. Similarly, most people in the Philippines or Israel aren't applying better reasoning than Americans, their cultural zeitgeist is less anti-evolutionary for a host of reasons. We're a social species, it's in our nature to go along and get along.

The Mormons are a good test case of this. They are, believe it or not, theologically liberal. This was a religion made up in the light of history. There is a lot of cutting edge science and history in the religion...for the early 19th century. Joseph Smith's New Age and Universalist biases crop up in Mormonism's operational polytheism and lack of hell. Additionally, to a large extent Mormons are materialists in that God has a body and lives on a planet in this universe. God was once a human, he evolved to his current state over time, just as Mormon males will after they die and become gods of their own universe. The Mormon God to a large extent is bound by logic and reason. So why are Mormons so Creationist now? I suspect it is because no matter what creeds they profess and theologies they exposit human views on many issues are derived from cultural and social inputs that don't have much to do with the direct reason offered. That is, Mormons who are Creationist will point to their Mormonism even though Mormonism doesn't give much succor to Biblical literalism, but they believe it nonetheless. Creationism is what Christian Republicans normally believe, so it is no surprise that Mormons, being Christian Republicans are sympathetic toward Creationism (Mormons view themselves as Christians, and the only Christians, even if others don't perceive themselves as such).

So people believe one thing, they do another thing, and they don't think much. There are hard to discern cultural factors that shape the facts of the universe as well. Why are Americans so conservative in their Biblical literalism vis-a-vis other Westerners? Who knows, but that's the game we have to play.

Back to the title. As I said, a player tells a girl he loves her even if he doesn't, because a player wants what a player wants. If a player was going around telling girls that he wants to score, and move on to fresh meat, but complains when they reject him, we'd think he was an idiot. The reality is that on many levels many ladies that the player approaches probably know his history, but the forms dictate that he at least make a show of gallantry rather than expose his mercenary cards.

What I'm getting at is that I'm player when it comes to evolution. I just want mine, and mine is the research, the knowledge, the great pattern of life. I don't really care in the deepest darkness of my heart if there is any practical payoff for evolution. Yes, I think evolutionary dynamics might have relevance in medicine, biotechnology, as well as in shedding light on other disciplines. But the reality is at the end of the day I'm seduced by the dancing of allele frequencies, that's my ultimate, my bliss. So how do I get it? Well, flies don't live on bread and water alone, and in silico simulations need one pricey box or lots of cheap boxes. On a smaller scale researchers who submit grant applications to the NIH often know that the practical payoff of their investigation might be minimal. Nevertheless, they want to play the game and get theirs, they apply. Similarly, we have to play the cultural game, and deal with the facts of American society as it is.

My friend Michael Blowhard has been telling me for a while now that scientists need to get into the marketing game and work on their P.R., that they can't seem like they are arrogant and distant prigs who take the money and run with it. Sure, I agree. But the reality is that Science isn't General Motors, it is a culture with particular rules, constraints. These "handicaps" are actually the defining aspects of science. They are the facts of the scientific universe, Richard Dawkins doesn't call his middle manager before he spouts off, and neither does Daniel Dennett have to get a license to talk about science even though he's a philosopher, there's no "American Scientific Association" which passes judgement and revokes standing (at least in a formulaic fashion). Additionally, science is a difficult process, it isn't easy to market, otherwise it would be ubiquitous in human history, and it isn't. In contrast, religion and politics are ubiquitous, people worship gods and form faction galore, with abandon and without any great social scaffolding necessary. While science is a mysterious industrially controlled and secretive process (to the average Joe) religion and politics are rather accessible handicrafts.

The fact is that 90% of evolutionary biologists aren't religious. Not only are half of American Ph.D. scientists unbelievers, but nearly 90% of the elite National Academy of Science members are. A "PR" campaign has to take into account that a) to some extent the people who run the project of science, and evolutionary biology, are godless heathens, b) a subset of these heathens have opinions which conform the counter-marketing promoted by the Creationists. What to do? The group dynamics of science simply make it impossible or acceptable that these voices should be muzzled. The marketing savvy of the Creationists means that they'll always be able to get a nice yield of quotes from select scientists, the human mind doesn't check to see if talking points are a representative sample. These are facts, what should the proximate response be in light of the ultimate ends? (ie., "but is it good for evolutionary science?')

First, there are many talking points we can marshal in the domain of "practicality." Medicine, biotech, "you don't want the neighbors thinking you are a yokel," etc. Second, triangulation can work. Sometimes this is dishonest, though I don't think in the service of noble ends dishonesty is always bad, though we should use it cautiously and judiciously. I don't find Dawkins' assertions about religion that objectionable myself, so I can't diss him in good faith. But, I do think think Dan Dannett has a tendency toward overreach, though at the end of the day we agree, I can honestly express disagreemant and buy myself some credibility. That being said, there is the issue of "facts" and perception of facts. Some people like to say that religion and science are orthogonal. That's not always true, though sometimes it is. Strictly speaking theology and science are orthogonal, but though the masses mouth theological platitudes what they believe isn't theology but intuitive supernaturalism. So, in the domain of dishonesty, that's just too blatant of a dodge of reality. Can we expect humans to understand the nuance that they profess beliefs which they don't believe, that their minds can be decomposed into separate entities which act at cross-purposes? As I've noted before, religious people imbue their beliefs with ultimate significance, so decomposing them in a reductionist fashion isn't going to go down well. So let's not go there in this context (keep your eyes on the prize: "but is it good for evolutionary science?").

There isn't going to be one-true-solution to our ultimate ends. One thing to remember is that despite public sentiment in favor of "equal time" the elites end up rejecting Creationism. This doesn't mean that Creationism isn't a constant shadow, always bubbling and simmering under the surface, but it can be contained. Though humans are mostly unreflective elites are probably in some ways closer to being rational actors because they live in a more formal and structured world, they are somewhat sample biased toward higher IQs and have a comfort with abstraction and a conditioned deference toward knowledge specialists (since they are usually such professionals themselves). For whatever reason a Creationist element will probably continue to be powerful in the evangelical Protestant community, but to simply hold the line all we need to do is allow a little breathing space for "compromisers." Most humans, let alone most theistic evolutionists, won't understand or comprehend the details of natural selection, random genetic drift or chromosomal rearrangement. But, if they can be convinced that this program of fascinating research doesn't conflict with their basic and ultimate values, then life goes on....