Final Thoughts on Natural Security

To me this book had great insight into the natural world and really tied together concepts and ideas that were relevant to our human world. It highlights the ideas that there "is no one natural solution to security problems we have", and that the main mechanisms we can use to better ourselves is to adapt, anticipate, and be economically conscious of the decision and tactics we are using (pg 10). Overall the book was extremely interesting in the ways it attacked the every day security questions we have, from physical threats all the way to environmental and diseases threats. 

As I stated in my last blog post one of the most interesting chapters to me, that in my eyes, captured some of the main ideas we need to be aware of were the fourteen rules that were laid out in chapter 10 , Fourteen Security Lessons from Antipredator Behavior, by Daniel T. Blumstein. These rules covered the vast majority of important detailed concepts throughout the book, the rules were laid out like this:

• avoiding all risk is impossible
• overestimating risk is a good strategy
• it's possible to reduce risk by limiting exposure or being very careful when in risky areas
• detection signaling is a good idea and may reduce predation risk by encouraging the predator to select another target
• individuals should signal when they are in a safe position 
• exaltations are common
• important to assess signaler reliability 
• there can be qualitatively different responses to the same situation or problem
• reducing uncertainty by predator inspection is important to reduce costly responses
• adaptive to reduce defenses when risk decreases
• generalize defenses that work against more than a single threat
• unless there are great costs to maintaining a defense in the absence of a specific predator, it may be a good idea to keep all defenses up
• often expect habituation when there are many false alarms
• maintaining flexible responses is often a good idea

Each of these ideas, although applied to the natural world, can be directly correlated with our way of life and defense. whether it is to the physical threat of attacks or biological. 

Another key thing to realize about this book is that it truly does attack a lot of the main ideas that we have learned in this class; things like adaptation, weighing costs and benefits for evolving, and the idea that evolution can occur on several different levels. One of the most important ideas that I noticed was of adaptation. There were several accounts where adaptation was the main argument for how to fix things, whether that be adapting from our own mistakes or misfortunes or learning from other peoples as well. One of the most convincing quotes that I personally liked was when they said "security must ultimately come through adaptation" (pg 28). This essentially sums up one of the main arguments in my eyes.

To continue the overview of the book you would have to point out that it also uses numerous accounts of articles that aren't as biologically or scientifically related, but more politically influenced, or by other fields as well. These parts gave great background and insight into how other peoples ideas and thoughts on the subject are proposed, and thus offers a great opportunity to mesh the ideas together and possibly formulate a better way of going about national security. 

Life Ascending - Week 5: Final Thoughts

Life Ascending was a great choice of book. When I initially picked it I was intrigued about what it could possibly talk about and how it could possibly summarize the "greatest" inventions with just ten.  After reading it, I can say, it certainly convinced me and had me very caught into the book. The reason this happened was because of how the book was written and how Lane presented each new 'invention'; he explained and elaborated on each intention from a unique point-of-view - meaning he used interesting metaphor and always showed the 'invention' in both wildlife and humans. Had he just explained each 'invention', the book would have been boring, but thankfully he didn't.

For this last blog post, I want to focus on the last chapter of the book: Death. The reason I am doing this is well, its the last chapter of the book and the last post, so it feels appropriate. But, also because I found this chapter to be really interesting. When I firsts started reading this chapter I didn't know how death could be a beneficial invention; I could only think of the amount of pain that death causes both humans and animals. However, Lane convinced me otherwise, not that it doesn't cause pain because it does, but that it is incredibly beneficial. The quote that sold me on that ideas was this:

"Only death makes multicellular life possible. And, of course, without death there could be no evolution; without differential survival, natural selection comes to nothing"

I feel the quote is pretty self-explanatory. Death allows evolution to happen by survival of the fittest - the beneficial evolutions thrive, while the deleterious ones die. If deleterious evolutions did not die then there would be no moving forward with life. Just like with natural selection, if there was no death then everyone would have the same fitness and we could not more forward to more fit individuals. To me this is in fact one of the GREATEST evolution, ignoring that fact that death in every other ways sucks. I would have never thought of death this way and am so grateful to be able to this of it this way, there is more than just a negative meaning to the definition of death now.

Just like with the topic of death, after this book I so happy I can now explain all these evolution and have more the say about them, other that the basic common knowledge.

Week 5: Bittersweet Endings

Interestingly, I really like the later chapters of this book. They are not prescriptive but descriptive; in the latter chapters the authors focus on describing the political and social issues that disrupt peace and threaten security while simultaneously providing evolutionary explanations for these phenomena. However, they seldom attempt to suggest black and white answers tied to natural selection and evolution.

My favorite chapter: 

In Chapter 9: The Power of Moral Belief, Scott Atran explains how economic decision making  based on cost-benefit analyses is very different from behavior motivated by morals and sacred values. He states that current conflict resolution strategies assume that adversaries make rational choices but that his research indicates that what is considered to be rational behavior changes from one cultural framework to another and that some of the values and motivations intrinsic to a deep-rooted cultural framework cannot be translated or understood in the framework of other cultures. His team also found that "emotional outrage and support for violent opposition to compromise over sacred values is (1) not mitigated by offering material incentives to compromise but (2) is decreased when the adversary makes materially irrelevant compromises over his own sacred values" (pp.142) and that when people (for whom a terrorist group claims to be working for the sake of) foresaw the loss of a sacred value in exchange for materialistic gains they were less supportive of violence and were less likely to feel joy if they heard of suicide attacks. 

I am shocked by these findings. They are intuitive and make sense but at the same time, I never thought that the whole "dealing with terrorists" dynamic could be synthesized so relatively simply and accurately. 

I think the transition from prescriptive analyses to descriptive depictions is exemplified in the fourteen rules that Daniel T. Blumstein identifies in his essay Fourteen Security Lessons from Antipredator Behavior, i.e. Chapter 10. These rules also summarize the ideological evolution of the essays as the book progresses.

1) Avoiding all risk is impossible.

2) Overestimating risk is a good strategy in many circumstances.

3) It is possible to reduce risk by limiting exposure or by being very careful when in risky areas.

4) Detection signaling is a good idea and may, in some circumstances, reduce predation risk by encouraging the predator to select another target.

5) Individuals should signal when they are in a relatively safe position: flee to safety  then signal.

6) Exaptations are common.

7) It is very important to assess signaler reliability and to behave accordingly

8) There can be qualitatively different responses to the same situation or problems

9) Reducing uncertainty by predator inspection is an important way to reduce costly response.

10) Reduce defenses when risk decreases

11) Have generalizable defenses that work against more than a single threat. 

12) Unless there are great costs to maintaining a defense in the absence of a specific predator, it may be a good idea to maintain all defenses. 

13) We should often expect habituation when there are many false alarms.

14) Maintaining flexible responses is often a good idea. 

 Although a few of these rules are definite, most of them leave room to develop variations of the ideal strategies provided in earlier chapters. I think that these generalizable rules are more feasible for policy makers to implement and for governments to improve on their national security management. 

I would definitely recommend this book to a friend but I would warn them that enjoying this book is similar to consciously working on developing an acquired taste. 

Week 5: Paleofantasy

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was very interesting and Zuk brought up some really strong points in her argument that we as humans are still evolving and at a faster rate than we would think. Her last sentence of the book says it all. "But change is continuous, and those ancient ancestors encountered changes as well; they domesticated animals, they grew crops, and they dealt with diseases. Change does not have to mean disaster. Sometimes it just creates more change" (Zuk, 271). I think what she means by that last part, is that changing and adapting happens as a species evolves over time. We don't really look at it as "good changes" or "bad changes" but instead at how they evolve to adjust to other factors. Another big theme in the book was Zuk proving that the paleo-diet isn't as effective as the media says it is. The paleo-diet pushes us to eat the same way as our ancestors since it is "more natural" and it is what we grew up with and that our bodies can't take the new processed foods we eat now. Zuk proved that theory to be false time and time again throughout the book which allowed her to keep linking back her arguments to the title of the book "Paleofantasy".

Your Inner Fish- Week 5

As I finish reading Your Inner Fish, I am happy to say that I have learned a lot that I hadn't known before. Shubin did a wonderful job in explaining the many relationships that humans share with other organisms. He was able to make these evolutionary connections throughout the entire book and really engaged the reader in wanting to learn more. He provided evidence about these evolutionary viewpoints by talking about the structure of the human body and the many aspects of it that were similar to other life forms. His writing style also made the concepts introduced easier to follow. Overall I definitely enjoyed reading this book. I was intrigued by all of the evidence that Shubin provided and his writing style definitely got me wanting to read more. Shubin's writing style made it possible for me to make connections to other concepts that I had learned before. The author did a phenomenal job in explaining how parts of the human body are in fact similar to those of other organisms that, structurally, look nothing like us. This book made me realize how connected we actually are to other organisms and that our DNA, cells, and organs are the evidence to all of these connections. 

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend?

Subscribers of the paleo-lifestyle use the "we are adapted to caveman life, therefore we should live more like cavemen" argument to advocate more than just eating like cavemen; they think that our sexual habits should follow "caveman sexuality" as well. As fun as caveman sex sounds, Zuk again uses an educated evolutionary argument to show that there has never been one single manifestation of human sexuality. Following the logic that people have evolved to eat different things at different times (yes, in the time since the paleolithic), Zuk argues that humans have evolved to enjoy a spectrum of sexuality, ranging from stoic monogamy to swinging polygamy. Generally, the form of sexuality present in a particular culture is dependent on the environmental factors that influence how reproductive success is maximized.

The paleo-lifestyle argues that cavemen were polygamous and that our modern divorce rate and marital conflict comes from our instance that monogamy is the only option. Paleo-lifers argue that in mammoth-hunting and loin-cloth-wearing times, many people would act as parents to many offspring whether they were the actual biological parents or not. Babies, they argue, are raised by a community, not by a pair, and our insistence on monogamy also disrupts healthy infant development. This makes sense: we could have only evolved one way, and must still be that way, right?

If you've been following this blog, you'd know that that argument reeks of partially digested mammoth, and Zuk carefully demonstrates why. She describes anthropological studies on human sexuality in various cultures and shows that different human societies, living at the same time--but in different places--have different ways of doing things, so to speak. For example, children of the polygamous Gusii people of Kenya are "better adjusted, more empathetic, and more independent if they had strong attachments to at least one other person besides a parents while they were growing up". Tertiary helpers  might help children learn skills their parents may not know very well, and can help watch children if the parents need to do some other task. 

However, in the partially polygamous Dogon society of Mali, polygamy is associated with decreased survival and health of the children of second wives. In this context, the children of a man's first wife are prioritized over the children of second wives, likely due to increased resource competition. In this society, children of monogamous parents are better off than many of the children of polygamous parents. 

So it seems that in some environments polygamy is best, while in others monogamy confers the highest fitness. (I do acknowledge that both cultures I described have some degree of polygamy). The point is that there is no single "best" form of human sexuality. Thousands of years of evolution and adaption to different environments has given rise to the complex and seemingly contradictory face of human sexuality. Is the high divorce rate really a problem? Or are we living in a world of serial monogamy? What does our modern conception of sex have to do with horny cavemen? Well, one thing, to be sure: be it during the paleolithic or the anthropocene, when the gears of human sexuality get crankin', who doesn't want to don a loin cloth, run through the wild, and let loose the most primal of all yells? 

Week 5: Life Ascending Final Thoughts

Life Ascending surprised me truth be told. As I mentioned in my first post I was concerned that Lane would focus too much upon anthropomorphic view and was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not the case. Lane does focus heavily upon a human centered viewpoint, which is to be expected but I was pleased to see that he based many of his arguments in other contexts other than the human one. One example of this is the death chapter where Lane describes how death could have arisen from a war between bacteria and viruses developing an arms race of toxin and anti-toxin. Death is traced from its basic roots through the incorporation of mitochondria into host cells and the advent of multicellular life explaining how death could be brought into the host cell via a fully formed apparatus in mitochondria, and how death would be preserved as a mechanism to keep differentiated cells working as a cohesive unit. This allows Lane to bring the evolution of death and aging into the human context discussing antagonistic pleiotropy and free radical affects. Lane uses these smooth transitions from different aspects of evolution to the human perspective to great affect. These transitions capture the average readers attention while simultaneously educating them about aspects of evolutionary biology they would never think of on their own.

Also the more I read the more I became convinced that Lane's praise of natural selection was not as overbearing as I had feared at first. Natural selection is still described in a glowing light but Lane points out repeatedly that natural selection can only within the historical context of evolution and is not goal oriented. While this might seem like beating a dead horse to students in an evolution class, but when viewed from the perspective of a member of the general populace trying to learn more about evolution it helps show how natural selection actually works. I also have changed my mind about Lane's chosen topics as I appreciated how they were presented. The topics were kept broad an attention was applied to how they evolved outside of humanity.

The final thought I have from the death chapter is over Lane's argument about antagonistic pleiotropy, mainly how can we expect it to evolve in the future. If people start having children later and later as is the trend in modernized countries what evolutionary changes can we expect?