h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Mindless brutality? No, it's the spiteful gene"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1296397,00.html

"We have all heard of the selfish gene, but in extreme circumstances genes can be downright spiteful too, scientists have discovered. Researchers at Edinburgh University who studied the brutal behaviour of bacteria and insects say spiteful behaviour is not only justified at times but is hard-wired into our genes."



A serious article that later takes a light-hearted look at other possible genetic excuses for our bad behaviour:

"Learned behaviour or cradle of inevitability?
New and unlikely genes are discovered every day, rendering obsolete many of our ideas about so-called "learned behaviour". But what will be the next big breakthrough in genetic science? Here are five likely candidates. Place your bets!"


Any other likely candidates?


azahar

I loved the list at the bottom of the article...

Procrastination Gene - now that's an excuse I've _got_ to use!

hi Whisky,

Yes, I thought the last bit was the best too. I'm hoping we can put together a comoprehensive hootoo list of genetic excuses.

For example: a txt-speak gene?


az

Hmmm, maybe I'm actually genetically addicted to h2g2?


That would explain it - the italics are actually mad scientists who've been messing around with our genes to make us stay on here!

the hootoo gene

I came across this today whilst reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. He says:

"It won't have escaped your attention that genes have been commonly implicated in any number of human frailties. Exultant scientists have at various times declared themselves to have found the genes responsible for obesity, schizophrenia, homosexuality, criminality, violence, alcoholism, even shoplifting and homelessness. Perhaps the apogee (or nadir) of this faith in biodeterminism was a study published in the journal 'Science' in 1980 contending that women are genetically inferior at mathematics. In fact, we now know, almost nothing about you is so accommodatingly simple."

It turns out that genes clearly must cooperate with each other - it isn't simply a matter of isolating one gene responsible for, say, haemophilia, and then tinkering with it to correct this problem.

Which was perhaps the point of the writer of the article adding the very silly gene-produced human attributes at the end?


az

I don't know about shoplifting, but there's most definitely a Shopping Gene, and it's one of those that only works in the presence of two fully operative X chromosomes. That defective Y has an awful lot to answer for - I bet the Middle Lane gene is XY specific, along with the Singing Rugby Songs gene and the Diamond Pattern Cardigan gene.

... and the I Feel a Compulsion to Watch People Build (or destroy) Things on Telly gene and the I Think I'll Have Some While I'm at It gene ...

or the worryholic scatty what-the-hell-is-going on confusion gene........ or is that just me..........

I don't think that one's gender specific!

I used to think there was a 'full of crap gene' due to observation of some of my bosses. However, I've revised my opinion and now believe it is a virus, mutated from the stupidity germ, which as we all know is contagious.

I'm certainly a victim to Gulible. Mind you I reckon a couple of guvnors around here have an arrogant gene.

That's a really nice article by Tim Dowling, and he turns it nicely back on us by proposing more and more fabulous genes, then ending with the Gullible Gene. But the amazing thing is how he (deliberately?) confuses "spiteful" with "altruistic" behaviour. What's altruistic towards your friends and relations is spiteful to everyone else. Makes you think?

The altruism gene?


"The kindness of strangers"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1372477,00.html

"Why should animals help out stricken humans - does it prove that altruism is a natural instinct?"



az

Spiteful gene?

Yet more pseudoscientific bulls**t attempting to explain why we are how we are.

I was surprised to read "Dolphins are, of course, the favourite animal of new age romantics, who see them as some kind of aquatic hobbit, wiser and kinder than we corrupted humans."

Hobbits are less wise and less kind; he means some kind of aquatic elf, or wizard. It does my head in when academics stoop to quote popular literature and balls it up. As a philosophy student I had to read some published paper that got a Lewis Carroll quote exactly backwards (look after the sense, and the sounds will look after themselves; the idiot academic swapped "sense" and "sounds").

" . . . pseudoscientific bulls**t attempting to explain why we are how we are" -- why "pseudo", Mr D? It is uncomfortable that science seeks to reduce the complex and wonderful to the simple and awful, but that doesn't make it pseudo, nor does it make it untrue.

"Pseudoscientific" was, with hindsight, the wrong term to use.

What I meant was that science is telling us things like this without being able to adequately explain why.
It's all very well saying the people are spiteful, violent, etc. because of their genetic make up (and I'm not saying it isn't true, I'm more of a physics buff) but if it's that simple why do siblings often have such wildly different personality quirks or why can families who have never been the brightest sparks in the fusebox suddenly spawn a child who is able to get a first class degree in chemistry?

The problem is that genetics is the new black in scientific terms and until something better comes along it will be used to explain everything.

There's a lovely song about that by Loudon Wainwright III

"There's been a brand new breakthrough though we're not sure what it means
We used to blame our parents, now we can pin it on our genes . . .
If you're dumb, fat, queer or crazy no one is to blame
You've just been dealt a lousy hand in the genetic poker game
And if you start killing people you're not crazy, it's not cruel
It's just a little goop polluting your genetic swimming pool

And they can take the culprit and magnify it on a screen
Those scientists and doctors can locate that nasty gene
And with a little engineering they can take your wayward train
And they can get it back on track, so that you're smart straight thin and sane . . ."

Great song, Recumbentman!

Speaking of dolphins, I did a paper on whales and dolphins at school and came across an amusing anecdote by someone (I think his name was John Lilly) who studied dolphin behaviour.

He was testing a female dolphin for the 'rescue' thing and one day 'fell' out of his boat and started flailing around as if he were drowning. And sure enough, the dolphin swam over and gently nudged him back to the side of the boat and helped him climb back in.

He then tried the same thing the next day and this time she came over and beat him up!


az

Yeah, I've noticed females can be like that

Treating him like an errant child: "don't make a habit of it, I won't always be here to rescue you!"

The likelihood of the dolphins' protective behaviour being instinctive baby-protection is convincing; several animals can be fooled into behaving reactively towards extraordinarily crude models of their young, or their enemies. It goes to show that the perceptual triggers for reactive behaviour are often quite slight. A red rag to a bull, for instance.