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

Entry: The evolutionary function of belief - A853814
Author: a girl called Ben - working hard (at last!) - U148580

This is part of the Uni Project I have just started on Belief. (Uni Project: A853751).

This entry represents some fairly recent conclusions to thoughts that have been rattling around my brain for a long time now.

I would be grateful if y'all could tell me where this works, and where it doesn't.

Ben

On a quickish read through, I like it.
My only real concern is that you seem to be talking about one particular usage of the word belief. Perhaps this peice should really be preceded by one examining different uses, and their relation to doubt, faith, knowledge and certainty?

Noggin

Definitely.

I mention the difference between belief and faith in a footnote, but we do need a whole entry on the subject. Do you write it, or shall I? Or both of us?

Ben

(PS - I LOVE your name, I had a great fondness for Noggin King of the Nogs when I was a wee nipper)

I have updated and re-written this entry - comments welcome.

B

Toxxin posted the following to the entry itself. I am trying to funnel all conversations about it into one forum, so here is what he said:

*************************

This entry just doesn't work. What about all those who have believed with zero or negative consequences? Where is your evidence about them? What about those who had no 'belief' but had positive consequences? There must be more than Di.

Let's just suppose that all folks have 'belief', because that is what would be the case if it had evolved. Why do you single out certain individuals as examples? You should be comparing them with another species that DOESN'T have belief.

In evolutionary terms, it is more than possible to argue that the coleoptera (beetles) are the most successful. Is that because of their beliefs?

Far from being completed, this is barely adequate as a first draft!

Do tell me if I'm wrong, and how. Also feel free to ask any questions you like. I'm not here to be negative, but I have to say what I find. You wouldn't really want me to do otherwise would you?

Toxxin

Toxxin posted the following to the entry itself. I am trying to funnel all conversations about it into one forum, so here is what he said:

*************************

This entry just doesn't work. What about all those who have believed with zero or negative consequences? Where is your evidence about them? What about those who had no 'belief' but had positive consequences? There must be more than Di.

Let's just suppose that all folks have 'belief', because that is what would be the case if it had evolved. Why do you single out certain individuals as examples? You should be comparing them with another species that DOESN'T have belief.

In evolutionary terms, it is more than possible to argue that the coleoptera (beetles) are the most successful. Is that because of their beliefs?

Far from being completed, this is barely adequate as a first draft!

Do tell me if I'm wrong, and how. Also feel free to ask any questions you like. I'm not here to be negative, but I have to say what I find. You wouldn't really want me to do otherwise would you?

Toxxin

Damn! It doubled. < grr >

Anyway - here is my reply to him.

****************************************

"This entry just doesn't work."

Sorry you think that.

Toxxin:
"What about all those who have believed with zero or negative consequences? Where is your evidence about them?

Ben:

Can you give me some examples?


Toxxin:

"What about those who had no 'belief' but had positive consequences? There must be more than Di."


Ben:
Well that presupposes that Diana had positive consequences. And she certainly presented a particular belief-set, the landmines thing, the aids thing. She attached herself to inspiring causes. So in fact she isn't an example of someone with zero or negative consequences. I just happen to think that for some rather odd reasons she was iconic rather than inspired.


Toxxin:
"Let's just suppose that all folks have 'belief', because that is what would be the case if it had evolved."

Ben:
No it wouldn't. That is an incorrect understanding of evolutionary pressure.


Toxxin:
"Why do you single out certain individuals as examples? You should be comparing them with another species that DOESN'T have belief."

Ben:
Not necessary. I can compare them to peoples who have no beliefs or vague beliefs, as I do with Chamberlain, and by implication with the British in India, the whites in South Africa, the rest of Britain in the 1980s, and the other groups of people implied in the entry who lost out to inspired leadership.

Toxxin:

"In evolutionary terms, it is more than possible to argue that the coleoptera (beetles) are the most successful. Is that because of their beliefs?"

Ben:

1) I don't argue that our species is successful. That is a meaningless comparison when you are talking about different ecological niches anyway.

2) Maybe beliefs do form part of the make-up of beetles. I doubt it, because there is no sign that they are capable of complex emotional responses. I think that it is highly likely that beliefs, or proto-beliefs anyway, do form part of the make up of other species, particularly chimps, but there is no way to reliably test it, so I left the suggestion out of the entry.

Toxxin:

"Far from being completed, this is barely adequate as a first draft!

"Do tell me if I'm wrong,"

Ben:

Check

Toxxin:

"and how."

Ben:

Check


Toxxin:

"Also feel free to ask any questions you like. I'm not here to be negative, but I have to say what I find. You wouldn't really want me to do otherwise would you?"

Ben:

No, you are right, the piece is already much stronger for your previous round of deconstruction, and I am grateful to you.

However, if you are entitled to say what you find, I am equally entitled to say what I think.

I have run it past a mathematician who has done a considerable amount of work modelling complex systems, including AI and other cognitive systems. He spent a considerable amount of time deconstructin my logic. He came to the conclusion that I was right, or at least that I was not wrong.

I would say that I am sorry if what I have written has unsettled you. But my objective was and remains to get people to think.

B

I wouldn't bring mathematicians into this, Ben. They think they are free of belief!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

B

Phew. I'll focus on one of your responses. Evolved features surely apply to the whole of a species, not just certain members (sexual dimorphism excepted, of course). Therefore, if belief has evolved because of some advantage it confers, then we should all have it. How is that a misunderstanding?

Yet, by your own arguement, it is very unevenly distributed among homo sapiens. Therefore it didn't evolve. QED

Yeah, and so are blood goups, skin colour, sickle cell aenemia, and ectomorphism. But there are evolutionary pressures for all of these things.

And even within groups where there is no inspired leader to issue a rallying cry, there are still individuals praying to their gods.

My argument is that belief IS too widespread, not that it is not widespread enough.

B

The examples you give are variations due to a primary evolved characteristic responding to the environment. So it isn't evolved as such, but is secondary.

Are you saying that belief is like that? Maybe belief is a bit like having schizophrenia or cancer then. The tendency can be inherited, but whether it is expressed depends on the environment. So what is the nature of this underlying tendency that makes us susceptible to belief? Or maybe it's just our humanity in general, rather than a single characteristic. It's still a consequence though, rather than something which itself evolved. It could even have a negative survival value like my examples. It's the price we pay for some greater adaptive characteristic perhaps.

This topic is just now beginning to get interesting.

<...it is very unevenly distributed among homo sapiens. Therefore it didn't evolve.>

I'm not saying this is wrong; I don't know. But I do have a question:

Given that humans are social animals, and have been for long enough to figure in evolutionary timescales, couldn't our communities have developed skills, traits or whatever you want to call them? I.e. couldn't *some* individuals have these traits, thus making them available to the community? Assuming this is so, couldn't these traits be considered to have been gained by evolution?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Problem 1: Whether a belief counts as "inspired" is surely (at least partly) in the eye of the beholder?

Problem 2: Could "inspired belief" be a synergy of several traits, possibly both biological(ly based) and cultural(ly mediated), that happen to come together in a particular individual?

Noggin

I'm sorry P-c, but our species hasn't actually been around long enough to figure in evolutionary timescales. The odd million years is evolutionary peanuts for a species as long-lived as ours. The timescale is measured in generations, not years. If we were fruit flies, it might be different. There is no evidence of any evolved differences since we became a separate species.

Evolved characteristics apply to all members of a species. To take a behavioural example, when danger threatens, do you freeze or run? The hare does both, in that order, they all do it. Impala run, the hedgehog rolls up - it's evolution hasn't caught up with the juggernaut just yet. They all do it.

Culturally transmitted behaviour is the province of memetics, not evolution.

Hi Noggin. This is now looking to become a genuine debate instead of a meeting of the faithful. I hope my spanner in the works has assisted in this. I hope to help reconstruction rather than just deconstruction of ideas here. However, Occam's razor will end up shaving some ideas right down to the bone. Ouch!

OK. I'll try to take your points in order, but still one at a time. An example of belief with negative consequences. Well, how about the effect of religious belief on reproductive success, to consider one evolutionarily relevant outcome.

Some have been martyred before reproducing, others have been persuaded to remain virginal, yet others have followed the advice to be found somewhere in Matthew and castrated themselves! Ouch!

"An example of belief with negative consequences. Well, how about the effect of religious belief on reproductive success, to consider one evolutionarily relevant outcome."

My argument is about the structure of belief - and explicitly not about content. If you take it into content you find some memes are more successful than others, as you point out. But that does not address the issue: looking at content and saying 'some beliefs serve better than others' does not address my argument about structure.

The colour of a person's eyes does not affect their ability to see.

Address my arguments sweetie - the fact that you are addressing things I have explicitly or implicitly *not* said suggests to me that what I have said is disturbingly sound.

It startled the life out of me when I came to this conclusion.

Just because I think something is true does not mean I have to like it.



Ok - a little elementary evolutionary theory here:

What produces defining (or universal) characteristics, such as the opposable thumb is for that adaption to be of sufficient benefit to create a bottleneck in the genepool. (I am really glad that metaphor is not entirely mixed).

What creates a pandemic feature (rather than a defining feature) is for that characteristic to have been more useful more of the time. It is more likely to become pandemic if the genepool is near a bottleneck, but that is not essential.

It is observable that inspired belief is a pandemic feature, and not a universal feature of our species. (As I have already said, there is no way to measure whether or not it is a defining feature of our species).

Ergo it must have been more useful more of the time for individuals and possibly groups to have a propensity for inspired belief.



When asked whether or not inspired beliefs had survival benefits for individuals I discovered that they did.

When I then asked whether or not inspired beliefs have survival benefits for groups, again I found they did, in spades.

Nothing you have said has countered these arguments, although you have taken some semantic side-swipes at things I have not in fact said.

Nice try, but no cigar.



Let's look at how you are addressing this Toxxin. Seems to me that you are trying to have your cake and eat it.

"The odd million years is evolutionary peanuts for a species as long-lived as ours."

Compared with:

"Well, how about the effect of religious belief on reproductive success, to consider one evolutionarily relevant outcome."

Address the thesis.



I am seeking to answer a question I have asked for over 25 years - 'why do we, as a species, have such a need for something inspiring to believe in'?

The entry is my answer to that question.

Now - you either are ont interested in that premise (the pandemic nature of inspired belief) - in which case the whole entry is irrelevent to you, in the same way that an entry on the finer points of Play Station 2 is irrelevent to me.

Or you disagree with it - in which case you should attack the premise.

Or you disagree with the logic with which I reach the conclusion that I come to - in which case please provide counter-arguments and workings.

But sniping from one side or the other - while entertaining for you - does not actually address any of the above issues.



Elsewhere I have described myself as a seeker of truth and cheesecake.

If you can convince me by argumnet that there is a better explanation for the god-shaped hole in the human psyche then I will buy it. I have a history on this site of considering points of view expressed, and reaching conclusions based on them. "If you know of a better 'ole, go to it." If you can produce a better answer to the question 'whence the god-shaped hole?' then I will convert to your new creed.

But you have to convince me with logic and argument. Simply asking me to defend my arguments is pointless. I have already expressed them simply and clearly for the hard of thinking.

B

You seem to say that I am being dim in failing to understand your points. Fair enough. I'll talk from the point of view of a ficko. Not all your readers will be geniuses!

OK, this is about the structure of belief. So what are the alternative structures, and how do they affect reproductive succes? May we have examples? I keep feeling that I've missed a link to a paper that I haven't read! Is it here somewhere or still in you head?

I just don't accept the existence of pandemic (as opposed to secondary) evolved characteristics. Is there a source that defends this notion?

We still don't seem to know how to identify an 'inspired belief'. I still ask where are the comparisons with non-inspired belief so we can see how their outcomes compare. Let's have a decent sample rather than individual anecdotes.

I plead guilty to asking about the evolutionary effects of religious belief when I should have said 'potential effects'. However, there is no way of testing the effects of total sexual abstinence on reproductive success over the generations! By definintion, any such variation is nipped in the bud pretty sharpish. We don't have to wait for millions of years, which is why I chose this particular example.

You ask why we, as a species, have such a need for something inspiring to believe in. I don't accept that we do have such a need. I don't know what 'inspiring' means here. If you're telling us that inspired belief is pandemic (you say you are) please, please unpack it so that it can be understood. You may know what you mean but to me it is opaque and dubious in about equal proportions.

I don't so much see 'logic' as unexplained jumps from one unjustified statement to another. Ah, this is my poor dim brain letting me down again I expect.

There is no god-shaped hole. A fortiori, there is no explanation for it. You don't appear to have demonstrated that there is. Presumably it's just a metaphorical way of referring to the 'need for something inspiring to believe in'.

I can see no evidence for your premises, where they are not too opaque to know what would count as evidence; no logic; and no evidence for your conclusions. I must be coming down with Alzheimer's a record rate if this is all due do my erroneous and misguided thinking. I would like to petition the king of the Nogs to adjudicate here.

Then why the plethora of different belief systems, apparently followed by the majority of human beings since time began? What is it that you don't accept?



And you complain that Ben is making claims without backing them up....



And I can quote no formal references to papers, if that's what you think evidence is. All studies I have ever seen about (pre)historic humans devote a significant proportion of their time to the beliefs of the humans involved. The authors seem to think it's important, or that their audience will consider it so.

If you can see no evidence, I wonder what you are using to look with?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"