The Biology of Racism

The Biology of Racism

The 2-week suspension of Whoopi Goldberg from ABC’s television show “The View” brought to mind an article—The Biology of Racism—written by my twin brother Dr. Farhad N. Kapadia for his medical community.

The dearth of this kind of an?evolution-biology-based-root-cause-analysis on this difficult and emotive topic is unfortunate.

In light of the Whoopi Goldberg incident — and this also being Black History Month — I’ve decided to post the article here for a more general audience.

Caution: It is a long article, with a lot of scientific and technical content. If you are genuinely interested in this topic, and potential solutions, please block out 30 – 45 minutes of uninterrupted time. Focus and effort — especially for those of us with limited biology background — will be required.

?Preamble: This article is analysis. Analysis is not advocacy. Analysis is not acquiescence. Analysis is analysis.?It is a bedrock and seedbed super-power of humans. Analysis is not for provoking conflict, nor is it for shirking from conflict. Analysis is a tool that can be used for collaborative problem solving.

Notes to myself: (1) Remain mindful of the power of politics, prejudice, and dramatics to taint analysis. (2) Ignorance more frequently breeds confidence than does knowledge. (3) The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

My conclusion: Basis the insights in this article: Optimal way to reduce racism is (1) to increase number of interactions and (2) to reduce power differentials.

For a sense of this article, scan these the sub-headings and the hashtags:

·?????Racism: A Sign of Our Times?

·?????The Spectrum of Racism: From Reflex Behaviour to Insightful Cognition

·?????This is Your Brain on Racism

·?????Human Racism: An Historical Exploration

·?????The Question of Skin Colour

·?????Racism: The Fundamental Role of Natural Selection

·?????Racism and Procreation

·?????Racism: Improving or Worsening?

·?????Racism vs Power Hierarchies

·?????Back to the Beginning

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?A request from Rashid: If any reader is in communication with either Howard Bauchner, or Dr. Edward Livingston (JAMA) please forward this article to them.

To Howard Bauchner and/or Dr. Edward Livingston: If this message gets to you, please consider disseminating the insights and ideas in this article to your highly accomplished and educated networks. It is an essential upgrade for our collective thinking.

And, as in the conclusion of Farhad’s article, I too hope both of you get reinstated into your editorial roles.

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#Racism #Biology #Evolution #TheBiologyOfRacism #DrFarhadKapadia #WhoopiGoldberg #TheView #Analysis #RootCauseAnalysis #AMA #JAMA #DrEdwardLivingston #HowardBauchner #Sectarianism #Communalism #Classism #Casteism #ReflexBehaviour #InsightfulCognition #AntsPracticeSlavery #ThinkingFastAndSlow #DanielKahneman #NobelLaurete #CharlesDarwin #RichardFeynman #ConflictInBiology #Power #Hawks #Doves #HawkDoveIndex #TitForTat #TitForTatWithGenerosity #WinStayLoseSwitch #FirmButFair #DiscriminatingAltruism #ThePowerParadox #DacherKeltner #BertrandRussel #EvolutionarilyStableStrategy #ESS #RashidKapadia

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The Biology of Racism. By Dr. Farhad N. Kapadia. Initially Posted on August 24, 2021

“No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?”?So declared JAMA on Twitter on Feb. 24th 2021. Followed by “Refer to below AMA podcast”

?“Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.” — AMA podcast hosted by Dr. Edward Livingston

?What happened next???

The editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Howard Bauchner?is stepping down. Dr. Livingston, resigned as deputy editor of JAMA on March 10th 2021.

Then came the Mea Culpa

Howard Bauchner:?“Comments made in the podcast were inaccurate, offensive, and hurtful, and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA. Racism and structural racism exist in the United States, and in healthcare.”

Dr. Livingston: Can’t be reached for comments.

Racism: A Sign of Our Times?

What better way to start a weekend, than with ?ramble about a topic that has dominated our collective attention over the last few years or decades; the problem of racism. Somehow, I feel everyone is missing the central point, so this is my attempt at exploring the root of the problem, through the eyes of biology. (I’ll add some Nerdy Notes at the end for related biological explorations) Exploring racism could quickly descend into a political quagmire and I request people to see this as an attempt to get to a deeper level of understanding, rather than simple political correctness, political incorrectness, wokeness etc.

One universally hears (most recently from the Brit Royals, and earlier from the US prez) that one is definitely not racist.

And I can’t help but roll my eyes at these trite statements.

It is possible that one is unaware of one’s racial bias. Or it is possible that one realizes one is racist, but decides that denying it publicly is the best strategy. IMHO, it is exceedingly unlikely that one is completely and totally unbiased. That’s not the way we humans function. For that matter, that’s not the way biology functions.

My unflinching biological take is that we are all racist to various degrees, and we all face conflicts of interest when we try to deal with this. It’s obviously a bit much to simply label everyone as racist, so maybe we need to use more neutral but equally accurate terms. Variations of racism include sectarianism, communalism, classism, casteism, etc. We could simply state that we all distinguish between our own type and others. The others could be anything from different neighborhoods, to different professions, to others at a different level of the social hierarchy. And of course, they could be of a different religion, ethnic background, nationality, race or gender.

?I genuinely doubt that anyone can be totally blind to these distinctions. We make these distinctions repeatedly. All the time. Every minute and every waking hour of every day. They are part of our deeply programmed survival mechanism.

The Spectrum of Racism: From Reflex Behaviour to Insightful Cognition

The fundamental question in my mind is this; is racist behaviour deeply programmed, or is it cognitive and calculating? Is it subconscious or conscious? The term behaviour could mean many things, but the simplest way to look at it is to see the physical response or the “output”. Some things are so deeply programmed, that we presume the response or output is automatic.

In the realm of Physics and Chemistry; magnetic poles repel similar poles and attract opposite ones. Elements on the left side of the periodic table donate electrons, while those on the right side attract them, both becoming charged in the process. Geochemistry becomes biochemistry. Simple carbon-based molecules become more complex, e.g., sugars become complex carbohydrates and amino acids become proteins. It would be reasonable to assume that these reactions are simply following the laws of science with no internal volition or free ?will. Metaphorically, the participants of these reactions have no choice but to behave the way they do. Their “behaviour” is totally programmed by the laws of science.

In the realms of biology too, there are exceedingly complex behaviour patterns noted in bacteria (quorum signalling) , unicellular organisms (building colonies to enhance dispersion), plants (sending chemical signals when attacked), insects (forming large social networks) and in large animals (complex predatory patterns or mating rituals). It is very difficult to know where simple biological reactions merge into automatic but complex behaviour, and when these behavioural patterns change from reflexive to volitional or cognitive. It is more than plausible that human behaviour is programmed to a large extent, and we can only analyse it and modify it post hoc. If so, that would easily explain the widespread existence of racism. That’s simply us following the laws or the programs of science.

Rather than give multiple examples from biology that highlight how our behaviour, racist or otherwise, is programmed, I’ll focus on two experiments. The first regards ants, a social insect and the other an ingenious mice experiment. The results of these two studies make me seriously question how much of my own behaviour is programmed, vs being truly under my cognitive and voluntary control.?

Ants practice forms of slavery. Ants from one colony invade another and kill the adults off in large numbers. They then use the offspring of the captured pupae to raise their own offspring and for all other maintenance chores.

In an interesting experiment, a researcher introduced a dead slave-maker ant into a colony of potential slaves. This induced days of aggression in the ant colony as they attacked the dead ant, and also started attacking other members of the ant colony that were not direct kin. Something in the body of the dead slave maker ant was triggering a violent response from the majority members of the ant colony against the dead ant. And some of that violence was directed against other minority members of the ant colony. Here the terms majority and minority are in the context of the genes the ants carry. This behaviour pattern in humans would be labelled racist. Strictly speaking,?one is strife between different ant species and the other is strife between different human races. (A species is a group that can mate and procreate between themselves, but cannot they procreate with individuals of another species)

This experiment should make us question how much of our human own behaviour is encoded in our genes and our brains. We are not ants, but it is worth remembering that the species with the most complex social interactions are humans, ants, termites, bees and wasps. In the context of social behaviour, a dead slave making ant is of no threat to a colony of potential slave ants. The cognitive response to the presence of a dead ant would not require aggression to a potential threat. It would be a complete and total waste of time, energy, and resources. Yet the mere presence of a dead ant triggered an orgy of violence. This trigger was a signal, probably a chemical released from the dead slave making ant. And this chemical trigger was enough to dictate subsequent behaviour. It is possible that the same chemical signal triggered a violent response in all the ants of the colony. Or it is possible that the violent behaviour of some ants in the colony triggered a similar violent behaviour in other ants, a form of mob mentality.

The next experiment further highlights how behaviour of one member can trigger similar behaviour in another member of a social group.

This experiment examined programmed behaviour between members of the same species, mice in this instance. The NYT published this fascinating article with the title “Scientists Drove Mice to Bond by Zapping Their Brains With Light” In a one line summation; synchronising mice brains resulted in them bonding more, the bonding seemingly dictated by the command of the investigator.?This experiment is a remarkable feat in bio-technological engineering. Earlier such experiments were unwieldy as they involved implanting electrodes into brains and had a set of wires attached to the animal. Not the best circumstances to study innate or spontaneous behaviour. The tool?involved in this particular experiment is called optogenetics. It consists of embedding a tiny LED light in a specific group of neurons in the brain. (The optic component of optogenetics) These neurons are first primed with an algal gene that encodes for a light sensitive protein.?(The genetic component of optogenetics) ?This allowed the researchers to stimulate a specific part of the brain without any need for wires etc. They could stimulate a specific part of the brain remotely with their device. Mice with these devices implanted in the medial prefrontal cortex, were allowed to interact with each other. They?generally went about their business of sniffing, digging and some fighting. Then the LED device was activated to emit blue light in these animals. Within minutes, the fighting disappeared, they clung together, stayed together and groomed each other. When the experiment was repeated, but with different light frequencies in different animals, their?socialising effect was diminished. Similar experiments were also performed earlier in socially interacting bats. These studies were done in the last 2-3 years. Intriguingly, in the last 2 decades, similar studies were done in humans, using overlapping imaging techniques or EEGs. These studies looked at how one person’s behaviour causes near instantaneous similar behaviour in another. This is not due to some external synchronisation like listening to music or watching a game.?During a conversation, hand gestures of one participant triggered similar gestures in the other. It involves a feedback loop of attention, prediction, and reaction. Some had fancifully assumed these and earlier studies demonstrated the presence of telepathy or other such paranormal phenomenon.

It is worth taking a step back and figuring out what these experiments signify. The behaviour of the mice was not autonomously volitional. The behaviour of the mouse was modified or controlled by the human experimenter, but even this does not really tell the true story. The behaviour of a given mouse was the result of a near instantaneous interaction with the behaviour of another mouse. Ultimately, the behaviour of a mouse was modified and controlled by synchronising itself with that of another mouse. And the way this was done was by synchronising brain activity. This experiment did not induce any specific behaviour. All the experimenter did was activate a specific part of the brain simultaneously in two or more mice. And that was enough to dictate the behaviour of the mice. Mirror neurons are believed to do the same thing. When one human sees a certain emotion, mood or behaviour in another human, the part of the brain involved in that emotion or activity is activated in his or her brain. If we accept this, we have to then accept a lot of our behaviour, racist or otherwise, could simply be a reflection of our social environment and may not be as much under our cognitive control as we would like to believe.?

These animal and human experiments should make us introspect as to how much of our behaviour is due to reasoned cognition vs programmed neural responses. ?It is perfectly plausible that racist behaviour is simply a response that is triggered in a certain environment. It is more than plausible that these responses serve as a survival mechanism against “others” and have therefore been naturally selected, not only in humans, but all the way back to our early animal evolution. And if this is accurate, then it is not surprising at all that racist behaviour is simply part of our encoded survival?mechanisms.

A contemporary example is the insurrection episode of Jan 6th 2021. Those who appeared in court seemed to say it was not who they really were. Obviously this could simply be a shrewd defence, but it could equally be a very real manifestation of human behaviour. Environmental signals, in this case the behaviour of the crowd, could dictate one’s behaviour in a way that almost seems non volitional. In this case, we could say that the actions of the mob triggered mirror neurons in others and precipitated their subsequent mob behaviour. This probably won’t wash as a legal defence, but it should make us introspect as to how much of our own behaviour could be dictated by our own mirror neurons and our cultural environment. (Nerdy Notes 1)

This is Your Brain on Racism

In humans, most behaviour is totally beyond our control. Some, like the tendon reflexes are monosynaptic and others like say the vomiting reflex, or the pain withdrawal reflex are?a little more complex, but we really have little to no control over them. Emotions like fear control our behaviour and once again we have little or no control over these responses. And finally, we have cognitively based responses, that presumably are not reflex and are actually “controlled” by us.

We could summarise that we have a range of responses. One could legitimately assume that an electron hopping along on the mitochondrial membrane in a neuron is purely following the laws of physics. One could reasonably assume that an ATP molecule releasing a molecule of PO4 and releasing energy in the process is purely following the laws of physics and chemistry. One could equally reasonably state that the neural action potentials are simply following physicochemical gradients according to the laws of science. ?These processes occur in the brain, but presumably we have no volitional control over them. In fact it would be beyond obvious to state that almost all biochemical and physiological functions of the body are simply algorithms running themselves. (Organisms Are Algorithms)

It becomes less clear when we deal with neural network responses, especially cerebral responses. We could broadly put these responses into an hierarchy of the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the human brain. It’s difficult to imagine that the great human discoveries are?simply the product of noncognitive neural reflexes. (Nerdy Notes 2) The question to explore is; where in the spectrum of human behaviour does racism occur? Does it occur at the level of the reptilian?brain, the mammalian brain, or the cognitive human brain?

The pre reptilian and reptilian brain is in the basal ganglia and surrounding forebrain structures and generates the most basic reflexive behaviour; muscle control, balance, breathing and heart rate control, feeding and reproductive responses. These in turn generate flight, fight, or freeze responses in threatening situations. The mammalian brain is in the limbic system (amygdala and hypothalamus) and decides if things are agreeable (pleasure) or disagreeable (pain & distress). Based on this limbic analysis, the more primitive reptilian responses are calibrated. Pleasurable responses are repeated and disagreeable stimuli are avoided. The neocortex accounts for the human cognitive brain including reasoning, maths, and other advanced abilities. (Nerdy Notes 3)

Human cognitive responses are the third step in the hierarchy determining behaviour, after reptilian and mammalian brain responses.

A Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman identified two distinctive ways we think and behave. IMHO, understanding this is the key to us identifying behaviour that is racist, either from the perspective of the privileged or from that of the oppressed.

The one we use most of the time is called fast thinking (System 1) and is memory based and automatic. Learned skills are reinforced by repetition. This system’s responses are fast and reflexive, like driving a car. This results in subsequent reflex associations so that one stimulus can trigger a?response based on past association. A rainy day might make one unthinkingly slow down one’s driving. The fast system is not under immediate direct control and yet it dictates most decisions and behaviour. It is associated with cognitive ease and leads to a subjective confidence based on feeling. The slow thinking system (System 2) is more debilitative and effortful, like learning to drive a car or play a music instrument. It is relatively slow and we have some control over the process. This slow thinking modifies a few decisions made by System 1 but is associated with cognitive strain.

I would like to reinterpret two of my favourite quotes in the light of this fast and slow thinking approach.

·?????"Ignorance more frequently breeds confidence than does knowledge" Charles Darwin

·?????“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool” Richard Feynman.

Darwin could well have been saying that fast thinking is more associated with confidence than slow thinking and Feynman could well have been saying that we fool ourselves when we remain in a fast thinking mode.

This should not be interpreted as the fast system is bad and the slow system is good. The absence of a fast system would result in very very slow cognitive responses and actions, while the absence of a slow system would lead us to an unending loop of useless or harmful behaviour. The existing balance is probably the optimal one, naturally selected over the millennia. It’s just that we need to be aware of the distinction between our own fast and slow thinking, and the shortcomings of each.

The human brain could justifiably be called the most complex organ or structure in the known universe. And the network of socio-cultural human brains could equally be called the most staggeringly sophisticated and complex system in the world. And yet the brain in itself is a completely impotent organ. The only thing a brain can do is generate a motor response output. It’s worth repeating this again. The only thing a brain can do is make a muscle contract. It does this via the spinal cord, the peripheral nerves and the neuro-endocrine system. No matter how complex the brain’s response is, the final result is some form of muscle activity. Take away this component, and the brain is essentially functionless. ?Like a cell-phone camera without a screen. All the software in the world cannot display the image.

Similarly, while the brain is capable of immense memory and computing function, this is reliant on some form of sensory input. Take away this, and once again the brain function becomes redundant, like a phone camera without a lens.

Any initial behavioural motor response is probably reflexive and initiated by the pre-reptilian brain, in response to some incoming sensory signal. This initial response is modified by a brain hierarchy. First the reptilian brain, then the?mammalian brain, then the cognitive fast system and finally the cognitive slow system. In that order. When a human sees another human of a different race, the first reptilian response will be fight, flight, or freeze. Before this reptilian response can be executed, it will be modified by the mammalian brain into either a pleasant or unpleasant ?response, based on past experience and memory. Interacting with the individual of another race could therefore trigger a friendly, indifferent, or a fearful response.?Before this mammalian output is executed, the fast thinking cognitive response of the neocortex will further modify it and then there will be some motor output causing a response. This again could be a racist or a non-racist response, once again depending on past experience and memory. And finally, one would analyse this response using the slow system of cognition and see if it was appropriate or inappropriate. This new memory would then guide future responses when meeting the same individual of another race in the future.

The point of this exploration of neural human behaviour is to highlight we don’t directly act with our higher cognition.

When we see a person of another race, we always react via our primitive reptilian responses. These are subsequently modified by our mammalian brain and further modified by our cognitive brain. The final motor behaviours act is a modified version of the more primitive reflexive response. And this explains why racism is the default neural setting, and that this default can only be modified by a cognitive non-racist response.

Human Racism: An Historical Exploration

Getting back to human racism; is it the norm or is it an aberration? First let us consider that all human species are ~ 2-2.5 million years old and all but homo sapiens are extinct. It appears that cooperation among homo species as equal members of society was not really practiced. Instead the competition or scarcity of resources lead to all other homo species becoming extinct. Homo sapiens ourselves have been around 200-250,000 years, and essentially lived in small groups with no real cooperation between groups. The cognitive revolution occurred ~ 70,000 years ago when our ancestors lived as hunter gatherers, once again competing with other groups for resources and territory. The onset of the agricultural revolution led to more dense populations living in close proximity, and once again brotherly or sisterly love was not at a premium. Instead there were hierarchies of unequal individual humans. The era of conquest of Alexander, the Romans, or Genghis Khan was?fundamentally racist. In fact not being racist would probably decrease one’s chance of survival. The era of Empire building by the Europeans was?similarly fundamentally racist. Even at local geographical levels, various tribes simply assumed that other tribes were enemies and invading another tribe’s territory was more than enough justification for homicide. The most recent example of this basic human behavioural instinct was seen after the tsunami of 2004. A group of well-meaning people went to check out if the Sentinelese natives of an Andaman island were safe, and were greeted by a shower of arrows. In fact these Sentinelese natives are a textbook example of racism. They fiercely resist attempts by outsiders to meet them. In 2006 two Indian fishermen were killed by the tribe when their boat drifted towards the island. And yet this tribe has done better than other tribes from different islands that have greater levels of integration with the outside world. A contemporary example of the survival advantage of racism. (Though they do very badly when they travel). ?As we look back, our history should make it blindingly obvious that racism is part of our DNA. Or more literally, part of our fundamental neural behaviour, programmed by our genes and calibrated by our cultural environment.

The Question of Skin Colour

Why then do we struggle to see this racism as a universal problem. Before going a little further into the question, it’s worth looking at the impact of colour on biology. Unlike sectarianism, communalism, or classism, members of other races can differ in terms of colour, (among other features). This allows a?very rapid identification of “otherness” and could potentially modify our behaviour. These colour cues are widely used in biology. (Nerdy Notes 4).

Human colour is primarily limited to various degrees of melanin expression. It is exceedingly likely that we humans also use colour cues to estimate threats, and it follows that we would view different coloured people as potential threats. And, almost certainly we first perceive this threat at the level of the reptilian and mammalian brain, and only later calibrate it with our higher cognitive abilities.

Racism: The Fundamental Role of Natural Selection

Coming back to the brain’s role in racism. It’s not enough to see that brains have different responses to different perceived racial threats. We also have to look at why certain responses are chosen and others are not. Why not simply attack at every perceived racial threat. Or why not take one’s time to try another less aggressive response to every perceived racial threat. Or why not try a friendly gesture to every perceived racial threat before attacking.

It is here that we have to consider the pervasive role of natural selection in guiding our responses to perceived threats.?

Some time back, I’d put out a detailed blog on how selfishness and cooperation work in biology. The main point of that blog was that natural selection rather than neural control dictates behaviour. No matter how much we think we are in charge of our own behaviour, we are not. We have multiple neural responses to a given situation, and the one that gets selected is the one associated with the most reward. Conversely, behaviour patterns that result in unpleasantness or threat are deselected. Below are the main points from that blog.

First, both selfishness and cooperation are widely seen in nature, between members of the same species, and between different species. Sometimes the complexity of these responses is staggering. The same responses in humans would be assumed to be cultural or even moral, and not simply based on natural selection of pre-programmed biological traits.

Second, if one compares aggressive acts (hawkish behaviour) vs more pacifist ones (dovish behaviour) and assigns reward vs loss points, one finds that both doves and hawks end up accumulating nearly equal points. Put another way, cooperative behaviour and selfish behaviour are both needed for a system to become stable.

Third, one can apply the same principle in examining the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” using game theory. What serves a prisoner’s interest best? To be loyal to his or her fellow inmate, or to be selfish at the cost of his or her prison colleagues??Initially selfish acts score more points but as the number of interactions increase, cooperation gets more points than selfishness and ends up a winner. Here previous selfish behaviour gets punished.

Fourth, testing the same thing in pure simulation games. Again, computer strategies that are nice (don’t cheat first) end up accumulating more points than strategies that are nasty (cheat first). Here, not only does previous selfish behaviour get punished, nice strategies that also prevent exploitation flourish. In other words, “cooperate but don’t be exploited” becomes a very successful strategy in surviving and thriving?So Tit for Tat (with some generosity and modification) is a very robust predictor of behaviour. As are other nice strategies like “win stay-lose switch” (sometimes called simpleton), “fair but firm”, and “discriminating altruism”. To reiterate, these computer strategies that are nice (don’t cheat first) and guard against exploitation are the most successful (in maintaining or increasing their numbers)

Putting all this together, natural selection does favor nice behaviour over nasty behaviour. Cooperation turns out to be more rewarding than cheating or selfishness, but the strategy needs safeguards against being exploited and becoming a sucker. There is no reason to suggest that this does not occur in humans, and there is no reason to presume our niceness is different from the rest of biology. Our cooperative behaviour does not need cultural or moral cues. Nice behaviour is just a smarter strategy than nasty behaviour. Smarter, only in the sense that it is naturally selected in larger numbers.

When it comes to interactions between humans of different races, it is reasonable to assume that the above principles will hold. Initially we will look after our own and discriminate against others. But as the interaction frequency between races increases, so will the benefits of cooperation. These benefits will however have to be safeguarded against exploitation of our cooperative behaviour. And this exploitation can come from outside the group or from inside.

Let us imagine that by some lucky quirk of fate India and Pakistan decided to let bygones be bygones and chose the path of trusting friendship and loving brotherhood or sisterhood. Everyone stands to gain by diverting resources from defence to other parts of society like education, health and social justice. Yet if this trusting partnership got run over by an external force, say China, then everyone would be losers. The new cooperative Indo-Pak partnership would fail. Using evolutionary terms, the strategy of partnership would not be stable and would be deselected. Alternatively, in the absence of hostile external forces, the Indians or the Pakistanis could try to impose their businesses, laws, religions or cultures on the other. This imposition could be done by force, stealth or manipulation; it doesn’t matter how it was done. The cooperative effort would fail. Blind trusting cooperation is a breeding ground for exploitation and failure; it is not sustainable. For a behaviour pattern to become sustainable, cooperation must be backed up by safeguards against external and internal exploitation.

Racism and Procreation

By definition, a species is one in which members of the opposite sex can procreate and reproduce fertile offspring. The ultimate act of non-racist behaviour is to mate and reproduce with a member of another race. An interesting animal experiment throws some light on this. As a background to this experiment, we need to look at human mate-selection at two extremes. Incest vs inter racial mating. At one end of the spectrum, every society has been known to go to great lengths to avoid incest, but there may be a much deeper genetic and reflex avoidance behaviour against incest. (Nerdy Notes 5). At the other end of the spectrum, ?for most of human history, mating between races was the exception, and usually a product of conquest and slavery.

Mating with a very distant genetic partner may not result in such robust offspring (biologically speaking). The pairs of genes may not work so well together, and equally importantly, the maternal mitochondrial genes and paternal nuclear mitochondrial genes may not work together efficiently.?In this case the risk to the offspring is much lower than 1/8 risk to offspring between two incestuous sibs (see nerdy notes 5). Once again we face the same problem; is avoidance of mating with genetically distant people socio-cultural, or is it more primordial and dictated by gene selection? ?Obviously it’s not black and white; a primordial genetic driven avoidance behavioural response can be modified or calibrated by an inclusive cognitive behaviour, which itself is subject to the zeitgeist of the?socio-cultural environment.

This ingenious experiment with birds indicated it is not simply cultural. For this experiment we can assume that the “bird-brain” is not capable of higher cognitive function. Presumably birds do not have the mathematical ability to calculate degrees of genetic relatedness. Japanese Quails were studied in an experimental set-up called the Amsterdam Apparatus. Females of reproductive age were introduced to potential mates arrayed behind shop-windows. They preferred first cousins over full siblings or unrelated birds. Further experiments suggested that these young quail learned the attributes of their clutch companions and choose mates that were quite like their clutch mates but not too much like them. This experiment clearly demonstrates that natural selection, acting through reflexive neural responses, does “reject” mates that are genitally too close or too far. And we can further presume that this pattern is seen solely because it is most advantageous in terms of survival and reproduction. ?When it comes to humans mating, it would be reasonable to assume that the more primitive parts of the brain response is to avoid both incest and inter-racial mating or marriage. In the case of interracial mating, the higher cognitive functions may opt to overcome that primordial avoidance. And this will happen when the perceived and actual benefits of diversifying one’s genes trumps the risks and stagnation that occurs when procreating in a homogenous racial gene pool.

Racism: Improving or Worsening?

Are we destined to be racist forever? Not really. It is exceedingly likely that the vast majority of us are more aware and tuned in to the problem of racism compared to previous generations. And people of our age are probably less tuned in compared to younger generations. Incidents that would be earlier deemed as normal are no longer ignored or ignorable.?

“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.”— Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison

That itself is progress. And that’s a small part of the progress. In most societies, social hierarchical discrimination is much less common when compared with earlier generations. At least in the context of modern constitutionally ruled countries, and in larger urban areas where more interaction occurs and more peer pressure exists.

All our neural responses are subject to our socio-cultural environment. Aggression or kindness in one setting may be successful, but harmful in another setting. If I do business with someone, and he or she cheats me once, I have more to gain by giving him or her another chance. It may have been an unintentional or an honest error. I could gain in future?business deals. If however, he or she serially and intentionally cheats me, I have a lot to lose, by continuing to do business with that person.?One could view racist acts as hawkish or selfish behaviour and non-racist acts as dovish or cooperative behaviour. A large body of academic work, briefly discussed earlier, shows that repeated interactions favour cooperation over selfishness.?Similar calculations play a role in our racist vs non racist behaviour. As the socio-cultural environment rewards integration, we will see more individual acts of integration. And for this to happen we need to be more willing to interact with other races. In our current society, racial, sectarian, religious, caste, or class based isolation is uncommon, especially in larger urban societies. And as the interaction between races increases, the perceived threat will become less relevant and the benefits of interaction will become more apparent. This interaction may occur in our schools and universities, in our profession or in our social circles, or in business transactions and gradually the race of people will become less and less relevant. Unless some act of aggression occurs, and then all our defences will spring back up. My guess is that, over generations, the race factor will become less relevant in our interaction, just like the contemporary situation with gender factor. Today one hardly notices female doctors or male nurses. What would have been unusual a couple of generations ago is now completely normal. And this observation is seen all across society, not just in medicine. I would like to end on this optimistic note, but I don’t think it’s the whole truth. We have to explore the role of power in driving racism.

Racism vs Power Hierarchies

The recent Cooper vs Cooper incident in Central Park NY serves as a wonderful example of the question of racism vs that of power. The bare facts are as follows. Christian Cooper (with loads of melanin), a?bird enthusiast, requested Amy Cooper (with little or no melanin), a dog walker, to keep her dog on a leash. Female and White Cooper responded by calling the cops and stating she was being threatened by Male and Black Cooper. My take is that only superficially was this a racist response. It was really much more the case that race was being used as a tool in a power game between these two individuals. Even if the sex or race of the two protagonists were reversed, we would have seen a similar power play in this interaction of “keep your dog leashed”.

In his book The Power Paradox, author Dacher Keltner writes that power is a part of every relationship and every interaction. Bertrand Russel noted that “The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”

The quest of power occurs in humans obviously, but is probably seen in much of biology where members of a species interact with each other. In purely biological or human terms, the greatest threat to individuals is not the physics or chemistry that surrounds us, in terms of hostile weather or terrain. It is not even other biological threats like predators, or parasites. It is other individuals of the same species that are competing for resources, territory and mates. We face this conflict every day in every human-on-human interaction. We have much less day to day worry from non-human threats like tsunamis, toxic rainfall, extreme weather conditions, earthquakes, predators or parasites, (though COVID is currently occupying our top concern). Grabbing or maintaining power is a major survival tool for social survival. Almost every interaction between two humans will have some power balance component to it. Much of inter human strife is based on getting or retaining power. Most racist acts have this power underpinning. Much of racist strife would disappear if there wasn’t a power advantage to the racist act.

Racism may or may not disappear in our day to day interaction, but IMHO, they will simply be replaced by other power hierarchies. I genuinely can’t see a situation where we humans will not be playing power games with each other. It’s just that the power criteria change. The only way I see this power hierarchy being overcome is if we become some sort of super-organism, where the survival of an individual is directly linked to the survival of all other individuals. I can’t see this happening anytime in the foreseeable future. ?An interesting observation; dating sites have shown the evolution of a relatively new hierarchy, that of education. For whatever reason, females tend to date at their education level and up while males tend to date at their education levels or down. For this reason, uneducated males and highly educated females have the hardest time finding a partner. Because the selection pool is smaller. Many females, when interviewed, said the first thing they checked was the education level, and only then looked at other factors like race, profession, location etc.?No one is forcing this pattern of selection. No social mores of law dictate this pattern of selecting partners, and yet it has evolved into a really relevant social hierarchy. IMO, this is a nice example of how racism may become less and less relevant in the future, only to be replaced by some other power hierarchical structure.

The power conflict is a two sided war. Those lower in a hierarchy will struggle and fight to get opportunity. And many of those higher in the hierarchy will simply believe it is their ability that led to their position. Or the inability of others that led to their lower position.?These people have no incentive to change the system. But it’s more complicated. Those higher in the hierarchy will passively prevent others from getting a fair shot by multiple subconscious acts and signals that declare their social power. And when that is not working, some will actively prevent others from equal opportunity as they fear a loss of their own share of the resource pie. A perceived or real loss of power is potent force of social behaviour. It may even be more potent a force of social behaviour than an absence of power. Most of us will fight more to preserve what we have, compared to how much we will fight?to get more than we have. (Nerdy Notes 6)

Let’s look a little deeper at the statement “Most of us will fight more to preserve what we have, compared to how much we will fight?to get more than we have.”?

All of biology competes for territory and resources. A person or a population can have one of four strategies.

·?????Fight to near death to protect your own?house and also when you invade another’s house.

·?????Fight but withdraw early to avoid serious injury when protecting your house or when invading another’s house.

·?????Fight to near death to protect your own?house but withdraw early to avoid serious injury when invading another’s house.

·?????Fight but withdraw early to avoid serious injury when protecting your house but fight to near death when you invade another’s house.

?The question (explored in Nerdy Notes 6) is; why do some of these strategies persist while others die out. The bottom line is; those that form an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) persist, and the others die out. It is worth repeating this: (ESS) get “selected”, and the others get "de-selected”. Of these four options, only the “Fight to near death to protect your own?house but withdraw early to avoid serious injury when invading another’s house” is stable. All others will result in instability (of the number of people with that strategy).

·?????Those who fight to near death invading others’ houses will suffer great losses (in terms of injuries and loss of future fights).

·?????Those who meekly give up their house will also suffer great loss (in terms of territory).?

Only the strategy of “fight aggressively to protect your own home but cautiously to invade other homes” will be stable in terms of retaining territory and avoiding injury.

Using these concepts, we can relook at the Jan 6th insurrection. Superficially one could say that they were brainwashed by a demagogue, or they were inherently racist, or that they become victims of a mob mentality (mirror neurons). All these are true to various degrees. But at a deeper level, they were following a very stable and long-lasting biological strategy of fighting to protect what is yours. Of course their perception of what was theirs is questionable, but, once they held that perception, then one could predict this behaviour. I don’t want to give any impression that the whole episode was anything other than scary and vile. But then, much of biology is scary and vile, and it is better that we accept this unpleasant reality and develop safeguards against this. The hawk-dove index and the ESS concept beautifully explains why the Jan 6th episode occurred. Because this behaviour evolves into an ESS. IMO, it is definitely worth putting in the required cognitive strain to get to this insight. (Nerdy notes 6)

Simply wishing away such “racist” behaviour by hoping common sense, morals or justice will somehow change these people’s minds is, IMHO, exceedingly naive. Such insurrection behaviour may or may not be seen in the future. If the judicial cost to the guilty of the current episode is high enough, it will deter future potential insurrections. If the perceived legal jeopardy is minimal, this episode will potentially repeat itself.

Back to the Beginning

Coming back to the JAMA editors. How did they end up in the situation they did? First claiming they were not racist, and then recanting, and finally resigning. It would be fair to say it was not because of ignorance or intellectual ability. These people are highly educated, they deal with other humans of different backgrounds daily. They occupy the top echelons of clinical medical academia. And yet they somehow missed the big picture.

If there is any real lesson here, it is that one can be on the top of one’s field and subsequently become over-confident about one’s abilities in other fields.

We can surmise that they were essentially functioning in a fast thinking mode, and this led them to false confidence. Had they asked “Am I a racist?” rather than simply state “I’m not a racist” they might have gone down a different path on social media. Or had they actually asked themselves, “how do I know if I am a racist or not?”, they might have come up with different insights. One, that human behaviour involves multiple behavioural patterns taken as reflex and subconscious levels, two, that we are all capable of deluding ourselves, and three that the exact same issue can appear very very different when viewed from different perspectives, especially from different rungs of a power hierarchy. Personally I definitely don’t think they were racist, but equally definitely, I think they were not insightful enough into the ubiquitous problem of racism. And this prevented them from seeing how they could subconsciously contribute to the problem. This lack of deliberate cognitive insight gave them the false confidence to publicly state?they were not racist. But then the juggernaut of public social opinion hit them, forcing them to look in the mirror. I’m pretty sure they are more insightful about racism now compared to earlier.

Regardless, I for one hope they get reinstated into their editorial roles.

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Nerdy Notes

1.????There are probably multiple variations of the mirror-neuron driven behaviour. Fans in a rock concert, singing and clapping, all locked into the tune. Partisan supporters of the home team in a hard-fought football or basketball game are another example. Or for that matter a political rally of a populist rabble rouser or warmonger. A superficial interpretation is that one’s brain is locked into the external stimulus of the music, the game, or the speech. But the presence of the crowd seems to magnify it disproportionately. It is possible that, at a deeper level, this amplification is driven by mirror-neuron activity in the crowd, by the crowd, and of the crowd, rather than the action on the stage or the court. Once again highlighting that we may be less in control of our behaviour that we would like to believe. One can explore this in lots of other social situations too.

2.????These are my top contenders for the pinnacle of human cognition.

Einstein’s theory of relativity, Newton’s laws of physics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Copernicus’ concept of a spherical planet earth as part of a solar-centric planetary system, Pythagoras’ concept of proof,?Euclid’s insights into geometry, Euler’s identity equation, Van Gogh’s masterpieces, and Beethoven’s symphonies.

There are also a whole host of others from the ancient worlds of India, Greece and China that offer fascinating exploration opportunities.?

3.????It is worth pointing out that some form or “mathematical” ability happens in a non-cognitive sense. If an animal sees two lions go into its cave or den and only one lion comes out, then it will avoid going into its own den.

A bird swooping down on its prey is doing a complicated differential equation calculation as it calibrates its speed and descent to catch the prey. As does a human running to catch a ball. These behavioural patterns depend on some mathematical ability of the brain, but this is not the same cognition of a human?actually working on a problem involving mental or written numbers and mathematical laws. This automatic mathematical ability is very advanced and very few of the most advanced robots can match them. It’s worth noting that this mathematical ability is over and above an already intricate neural activity that controls flight. The ability to use muscle power and coordination to control flight is itself exceedingly complicated. Most mechanical devices created by humans cannot match the flight ability of birds. To use some maritime terminology, not only do birds fly, but they do so without pitch, roll or yaw. Over and above this, the “bird brain” of a few cubic cm. can do the necessary differential equations to swoop down & capture a moving prey.

When we, and other animals, hear a sound, each ear receives the same signal, but with a micro delay of timing between the two ears. Based on this?micro difference, the brain calculates the direction of the sound. Similarly, when we see an object, each eye sees it at a fractionally different angle. The brain uses this micro difference to calculate how far the object is.

4.????In Attenborough’s BBC and Netflix series “Life in Colour”, he explores how different species use colour to enhance their survival or their success. Presumably, when most of these animals respond to colour, it is the result of genetic programming and primitive neural responses, rather than thoughtful cognitive behaviour. Regardless of at what level it is processed, colour is used as a signal for multiple purposes. It signifies the status of an individual, it sends signals to attract sexual mates, it is used to camouflage predators against prey and vice versa. Interestingly, different animals have different visual capabilities. Some like snakes only see monochromatically and in two dimensions. Others use Ultra-Violet or Infra-Red parts of the spectrum that are invisible to us humans. In Attenborough’s Netflix series, he uses special cameras that capture these different spectral ranges and shows how the world appears to these animals, and how this changes the way we humans see camouflage compared to the way the animals would perceive it.?

5.????At the other end of the spectrum, every society has been known to go to great lengths to avoid incest. This avoidance occurred even without humans cognitively knowing the details of the underlying genetics. The scientific explanation for avoiding incest is as follows. We all carry rare but deleterious recessive genes. They do us no harm as they are recessive and therefore not expressed. And the chance of us finding a mate with the same rare gene is very small, unless that mate is an immediate family member. The gene pool is shared in the family, and the chance of a family member having that particular gene is vastly higher than the general population. It is estimated that there is a 1/8 chance of two sibs producing an offspring with a lethal recessive gene. It’s that high. So it’s not surprising that societies have “forbidden” it.?The question is, is there another deeper genetic-behavioural level of avoidance? Not simply a socio-cultural avoidance. Some socio-biologists have insisted that this avoidance of incest is purely cultural, with no genetic input. Proponents of “kin selection” find this argument strange. It’s obvious to them that even without cultural norms, these genes will de-select themselves in any society with incest, as the offspring will either be still born or die young, (before the offspring themselves can reproduce). Evolutionarily speaking, still born is better than dying young, because parents have “wasted” a few years in child rearing.?I am saying this purely from an evolutionary and natural selection perspective and in no way suggest an eugenic angle to this observation. Dawkins counters the attempt of the socio-biologists who insist that it is purely socio-cultural. The socio-biologists argue that if avoidance of incest?was genetic, there would not be any need of cultural barriers to prevent it. So it must be purely cultural and nothing to do with genetic selection. Dawkins likens this argument to a car having both a door lock and a steering lock. Just because there is a door lock, it doesn’t mean that the steering lock is merely an ornament or a ritual. Two safeguards may be better than one.?

6.?????“Most of us will fight more to preserve what we have, compared to how much we will fight?to get more than we have.” It seems a fairly obvious thing to say, but one could wonder why this is so. To answer this question, we need to go into some detail about an ESS or an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. I’ve mentioned the Dove Hawk behaviour and index earlier, but it would be worth exploring it in some detail. To use the lingo of?Daniel Kahneman,?this is going to require some slow System 2 thinking and will cause some serious cognitive strain. But there is a beautiful concept at the end of it, so please bear with me.

There is an unpleasant biological reality; in a sea of doves, a solitary hawk will reign supreme. Instead of considering actual hawks and doves, we could consider hawkish and dovish human behaviour patterns. The former seek out fights and don’t stop till victorious or till seriously injured. The latter put on a pretense of resistance and if that doesn’t work, walk away. In a community full of peacenik doves, a single hawkish goon will pick fights and carry away the spoils, every time. And this will be a winning strategy even if he or she is not stronger than the dove.

But, as hawks proliferate, each hawk runs the risk of fighting another hawk and getting injured. Now the strategy of fight and plunder is less rewarding. The hawk is going to get seriously injured in some interactions. So badly injured that they lose out on the spoils of potential future fights with doves. Conversely, in a community of hawks busy fighting and harming one another, doves will do well by escaping the ravages of conflict. And their numbers will increase.

We could give points to each interaction and keep the total score an individual (or an individual act) accumulates. Some points for a win, no points for a safe loss, few negative points for time wasted in an aborted fight, and lots of negative points for a severe injury or loss. And then we could let the doves and hawks interact and see how the points are distributed.?What happens is that a stable pattern evolves. One specific ratio of hawks and doves will be stable, and that population will then remain in this ratio.

A population with all hawks or all doves will not be stable. Here, the introduction of a single change or mutation will change the balance in an evolving way, not in a fixed or stable new ratio. Of course, this ratio depends on the magnitude of the points allotted for victory and defeat.

So, we could specify arbitrary points; say 50 for a win, 0 for a loss, -10 for wasted time and -100 for severe injury.

In a population full of hawks, the winner will get 50 points but the loser will get -100 points. If we assume that each hawk has a 50% chance of winning, then the average score over many interactions will be -25. ([50-100]/2).?

In a population full of doves, the one that walks will get -10 points while the winner gets 40 (50-10 for lost time). If we assume that each dove has a 50% chance of winning, then the average score over many interactions will be 15. ?([40-10]/2).

In a mixed population, things will be different. If the majority are doves, when a hawk challenges a dove, the hawk gets 50 points and the dove gets nothing. But in a majority of hawks, the dove will slowly gain as the hawk will be losing an average of 25 points when interacting with other hawks while the dove will not be losing any points.

Using this model, and letting the individuals interact with each other ends up resulting in a stable ratio of 7/12 hawks to 5/12 doves. At this point all further interaction will maintain the balance, as it will self-correct when the ratio shifts. Put another way, at this ratio, both doves and hawks get maximum average pay offs, compared to any other hawk dove ratio.

Even this is not fully accurate. The actual average individual payoff at this ratio is a relatively low 6.25. If everyone agreed to be a dove, the average individual payoff would be 15. But, sooner or later some would cheat, become a hawk and gain more points. The ratio of 7/12 vs 5/12 is stable because?it eliminates the advantages of cheats in the overall population.?This example demonstrates that to achieve stability, one needs a certain number of doves and a certain number of hawks. It is worth noting that it need not be this ratio of individual doves and hawks to maintain the balance. Even if each individual could randomly use a dove or a hawk strategy for each fight, the number of individual dove and hawk episodes or acts would evolve into a stable balance. And the points assigned determine the ratio. ?All this is extensively covered in Dawkins The Selfish Gene

If we translate this into a more human context, we could say a certain ratio of nice dovish to nasty hawkish individual people coexist in a steady state. Or, a ratio of nasty to nice individual acts exist in a steady state. The point here is that some niceness is necessary to maintain stability in a human pool. And this niceness is a naturally selected state, nothing to do with morals or ethics.?This stable ratio has been labelled the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy or ESS. The word is not evolutionary, it is evolutionarily. The term strategy suggests purpose or design, but it actually describes a pre-programmed behavioural response. In the case of hawks, the pre-programmed behavioural response would be “attack and don’t back down”, and in the case of doves the pre-programmed behavioural response would be “threaten and if unsuccessful, retreat”.?The calculation of the ESS suggests there is a blind selection of “nice” traits, and this evolves without any underlying ethical or moral basis. The hawk-dove index and the ESS concept beautifully explains why the Jan 6th 2021 insurrection episode occurred. Because this behaviour evolves into an ESS.

As I mentioned earlier, it is definitely worth putting in the required cognitive strain to get to this insight.?