Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

A long time ago, and by that I mean several years ago now, I started an essay on whether humans had stopped evolving. I never quite finished it and due to its length, every time I sat down to finish it, I needed to re-read what I had written so far and then thought better of it.

Well, that has been dragging on for far too long now, since 2008 in fact, so I’ve patched it up with the few final notes I had left myself and decided to publish as is.

I’m sure if I sat down and wrote something from scratch today, it would be better. But never the less, I have some confidence in what I wrote back then, so here it is in its full glory.

Humans are amazing animals. But animals none the less.

One issue which has come up quite a lot recently is the idea that humans have evolved beyond the idea of being an animal into something higher.

Many people make this claim without meaning to or without really considering its implications. I am not talking about the people that claim that animals are merely automatons while humans alone can think intelligently. These people are wide spread, obviously within the religious community but also within the non-religious community to an extent as well but any such argument, at least from an atheist perspective, is clearly rubbish.

However what I am getting at here is people who make claims such as “humans have now evolved to control their own evolution”, “humans are no longer subject to the laws of evolution” and “humans are no longer subject to the wrath of mother nature.”

These claims may seem apparent [to be true] with some thought on the subject but when examined deeper actually come up along the same line of thinking as believing that humans are the only creatures which can think and are self-aware, it grants us a special place in creation which is a perfectly acceptable view within religious communities but one which does not fit with the atheist world view. This would be accepted by all but I suspect the people that make the sample arguments I have supplied would disagree this is the claim they are making.

However, when examined it does in fact come down to this point of view. So it is important I think that I address the points made on this line of thinking to explain why I do not believe this to be the case. Humans are still animals, we are still subject to the laws of evolution and we still play within the framework that all life does.

I believe one of the problems which lead to this line of reasoning is that we assume the same metrics used to measure what we would consider a successful person within society are equally good metrics for measuring how successful someone is in terms of evolution. In this case it is a far more simple equation – who is likely to survive and breed the most.

Take for example, the chav. In today’s society they are considered the bottom of the pile. They are uneducated, unmannered, annoying and often regarded as a group we would be better off without. It therefore seems perplexing to many people that chavs are breeding faster that well mannered well educated individuals because this suggests they are the next stage of human evolution.

The mistake here is, as stated above, that we use the same metrics to measure value in society as to value from an evolutionary perspective. Considering the problem from an evolutionary perspective, the chav is indeed the next stage of human evolution. Why? Because they are better at surviving and breeding than the smart highly educated yet less sexually promiscuous individuals (probably such as you and me if I am so bold as to make a judgment about my readership). A lot of people would at first laugh when it would be suggested chavs were the next stage of evolution but why should it not be true? How self righteous is it to presume that you must be the next stage in evolution?

As it happens in this case chavs probably aren’t the next stage of evolution. The reason for this is that there are questions raised as to how an entire society of chavs would fair and I shall return to this later but for the moment I would like to move on as this is somewhat of a side track, it does not illustrate my argument in the best way but more stands alone as an important point.

Returning to my original argument, humans are in fact in no special way in control of their evolution or protected from mother nature. Every year millions of people around the world perish in natural disasters. Of course many do not because of the efforts of mankind but this is no different than to the animal race. They too are fighting for survival and they too have a degree of success with this. Our degree of success is generally regarded as higher – but it is all on the same scale.

For example humans build themselves tools and shelter to protect against the wrath of mother nature. We have flood barriers, shelters from hurricanes, etc. But of course animals build themselves shelter too. Take a look at the humble ant, building mightly ant hills to protect themselves. These are not always successful, just as man’s efforts are often unsuccessful when mother nature claims lives in floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Both are “artificial structures” created by animals to live and shelter in.

Secondly I believe the idea that humans are now in control of their own evolutionary path is equally flawed. One of the prevailing arguments for this is that people within our society who would not survive in the animal world now survive in our society such as people born with severe disabilities.

However much like the uneducated chavs, severely disabled people rely on the infrastructure created by society in order to support them. It is a fantastic feat of human advancement and kindness that we are now able to keep alive and care for the severely disabled. But they no more form the next step in human evolution than they ever did. A society consisting purely of severely disabled people would be unable to survive effectively. Similarly a society solely consisting of uneducated chavs would be without the medical, engineering and logistical knowledge required to make modern society function effectively. Therefore the idea that human evolution will not continue along the natural path is simply unsubstantiated. Society is not about to devolve into chavs or people unable to look after themselves – the bulk of the population will remain fit, able and evolutionarily advancing individuals.

Further along this line of thought, it is worth noting that society’s apparent lack of potential to evolve further is also false. Take for example a change in the climate. Let us say it becomes colder, there is a global drop in temperature. Many people would claim this shows that human evolution has stopped because while animals (a term taken to mean non-human animals of course) would evolve thicker fur or a similar evolutionary trait, humans would simply manufacturer themselves thicker coats.

This at first glance seems to make sense but on closer examination does not in fact stand up as an argument. The main reason for this is that evolution covers the adaptation of a species – it does not state how this adaptation has to occur. Therefore, humans manufacturing themselves thicker coats to survive the cold is the human race adapting to better survive in it’s environment. It is not a case of us “breaking” evolution, it is a case of evolution happening right in front of our eyes.

This is often disregarded as it is seen as something external to us ourselves as evolving but when some thought is put into such arguments it does not seem to hold much water. Furthermore this is likely to be less true in the future as the “artificial” or “external” advancements we make become far less external as we begin to alter our own genetics and breeding ourselves fitter, healthier and better able to survive.

As we’ve already established, you have to accept humans as just part of nature, and once you do, it’s very difficult so say, “oh, that isn’t part of nature” when we do something. Animals make nests to live in and sometimes use basic tools – how is that any different to the more advanced tools we use?

Evolution seems to be continuing on humans unabated. Take, for example, height. We’re definitely getting taller as a species. If you compare the average height of someone a thousand years ago, they were shorter than we are today – and that is entirely natural if you will.

Mutations also occur at just the same rate as they ever have. Just because we’re moving faster with our own technology and improvements to life, doesn’t mean that the classic methods of evolution have stopped – mutations occur at just the same rate as they ever have. The reason it seems to be happening could perhaps be to do with the fact that it’s a very slow process and as humans we’re used to things advancing increasingly quickly.

Our basic desires also still drive us. Deep down we all still want to find a mate and have babies. It’s wired into us and the majority of people over the age of fifty will be happy to tell you that at a certain point, you just get the urge to procreate. We might be master of many things as a species, but we haven’t wiped out our basic emotions yet (and probably never will, unless people start seeing Vulcan as the ultimate utopia).

Therefore to summarise, my points are as follows. Most of us will agree on the premise that humans are animals and have no divine special place in the universe, we’re just doing pretty well. Once we agree on this there is no reason to believe that we are not subject to the laws of evolution, that we have somehow stopped evolving or that we now control mother nature.

While browsing the Sam Harris website for some information to add to my recent post on The Moral Landscape, I came across a new essay that Sam had published, entitled Lying, which was available exclusively via Kindle.

At 26 pages long I was able to get through it before going to bed yesterday and it makes for an interesting read.

In the essay, Sam puts forward the case that you should almost never lie. It’s qualified with almost as there are times when normally immoral actions can be moral – for example, if you’re willing to kill in self defence, it seems silly to rule out lying as well. But for the majority of our life, lying is best to be avoided.

This is something most of us would follow anyway, but Sam concentrates his efforts in persuading the reader that white lies are equally an enemy to be avoided – something that most of us probably are guilty of (I’ll be honest, I certainly am).

Examples are things like telling a friend your busy when you actually don’t want to go to an event, pretending your friend doesn’t look fat in that dress, or not being honest about how you think the book they have just written is rubbish, or even as far as being honest when someone gives you a present that you actually don’t like.

A good example is this – you overhear a friend leaving a voicemail for someone else (that you don’t know) saying that she has had to cancel plans at the last minute because something has come up. You know this isn’t true, but you don’t call the person on it at the time. Still, every time they cancel you on because something came up in future, you are disinclined to believe them.

This is something that I can really relate to. Many friends I just won’t believe when they cancel me because they claim to be ill. Carl is a good example of this. Sometimes he probably is ill, but most of the time I just don’t believe him. Given that trust is a very valuable commodity, that really isn’t a position you want to be in.

Of course, sometimes white lies can actually just be code for something else, and we all know it. “I have no money” for example. It’s amazing how many people say this and then suddenly have money when we’re doing something they really want to do. But then, we all really know that saying that actually means “I only have limited funds in my budget so it has to be really good to make it worth it, and your event isn’t worth it.”

Another example of this is “I’m busy.” As Gijsbert says, we’re all busy people, what we mean when we say we are busy is “I have other priorities.”

Harris argues that it’s best to avoid these white lies, though. If your friend genuinely is fat, be honest, maybe it will inspire them to lose some way and be happier with their own body image. If your friend’s film script is genuinely awful, tell them, don’t let your friend waste more of their time on a project that isn’t going anywhere. It’s better to face short-term discomfort for the overall benefit of your friends.

It’s a good read. Not as great as the reviews claim, but interesting none the less. If you’re interested, you can find it in the Kindle Store.

EDIT: The essay is now also available in a PDF edition, for those that don’t want to download the Kindle software. Thanks to Aaron for the heads up.

I’m a vegetarian. And I think everyone should try it.

The problem is though, it’s very heard because steak tastes so good. So do ribs. So does chicken. And many, many other meat based foods. Meat tastes amazing!

So here is the question – if vegetables are so good for us, why don’t they taste amazing? Think about it from an evolutionary perspective – if you had a human who preferred eating food that was good for them, then they would prosper, so you would expect natural selection to lead us to humans that love vegetables because they are really good for us.

But we don’t have that, we live in a world where many people eat vegetables because they are good for us but enjoy eating meat far more.

This seems strange, much like the problem of natural selection and homosexuality, and much like that problem, I’m sure there is an answer to it.

My guess would be this – back when humans were evolving, there was a lot of plant life and vegetables to be eaten. Humans didn’t actually have to like them to eat loads of them because they were the most abundant food source and so people ate plenty of vegetables anyway, by default almost.

People do need a bit of meat though, or at least, did in those days, and that was much rarer and indeed, harder to get hold of. So it had to taste good to motivate humans to go out and hunt down animals for meat.

Of course, that could all be nonsense, that’s the best-educated guess I can come up with sitting here as a computer scientist with a casual interest in evolutionary biology and the combined knowledge of the first two chapters of Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable.

Another reason is that it could just be an accident of the way that the human taste sense has evolved and the texture of meat. Maybe someone who studies biology can enlighten us?

Many people used last week as a chance to lay into Apple, describing the iPhone 4S as a disappointing release.

I honestly can’t image why. It really is the iPhone 5 in everything but name, and perhaps a bit of exterior work, but from every other point of view, it’s a whole new phone.

They’ve put the dual-core A5 chip in it, which is the same chip that is inside my iPad 2, it has the dual antenna system, the battery life has been extended, and it’s new 8-megapixel camera not only has a new censor allowing it to capture 73% more light but it also shoots 1080p high definition video as well.

What I am most in love with however, is Siri. Their new voice control system not only allows you to do things just by speaking to your phone, but actually have a conversation with it!

Of course, speech recognition has been around for a long time and nobody really uses it, but this is what Apple do best – they take a niche technology and package it in a way which brings it to the mass market. For example, the first tablet came out decades ago, but it was only when Apple released the iPad did tablets really see the first mass adoption. Hopefully, Siri is the opportunity speech recognition has been waiting for.

Currently, car insurance providers offer cheaper premiums to women than they do to men. Purely because of your gender.

That’s discrimination, it’s immoral and thanks to a ruling by the European Court of Justice, it will be illegal from the end of next year. Yet most, if not all, still seem to carry on with the practice.

Having discussed the problem at work today, we decided to put it to the test on a price compassion site. Here were the results. The bottom quote I used the name Mr Chris Worfolk, whereas in the one above, I used the name Miss Chris Worfolk.

As you can see, there is a £60 difference. For Jason, the difference was far bigger – over one hundred pounds, just because of his gender.

Interestingly, just after I had generated the second quote, I received a call from Hastings Direct asking me if they could fill in some further details to complete my quote. I politely explained to the woman that I only generated the quote to prove they immorally, and soon to be illegally discriminate based on gender.

Now, you can argue that males should pay more for their car insurance because they cause more expensive accidents and so it is statically justified.

But, you would be wrong. This is exactly what discrimination law is designed to deal with. After all, just because a small minority of males do drive like boy racers have have some pretty big accidents, doesn’t mean that one individual, such as myself, is any more of a high risk than a female driver – so why should I be punished?

It’s easier to see how wrong it is, when you look at other factors you could discriminate on. Lets use the classic example – you wouldn’t charge someone more for their car insurance because of the colour of their skin, even though we have the same as to what skin colour we are born with as we do over what gender we are born into – none.

You could argue that there won’t be a statistical difference between sin colour, but again this doesn’t hold up because you could look at an area where there is a statistical difference – crime for example.

Non-white minorities are more likely to be convicted of a crime. There are a number of reasons for this, most notably that these minorities tend to be in lower social brackets and lower social brackets produce more crime, so even though for those social brackets minorities have a similar conviction rate to majorities, overall they have a higher conviction rate – but the one thing I think we can all agree on, it isn’t because they are black.

But if you go purely on statistics for an entire group alone, as car insurance companies do, we should be more suspicious of black people in the UK and police should stop and search them more.

We don’t do this, because it would be utterly wrong.

We treat people like individuals and don’t hold them accountable for what people who share arbitrary characteristics with them such as skin colour, ethnic origin, sexual preference or (usually) gender. Because to do so would be wrong. Including if you’re selling car insurance.

While attending the Atheist Society talk this week, I picked up a copy of Leeds Student which had some interesting statistics.

43% of people pulled last week and 23% threw up. That’s to be expected.

However, I was quite shocked that 14% of people said they had had unprotected sex.

I mean, seriously? Lets assume that one third of people had sex in freshers’ week. That is quite a lot I believe, not just because that is generally a lot but because only 43% of people pulled, which would mean that most people who pulled, also went home with someone.

But if we assume that such a high figure is true, that means that half the sex had during freshers’ week was unprotected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to pretend condoms are a great solution – they’re a massive hassle when you’re in the middle of it, and lets not pretend otherwise, but given the prevalence of STIs and most of these events being one night stands, surely people at one of the best universities at the country are smarter than that?

Yesterday the technology industry was saddened by the passing of Apple founder and chairman, Steve Jobs.

Steve was a visionary who literally changed the world for the better by bringing new and innovative technology to the public in a way which was always intuitive and more importantly, magical. Every time I pick up my iPad, I still feel like I’m living in Star Trek.

Tributes have poured in from politicians, to business leaders, to the many, any Apple fans across the world. In a touching note Bill Gates described working with him as “an insanely great honor.”

He’ll be missed by all of us in the field of technology.

Recently, my good friend George, decided to part ways with his then girlfriend. Sad times. Unfortunately, when it became time to make it official, by severing the relationship on Facebook, the status change attracted very few comments.

Now this clearly isn’t because George is simply unpopular. Nothing could be further from the truth – George is a witty, charming and sexually attractive man. I would go on, but what happened in Munich, stays in Munich.

The reason that such a status updated attracted few comments was that Facebook has decided that George’s updates aren’t that important. It never appeared in my newsfeed, it simply slipped by without me ever reading it.

Back in June, I blogged about Eli Pariser’s talk on online filter bubbles and how Web 2.0’s attempt to personalise its content can lead to blinding us to what is going on in the rest of the world.

This is a good example of this – Facebook has decided that George’s Facebook updates aren’t that relevant to me, even though I would consider him one of my closest friends (as well as living with him!). So beware the online filter bubbles, Eli was right all along.

On Wednesday, we headed down to Sheffield Humanists for their talk by Dr Natalie Hammond, “Paying for Sex.” She had recently completed her PhD on the subject, specifically men who pay women for sex and the law surrounding it.

After the talk, there was a group discussion which took a while to get going, initially with people discussing the laws surrounding the topic, but finally someone got up and moved the discourse to where we really wanted it to be – the ethics.

Naturally, being a progressive group, most people were in favour of women having the right to do as they wish and rational enough to see that it is just the same as selling your body to any labour (I sold my body to McDonald’s, doing hard labour for far less money for example), and supporting decriminalisation so that victims are not afraid to come forward and the industry can be properly regulated.

A good parallel between this with the law surrounding abortion. Even if you disagree with abortion, it still makes sense to legalise it because of the harm caused by back street abortions and driving the practice underground.

Similarly, the harm caused in prostitution is nothing to do with any inherent problems in the industry, it’s the fact that we drive it underground and as a consequence the pimps, the human traffickers, the drugs, etc, etc get involved and that is what causes the problems.

Luckily, there were a few people in the audience with more regressive views, so some great debate got going :D.

Recently, I signed a petition to retain the ban on the death penalty.

Initially, I didn’t think it worth it. Why? Because Parliament would never approve the death penalty being brought back into British society, and even if they did, Europe would just override them anyway. We don’t have to worry about the death penalty coming back.

However, having initially rejected the idea out of concern it would give the debate some genuine legitimacy, I in the end decided to sign it because if enough of us do, we don’t even have to have the faux-debate. I’m proud to see more pople standing up to say of course we don’t want the death penalty back, than people signing up to say we do.

As I write this, the petition to retain the ban currently has the 5th most signatures of any petition, the most popular bring back the death penalty petition is only 8th.