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I recently asked my Uncle Chris about how he reconciles being a scientist with being a Christian. I used to be such a militant atheist that I thought that science and religion were incompatible. But now, I try to be more open-minded. He sent me a response that was so articulate and thought-provoking that I asked him if he would be okay with me publishing it on my blog. I disagree with some of his opinions, but I don’t claim to be objectively correct. Here is his response:

 

Andrew,

 

You mentioned that you wondered how a scientist could believe in God.  I think religious belief is largely a matter of personal faith.  For a scientist, then belief in God is more a matter of whether or not this belief conflicts with scientific principles.  In addition I think that the principles of Christianity followed by honest and truly caring members of the faith has the potential to do so much to heal this broken and hurting world.

 

The following is a sermon I have given a couple of times that answers some of what you have asked, but certainly does not represent all of what I believe.

 

Chris

 

 

What Do I Believe?

            As a scientist I have been taught to make observations of our world, collect indisputable data, and develop explanations that are consistent with all known observations and data.

 

            Much of our lives are ruled by both what we know and what we believe.  Do you believe in ghosts?  Do you believe in miracles?  Do you believe in magic?  Do you know where you live?  Do you know what day or date today is?  Do you know how many pennies there are in a dollar?  The following story illustrates in a humorous way the somewhat less constant our beliefs can be.

 

 

            Once upon a time there was an atheist.  He decided one day to take a trip to visit Great Britain.  After several days visiting many of the sites in England he travels north to Scotland.  Once there he is overcome by the beauty of the Locs and rents a row boat.  As he is rowing out into the middle of the Loc, suddenly a sea monster’s head breaks through the surface immediately underneath his boat.  The monster tosses the boat and its contents high into the air and opens its mouth to catch him.  The atheist screams out, “Oh dear God!  Please save me!”  Everything stops.  The boat hangs in the air, the oars and the atheist.  A loud booming voice calls out, “I thought you didn’t believe in me?!”  The atheist answers, “That’s true!  But up until about 10 seconds ago I didn’t believe in the Loc Ness Monster either!”

 

 

            What do I believe?  What do we as a church believe?  Page 918 in

Voices United provides us a look at what our Creed says we believe.

 

            We believe in God:

                        Who has created and is creating,

                        Who has come in Jesus,

                        The Word made flesh,

                        To reconcile and make new,

                        Who works in us and others

                        By the Spirit…….

 

 

            These statements are some of what we as a Church claim to believe and they are what I believe.  But what does it mean when I say I believe these things?

 

            I believe in God who has created and is creating?  Does this mean that I believe the creation stories as described in Genesis?  Genesis 1 and 2 describe the creation of the heavens and earth and man and woman.  Genesis 3 describes the temptation of the serpent and Adam and Eve’s banishment from Eden.  These chapters are specific in regard to times involved and graphic in description of the physical creation.  At this point it is probably a good idea for you to remember that I am a scientist by choice, and that what I have claimed, is that I believe that God has created and is creating.

 

 

            Scientists make observations, gather numerical data, and develop hypotheses and theories to attempt to generate self – consistent explanations of our world and universe.  These hypotheses and theories are only of value to scientists until the day someone collects data and observations that contradict them.  Up until the end of the 19^th century scientists believed that time was a constant, and that there was no limit to how fast something could travel.  However, there were beginning to be gathered data that seemed to contradict both of these concepts.  Early in the 20^th century Albert Einstein developed his theories of relativity and general relativity erasing both of these concepts and reconciling the contradictory data.  Einstein’s theories suggested that time is relative and subject to both velocity and gravity.  His theories also required the speed of light in a vacuum to be a constant and the maximum possible velocity.  To this date these two concepts have been experimentally demonstrated and confirmed, repeatedly, and no credible data presently exists that cast these theories into doubt.

 

 

 

The best scientific theory of the creation of the universe “The Big Bang Theory” proposes that the universe was “created” from an incredibly dense and small point source about 15 billion years ago (not the roughly 6 to 10 thousand years demanded by a literal interpretation of the Biblical scriptures).  What was there before this?  Our science does not have the mathematical and theoretical tools to investigate and describe anything before the “Big Bang”.  This sounds like creation to me.  For the first approximately 300,000 years the universe was too hot for atoms to form from the plasma of electrons, protons and neutrons.  Once the universe had cooled sufficiently that atomic nuclei were able to form and electrons could be captured and released by them, light was suddenly possible.  “Let there be light?”  Early stars and galaxies were formed from the original mixture of essentially the two simplest elements, hydrogen and helium (mostly hydrogen).  These original stars lived their lives using nuclear fusion to consume the hydrogen and helium while creating heavier elements.  Eventually as the fuel was exhausted they collapsed under their own weight and exploded as supernova.  It is only in these supernovae that formation of the heavier elements present in the earth and present in our sun was possible.  This ejection of star matter led to second and third generation stars including our own sun.  These stars and solar systems formed from the gravitational attraction of the interstellar dust/matter left over from the supernovae of the first stars.  The center of our local dust cloud became dense and hot enough to ignite in nuclear fusion and result in our sun.  At the same time (about 5 billion years ago) smaller clumps of this matter orbiting the sun coalesced into the planets in our system.  The largest of these, Jupiter is too small to generate the density and temperature necessary to create fusion and become another sun.  The earth then is made of star dust, or has been created from the stuff of the universe.  This star dust along with the multitude of meteors entering the atmosphere daily (asteroids, comets; ie. more star dust) is the stuff of the earth.

 

 

Another theory that scientists are investigating and testing is Darwin’s origin of the species, or evolution.  This theory suggests that the species of animals and plants that we observe on earth today are the result of selective evolution from earlier and possibly more primitive species.  The most modern extensions of this theory suggest that the earliest, simplest living organisms evolved from the water and soil of this planet. God created us from the stuff of the earth?  This evolution is driven by the incredible amount of energy reaching the earth daily in the form of solar radiation.  This energy can be seen causing chemical changes and mutations today leading to sun burns, bacterial and viral mutations and cancer.  Once the process of life got started, the energy of the sun is more than ample enough to keep it all going.  Darwin’s theory can be summarized to claim that variations in the genetic makeup of all living species occur naturally and randomly in generations with time.  Some of these variations are not viable (hence miscarriages, still births, and failure to thrive occur).  Some of these variations are not competitive (eg. a rabbit that has no legs).  These two categories will almost always fail to live to reproductive age, and hence these genetic variations fail to be continued.  Some of these variations give a selective advantage to a species.  Eg. improved night vision might make a species of owl better able to hunt at night.  More of these individuals will avoid disease, starvation and be generally more robust during their reproductive age.  These individuals will be more likely to pass their genetics on to their offspring and hence this variation survives.  This competitive selection process over several billion years allows species variations that have a reproductive advantage to survive and thus evolve from their more primitive, less competitive, ancestors.  Does this mean we evolved from chimpanzees and gorillas?  No.  But anatomical and genetic analysis of humans, chimps and apes suggest that sometime, millions of years ago, we had a common ancestor.  For some reason chimps found an environmental niche that reinforced the changes that have led to the modern chimpanzee, similarly for gorillas, and possibly the evolution of our amazingly adaptive mind allowed humans to escape the restriction of being best suited to only one ecological niche and emigrate to almost all regions of this planet.

 

 

So, what do I believe?  I believe that God has created and is creating.  The only part of this that cannot be tested by science is the existence of God.  I also believe that God gave us the capacity to understand creation and ultimately the ability to share in creation.  The modern reproductive technologies and genetic engineering have given us God – like power.  Let’s hope that we will soon develop the wisdom to use this knowledge responsibly.  There is an entire sermon on the ethics of reproduction in there somewhere.  However, as a scientist this means that I do not read the creation stories in Genesis as literal descriptions of how God created the universe.  What then do I say to people who challenge me with the statement that the Bible is the word of God?  I may not accept Genesis as the literal word of God, but I do believe that it was inspired by God.  Does this mean that I believe that God lies?

 

 

At the time that the Genesis creation stories were being passed on orally and eventually being put down in print, God’s people were asking, “Where did we come from?”  With their primitive understanding of the form and function of the universe around them, a scientific description of the physics and biology of the “Big Bang and Evolution” would not have answered this question.  They would not have understood the answer and thus would have received no answer.  What is the important essence of the creation stories?  God created the universe and created us, and God says that it is good.  I believe that one of the truly wonderful parts of this gift from God is the ability to understand God’s creation.  God hates separation from us and continually calls us to be in harmony with creation.  To understand it, embrace it and care for it.

 

If this isn’t enough reason to avoid literal interpretation of the creation stories, I also believe the following.  Even though I believe we were too primitive to understand the modern explanation of the creation of the universe, I do not believe that we were primitive enough to believe in talking snakes.  I believe that the serpent in the temptation story of Adam and Eve is symbolic of the evils of temptation.  Snakes historically have been feared and hence labeled as evil.  If people 6000 years from now found a Richard Scary children’s book, would we want them to think that we believed in talking worms, cats and dogs that drive cars and are employed in the fire department and police force?

 

 

Finally, I want to look at some of the challenges that fundamentalist and literalist approaches to the Biblical descriptions of creation use to try and debunk what science is learning.  Our theories and scientific measurements are the basis of our estimates of the ages of the earth and universe.  Our understandings of the physics and chemistry of stars is what allows us to date the age of the universe to about 15 billion years.  It is our understanding of the physics of radioactive elements that dates the earth and solar system to about 5 billion years.  Through use of various dating methods the oldest geologic formations on earth fit into this 5 billion year age.  The fossil record shows evidence of life on this planet for the last 2 to 4 billion years.  The work of the Leaky family in England has identified human ancestors in fossil remains that date back 2 to 4 million years ago.  How can this be reconciled with a Biblical creation that occurred 6 to 10 thousand years ago?  Some fundamentalists have suggested that the fossil record and radioactive half lives are just tricks of God.  Deliberately placed in our world to confuse and test our faith and belief in God.  These people would have us believe that God created a universe that could be understood in a logical and consistent manner, merely to test our faith in God’s literal words as written in the Bible.  I cannot believe that a loving, nurturing God would choose to play such a cruel game with us.  I prefer to believe that God loved us so much, wanted to share the joy of creation with us so much, that we were given the ability to investigate, explore and understand the universe.  Does this mean I believe that the Big Bang and Evolution theories are the correct descriptions of the creation of the universe and all life on earth?  Not likely.  Ask me this same question in another 6 thousand years.  I believe they are the best, most logically consistent descriptions that we have today.

 

 

This morning I have dealt with my belief in God’s creation of the universe and us.  The creed also talks of belief in Jesus.  It is belief in Jesus that defines us as Christians.  I believe in Jesus, and I also follow with interest the deliberations of the Jesus Seminars.  Remember, after all I am a scientist.  Maybe some other morning I will have the time to share some of my beliefs of Jesus with you.

 

 

Finally, do I believe in miracles?  What is a miracle?  In the 1500s and 1600s if you told someone that you were going to remove their heart, and replace it with the heart of a dead person, and that they would not only live, but most probably feel better, do you think they would believe you?  They would most likely burn you at the stake as a witch.  If you did do this would they consider it a miracle?  Would this mean that it cannot be explained by science?  We know the answer to this today, and that this very thing occurs here at the University Hospital several times each year.  Who knows what miracles we will be performing a thousand years from now?

 

 

 

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More experienced doctors are more likely to kill you. This seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I think that an understandable notion in our culture is that more seasoned doctors are better at treating patients due to their experience. They have superior treatments, and know far more about different diseases and symptoms.

 

 

However, I recently learned that the likely truth is basically the opposite of what we expect. I’m not a medical expert, I don’t play one on the internet, and I haven’t exhaustively researched this topic. But I listened to a Freakonomics podcast in which several doctors were interviewed, who explained the situation. Freakonomics is a podcast that is based on the books by an economist named Steven Levitt and a journalist named Stephen Dubner. They examine common and uncommon social issues from an economic perspective, and often come to unexpected conclusions. On their podcast, they interview experts with multiple opinions in a wide variety of fields.

 

 

In the episode that I’m thinking about, Dubner talked to doctors with different opinions about how experience impacts how well patients are treated. Contrary to popular belief, even some of the more seasoned doctors admitted that they are more likely to make mistakes. But how can this be possible?

 

 

It seems like we tend to believe that there’s a correlation between grey hair and better medical expertise. However, the opposite is apparently more likely. Why is this? Well, one of the main reasons is that medical information is endlessly being researched and updated. It’s hard for anyone, including people with a better ability to interpret studies and data, to keep up with the latest findings. There’s so much change that by the time a doctor finishes medical school, what they learned is probably out of date. Biology, pharmacology, and every other related field are phenomenally complex. So when new results are found, it has countless downstream effects, including new questions and altered knowledge. There are often new tools added to a doctor’s medical tool box.

 

 

It’s not a requirement for doctors to continuously read papers and learn. Also, a lot of them have extremely hectic schedules. They tend to have a large amount of patients and need to keep up with all of their information. Finding the right treatment sometimes takes time. If you have multiple patients, this all can create a huge snowball effect. This can be even more of a problem if you’re a doctor at a hospital or emergency room, and it can suck away all of your time. I can imagine how difficult it would be just to maintain regular functionality, let alone extra research on the side.

 

 

New doctors tend to be more up to date on recent information because they’ve just completed medical school. So they often understand more of the newest knowledge. They’re less likely to have immersed themselves in treating patients so much that they have no time for research. If you’re a doctor, you almost have two jobs if you want to be diligent about this.

 

 

Another factor is that experience with successfully treating patients can give you greater confidence in your abilities. Specific drugs and other tools have worked well in the past, so you might see no reason to update your information and find better solutions. That’s logical, but this type of thinking can lead to arrogance. This is dangerous in doctors, even though that fits the stereotype. It can lead to more people needlessly suffering and dying. Ego stroking can be insidious because the general public seems to assume that older doctors know that they’re talking about. People appear to believe that doctors understand medical issues. But this assumption probably applies more to those with greater experience. We’re less likely to question men and women who look and sound like they’ve seen and treated every medical issue.

 

 

Arrogance is of course not exclusive to older doctors. But younger ones are less likely to have confidence in their abilities because they have treated less patients. They probably have more up to date knowledge, but they have applied it to people far less than doctors with more experience. This can help younger doctors question their assumptions more, which is a great idea for everyone. They’re more likely to spend extra time and effort finding the right treatments for their patients, and they could be more open-minded. Less experienced doctors probably want to earn the respect that older doctors get from having grey hair. All humans stereotype, and this one about experienced doctors is incorrect. Younger ones are less likely to have had this better mindset beaten out of them by the time requirements of all of their patients.

 

 

More experienced doctors are more likely to kill you. However, that isn’t my main takeaway from what I’ve learned about this. It doesn’t mean that if you meet a seasoned veteran doctor, you should flee the room in a screaming panic, terrified for your life. Most doctors aren’t looking to kill people. They probably get into this profession because they want to help us and save lives.

 

 

A younger doctor won’t inherently give you better treatment. We shouldn’t just put young and old doctors into radically different categories. There are always exceptions to generalizations. More experienced doctors likely have the same altruistic intentions as younger ones.

 

 

 

For me, the main lesson is this: Doctors should try as hard as they can to keep up to date with the newest information. Maybe we should be more inquisitve with them regardless of their age and experience. That way, we can stay away from those who are set in their ways. We can get treated by those who continuously update their knowledge and methods instead. The more that we do this, the better chances we’ll have of avoiding unnecessary sickness and even death. It can help us all have longer, healthier lives.

 

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I’ve written a few blogs on what I’ve learned from Robert Sapolsky. He’s a behavioural biologist at Stanford University who has spent decades living around and studying primate species like baboons. This has improved his knowledge of human behaviour, along with what he calls “different buckets” of information. They include fields like neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, genetics, anthropology, sociology, and endocrinology. In his lectures, and in his new amazing book called Behave, he explains the pros and cons of different reasoning methods in each bucket. Sapolsky does a great job of elaborating in detail on the incompatibility of some assumptions in different fields. He also talks and writes about how you can combine the accurate bits of knowledge to explain behaviour in understandable terms. Here are the links for my previous blogs about his work, called Are Men Actually Better at Math Than Women?, and There Are People Born as Both Male and Female Who Are Not Hermaphrodites:

 

Are Men Actually Better at Math Than Women?

 

https://mindgasms.bplifetime.com/2017/10/11/people-born-male-female-not-hermaphrodites/

 

This is part 2 of a 2 part blog series called Nature, Nurture, and Randomness. Here’s the link for part 1:

 

https://mindgasms.bplifetime.com/2018/01/01/nature-nurture-randomness-part-1/

 

 

Human behaviour is even more complex than the two way combination of culture and genes that sociobiologists study. Learning and thinking about it is like entering The Matrix. Every time you discover something new, it brings up dozens more questions. They can each inexorably change your life forever as you find the answers. You often can’t definitively explain why someone behaves in a particular way. There are many reasonable possibilities, but figuring out which ones are objectively correct is borderline impossible. That’s why science relies on generalities. Don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing that scientists can explain as much as they do. Their knowledge will almost certainly continue increasing. But the incredible amount of individual variation means that analyses that sound 100% correct could easily be completely wrong.

 

 

Like I said, the environmental experiences that shape our personalities and life choices tend to be random. They’re so complex that sometimes, no one can determine which factors lead to a particular choice or behaviour. On one day, what we eat for breakfast might have much more effect on our psychology than the books we read, the new friends we make or the old ones we lose, spilling coffee on the way to work, that new promotion, or getting fired. Any of these factors might impact us far more than any others on different days depending on innumerable circumstances. Human emotions are highly variable and can’t always be explained. Random reasons might lead to what we eat for breakfast having no effect on us the day after it had more effect than anything else.

 

 

However, there’s rarely just one thing that has a much higher impact on our interactions with people than other factors. There are actually countless circumstances every day day that affect us in very different and fluctuating ways. Eighteen events in any minute might influence our behaviour both consciously and subconsciously. And the degree to which each of them impacts us will likely increase and decrease mildly or significantly as time passes. This is determined by our evolved genes. Our genetic expressions change depending on our cultural experiences. They make our brains predict the future, and act accordingly.

 

 

Life is so phenomenally complicated that it helps cause a lot of fluctuation in our psychology. But there’s at least one more layer of complexity than that, and probably many more. Forces of nature like physics influence a large amount of the extremely variable every-day circumstances that we all experience. Some of them can be studied with scientific analysis. I’m not a scientist, but it seems like things like shifting gravity could have minor affects on metabolism levels and similar biological processes. Women’s menstrual cycles are also supposedly affected by moon phases. Many of these factors are probably fairly random as well, and as far as I know, are not often applied to human behaviour. Science can figure out a hell of a lot, and will continue to do so if the world isn’t destroyed by nuclear war, climate change, or asteroid impacts.

 

 

If you add the semi-randomness of genetic expression to the randomness of life experiences and the randomness of how nature impacts our lives, that’s a lot of fucking randomness! The universe is so unimaginably enormous. It has such an incredible amount of events happening simultaneously at every moment in different layers of reality. Everything from atoms moving and interacting with each other to stars exploding and becoming black holes is constantly happening. So even if I went through every way that I can think of that can possibly affect behaviour, there would be many factors that I haven’t considered. It’s virtually a guarantee that scientists will keep discovering different and more complicated ways that various factors influence human behaviour. It’s also as close to objectively true as I think is possible that there are many things that impact behaviour that I’m not considering.

 

 

Human behaviour is almost impossibly complex, and scientists are endlessly finding more pieces of this puzzle. We can understand a lot of likely explanations for why we do what we do, in immense detail. But there’s a hell of a lot of individual variation in people, and there are ample conscious and subconscious reasons that we behave in certain ways.

 

 

Our emotions were constructed by evolved genes, and they impact our behaviour. They fluctuate wildly throughout our random cultural experiences every day. We have little control of our emotions, and almost no power over our experiences. We can change our emotional responses of course, even though it’s sometimes exceedingly challenging. Also, factors outside of our control often have a greater affect on us than we think.

 

 

The way that we interact with our environments is insidiously random. The factors that lead to behaviour are often borderline impossible to trace. Even though scientists can offer a lot of reasonable explanations, they are frequently generalizations and approximations. There’s so much randomness that probably, no one really objectively knows why we behave the way that we do. There are such enormous quantities of different and constantly changing factors that often, we are likely affected by more of them than we can imagine. Nature and nurture both play crucial roles in our psychology. But one frequently over-looked factor is randomness. In some ways, it’s much more important, and borderline impossible to explain. So the next time you think about whether nature or nurture plays a bigger role in our crazy and inconsistent behaviour, think again. Consider how much of what we think we understand might be completely random. Since it’s happened throughout history, it’s very likely that scientists will discover in the future that our current model of psychology is fundamentally flawed. But that’s cause for excitement rather than despair. Scientific discoveries open new doors of wonder and understanding. The more we learn, the better we get at investigating questions and finding answers.

 

Here’s the link for people who want to support me on Patreon:

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I’ve written a few blogs on what I’ve learned from Robert Sapolsky. He’s a behavioural biologist at Stanford University who has spent decades living around and studying primate species like baboons. This has improved his knowledge of human behaviour, along with what he calls “different buckets” of information. They include fields like neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, genetics, anthropology, sociology, and endocrinology. In his lectures, and in his new amazing book called Behave, he explains the pros and cons of different reasoning methods in each bucket. Sapolsky does a great job of elaborating in detail on the incompatibility of some assumptions in different fields. He also talks and writes about how you can combine the accurate bits of knowledge to explain behaviour in understandable terms. Here are the links for my previous blogs about his work, called Are Men Actually Better at Math Than Women?, and There Are People Born as Both Male and Female Who Are Not Hermaphrodites:

 

Are Men Actually Better at Math Than Women?

 

 

https://mindgasms.bplifetime.com/2017/10/11/people-born-male-female-not-hermaphrodites/

 

 

One idea that I recently heard Robert Sapolsky discuss adds another layer of complexity to what I’ve thought for a long time. That’s always an enthralling experience for me. I had arrived at an important lesson through many years of learning about psychology and evolution. This is that the answer to the nature vs. nurture question is always a complicated mixture of both factors. Evolved genes in our biology play important roles in explaining human behaviour. But our prenatal, childhood, and cultural upbringings in our environments have huge influences on genetic expression.

 

 

We are all genetically programmed with unique characteristics. However, genes can be turned on or off depending on how our brains think we should adapt to our environments. Someone who has genes associated with musical skill might not achieve their potential if they live in a poor neighbourhood and have a low socioeconomic status. They could end up in a completely different career and adapt their personality to that because they were never able to afford a musical instrument or lessons. Twin studies famously show the power of evolutionary and genetic influence. But twins with different upbringings sometimes choose entirely opposite careers and lifestyles. Let’s assume that both twins have genetic musical skill. If the second one grows up in a high socioeconomic status, he or she will have a much greater ability to become a musician. However, this might be hindered by the parents’ values. If they see no hope for a career as an artist, then that rich kid could easily take a path that is completely different from music.

 

 

Robert Sapolsky taught me that something more than nature and nurture is responsible for the complex factors that construct human behaviour. It’s not just nature and nurture. It’s nature, nurture, and randomness. Genes and environment play massive roles. But there’s a crucial third piece to this puzzle, which is randomness.

 

 

Basically, you can analyze and predict how genes and environment affect behaviour to an extent. We can understand where our genes came from and how they shape us because most of us probably know our parents. Science can explain how evolution constructs genes, and how they can influence the people we become. But our experiences within our cultures are much more difficult to trace. We can’t really predict what is going to happen to us in the future because there are so many complex variables. No one can tell us who we’ll meet, what relationships will form, or how they’ll shape our personalities and the paths we take in life. A lot of scientific study has been done on how our interactions with our environments impact genetic expression. There’s an entire fascinating field surrounding this idea that’s called epigenetics.

 

 

But when you take people out of the confines of laboratory experiments, scientists have exponentially less control over how cultures impact behaviour. Life is a hell of a lot more complicated than genes. Like any self-respecting scientist will tell you, there’s waaaay more individual variation than there is between different groups of people. For one thing, the cultural and childhood upbringings of all of our ancestors changed their genes. Evolution selected for pieces that made up the genes that were given to us by our parents. You can’t escape environmental effects, and like I said, they’re pretty random. They’re even more outside of our control than how evolution constructed our biology. There’s an entire field of science devoted to studying how culture affects evolution, called sociobiology.

 

…To Be Continued…

 

 

 

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There’s an awesome new show on Netflix called Mindhunter. It’s about the development of psychological profiling for serial killers in the 1970s. The show is a fascinating examination of law enforcement’s totally wrong mindset about violent criminal behaviour for most of human history. It’s fictional, but apparently based on real events. So I’m sure that there are many aspects of the idea that are over-dramatized. However, even if the show has a small semblance of truth, the fact that the psychology of serial killers was neglected for so long is phenomenally engrossing.

 

 

Apparently, it was extremely controversial to try to understand how violent murderers think. I was surprised by this at first. But in retrospect, it makes total sense that the collective cultural mindset operated this way. We almost always fear what we don’t understand. It’s easy to write off serial killers as genetically broken. This is an example of biological determinism because it’s the mindset that our genes predetermine our entire fate. Biology does play a role in people becoming murderers, but our environments shape our behaviour, sometimes to a very large extent.

 

 

I am fascinated by Mindhunter’s insight into the burgeoning influence of sociology in examining criminal behaviour. Along with psychology and biology, this helps the main characters put the puzzle pieces of criminal profiling together. Some people are genetically predisposed toward violent behaviour. A small number of them experience profound and sometimes persistent childhood trauma. This increases their psychological tendencies toward violence. So some people are programmed to harm others. If they are abused and neglected as children, this understandably increases their angry outlook on life. This encourages some of them to be violent toward people or animals. If they continue to feel ostracized by society and have bad relationships, this vicious cycle can continue. Then, a negative feedback loop can be created. It can make some of these people into serial killers through the complex two-way relationship between genes and environment.

 

 

Another great aspect of the show is that the main characters are essentially inventing a new field. This means that they make up the terminology as they go along. They figure out that murderers can be put into different categories. These are broad and don’t account for the always important individual differences. One of the characters says, “The way people kill is as distinct as the way we have sex.”

 

 

However, there tend to be recognizable differences. One is that some murderers with multiple victims are highly organized, while others are the opposite. Some plan every detail, choose specific victims, and kill in particular ways due to complex motivations. Others are more spontaneous about when and who they murder, and are have messier methods. They don’t mythologize their kills as much.

 

 

It’s also compelling that according to Mindhunter, the term “serial killer” had not yet been invented in the 70s. So the three main characters start referring to anyone with multiple victims who kills ritualistically as a “sequence killer.” Eventually, the term is changed to “serial killer.”

 

 

Another contentious part of the show is the way that these murderers are interviewed. It shows the beginning of the shift in cultural mindsets. People are very uncomfortable with the way that one of the characters talks to a few of the serial killers. He sometimes pretends to be just as sadistic as them, and says fucked up shit to gain their empathy. He does that in a deceptively genuine way so that they trust him. Almost nobody is okay with this interview method. This is in spite of it allowing the characters to gain more insights into how these twisted people think. It’s unsettling. But it helps them achieve their goal of understanding serial killers better so they can prevent mass murder.

 

 

There is one profound message of Mindhunter that I think is crucial: Understanding people better, INCLUDING serial killers, can literally save lives. One of the characters says this in a perfectly simple way. This is one of my favourite lines in the show: “How are we gonna stop crazy if we don’t understand it?”

 

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In one of my recent blogs, I mentioned Robert Sapolsky. He is a behavioural biologist who has taught me a ton of new information through his Stanford Lectures. I like him because he understands the importance of interdisciplinary studies, and doesn’t fit the stereotype of scientists. His long hair and big scruffy beard make him look like a hippy, but he’s a genius scientist.

 

 

My blog that described him was about one of his many mind-boggling propositions: That there are people born as genetic boys who look like girls, and have vaginas but no ovaries. They also have internal undescended testicles that produce insufficient amounts of testosterone to have physiological effects. Some of these people even grow penises during puberty due to increased testosterone! If you want to learn more about this, the link is below.

https://mindgasms.bplifetime.com/2017/10/11/people-born-male-female-not-hermaphrodites/

 

 

There is much more earth-shattering information in Sapolsky’s lectures. One piece pokes holes in evolution and genetics being the main cause of different mathematical abilities in men and women. I have heard this theory from evolutionary psychologists, biologists, and geneticists. I’m not a scientist, and I mostly agree with people who criticize those who pretend that biology plays no role in behaviour. Clearly, biology has a massive impact on the way we act. Gender differences are not ONLY due to socialization. That’s completely ridiculous.

 

 

Sapolsky made a convincing argument in one of his lectures. He talked about the primarily sociological causes of different mathematical abilities between men and women. I have not researched this issue much, but I’m pretty sure that genes and evolution do play a role. However, Sapolsky deconstructed studies showing that boys in school are waaaay better at math than girls, and that this is due to biological differences.

 

 

These massive variations in ability are probably mostly caused by different societal upbringings, rather than gender. In Iceland, where there are many socialist policies for equal opportunities, girls are generally slightly better at math than boys. I usually object in principle to ideas like affirmative action for many reasons, which is a separate topic. But this almost has to be due to different cultures, doesn’t it?

 

 

This appears to be correct particularly because the original study from the 80s showed that the ratio between boys’ and girls’ math skills was 13:1. That sounds like such an enormous difference that it’s virtually impossible for it to be caused by socialization, right? I believed this until recently, but it turns out that I was likely wrong.

 

 

As of 2007, the ratio was more like 3:1. I haven’t done enough research to know how much it has changed since then. But Sapolsky’s point is this: The ratio changing so much over only about 20 years makes genetic differences causing it basically impossible. Everyone who has learned even a little bit about evolution probably knows that it is an incredibly slow process. Minor changes tend to take hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of years. So it’s almost completely unfeasible that evolution could alter genetic gender differences so much over such a short time frame. If that ratio going from 13:1 to 3:1 were due to evolution, it would have taken exponentially longer than 20 years.

 

 

In the nature vs. nurture debate, I tend to think that gender differences are caused much more by the former than the latter. But this finding is why it’s important to always be open to changing our views. I used to believe that people claiming that socialization is the main reason behind gender differences in ability are full of shit. Authoritarian progressives who scream about oppression and demand that everyone agree with them alienate people. But it turns out that there is at least a grain of truth to some of their claims.

 

 

I think that I was wrong about mathematical abilities between genders. In my opinion, this is another incentive to expose ourselves to diverse worldviews. I hate extremism in any form. But sometimes I agree with right wing extremists claims, and sometimes I agree with those on the left. This post is about science, but gender differences is an almost inevitably politically polarizing issue. For me, it’s important to have all of my views subject to change when presented with better evidence or arguments. Maybe if more of us did this instead of insulting people we disagree with, we could more easily solve problems, and the world would be a better place. I think that it’s crucial for people to disagree with me about this. But all I can do is hope that others will see the flaws of authoritarianism. If we all calm down and talk to each other like adults, maybe we can avoid destroying the world out of contempt and hatred.

 

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Yes, you read that title correctly. I recently started watching a Stanford lecture series on behavioural biology with Robert Sapolsky. He is a fascinating scientist who promotes using knowledge from multiple biological fields to explain human behaviour. This is because there are accepted assumptions in every domain of science that are incompatible with those in others. So other than living with and studying other primate species like bonobos for many years, Sapolsky compares explanations from various fields. He uses these methods to figure out human behaviour. The areas of study include evolutionary biology, genetics, sociobiology, and epigenetics. I’m a huge fan of Sapolsky. Other than interdisciplinary study, and his discussion of the complexity of genetics and biology, he has long hair and a big scruffy beard. So he doesn’t fit the stereotype of scientists. He’s a genius who looks like a hippy, yet he’s never tried any drugs at all; not even alcohol.

 

 

When he explains genetics in one of his lectures, he describes a rare type of person whose existence I thought was impossible: Someone who is both female and male, but not a hermaphrodite. How the fuck does this ever happen? Great question.

 

 

Apparently, due to genetic mistakes and other factors, a small number of people are born with male genotypes and female phenotypes. This means that they’re genetically boys, but they look like girls. That isn’t too unusual, but it gets way more bizarre.

 

 

These people seem to be hybrids of the two different sexes in strange ways. They have vaginas, but with with no ovaries or uteruses. This means that they are technically boys who can have sex with boys as girls do, but they can’t get pregnant. These people also have internal, undescended testicles. So they have vaginas that you can see, but they also have testicles inside them.

 

 

In case that isn’t fascinating enough, it gets even stranger. Since these people have female phenotypes but male genotypes, they don’t menstruate during puberty. In fact, because they are genetically boys, their testicles still produce testosterone even though they are undescended.

 

 

However, the testosterone produced by their bodies has no physiological effects, which is why they keep looking like girls in spite of having testicles. Why doesn’t their testosterone change their phenotype? This is because they don’t make enough to cause this to occur. They would have to produce a certain amount in order for this to happen. Why don’t they make enough of it? The reason for this is that their testosterone is attached to an androgen receptor with a different shape than that of a normal one. If I understand correctly, the oversimplified definition of this receptor is that which produces testosterone. So since it has a different shape, it can’t produce as much as regular androgen receptors.

 

 

Is this mind-boggling enough for you yet? If not, then here’s some even more unusual information. Sapolsky also said that with these people, the phenotype sometimes changes after puberty! How is that even possible? Well apparently, in spite of the differently shaped androgen receptor, enough testosterone is produced during puberty with some of these people for a penis to be grown. Yeah, there are real people who look like girls and have vaginas until puberty, and then they grow penises and look like girls! This is so amazing!

 

 

How the fuck can that happen? Well, a lot of hormones are produced during puberty regardless of gender, right? So even though these people look like girls, they make male hormones since this is their genotype, which gets ramped up during puberty. Like I said, before puberty, due to the androgen receptor with a different shape, the testosterone that their testicles produce has no physiological effects because they don’t make enough. But for some of these people, the extra testosterone released during puberty causes them to grow penises in spite of the androgen receptors.

 

 

I’m always enthralled when I learn that something I thought was impossible is possible. It’s why I always try to remember one of my favourite sentiments of Socrates: I know nothing. There is always information that I am 99% sure is true. But there are also times when I discover that I am wrong about my most basic assumptions. I’m not a scientist, so I’m probably getting some of the details wrong about this small subset of our species. But guess what? There are real people who are born looking like girls but are actually boys. And if that isn’t unusual enough, these male/female hybrids sometimes appear to switch genders during puberty. They have been genetic boys but looked like girls for their entire lives, only to grow penises when they’re teenagers!

 

 

Bizarre facts of life like this are why I think that it’s important to remember that we can always be wrong. It also helps put our own likely mundane problems into perspective. Have you had a rough day at work? Did you open the fridge only to discover that your roommate ate the last piece of cake? There’s nothing wrong with righteous pity sometimes. But the next time something like that happens, try imaging what it’s like to be be born as a boy who looks like a girl, only to grow a penis as a teenager. Everyone has problems, but they can always be worse.

 

 

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H. I. V. is a contentious issue for a variety of reasons. I’m not an epidemiologist or a historian, but it seems like there are many more S. T. D.s or S. T. I.s today than there were for most of human history. This is probably due to disease mutation. However, maybe there were always a lot, and most people just used to die from them without the majority of us hearing about it.

 

Regardless of the history of sexually transmitted diseases or infections, H. I. V. is one of the few that almost everyone has heard about. It seems like it became infamous during the 80s, which if I understand correctly, is when it spread through North America. Many people died from it, particularly before there were treatments. I know very little about the sheer, unadulterated suffering that those with this sickness have to go through. But from what I’ve heard, it sounds unimaginably horrifying.

 

 

Until recently, I went along with the story that many people have likely heard about how H. I. V. originated. Specifically, that the first person to get it was a guy who had sex with an ape! In retrospect, this seems unlikely and oversimplified. The most bizarre aspect of the story is that a guy had sex with an ape. There are clearly people who commit bestiality. But one guy subjecting the entire western world to such a traumatic infection because he fucked one sounds like an outrageous headline designed to sell paranoia.

 

 

Not long ago, I watched a documentary about the origin of H. I. V. that revealed their understanding of the complexity of the story. Apparently, the argument for a guy having sex with an ape didn’t come out of thin air. There was a grain of supposed truth to it. This documentary was fascinating because it examined multiple theories, including a few that are now widely regarded as crazy and wrong. One that is likely the source of the ape sex myth is that H. I. V. was first transmitted when Polio vaccinations in Africa were contaminated with chimpanzee blood. A large number of people have meticulously researched this, and there are various specious arguments for it. Journalists and scientists have written well-researched books about the subject that sound very convincing.

 

 

It turns out that apparently, this theory is bullshit. The original Polio vaccines in question were finally tested, and none of them contained any traces of H. I. V. The chimpanzee populations around that area of Africa were also examined, and their blood samples were not infected either. The Polio story is perhaps where the ape sex myth came from, but both are probably false.

 

So how did H. I. V. actually originate? It seems like the answer is complex. Although there are conflicting accounts, scientists have determined that the disease did come from chimpanzees. However, no serious pathologists or biomedical researchers appear to believe that humans were subjected to it due to someone having sex with an ape. The prevailing theory is that humans first got H. I. V. by hunting chimpanzees in Africa in the late 50s. So like I said, there are grains of truth to both of the outrageous arguments I mentioned, including the one involving Polio vaccines. Hunters got infected, rather than people looking for an inter-species good time. This is because in the Africa, people hunt chimpanzees for bush meat. That’s how they got exposed to infected blood. It also apparently happened in a different part of the continent, during a different time period than the one proposed by people in favour of the vaccine theory.

 

 

Interestingly, it used to be common knowledge that chimpanzees are immune to any negative side effects of H. I. V., including the fact that it doesn’t mutate into A.I.D.S. for them. However, scientists have discovered that there are different types of H. I. V. It is apparently true that the small difference in D.N.A. between humans and chimpanzees accounts for us getting sick and dying from it, and it mutating into A.I.D.S. Their different immune systems help prevent this from happening in many cases. However, it depends on the type of H.I.V. Most apes don’t suffer when they have it, and it doesn’t develop into A.I.D.S. But chimpanzees can get negative symptoms, A.I.D.S., and even get killed by certain strains of it. This is rare, but it does happen. Obviously, diseases mutate. But has this always happened in small numbers of chimpanzees? Or were they completely immune until it mutated more recently? I don’t know.

 

 

This is why science takes a hell of a lot of work. It’s also why in my opinion, we should never assume that we know the objective truth about these topics. The truth is almost always way more complex than we think. This of course extends to my amateur interpretations in this blog. But the important thing to remember is that rumours are frequently oversimplifications, and that science often uncovers complexities and reveals more questions. It can give us a good approximation of how H. I. V. originated, but the truth may be slightly altered in the future.

 

 

That’s one of my favourite aspects of science. It’s like the show called Lost. It’s fascinating, gets endlessly more complicated, and every answered question raises 10 more. When you’ve scoured every episode, there are so many things that you missed that you have to go back and examine it more carefully. You discover new information every time you watch it, and the ending is ambiguous. There’s much more certainty in science than fiction, but both can be phenomenally exciting. Like countless other questions, learning how H. I. V. originated is an awe-inspiring journey.

 

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I think that rationality is important. However, I recently learned about the significance of emotion and intuition, and that they are almost inexorably linked with rationality. On their Mixed Mental Arts podcast, Bryan Callen and Hunter Maats helped me understand this by discussing research by scientists like Jonathan Haidt and David Sloan Wilson. To summarize and simplify my perception of the science, our rational decisions are influenced by our intuitions. So for the most part, it seems like our emotional impulses make us think we’re behaving rationally, while we really are rationalizing our preconceptions. I’m not a neuroscientist or a psychologist, and I don’t play one on the internet. But this is apparently how the link between reason and emotion works.

 

 

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book called Blink, he helps explain how intuition works. Basically, when we get that gut feeling, we shouldn’t ignore it. We should listen to it most of the time. It’s part of the fast thinking that Daniel Kahneman talks about in his book called Thinking, Fast and Slow. Both fast, intuitive cognition, and the slow, more rational type are important. The latter can help us make long term decisions and analyze complex issues. Fast thought helps us perform actions like catching a ball when someone throws it at us. There’s no time to carefully consider what to do. We just react. However, these two kinds of cognition are not as separate as we might believe. Our fast thinking informs our slow thought.

 

 

This is one of the ways that Gladwell explains intuition in Blink: When we sense something without any rational explanation, we aren’t necessarily experiencing some weird, magical event. Our minds aren’t just playing tricks on us. Often, our brains are processing information more quickly than we can comprehend it. A few examples that Gladwell uses are firefighters and police officers. In those with abundant experience, they can notice relevant factors so quickly in certain situations that they anticipate events before contemplating the reasons. Firefighters can seem to sense that a wall is about to collapse from fire damage. This is because their trained brains notice clues like the distinct smell of a fire about to take down a structure, or the bottom of the wall burning faster than the top. They can process this and ample other information long before their conscious minds understand the danger. By the same token, cops can appear to sense when a suspect is about to pull out a gun. Their experienced brains can rapidly process information such as subtle changes in facial expressions and body language when someone is about to shoot at them.

 

 

In a book called The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker explains how useful intuition can be. He talks about how the enlightenment has taught us to ignore our intuitions. But this is a huge mistake. They apparently played a large evolutionary role because they allowed us to sense danger. When you’re at the risk of being killed by predators much more than we are in our civilized societies, it makes sense to be able to anticipate threats, right?

 

 

This is how intuition can literally save your life, and why particularly, women could be protected from violent men if they paid attention to their gut feelings: Our intuitions are not always correct, but the majority of the time, we can rely on them for important information. One example that de Becker uses in his book is a woman getting into an elevator with a man. If she senses danger, she’ll often step into the isolated metal box anyway, assuming that her intuitions can’t be trusted. This might be exacerbated if the woman is white, and the guy happens to be black or any other minority, because she might not want to be seen as racist. Obviously, there are white criminals. But regardless of the person’s race, the woman’s gut feeling is likely warning her that the man wants to harm her. So she’ll get into the elevator, and because she didn’t listen to her intuitions, she might end up getting mugged, raped, or even murdered. In this scenario, it all could have been avoided if she had just listened to her gut.

 

 

Of course, this isn’t exclusive to women. Men have undoubtedly had similar experiences. If I’m walking down a dark alley late at night, and a shady looking guy approaches me who turns off alarm bells in my body, I should pay attention to them. I could easily think that my mind is playing tricks on me. But these warning signs are likely happening for crucial reasons. I should turn around and walk the other way. I might be wrong, but doing so would probably help prevent me from getting attacked. The man could have a knife, gun, or some kind of other weapon too. Or he might be high on crystal meth and emotionally unstable. So even if I wanted to display my bravado by pretending that I’m Jason Statham in one of his movies, it probably would be a bad idea.

 

 

For at least a few years, I essentially worshipped rationality, seeing it as far more important than anything else. But recently, I have come to understand that life is not that simple. I’ve learned about the inexorable links between reason and emotion, and the importance of intuition. I continue to gain a better comprehension of the details, reasons behind these conclusions, and evolutionary explanations. However, this doesn’t mean that rationality should get thrown out the window. As Daniel Kahneman says, both fast and slow thinking, which include intuition and rationality, are important. But they are more interconnected than we might think. While the enlightenment greatly benefited society, I think that we should re-learn how to listen to our emotions and intuitions. It can save our lives.

 

 

There’s a lot of commotion about artificial intelligence lately. Many movies, T. V. shows, books, and podcasts have explored the subject, from both a fiction and non-fiction perspective. Some people downplay A. I. However, a few fascinations that extreme proponents of it appear to share are its sheer power, and the profound effects it will have on society.

 

Whether A. I. has already been achieved is debatable. A computer beat a world class chess player a long time ago, and another recently did the same thing with a Go champion. That game is even more complex and challenging than chess. So in some ways, artificial intelligence already surpasses that of humans.

 

But there are aspects of our brains that can’t be sufficiently mimicked, and this may take a long time. These include creativity and emotions, even though there are programs that can make primitive art. The human brain is so complex that neuroscientists have barely begun to scratch the surface. Some critics of A. I. argue that we need to fully understand our brains before designing robots as intelligent as humans. But this may not be a requirement since aspects of our brains have already been rudimentarily modelled, with impressive results. Many A. I.s do human tasks, with no detailed understanding of the brains they imitate. Other than with chess and Go, these programs show their abilities in all of our electronic devices. In some ways, our smartphones are smarter than us.

 

 

 

The type of A. I. that experts and artists often analyze and make predictions about are genius robots and supercomputers. These are shown in movies like Ex Machina and Transcendence, and books like the I, Robot series, by Isaac Asimov. Extreme proponents of artificial intelligence’s future to follow two opposing ideologies. One talks about “the singularity,” coined by Ray Kurzweil in his book called The Singularity is Near. People following his line of thinking basically have a utopian view. They believe that technology will keep evolving until A. I. monumentally changes the world and improves everyone’s lives. It could have the same kind of profound effects as language, the printing press, and the internet. A. I. advancements like nanotechnology and biotechnology can potentially take us to a new level of global prosperity. Since Ray Kurzweil has been mostly correct in the past, these predictions have considerable merit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some A. I. experts make doomsday predictions. This idea is expressed in movies like the Terminator series; computers will become so intelligent that they make us their slaves and possibly kill us all. Programs will figure out that our species is the biggest threat to the universe, so we need to be controlled or eradicated. Doomsday proponents go along with the utopian notion that artificial intelligence will be a momentous historical achievement. However, they think that this power will construct a dystopian future, rather than a heavenly one.

 

 

Philosophers and computer scientists also make convincing arguments for this view. In Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence, the Swedish philosopher analyzes A. I. research, and expert opinions. He makes a strong case for the dangers of this development. For instance, since we cannot program common sense, it’s borderline impossible to anticipate every way that superintelligent entities could misinterpret directions. If you tell an artificial intelligence to make as many paper clips as possible, it could potentially use the entire world’s resources to do it, and ruin the planet in the process. There wouldn’t be any raw materials left for running societies.

 

 

Human morality evolves, as shown by the nearly ubiquitous acceptance of slavery throughout history. So there are almost inevitably things most people do today that will be seen as immoral in the future. This is why it might be impossible to program morality into machines. We never really understand it ourselves. There are so many important, complicated problems to solve that A. I. could easily wipe out the entire human race. Such doomsday scenarios are expressed by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City. Innumerable people unquestioningly agree with him because they worship his intelligence and success.

 

 

I was convinced by the utopians, until I became persuaded by the dystopians. But recently, I started thinking about the subject more thoroughly, from more angles. In a recent Tim Ferris podcast, the investor, Naval Ravikant made me doubt doomsday predictions. Ferris dissects the habits and practices of world class performers to help people improve their lives in multiple domains.

 

 

 

Ravikant brought up a point that I had heard Michio Kaku make before. Kaku is a genius theoretical physicist who built a particle accelerator in his mom’s garage when he was a teenager, just like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. The difference is that he did it in real life. His proposition is that Moore’s Law is expected to drop off. The law proposes that every 18 months, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles. This means that technological devices get twice as complex every year and a half. The reason that this trend is expected to slow down, and perhaps stop, is that more circuits require more power. The increased number can improve a computer. But computer scientists have not solved the problem of using more transistors with greater efficiency, without needing an ever-increasing amount of energy. There are limits to power, regardless of the number of transistors. So if the energy efficiency problem is not solved, a device will eventually have so many transistors that it has insufficient power to use them. Combined with our limited understanding of neuroscience, this means that it could be a long time before superintelligent robots either save or destroy us. It might not even happen.

 

 

 

 

 

So will superintelligent A. I. lead to our salvation or our doom? It’s hard to answer that question, and it’s possible that the outcome will be somewhere in between these extremes. Past developments like the printing press and the internet neither eradicated nor saved us. They both came along with advantages and disadvantages. The internet brings us closer together and can make us smarter, but it also divides us and makes us dumber. It leads us to click bait, cat videos, fake news and echo chambers. Regardless of the consequences, a lot of experts on artificial intelligence agree that the technological gods will not emerge until around 2130 at the earliest, if at all. So contrary to popular belief, science fiction will probably not be manifested in reality until most of us are dead. When or if this happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if we are neither elevated to a new level of consciousness, nor eradicated by our own creations. Or maybe both will occur, and messiah A. I.s will fight demonic ones. Who knows? Regardless of the ramifications, it’s fascinating to imagine how this will change humanity in the future. Will A. I. Jesus save us? will A. I. Satan destroy us? Or are there so many unknown factors that the outcome is impossible to predict? Only time will reveal the truth.