Laughter as an individual fitness advantage
Alberto Gómez Corona
Laughter" . I don't know why I can't post there.
The discussion there is about either is meaningful or not to explain
laugther as a way of group comunication with the meaning "this think
is fearless".
I think that the "this is fearless" explanation is the genuine final
meaning of laughter as designed by evolution in apes and hominids,
probably exhapted from other adaptations. But for one side, 1) my
evolutionary explanation is different and 2) the meaning of laughter
is more sophisticated although with the same deep origin of "fear
release".
1) According with modern synthetic theory, group cohesion is no longer
a way to explain evolutionary designs. The laughter must have
conferred a differential advantage to individuals, not to the whole
group. The laughter of an individual chimpanzee means: "I have no fear
ot this or that, and I want everyone to know it", not an altruistic
way of altruistically try to communicate an useful fact. This is a
better explanation because it directly explains humour as part of
sexual selection, it also explain the costly exhibition of often
unnecesary noisy and gestural exhibition and it is a hint that the
main point of laughter is not the "choreography" of it but the
spectacle itself, making the laughter differences between species not
so important. The group laugh start when everyone want,
unconsciously, to do the same claim to the rest of individuals. That
explain the contagious nature of laugh. That also explain the nervous
laugh in not so laughable situations. Nervous laugh in this contexts
means: I know it too, I am in your position, Me and you we both are at
the same level and you don't inspire fear to me. A by-product of this
kind of interactions is group cohesion, Group cohesion could have
taken a main role afterwards, but never overcoming the origin of
laugh: a individual fitness advantage. Group cohesion coming from
laugther arises when anyone recognises that the other that laugh at
the same thing where concerned by it, so all of them shared the same
fears, so they are better keeping them together.
2) with the evolution of the human brain, dangers are enriched with
ambiguity, mental confusion etc and thus the different ways of humour
facing them. humorous cheating about our own adventures or unexpected
humorous responses to real future treats are effective ways to self
promotion, because it shows how fearless we behave facing past or
future problems. This is a proximate sign of low mental load in
solving future problem. It is also a sign of high self esteem , So
this trail is a strongly sexually selected.
Entertained by my own EIMC
"Alberto Gómez Corona" <agoc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f90fng$1srt$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
This interpretation of why we or some of us ;-> (and some other animals -
possibly including mice) can laugh, is sufficiently "far from inEPT" that I
very much agree with it.
However, although the interpretation seems both nicely concise and detailed
(even without references to specific brain circuits and chemicals), it is
very much a "here and now" type of explanation.
This makes it less incomplete in comparison to my 'EPT scheme'.
That is, the interpretation it is incomplete in so far as it leaves out the
very important (co-)motivating role played by accumulated CURSES (alt.
CCKHHURSSES).
[Either of these alternative acronyms addresses (or refers to - though the
shorter acronym does so with less 'acronymic precision') an automatically
suppressed insidious type of "Conditioned-in" state(s) whose aftereffects
are further describable as "Unconsciously Reverberating Stressors, Effecting
Symptoms".]
CURSES generate potentially maladaptive 'neurophysiological tension' that
can be briefly and beneficially (adaptively) released in *amongst else* the
direction of laughter (and humor), but CURSES is also a concEPT for the most
missing phylogenetically relevant/explanatory factor (selective pressure) in
almost all currently existing accounts of the our evolutionary origin of our
functional and behavioral characteristics.
P.S.
Not only can both accumulated CURSES and currently environmentally existing
and impacting lifetime predicaments (some of which become incompletely
"self-regulated to" and get as if 'put' into a thus situated individual's
brain in the form of "Conditioned-in Chronically Unresolved Reverberating
Stressors (specifically SHI-type such), Effecting Symptoms"; Or, using
Janov's jargon, some painful situations get retained as "primal pain" (or
"Pain"), within a thus (painfully) situated individual's "actention
selection serving" system.
Situations that end up as CURSES (-type memories) are likewise far from
inEPTly (actually quite accEPTably) conceptualized/classified/defined.
That is, they are described as a specific yet also sufficiently general
"type" (or subset) of predicaments - or subset of primarily adversely
naturally selective (or pruning) pressures within the entire "evolutionary
pressure (or patterning) totality".
Precisely how a primarily destructive (potentially or actually so)
environmental challenge (that may or may not also be a current source of
stimulation) is concEPTualized is explained below.
That CURSES (or "a CURSES") can be environmetally put into any normal neural
individual's Nervous ("actention selection serving") System can not be fully
rationally doubted.
By the expression "Conditioned-in" (the C in CURSES) I mean or imply that at
least one excitatory central motivational neuron have become permanently
modified (or imprinted) in the direction of LTP (Long-Term Potentiation).
And in the case of any genuine CURSES any predicament, specific situation or
direct environmental source of stimulation, that causes such a "conditioned
in state or (or imprint) are of a kind such that they won't be
reproductively survived unless an individual (that are in, or that has ended
up in, them) is capable of coping primarily by way of "specific/synaptic
hibernation";
The same thing can be alternatively put (as follows) purely for the purpose
of piecing together an etymologically pioneering terminology that is mainly
of evolutionary psychobiology type and that is effectively philosophy
terminating:
This is why I have put such circumstantial predicaments (or environmental
stressors or ditto sources of stimulation) as being of "specific/synaptic
hibernation *imploring* type".
The last expression was contrived by me to in order to achieve (only partly
by way of MAD-inspired 'SEPTIC humor') an in depth illustration of that and
how circuit-breaking synaptic inhibition at specific synaptic sites can
selectively cancel or preclude (and has in our phylogeny sufficiently
adaptively canceled or precluded) self-defeating distressful ways of
responding/behaving (or "actending" or "paying actention") and being
"consciousT". (The "T-tag" flags that the word has an EPT definition that is
partly warranted by an practical intellectual-attitudinal application of
"The Principle of Tolerance".)
"Specific hibernation" [achieving precisely a precisely synaptically
localized muting of metabolism (a relevant rate reduction or a complete
freeze)] is reminiscent of the meaning of hibernation as conventionally
meant (or 'general hibernation') and also reminiscent of aestivation. The
common denominator in all three "cases of self-regulation" being: that,
primarily and most importantly, _an inescapable predicament is coped
with/adapted to by a reflexive/instinctive muting of metabolism.
====
The essence of EPT - and of a concEPT-assisted percEPTive understanding of
mainly the humanly relevant "evolutionary psychobiology type" aspects of
What Is going on:
One important (and significant - significant in a subsequential subconscious
motivational sense - not the least in the course of historical and current
and future human "affairs") naturally selective theme in the phylogeny of
fauna, consists of lifetime situations (predicaments) that threatened to
induce self-defeating distress or self-defeating (futile) flight.
Defined in this way - this theme (or this subcategory of adverse lifetime
challenges) has a totally generic applicability that can help to catalyze a
*positively unusual* (and effectively philosophy terminating or at least
philosophy-finishing) understanding of the phylogeny and characteristic
behavioral and self-regulatory repertoire of any motile animal species.
Such situations can be described in two more far from inept ways:
1. as potentially overloading (or overwhelming) ordeals, and as
2. situations or stressors or environmental sources of stimulation that
'implore' ("implore" in the sense of, "IF to be survived THEN must
internally induce") 'specific/synaptic hibernation'.
About 2.
"Specific/synaptic hibernation" is meant to illustrate the thoroughly
science-aligned conclusion that an inhibitory transmitter (most
often/typically GABA) can be released by inhibitory interneurons (as happens
in the course of normal/basic 'competition' between mutually incompatible
neural "actention modules") - and, plausibly, also co-released when certain
intraneuronal tresholds get exceeded - resulting in the blocking ("gating"
or "filtering-out") of the directly distress or pain generating (or
fear/flight generating) effect of excitatory action potentials (most
typically mediated by the transmitter glutamate and by fairly pain-specific
neuromodulator such as substance P).
Now consider that many or most cells that constitute the neural (or
"actention selection serving") system (of individual animals) can form
memories.
[Apropos which, it is not inconceivable that even a amoebic animal can be
conditioned (by some environmental source of stimulation) to respond
differently to future stimuli.]
Both more precisely and more generally, we can (in a encompassing sense)
become permanently functurally modified by environmental influences - and of
course not only by "individually" (i.e. relative to individuals neural
organisms) primarily adverse lifetime challenges but also by environmental
factors and influences that are individually primarily "opportune" (or
beneficial) in character.
This way "the theme" (or the reality-reflecting concEPT of specific/synaptic
hibernation imploring type - or 'SHI-type' - predicaments) can be seen to
transform into insidiously dynamically stored co-motivational states -
states which can be most densely definitionally distilled so that they may
be collectively addressed by the acronym CURSES (or less densely thus
defined and denoted with exactly the same intention of acronymic
allusiveness if spelled as e.g. CCKHHURSSES).
And SHI-Type predicaments come CURSES can be seen to operate in in tandem
with
1. plastic and somewhat stochastic characteristics of the development and
ongoing internal organisation of actention selection serving systems, and
2. in conjuction with the diametrically different theme of beneficial or
primarily "opportunity type" lifetime challenges (which of course also can
become conditioned-in and have lifelong 'endogenously co-motivational'
effect).
Finally, if one looks back at our evolution - looks along the confluxing
contours of this dichotomy - and sum over all positively and negatively
patterning pressures or lifetime challenges (SHI-Type adversity come
CURSES", on one side, and opportunity type selective pressures on the other
side (of the ditch :-)), it is (or should, ideally, IMO) be possible to
perceive roughly *how* we humans have evolved with a certain logical
inevitability (or as a matter of principle) into being the most manifestly
(and thus apparently most elaborately) AEVASIVE species on this and (I dare
say) any planet.
By AEVASIVE I encapsulate all of the above.
John W Edser
=?iso-8859-1?q?Alberto_G=F3mez_Corona?= <agoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Subject: Laughter as an individual fitness advantage
> 1) According with modern synthetic theory, group cohesion is no longer
> a way to explain evolutionary designs. The laughter must have
> conferred a differential advantage to individuals, not to the whole
> group.
JE:-
Today's Neo Darwinists will not accept the simple argument that Darwinian
nature can trade in risk, i.e. individuals CAN be naturally selected to
accept shared risks as _individuals_ ( not as selected groups or selected
genes) because this can drastically reduce mean risk per individual, per
group (no group selection or independent gene selection is required). They
seem to think that just about any cost to an individual, e.g. just a simple
risk premium remains an "altrusitic"gift only explainable via group
selection above the Darwinian level (or Hamiltonian gene selection below
it). In fact, the payment of such premium was and remains entirly Darwinian
"selfish" (the opposite of both). However, it is a lot more than that
because it remains MUTUALLY selfish. A major Neo Darwinian error is to allow
just a movable frame of reference for calculating fitness. This can allow
just about anything, e.g. today's popular polycentric arguments can score a
goal for the theory by conventionally kicking the goal (making a rationale
argument which can be tested) OR if this fails, move the goal posts over
the ball without even touching it (fitting up nature to the argument). It
is only the assumed frame of reference which matters. For the sciences this
has to remain refutable (constant) otherwise "anything goes".
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
verulam
First, I should say that, while I did not altogether follow John
Edser's posting, number 3, what I did follow I rather agreed with.
I think the general problem of laughter and humour should be viewed as
related to human social evolution and the evolution of social
knowledge. I say this because we are knowledge animals, par
excellence, and humour, fully developed humour, does seem unique to
humans.
You may be interested in my work on the operation of hummour as an IFF
system
http://www.sexandphilosophy.co.uk/humour.htm
Sincerely
John Hewitt