more photos

added another album... roughly covering my first weeks in Liverpool. A tad blurry as they're all from my camera phone, but they get the point across.

Darwin rocks

Started a new book this week, entitled 'The Mating Mind'. It's all about how sexual selection has shaped the human mind throughout its evolutionary history. Explains all the elaborate displays (art, music etc) that humans engage in that seem to have little bearing on our overall fitness (reproductive success). Other notable theorists and evolutionary/cognitive psychologists have passed off these traits as merely icing on the cake, or side effects from our enlarge brains and cognitive powers.

For those of you who's evolutionary theory is a bit rough, sexual selection (SS) is not the same as natural selection (NS), although both contribute to an organisms fitness. NS is concerned more with solving ecological problems that pose a survival threat, ie. staying warm in cold environments, having the right beak size to crack certain seeds, echo location to detect flying insects etc. SS drives the formation of traits that increase the chance of a successful mating encounter. Even an animal superbly suited to the current environment is a genetic dead end if it fails to generate offspring. So any trait (behavioural or morphological) that increases the likelihood of successful mating would under go intense selection. Darwin originally proposed SS to explain the bizarre ornaments found throughout the animal kingdom that seem to defy logic, and may actually compromise an organism (peacocks tails - not the best for predator avoidance).

The peacocks tail (and deer antlers, male bird song) is actually an honest indicator of male fitness. Only those well suited to their environment are able to divert energy to such costly displays and still survive. Peahens that have a preference for these traits will in turn have better quality offspring. These offspring by necessity now contain the genes for both the trait (if male) and the preference (if female). It then becomes a positive feedback loop that continues until some equilibrium is met, ie. the trait becomes so extreme that the costs outweigh the benefits. There is some debate over how the 'preference' first appears in an gene pool, but whatever the route (ie mutation) the end result is the same... run away selection. It's always random and dependent on local conditions. Computer simulations rarely follow the same course, suggesting SS is a potent mechanism for speciation.

In humans the scene is a tad more complex. Having extremely altricial young, both male and female invest heavily offspring. This sets the stage for both sexes to be selective when choosing a mate, although there are sex differences in the characteristics desired by each. I'm sure some of you are familiar with the notion of men ranking youth and attractiveness as more important than females, who in turn, favour resource potential. This is what you would expect from evolutionary principles. However, ranked higher and evenly by both sexes are 'kindness' and 'intelligence'. According to a study I read today, the preference for these characteristics suggest that a species specific force is at work in addition to straight inter-sex dynamics. Again, a result of the nature of our young and relatively 'monogamous' mating strategies (rare in mammals).

Being only 70 pages into the book, I can't say how exactly displays like art, dancing, music, humour etc increase an individuals fitness, but I can speculate.

Humans collect information about reality through our sense organs. Based on this information an internal model of the world is generated, subsequently directing behaviour. Any organism with a better 'model' (containing more accurate spatial and temporal patterns and/or more patterns in general) will have an advantage over those with inferior models. Thus, selection should drive us to process relevant environmental (including social) information with increased efficiency and accuracy. We should then have indicator mechanisms to advertise this ability, and conversely, the capability to detect signals from others.

Now... indulge me for a second. I would say that in general, people that do things well are more attractive than people doing the same thing less well. Could be anything, and certainly not all tasks are equal in the attractiveness they attract. But why is this? Same task, difference in performance, different level of attraction. What causes this difference? Ready?

The individuals differ in their models of physical reality. One is more realistic, at least in the context of the task at hand, and is generating the desired result more effectively than the other. If better models are selected for, then surely it's not a great leap to see how skills are attractive and could serve as an indicator of overall fitness. After all, brain tissue is metabolically expensive to create, not to mention the time constraints involved when learning new skills. If you can do that thing you do well, and still function adequately in other domains... chances are you're a catch.

Cool stuff eh? And no need to invoke a higher dimensional being to explain it.

more photos

managed to get Annie's Bulgaria photos on my new pc this weekend, so here's some for your viewing pleasure.

Initial impressions

Ok. Been here long enough to form some initial impressions of this city and the campus. First off, Liverpool is a fantastic city. The night life is unlike anything I've been exposed to. Everywhere you turn there's some new pub/bar/club pounding out music and alcohol frenzied students. It's mental and can be a little overwhelming, especially coming from Rum. Haven't made it to the Cavern Club yet, but it's on my to-do list. There are markets on the weekend (selling LOTS of meat, which is unfortunate as I decided to try vegetarian for 3 weeks), constant live music acts and some nice parks to walk around in (before dark).

The MSc course is proving to be interesting. For once when I read an article, I'm actually generating valid questions and framing relevant thoughts. Before I just glazed over and prayed the next page was the last. The class is larger than expected... 25 people, and each module has around 20-23 people attending as we had some flexibility. I dropped Neuroscience next semester in favour for a small dissertation in an area of my choice. Had enough neurogenesis and modularity in undergrad. So far the best is Fundamentals of Evolutionary Theory. We sit at Robin's feet and listen to him 'twitter' about everything. If you can hold on, you gleam a lot out of that 1hr session.

I've also narrowed down some areas of personal interest, and plan to see a prof this week to get some direction. I'll sketch them briefly here... 1) humans consistently rank intelligence as an attractive quality in the other sex. Why is that so? What advantages to intelligent people have over others? What do humans use to gauge intelligence in conspecifics? Is it relative or an absolute measure? Have any indicators of intelligence been selected for in human/great ape populations? 2) When looking at human (or primate) social networks, one notices that there are individuals that link smaller isolated groups together within the population as a whole. Are there any characteristics (behavioural or morphological) unique to these individuals?

On a completely unrelated note: finding a suitable laptop has been an absolute bitch. Dell and Big Box stores are overpriced, eBay full of scams (a fully loaded Alienware for £700? send payment to Romania? ok...) and PCnextday is now Pc in 5weeks due to high demand. Too bad, cause they have the one I want: Intel Duo 2 Core (T7400) 2.16GHzz, 160G HD, 2 G ram, ATI x1600graphicss (256M) and various other crap that all laptops have. Once I put a new sound card in (7.1 surround), it should be everything I'll ever need. So... should I order one and wait, or settle for something else now? The problem is there is little to settle for. Every other machine I've looked at doesn't come close for the price (Dell was off by £200, almost £400 when you factor in I wouldn't be able to claim back the VAT).

alright... I was drawn away from typing for about an hour now, talking to various people on MSN etc. I'll take that as a sign and end things here.

If you have any PC related suggestions... fire at will.