Group items tagged

We designed this public goods experiment to isolate the effects of being shamed or honoured, with no monetary consequences to either experience, and test whether the expectation of negative or positive reputational information enforces social behaviour.

If players know that only the least or most cooperative individuals are to stand in front of their peers, will they cooperate more as a group?

In games that offer players anonymity, uncooperative behaviour is more prevalent [7] while the opposite is true of games in which players know that each of their decisions will be linked to their real identities [8–10]

confirming that, even when only the least or most cooperative individuals are to stand in front of their peers, players cooperate more as a group

expected that shame might be more effective than honour

n contrast to our expectations, we found no significant differences in group contributions over the first 10 rounds between the shame and honour treatments.

We hypothesized that the threat of shame or the prospect of honour would lead to increased public contributions.

Our results show that a promise to single out free-riding individuals for public scrutiny can lead to greater cooperation from the whole group, as can singling out the most generous individuals.

Group cooperation in the shame treatment significantly declined following round 10 (paired t-test between 10th and 12th round, t = 3.67, p = 0.005), corroborating our finding that the threat of being singled out as a free rider had been driving cooperation.

Cues of being watched enhance cooperation [11] and when humans lived in small groups, it was easy to observe individual behaviour.

language, replaced direct observation

the absence of shaming by the state does not preclude the absence of shame altogether in society, especially as social media increases the frequency, speed and inclusiveness of communication.

The Internet increasingly creates a global town square where controls are harder to implement and enforce, gossip travels fast, and where shame as well as honour therefore might experience resurgence.

Transparency also enhances cooperation [8–10] but can be costly to provide and its use can be limited. Transparency requires time evaluating and determining a satisfactory performance.

difficult in our current era, where human attention, not information, is a scarce resource [15].

Margulis, inspired by the work of little-known biologists, revealed and proved these mergers for us.  At first, her worked was rejected and scoffed at.  It did not fit the still-dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm that tells us all evolutionary novelty comes from natural selection acting on genes and the gradual accumulation of random genetic mutation.  But eventually these symbioses were accepted because they could not be ignored

our physical selves are universes composed of the movemenst, biological agreements, and interactions of these beings.

"Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves..." Margulis once stated, with her colleague Ricardo Guerrero.

Indeed, symbiogenesis has been observed in the lab.  An amoeba population, accidentally infected with bacteria was observed over long periods of time, and soon enough, the infecting bacteria could not be removed from the infected amoeba without killing the organism. 

Gaia is the work of the relational loops of push and pull between bacteria, other organisms, and the environment

But Lovelock came up with an understandable and accesible metaphor in the form of a computer program called Daisyworld.  Daisyworld is not the "proof" of Gaia: Lovelock and his colleague Andrew Watson devised the program to see if living and environmental factors could theoretically interact without intention. 

"Gaia," Margulis's former student Greg Hinkle said, "is just symbiosis as seen from space."

Gaia processes are real and observable (and sometimes referred to as "biogeochemistry", a term more acceptable to mainstream science).  Furthermore, the five kingdoms (bacteria, protoctists, fungi, plants, animals) of life are all touched by symbiosis

After she found James Lovelock, they worked on making those processes known.  Their collaboration resulted in Gaia Theory, which was a disciplinary symbiosis -- the theoretical expression of Margulis's interdisciplinary life.

All animals have symbiotic partners in their guts.  Remove these symbionts and the animals die.

Microcosmos show us a bacterial view of the world.  Bacteria exchange their genes laterally.  This means they don't pass their genomic information only when they reproduce (though this can happen), but also  through their simple existence.

Along with the many detailed examples of bacterial mergers at varying levels of cellular complexity, the world revealed by Acquiring Genomes is also a world of mating between distinct phyla

What is definite is that the merging of beings is key, and symbiogenesis offers a clearly observable alternative to the consistent but woefully incomplete neo-Darwinian paradigm.

David Bohm, who said

"Science is the search for truth...whether we like it or not."

Many neo-Darwinist concerns circled nervously around words like "Gaia" and "cooperation" (which Margulis did not like to use).  They were, perhaps rightly, concerned that these terms were ripe for religious appropriation.  But Margulis herself was outspoken against such mishandling of her research. 

it's much more complex than that -- there is something "in it" for every symbiont,

"Gaia is not merely an organism."  The Earth is beyond stale conception.  It is more magnificent and active than we can imagine.  Gaia is object and process.

this complexity is impossible to incorporate in a linear and reductive understanding.

If Gaia is conscious, it possesses a consciousness of a different magnitude, probably of a different order all together.

Perhaps as we -- in the newly and deeply connected world of the internet, social profiles, and globalization -- witness the dissolution of the cult of isolated individuality and embark on understanding a clearer and more nuanced view of individuality, so to will we ready ourselves for a clearer view of evolution and life.

Dawkins, who claims to be an atheist, relies on a host of selfish angels within us and the possibility for meme-salvation to justify his theory.  He substantiates his magical worldview on a meager past of scientific work.

To encompass complex systems with our thinking, we must imagine a model that is less like "cause-effect" more like "being-manifestation."  That is, multiple layers and numerous agents of forces unconsciously conspire together, and their conspiring is so intermingled, that it is simultaneously cause and effect, and thus beyond both. 

Now that Margulis has died, it remains our choice to catch up with what she and her life's work have set in motion.  To do so, we must bring together the many fields of knowledge she embodied.  Biologists must talk to physicists, virologists must talk to geologists, cosmologists must talk to microbiologists, and scientists musty talk to non-scientists.  This motion of meeting and exchanging ideas, if we act with it, will evolve our thinking.

During a three-hour surgery on April 22, Rezai implanted a chip smaller than a pea onto the motor cortex of Burkhart’s brain. The tiny chip interprets brain signals and sends them to a computer, which recodes and sends them to the high-definition electrode stimulation sleeve that stimulates the proper muscles to execute his desired movements. Within a tenth of a second, Burkhart’s thoughts are translated into action.

Battelle also developed a non-invasive neurostimulation technology in the form of a wearable sleeve that allows for precise activation of small muscle segments in the arm to enable individual finger movement, along with software that forms a ‘virtual spinal cord’ to allow for coordination of dynamic hand and wrist movements.

As part of the study, Burkhart worked for months using the electrode sleeve to stimulate his forearm to rebuild his atrophied muscles so they would be more responsive to the electric stimulation.