Darwin and Crime

The Economist has a piece about how the study of evolution can be useful to policymakers. I’m unqualified to opine on that however the article did contain some fascinating bits of research:

That murderers are usually young men is well known, but Dr Daly and Dr Wilson dug a bit deeper. They discovered that although the murder rate varies from place to place, the pattern does not. Plot the rate against the age of the perpetrator and the peak is the same (see chart). Moreover, the pattern of the victims is similar. They, too, are mostly young men. In the original study, 86% of the victims of male killers aged between 15 and 19 were also male. This is the clue as to what is going on. Most violence (and thus most murder, which is simply violence’s most extreme expression) is a consequence of competition between young, unemployed, unmarried men. In the view of Darwinists, these men are either competing for women directly (“You looking at my girl, Jimmy?”) or competing for status (“You dissing me, man?”).

Research also shows why capital punishment may be ineffective as a deterrent against murder. If murder is indeed motivated by reproductive competition, you could conclude that capital punishment is ineffective because it presents the same risk of reproductive failure which motivated the crime in the first place.

Then there’s this, on rape:

Ancient Oceans

New research on the state of the earth 2.5 billion years ago:

Just 2% to 3% of the Earth’s surface would have been dry land, compared with 28% today. Back then life consisted of nothing more complex than algae and bacteria. The Australian scientists who produced the new computer simulation believe that billions of years ago the Earth’s deep mantle was 200C hotter than it is today. A hotter mantle would have thickened and buoyed up the Earth’s crust beneath the oceans, creating shallower basins and leading to the flooding of what is now land. The continental crust would also have spread, making it lower and flatter and more vulnerable to floods. New Scientist magazine reported: “As the mantle cooled, land would have gradually appeared as the oceans became deeper and regions of high relief on the continental crust formed.” The transition may help explain why oxygen levels in the atmosphere rose at this time in the Earth’s history, say the researchers led by Dr Nicolas Flament from the University of Sydney.

Roots of Evil

We’re all familiar with the unpleasant consequences of dehumanization (torture and genocide come to mind). Dehumanization is actually surprising given the natural built in mechanisms human beings have for empathy. Harvey Whitehouse at Cognition and Culture highlights some of the new conclusions about what kinds of thinking produce it:

Some researchers have begun to investigate non-empathetic ways of reasoning about other agents. For instance, speciation (the tendency to classify our fellow humans as if they were natural kinds with essentialized heritable qualities) may be necessary for various types of reflective ideas about human types, such as racial categorizing or attribution of charisma or religious specialization (witches, shamans etc. who are thought to be inherently different from other people). Or to take another example, teleological reasoning(the tendency to view our fellow humans as instruments with specialized functions, just like tools and weapons) seems to be entailed in certain types of strategic decision-making (e.g. the idea that foot soldiers can serve as cannon fodder in a strategic advance or that civilians can serve as a human shield).

Future Food

Homaru Cantu on the next revolution in food:

We’ve been trying to incorporate food from the green world, and started growing microalgae. You can get 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of algae per acre. It can be grown in salt or fresh water, in a whole variety of temperatures. It increases the food supply rather than depleting it, and it’s a net energy gain. For $300 we built a photobioreactor that produced 15 gallons of food per month. The idea was to take algae, process it into sushi and fuel, and deliver it it in a truck running on algae biofuel. And we’re just a bunch of chefs. If we can figure this out, I don’t know why others can’t. Algae is the perfect food plant. It doubles cell mass every twelve hours, depending on the strain. The Japanese have a long lifespan in part because they eat different forms of algae.

 

The Sidewalk as Laboratory

Jonah Lehrer on cities and innovation:

While certain institutions can foster innovation, the scientists are quick to point out that the innovative abilities of cities are ultimately rooted in the one thing that every city has in common: lots of human interaction. “Cities concentrate our social interactions,” Bettencourt says, “and that’s what leads to this explosion in knowledge creation and innovation.”Perhaps significantly, the metropolises of the future of fast growing desert communities like Phoenix and Las Vegas don’t generate this kind of human friction. They work by minimizing our dealings with other people. These rapidly growing cities are really collections of suburbs, in which density gives way to single-family homes and air-conditioned garages. The sidewalks are empty; the commuters commute alone. But unless these new cities find ways to make their citizens interact to create public spaces that people want to share they might not generate the conditions that allow them to continue their rapid growth. The equations imply that a city without concentrated human contact is destined to stall and wither, since it won’t be able to innovate at the necessary rate. Urban growth without urban density is unsustainable.

The Coming Plague of Bad Drivers

The Economist on the coming age of the elderly:

Thanks to a combination of growing longevity and falling birth rates, the average age of populations, first in the world’s rich countries and, after a time lag, in emerging nations too, has been rising inexorably. By 2050 the world will have about 2 billion people aged over 60, three times as many as today. In parts of the rich world, mainly Japan and western Europe, that age group already makes up nearly a quarter of the population. By 2050 their share will rise to 30-40%, and even in the—much younger—developing world it will go up to 25-30%.

Why is this scary?

Art and Ecology

Saw this  in the BBC:

Nineteenth Century artwork is a useful tool for studying coastal erosion, according to a retired coastal engineer. Robin McInnes assessed the accuracy of geological and topological features in more than 400 paintings of the Isle of Wight and Hampshire coastline. Dr McInnes said such old masters gave engineers the chance to see coastal features before they were changed by industrial development.

Fake Smiles

This study suggests that smiles, along with other facial expressions, are innate and not learned behavior:

The researchers compared the facial expressions from more than 4,800 photographs of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. The analyses showed sighted and blind individuals modified their expressions of emotion in the same way in accordance with the social context. For example, in the Paralympics, the athletes competed in a series of elimination rounds so that the final round of two athletes ended in the winner taking home a gold medal while the loser got a silver medal.  The blind silver medalists who lost their final matches tended to produce “social smiles” during the medal ceremonies. Social smiles use only the mouth muscles. True smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise.

It seems to me that this analysis ignores the possibility that facial expressions, particularly those of social utility, aren’t learned exclusively through visual mimicry. For instance, our literature is full of references to fake smiles which only engage the mouth.  A blind person would likely be much more sensitive to facial descriptions in literature in the same way an average reader may pay close attention to descriptions of exotic places. This is not to say I disagree that facial expressions are innate or instinctual, only that the study seems like a flawed way of proving so.