Seeking wisdom pdf download

Evolution has no goal. Another way to describe natural selection is as a process of elimination. Certain individuals survive because they have structural, physiological, behavioral or other characteristics that prevent them from being eliminated. Those that don't have these characteristics are eliminated.

Darwin didn't know about genetics. Therefore he couldn't know that these characteristics were caused by mutations and that they could be passed on through the genes. After a mutation changes an individual, the environment determines if the change gives the individual an advantage.

If the new trait is helpful, the mutated individual is more likely to survive, reproduce and pass the new trait to his children. Take a poisonous spider as an example.

If some spiders mutants are born with more toxins than others, two things could happen over time. If more toxins give an advantage in the spiders' environment, more toxins might be "selected" for and the "more-toxins" characteristic might be passed to children.

If the more toxic black widow spiders survive and reproduce better than the less toxic ones, then black widow spiders, will, over time, evolve more toxic venom. The frequency of the "more-toxic" spiders in the population increases over time. If there is no advantage, the trait disappears and the population of less toxic spiders increases. When organisms undergo selection, some characteristic may be carried along that wasn't selected. Even if some trait didn't provide an advantage it could still be carried along as long as it isn't harmful, i.

But a situation may arise in the future when that trait can become useful. What happens when the environment changes? Since environments change over time and with geography, different variants are "selected" under different conditions. Characteristics that are successful in one environment may be unsuccessful in another. This is well expressed by the late American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in WonderfUL Life: "Even if fishes hone their adaptations to peaks of aquatic perfection, they will all die if the ponds dry up.

But there seems to be one creature that survives and reproduces independent of changes and stresses in the environment - the cockroach. Writer Richard Schweid says in The Cockroach Papers, "If there is a God that made all life forms, a particularly rich blessing was bestowed on the roach, because it got the best design of all. The cockroach is about the same organism it was millions of years ago because its characteristics were adaptive then and now. Often a new trait or a change in an individual doesn't occur through a single step but through a gradual accumulation of small mutations being selected over a long period of time.

By dating meteorites, most scientists say that the earth is about 4. The oldest bacteria fossils go back 3. Given enough variation and time, even such a complicated thing as the eye has gradually developed.

Evolutionary changes can act fast. Studies of fruit flies show that differences in wing size could take place in as little time as a decade. A change in a species' territory e. Other studies show that a change that involves few genes could come about faster and cause large behavioral changes than one that depends on small changes in many genes.

Mutation is not the only source of genetic variation. Other mechanisms sometimes interacting are genetic drift, gene flow, and symbiosis. Genetic drift happens when random events cause gene frequencies to vary between generations more important in small populations. Gene flow or migration is the movement of genes in a species from one population to another as the result of interbreeding. For example, there is evidence of gene flow between cultivated plants and their wild relatives.

Symbiosis is the cooperative interaction between different organisms that can produce genetic changes. There is also co-evolution or the parallel evolution of two species. Another source of variation is gene duplication or the accidental duplication of entire genes. So natural selection is not the only mechanism that changes organisms over time. But it is the only known process that seems to adapt organisms over time. The evidence for evolution There is fossil, anatomical and molecular evidence of evolution.

The fossil record shows how morphology was modified. Similarities of organs in related organisms show common ancestry. One example of evolution is industrial melanism. Before the Industrial Revolution in England, the color of the peppered moth was mainly light.

When there was no industrial pollution, the darker moth cropped up by mutation. But since the darker moths were easier to spot against the tree bark, hungry birds snapped them up.

Only when the environment changed, when soot from new factories covered the tree trunks, did darkness became an advantage. Darker moths were better disguised on tree trunks covered by soot. The lighter moths were eaten and the darker ones increased in numbers.

Around the environment started changing again. A decrease in the use of coal and better filtering equipment in the factories produced a cleaner environment and the peppered moth is in the process of returning to its lighter color. Why aren't antibiotics as effective against dangerous bacteria as before? Evolution is at work today.

Evidence of evolution is seen in pesticide resistance among insects and the antibiotic resistance of bacteria. There are a lot of bacteria around, and they can divide several times an hour. In any population of bacteria, there are some individuals that through mutations have developed genes causing them to escape elimination. The more non- resistant bacteria that are eliminated, the more opportunities for the resistant to reproduce and spread.

Over time, the resistant bugs win the race, meaning the antibiotics become less and less effective. Until someone develops a new type of antibiotic and then the race starts all over again. Bacteria are immensely adaptable. Expose them to antibiotics long enough, they adapt and find a way to survive. This also means that the more we use antibiotics, the faster resistance spreads. And any method we use to kill bugs will, unless it completely wipes out a species, cause a population of resistant bugs.

Just as we can't blame an animal for eating another animal to survive, we can't blame bacteria for giving us an infection. They have no intention of harming us.

Bacteria do what comes natural to all of us - survive and reproduce. Are bacteria always badfor us? No, they are important for our digestion and immune system. They are also vital for life on earth. Without them we wouldn't exist. In order to generate energy, we need oxygen. This oxygen is assumed to have been generated by a group of bacteria called cyanobacteria or blue-green algae , the light-harnessing microbes that live primarily in seawater.

The key source of energy for nearly all life is sunlight. This light energy is transformed into chemical energy in plants, algae and certain bacteria by photosynthesis. For example, plants make their food - usually glucose - from carbon dioxide through leaves and water mainly through roots. Sunlight provides the energy needed to run the biochemical process that yields sugar and the by-product oxygen that water molecules contain which is released into the atmosphere.

When we eat plants or animals that eat plants , we take in their stored energy. They contain the molecule chlorophyll, allowing plants to absorb the energy from the sun.

Chloroplasts may have evolved from cyanobacteria that were fusioned with plants a long time ago. Fossil evidence shows that there were cyanobacteria-like microbes on earth 3. It is also believed that mitochondria the non-bacterial cell structures where oxygen is used to burn food for energy evolved as a result from a fusion of different kind of bacterial cells.

Another activity of some cyanobacteria is nitrogen fixation. For example, in plants from which beans or peas are taken, bacteria live in the roots and chemically convert fix atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia useful to other orgalllsms.

Why isn't the world covered with dead plants and animals? Partly because bacteria breaks down the tissue of dead plants and animals into nutrients like carbon and nitrogen that are then released back into the environment. Go out and look at a recently dead bird. Then look at it a month later. There are only bones left. Thus, evolution selected the behavior that made our ancestors survive and reproduce.

What guidance system has evolution selected to help us make better decisions for survival and reproduction? Guidance through values and life experiences Human beings are pulledforward toward and by nature seek pleasure, whereas they flee from and reject pain. The 17th Century English philosopher John Locke said: "Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.

Evolution has made any behavior that helps us survive and reproduce feel pleasurable or rewarding. Behavior that is bad for us feels painful or punishing. Feelings of pain and pleasure are a useful guide to what is good or bad for us. If we eat, we feel pleasure. If we starve ourselves, we feel pain. Harm avoidance first. Our brain is equipped to register pain more sensitively than any other emotion. We also remember negatively arousing stimuli better. It has to be aversive to motivate us to set aside other activities to do whatever is necessary to stop the damage.

Richard Dawkins says in The Blind Watchmaker: "However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. Research shows that we feel more pain from losing than we feel pleasure from gaining something of equal value and that we work harder to avoid losing than we do to win. That we pay more attention to possible losses than gains makes sense. In Steven Pinker's book, How The Mind Works, social psychologist Timothy Ketelaar says, ''As things get better, increases in fitness show diminishing returns: more food is better, but only up to a point.

But as things get worse, decreases in fitness can take you out of the game: not enough food and you're dead. We interpret choices and events in ways that make us feel better. We often prefer to hear supporting reasons for our beliefs; think of ourselves as more talented than others, and make the best of bad situations. How are certain connections strengthened? If certain connections help us interact with our environment, we use them more often than connections that don't help us. Since we use them more often, they become strengthened.

Evolution has given us preferences that help us classifY what is good or bad. When these values are satisfied causing either pleasure or less pain through the interaction with our environment, these neural connections are strengthened. These values are reinforced over time because they give humans advantages for survival and reproduction in dealing with their environment. For example, light is preferred to darkness, eating certain food is better than not eating, etc.

When we drank our mother's milk, our brains told us that "eating" was pleasurable. Our chance of survival increased. If we didn't eat after we were born, the feedback from our brain would be that "not eating" was painful. The chances are that we ate in the future. In the future, when we were exposed to the same stimuli, this group of neurons reacted stronger.

Any behavior that we find rewarding, either pleasurable or less painful, are strengthened. The connections in our brain are constantly strengthened and weakened, developing and changing. The more we are exposed to certain experiences, the more the specific connections are strengthened, and the better we learn and remember those experiences. We then use these stored representations of what works when we respond to people and situations. Essentially what we do today is a function of what worked in the past.

We adapt to our environment by learning from the consequences of our actions. We do things that we associate with pleasure and avoid things that we associate with pain. Does the brain work like a computer - systematically and logically?

No, it is a selection system that puts together patterns among neurons. Ralph Greenspan says: In no sense does the brain work like a computer. Computers record, and computers have things stored in specific places that are stable.

Our brains do none of that. When the great chess master Gary Kasparov lost to Big Blue everybody said "Aha, this machine can think! Big Blue was simply replaying the entire history of chess. That's not the way that Gary Kasparov or any human being plays chess. We do pattern recognition. Even though we are capable of logic, our brain does not operate by the principles oflogic.

It operates by selection of pattern recognition. It's a dynamic network. It's not an "if-then" logic machine.

A chess computer has no pattern-recognizing ability. Instead, it explores all the possible moves on a given chessboard. Chess-masters look for patterns and decide what to do based on what have worked well in the past. Because what worked in the past is most likely to work in the future. Warren Buffett follows up with: There was a great article in the New Yorker magazine And it got into this speculation of whether or not humans would ever be able to take on computers in chess.

Here were these computers doing hundreds of thousands of calculations a second. And the article asked, "When all you're really looking at is the results from various moves in the future, how can a human mind deal with a computer that's thinking at speeds that are so unbelievable? Now we reach a key question: What part of the value system is called "human nature? Our genes provide us with the framework for neural development and our life experiences and our environment shapes our brain.

Since the brain is formed by life experiences and since an individual doesn't keep doing what doesn't work learns through trial and error , evolution has reinforced the behavior and values that help us survive and reproduce. This behavior must be the behavior that was adaptive in the environment in which humans spent most of their evolutionary history.

The question then becomes: What was the operating environment in which the human brain evolved? The hunter-gatherer environment has formed our basic nature Human evolution started about 4 to 7 million years ago and today's "modern" human brain appeared on the scene some , to , years ago.

For most of that time our ancestors lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies. These societies existed until the end of the last Ice Age, around 13, years ago. Soon thereafter, some 10, years ago, agriculture was developed.

If we compress 4 million years into 24 hours, and if the history of humans began at midnight, agriculture made its appearance on the scene 23 hours and 55 minutes later. If the conditions and challenges of the hunter gatherer environment is the environment in which natural selection has selected the adaptive traits for survival and reproduction, we must find out what the environment looked like back then.

What drove our ancestors' evolution? What were the characteristics of the environment that have shaped today's brains? What were the environmental conditions in which the hunter-gatherers lived? What was the availability of resources like food and mates? How was the climate and the geography? Social environment? Size of population? What enemies, predators, and dangers existed? There is no observational evidence from the hunter-gatherer environment.

People were living in small villages where everyone knew everyone else and strangers didn't show up often. There were enemies, predators and diseases. Limited resources created competition for food and mates. What different roles did men and women likely play? Men were responsible for hunting, and defending the group from predators and enemies. Women gathered and prepared food near the home, and cared for the children. If this were the environment, what would be appropriate behavior to increase the likelihood for survival and reproduction?

There are individual men and women, and there are families. Yes, one basic trait that aU individuals share is self-interest. We are interested in protecting our close family and ourselves. Since natural selection is about survival and reproduction, and individuals either survive or die and reproduce or not, it makes sense that individuals are predisposed to act in ways that enhance their own prospects for survival and reproduction.

The ancestral environment consisted of limited resources, including reproductive resources, and fierce competition. Self-interest came naturally. What if our ancestors were composed of altruists - individuals that helped others at their own expense? Altruistic individuals are at a disadvantage. They are always vulnerable to some mutants that take advantage of them.

Altruistic behavior cannot evolve by natural selection since natural selection favors individuals that are best at promoting their own survival and reproductive success. Only behavior that is selfish or for the mutual good is in an individual's self-interest and therefore favored by natural selection. Some behavior may under certain conditions look like altruism but can often be explained by self-benefit. Social recognition, prestige, fear of social disapproval, shame, relief from distress, avoidance of guilt, a better after-life or social expectations are some reasons behind "altruistic" acts.

But how did our social and moral qualities develop? As Charles Darwin wrote in chapter four of The Descent ofMan: "Why should a man feel that he ought to obey one instinctive desire rather than another? Why does he bitterly regret ifhe has yielded to the strong sense of self-preservation, and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow- creature; or why does he regret having stolen food from severe hunger? We may therefore conclude that primeval man, at a very remote period, would have been influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows.

It is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil. To do good unto others - to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you, - is the foundation-stone of morality.

It is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the dread of blame. A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such actions by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration.

He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high character. A high standard of morality would also benefit a tribe. Darwin continues: It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an advancement in the standard of morality and an increase in the number of well- endowed men will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.

Often cooperation is in our best interest Ifpeople aren't altruistic by nature, are they cooperative? Mutual aid has tremendous survival value. But under what conditions do people cooperate? The game of the Prisoner's Dilemma may shed light on this: Suppose you and a partner commit burglary.

Both of you are picked up by the police who then question you one by one. There is not enough evidence to convict you unless one of you confesses. The interrogator gives you a choice to cooperate or not.

From an outsider's perspective, it seems that both of you would be better off denying the crime 1 year. But from your point of view, it seems best to confess freedom. The problem is that you don't know what your partner will do. If your partner betrays you, it is better that you also betray him and get 3 years in prison, instead of the 10 years you get if you deny, but your partner ends up confessing. If on the other hand your partner denies, it is still better that you confess because this way you will be free, instead of the 1 year you get if you deny.

Since both you and your partner follow this "logic" and confess, you will both go to jail for 3 years. Doing what you believe is in your best interest leads to a worse outcome than if you cooperate and deny.

But here is the dilemma. You don't know if you can trust your partner. Cooperation only works if you and your partner can trust each other. Tests show that if people play the game over and over, they learn that it is more profitable to cooperate. Repetition tests trust.

Trust is key and fragile. It can vanish in a moment. As the 19th Century American President Abraham Lincoln wrote: "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. Talking encourages cooperation. Since people are social animals, they may change their behavior to keep others goodwill. In the end, it's a matter of trust and giving individuals an incentive to cooperate. In chapter three of The Descent ofMan, Charles Darwin wrote: At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will far more commonly lead him to gratifY his own desires at the expense of other men.

But after their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are contrasted with the ever-enduring social instincts, retribution will surely come. Man will then feel dissatisfied with himself, and will resolve with more or less force to act differently for the future. This is conscience; for conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse. But we also have to recognize that communication may be deceptive.

People may bluff Also, communications are imperfect - mistakes are made or intentions are misunderstood. It says that we should cooperate at the first meeting and then do whatever our "opponent" did the last time. When our opponent doesn't cooperate, we should retaliate. Then forgive and go back to cooperating next round.

This rewards past cooperation and punishes past defection. This assumes that the game is repeated time after time. In reality we never know if we meet our opponent again in the future. As long as neither our opponent nor we knows when the game ends, it pays to be nice. Of course, the game of the Prisoner's Dilemma is only a two-player game. Reality often involves many-person interactions.

There is one group that scientists say we treat better than others - our close genetic relatives. This is kin selection. We act altruistic to our kin because they share our genes. Studies show that in all social species, relatives are more likely to help each other. The greater degree ofgenetic relatedness between two individuals, the more likely it is that an individual treats the other individual better. If you sacrifice something for your children, it may harm you but since your children share your genes, the overall effect is positive.

Scientists say that one test of kin selection is what we would do if a relative and a good friend were both close to drowning. We can only save one of them. What ifone of them was a distant cousin that you'd seen only twice in your life and the friend was a person you spent every day with? Who would you save? What other behavior was appropriate for our ancestors? A tendency for fear Our fiars are always more numerous than our dangers. Two hours after takeoff, the flight attendant heard suspicious noise from the lavatory.

The passengers started to talk among themselves. Panic erupted. We fear dramatic and threatening events. We fear the loss of our health, family, friends, security, money, social status, power, or jobs.

We also fear violence, crime, punishment, rejection, failure, the unknown, the immediate, the unpredictable or the uncontrollable. Studies show that even witnessing a traumatic event can produce the same fear response as experiencing the event ourselves. Fear is our most basic emotion.

Fear has evolved to help us anticipate danger and avoid pain. As science writer Rush Dozier writes in Fear Itself "Fear is fundamental because life is fundamental.

If we die, everything else becomes irrelevant. Our ancestors environment was fraught with dangers. Self-survival was a powerful incentive. Mistakes could be extremely costly. Assume two individuals heard a strange sound behind the bushes. One of them looked behind the bushes, was bit by a poisonous snake and died. The other one saw what happened, ran away and survived. To always assume there was a threat behind the bushes and run away could save an individual's life. The cost of being wrong and running when there was no snake was minimal.

But the cost of staying around when there was a snake could be life threatening. Failure to detect threats is often more costly than false alarms. Our ancestors learned through trial and error that in the long run, pain could be avoided if they were fearful. They survived the dangers because they learned how to respond. If pain and pleasure are guides to the behavior that leads to survival and reproduction, fear is our biological warning signal for avoiding pain.

Fear warns us of potential harm and keeps us from acting in self-destructive ways. It helps us avoid threats and makes us act to prevent further damage.

Fear guides us to avoid what didn't work in the past. Fear causes worry and anxiety, a normal response to physical danger. It activates hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which keeps us attentive to harm since we need full attention to escape from a threat.

The degree of fear we feel depends on our interpretation of the threat and our perception of control. The more helpless and vulnerable we feel, the stronger our emotion for fear becomes. Assume that you are walking alone late at night on a deserted street in New York City.

Suddenly, you hear steps behind you. What happens? Immediately you fear the worst - robbery, assault, etc. Your autonomic nervous system takes over and prepares you for fight or flight. Your response begins in your brain and activates a biochemical process. Your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar increase. Normal behavior when you are the victim of stress, either perceived or real.

You reacted with fear on the deserted street because evolution equipped your brain to register pain more sensitively than any other emotion.

You were using the "memory" of your ancestral past - your primitive fear system of fight or flight. What we fear and the strength of our reaction depend on our genes, life experiences, and the specific situation.

You may react instinctively at first, but if the situation is one that you've experienced before since our brain is continuously being "rewired" with life experiences , the final reaction may be to calm down. You could turn around to find an old lady walking her dog. Or you may run away, because you avoid situations that in the past have been painful. If you for example had walked the same deserted street many times before but found out each time that the noise was the old lady walking her dog, you would be less careful.

Until something terrifying happened. Often our emotions provide affective information that helps us make better decisions. For example, guilt may make us regret doing wrong things, and correct them. It may also induce cooperation. Disgust seems to be a response to danger to protect us from disease or harm.

Shame may help us avoid certain temptations or reduce the risk of group-conflict. People who can't experience emotional responses because of brain damage seem unable to learn from their mistakes or to make choices in a coherent manner. Seeking explanations '1 ate a plant and now I feel sick. Therefore, I believe the plant was not goodfor me.

We need to categorize, classify, organize, and structure the world. Categorizing ideas and objects helps us to recognize, differentiate and understand. It simplifies life. To understand and control our environment helps us to deal with the future.

We want to know how and why things happen and what is going to happen in the future. To understand how an event happened helps us predict how it could happen again. This is why we always look for patterns and causal relationships among objects, actions, and situations. This makes it easier to identify and understand things and to make predictions based on similarities in patterns. Finding and recognizing connections between things and events in our environment helps us to learn what does and does not work.

Patterns also give us comfort, making our need to find them even more important. To learn what works and does not and what is good or bad for us means we have to explore. Exploring our environment successfully enables our survival and reproduction. Remembering places, facts and events is important. But sometimes, the brain seems particularly attracted to new information and novel experiences. Recent studies suggest that the brain responds to novelty.

The unknown is potentially rewarding, thereby motivating us to explore our environment and learn for the future. We must be flexible in order to deal with constant change and unpredictability. We often explore the unknown in a random fashion. Then they move towards it. Being flexible and learning a variety of options to choose from to deal with the world is of great value. This implies that finding new ways to deal with the world is superior to overtraining old patterns. For example, studies of honeybees show that they navigate according to a map-like organization of spatial memory.

When bees are over-trained to find a single nectar site, it is easy for them to find their way back to the hive from that site, but not very well from other sites. But when the same bees are trained to many nectar sites, they are much better in finding their way home to the hive from a range of different locations.

This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there.

An understanding of how and why we can "die" should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking.

Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? Product details Hardcover Language: Praise is more effective in changing behavior than punishment. Superb collection of practical wisdom. Peter Bevelin has read extensively on variety of disciplines and this book is a culmination of what he has learned all these years by reading the best minds.

What does this imply in numbers today? Want to Read Currently Reading Read. In part three the author presents other situations where humans suffer from misjudgments, by taking examples from physics and mathematics and linking them to subjects as investing and business.

We make a concession to people who have first made a concession to us. If I won I would have gained eternal life. Male brain vs female brain The brain exists to make better decisions about how to enhance reproductive success.

The more people there are, the less personal responsibility we feel. If you have read all the stuff wsdom above, this book is a good refresher of important concepts. Most of it is explained as survival instincts from having been hunter-gatherers for most of the existence. An example of a really responsible system is seeknig system that the Romans used when they built an arch.