Further Explorations In Heterosity

Posted by James Bowery on Monday, 02 January 2006 19:29.

Heterosity (novel diversity in a local area) is usually portrayed by its proponents as yielding a high rate of symbiosis in human ecologies. This is not what is observed in other ecosystems however.

Heterosity proponents like Axelrod and Trivers counter that human ecologies are much more dependent on engineered reciprocal altruism, in the form of money economies and law enforcement, than are natural ecosystems. (This is why, immediately after Hamilton published his paper “Innate social aptitudes of man” on the evolution of group competition in humans, Axelrod and Trivers campaigned, and succeeded, in getting Hamilton to divert his attention away from the consequences of panmixia, to research reciprocal altruism.) They are optimists and can afford to be since it is our lives they are investing in their optimism.

Parasitism is the actual result of newly created heterosity, in human not just natural ecosystems, due to the fact that while reciprocal altruism in man may be far more sophsticated than it is in other species, its very sophistication makes it is easily trumped by the far deeper, and more directly selected, kin altruism. Parasitsm that results from recently created heterosity we’ll call “parasity”. As evolutionary time passes and a more evolutionarily stable state is reached, sometimes the evolutionary arms race does _not_ end in a symbiotic peace—and parasity hardens to evolutionarily stable parasitism.

One of the features of parasites is that they express extended phenotypes in their hosts—phenotypes appearing to be part of the host’s morphology or behavior but in fact serving the parasite’s genes. The examples for this are so numerous as to have been the major sub-theme of Richard Dawkin’s book, “The Extended Phenotype”. A major extended phenotype of parasitism is what appears to be behavior by the host organism optimising the transmission of the parasite. This exteneded phenotype might be called vectorism.

We do observe a great deal of vectorism in human ecologies suffering from parasity.

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Comments:

Posted by anon on Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:41 | #

I was expecting this post from you.
engineered reciprocal altruism, in the form of money economies and law enforcement

The penalties for breaking the law are insufficient in terms of deterence. People obey the law because of training plus deterence by penalties plus something else. That something else is biological altruism. Biological altruism is the glue that holds societies together. Breaking the law (usually) harms other people. If the potential lawbreaker is genetically close to the general population, it is disincentive to break the law because he is harming his relatives. If the potential lawbreaker is distant, then there is little loss of fitness.
What laws and where to find this behavior? This would be seen most clearly in revenue collection and expenditure. Societies where the general population is closely related to one another need minimal enforcement of their tax laws. The audit percentage and the penalty for underpayment suggest that tax underpayers have positive expected value in monetary terms. Do they have a positive expected value in genetic terms? On the margin, tax underpayment does not result in jail time. One could compute the economic cost of jail time, but it isn’t a factor in marginal underpayment. Where is the harm? Revenue collection is a zero sum game. Revenue denied means some person or persons doesn’t get a government check. If that person is genetically close to the tax underpayer, then there is a fitness cost. If the tax underpayer is genetically distant, there is no or little cost in terms of reproductive fitness.
It follows that the populations with the highest expected genetic gain from tax underpayment are minority populations. Rampant tax avoidance is found in genetically diverse populations unless controlled by massive law enforcement.

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 02 Jan 2006 23:21 | #

In the expenditure realm we should see rampant rent seeking. And indeed in the private as well as public sectors, the positions most secure against unemployment and competition are disproportionately occupied by immigrant “cognitive elites” who are elite most of all in detecting such plum positions and competing to acquire their rent streams.

Posted by Calvin on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:50 | #

“the most important obligations governing our lives as social and political beings—including those to family, country and state—are non-contractual and precede the capacity for rational choice. By referring to them as “transcendent” I meant to emphasize that they transcend any capacity to rationalise them in contractual or negotiable terms. They have an absolute and immovable character that we must acknowledge if we are to understand our social and political condition”

“Transcendent bonds” as defined by Roger Scruton.

Posted by Melba Peachtoast on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 02:01 | #

Gosh Mr. Bowery, this is a silly question I am sure, but then I am only a silly woman from the great Outback and I was wondering, in general terms, who would you say these parasites were? Don’t say anything improper, of course! Thanks for the wallabies, Melba

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 02:18 | #

You can create artificial kinship by means of oligarchy, which is why the London merchant banks provided a cheaper and much more honest service than today’s universal banks.

Melba, one example of parsitism would be the Uitlanders in Paul Kruger’s pre-1899 Transvaal, who went there for the gold, destroyed the fabric and integrity of the Afrikaner society and caused a major war.

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:46 | #

Heterosity implies a territory smaller than the entire world, and a population smaller than an entire species. Otherwise, there is no distinction between the two diversities, which are also called external and internal diversity.
Prodiversity, as propaganda, is population genetic.
If genetic diversity as such, were a value to the official prodiversity of today; every country, every company and every college, would be at maximum genetic diversity value for its size, since each individual is genetically unique.
Heterosity-valorization has to mean that we value an increase in genetic diversity which does not increase the global genetic diversity, nor yet the world’s population genetic diversity; and may be destructive of these.
Pro-heterosity values the disadvantage of some local dominant.
In general, pro-diversity is anti-dominant.
Man is a dominant, or the dominant; therefore prodiversity is anti-human.
Pro-diversity must also value that lineage which tends to become rarer, and proportionally so; and hate that lineage which expands in a way that homogenizes.
Thus pro-diversity is against purifying selection and against life in general.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:58 | #

Gosh Melba, you sound so silly that I’m afraid the only way you’ll become unsilly is to leave the outback, get some life-extension technology and live for the next hundred years or so so you can observe the slow grinding descent to hell first hand. Trust me—what I say to you won’t help you—reality however will.

Live your beliefs and enjoy their fruits—you can’t do that hold up in the outback with the “inbred xenophobes”.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:03 | #

John, there are two kinds of evolution:

Undirected and eugenic.

The only way to be fully human is to take evolutionary responsiblity for the technological changes man has wraught—which means create eugenic evolution.

Part of this responsibility-taking is to recognize there is a lot we don’t know about ourselves and the history of evolution and the data telling us this is living in human and natural ecosystems. Therefore everytime we lose an ancient people, their surrounding ecosystem, their language and culture we lose our ability to create sound eugenics.

That’s part of the reason valuing global diversity and stopping heterosity is so key: We should be fully human.

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:07 | #

Does parasity refer only to lineages within a species, which exploit an opening to colocate with a host lineage, of the same species?

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:37 | #

Here might be brought in, Ewald’s concept of parasite virulence as governed by vertical versus horizontal transmission. Heterosity and parasity, as concepts would seem to pick out the possibilities for enhancement of parasite virulence as we move from vertical to horizontal, and on towards more efficient horizontal transmission of parasite lineages.

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:42 | #

From such considerations arises a general theory: that every increment of enhancement of transmission efficiency of parasitical lineages, may be expected to likewise increase the virulence thereof. Further this applies to lineages inside of a species, one of which is parasitic on another; and is contrary to any wishful or mendacious expectation of symbiosis.

Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 07:36 | #

Martin Hutchinson knows well, I’m sure, that during the Boer War the British Army was the Janissary of the Jews, viz Beit, Barnato, Phillips, Oppenheimer et al.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:13 | #

John, I’m indebted to you for mentioning Ewald’s concept of parasite virulence increased by horizontal transmission. I’ve known this intuitively and was looking for the proper terminology years ago however I never found it. I looked for “multi-host” and such terms and asked around a bit but until now I didn’t know there was an already existing theory of how parasites that can choose from alternate hosts in a given stage of their life-cycle increase their virulence. Google is now yielding results.

Clearly immigration politics, and more generally the politics of heterosity, is driving and being driven by highly virulent horizontal parasitism.

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 11:31 | #

The older wisdom spoke of ‘passaging’ as the way to enhance virulence. Ewald’s theory is significant also in that has made predictions, which now, as at your link, have won some confirmation. I’ve observed two types of vectoristic mentalities, one becomes enraged and hysterical if one mentions that, for example immigrants are brought in on public subsidy. Another says don’t worry about it, it’s a bagatelle. That we live in a vectoristic society is indicated also in the speech taboos on the mention of assisted immigration, net taxpayers and populations on net public subsidy. If a parasite could pick certain items foe censorship, wouldn’t these be near the top of the list? If a virulent parasite depends on lack of barriers to transmission, and could speak just two words, wouldn’t those be ‘value openness!’?

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:15 | #

The older wisdom spoke of ‘passaging’ as the way to enhance virulence.

I have to wonder to what degree study of horizontal transmission contribution to parasite virulence has been set back by the sort of “human achievements” besetting so many key areas of biology during the 20th century. Certainly “passaging” is uncomfortably close to the sort of terminology use by immigration liberalizers and may have seen a atrophy as a term similar to that suffered by “sociobiology” requiring new terminology (horizontal transmission / evolutionary psychology respectively) for any further progress.

Posted by ben tillman on Tue, 03 Jan 2006 23:52 | #

Astute observation, John.

Posted by ben tillman on Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:17 | #

We continually refer to the fact that the descendants of immigrants (such as the Algerians in France) are in many cases more hostile toward the host population. This is an example of increasing virulence of the parasitic group.

Posted by John S Bolton on Wed, 04 Jan 2006 06:25 | #

This sort of hostility is growing by leaps and bounds, and the leaping of boundaries is what gives great encouragement to it. The NYT of 1-3-06 has an article on p. A3 on the refugee rioters who stampeded under police herding activity in Cairo, killing many of the youngest, oldest and weakest of their number. A shot at the most efficient modes of parasitical lineages’ transmission towards the most healthy and productive populations, might be expected to select for the most hostile and ruthless of base-level vectorists.
The article says:

“We will kill you”, the crowd began to shout at visitors.”

Regarding passaging; Paul Ewald on p. 191 of Plague Time says:

“This passaging occurred over thousands of years in European populations, who coevolved resistance to endemic pathogens such as measles, mumps and smallpox. When these pathogens were introduced into populations who did not share this coevolutionary history, the lethality of each was ferociously elevated.”
Passaging means a great increase in transmission rates of a pathogen, such that more virulent subpopulations are selected-for.
Ewald also says “reduce transmission from the sickest”, on p. 199.
Vectorism says increase the opportunity for transmission from the sickest and weakest.
Which of these is the morally admirable position?

Posted by Cuspernicus on Sat, 20 Jun 2015 14:48 | #

“In the expenditure realm we should see rampant rent seeking” what fucking nonsense…

Who the fuck are you people?

” have to wonder to what degree study of horizontal transmission contribution to parasite virulence has been set back by”

These are not eloquent statements.

These are ambiguous and abjectly verbose.

Painful to read.

Grow up.