"Survival of the Prettiest"

"Darwin conceived this idea largely because he found natural selection could not account for the ornaments seen in many animals, especially males, all over the world — the bright buttocks and faces of many monkeys and apes; the white legs and backside of the Banteng bull, in Malaysia; the elaborate feathers and mating dances of countless birds including bee-eaters and bell-birds, nightjars, hummingbirds and herons, gaudy birds of paradise and lurid pheasants, and the peacock, that showboat, whose extravagant tail seems a survival hindrance but so pleases females that well-fanned cocks regularly win their favor. Only a consistent preference for such ornament — in many species, a “choice exerted by the female” — could select for such decoration. This sexual selection,as Darwin called it, this taste for beauty rather than brawn, constituted an evolutionary mechanism separate, independent, and sometimes contrary to natural selection.

To Darwin’s dismay, many biologists rejected this theory. For one thing, Darwin’s elevation of sexual selection threatened the idea of natural selection as the one true and almighty force shaping life — a creative force powerful and concentrated enough to displace that of God. And some felt Darwin’s sexual selection gave too much power to all those females exerting choices based on beauty. As the zoologist St. George Jackson Mivart complained in an influential early review of “Descent,” “the instability of vicious feminine caprice” was too soft and slippery a force to drive something as important as evolution... 

Like all selection, this is not intended to reach any particular goal; it just unfolds according to the demands of either fitness, or in this case, beauty. A trait selected for its beauty, of course, might create problems by selecting for ornaments that work against fitness. But, most crucially in the end, and often offsetting these problems, this “aesthetic” courtship, says Prum, creates an environment, temperaments and rituals — a sort of culture — that give the female sexual choice, autonomy and safety."

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/books/review/evolution-of-beauty-richard-prum-charles-darwin.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=http://m.facebook.com/

Evolution is way more complicated than just the survival of the fittest, Darwin wasn't some perfect genius whose words we study to find the truth, but reading about his other theories is interesting to think about because of the impact that his words have on society. 

Early theories of evolution and genetics were used to prop up some of the worst atrocities of the 19th and 20th centuries, and are still part of white nationalist ideologies. It's important to understand how these ideas are disseminated and filtered through social norms. 

Related: Survival of the Friendliest

"The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death"

"Mary’s entrepreneurial spirit—taking ride requests while she was in labor!—is an “exciting” example of how seamless and flexible app-based employment can be. Look at that hustle! You can make a quick buck with Lyft anytime, even when your cervix is dilating.

Lyft does not provide its drivers paid maternity leave or health insurance. (It offers to connect drivers with an insurance broker, and helpfully notes that “the Affordable Care Act offers many choices to make sure you’re covered.”) ... In the other version of Mary’s story, she’s an unprotected worker in precarious circumstances...

It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms. And yet this type of faux-inspirational tale has been appearing more lately, both in corporate advertising and in the news."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death?mbid=social_facebook

FB: "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system."

"What’s So Hard About Casting Indian Actors in Indian Roles?"

"

For “Wind River,” that system involved an intertribal collaboration. Leaders from the Wind River nations — the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho — read the script and visited the set. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe of Louisiana had no actors in the film but provided 90 percent of the film’s budget in a joint venture with Acacia Entertainment. Marshall Ray Sampson, the tribe’s vice chairman, explained, “We are always looking for ways to diversify our portfolio.”

Though the quest for authenticity was a community effort, Mr. Sheridan said, “As a filmmaker you have to stand in front of what you did and make choices that you could do with a clear conscience.”"

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/movies/wind-river-native-american-actors-casting.html?emc=edit_fm_20170804&nl=movies-update&nlid=67724906&te=1&referer=android-app://com.google.android.gm

"How to Protest Without Offending White People"

"If there is one thing white people outer-city people hate, it’s being left out. If you watch the nation unite in empathy and mourning for the single Caucasian victim of white supremacy, while ignoring the fact that the same supremacists have terrorized people of color for more than a century; when you see Justine Damond’s death change the leadership of an entire police force while streets run red with black blood spilled by acquitted police officers, you still shouldn’t say, “Black lives matter.”... 

There has never been a movement for the freedom or equality of people of color that has gained white approval. Not the abolitionist movement. Not the anti-lynching movement. Not the Black Power movement. Not the civil rights struggle."

https://www.theroot.com/how-to-protest-without-offending-white-people-1818770022

FB:"There has never been a movement for the freedom or equality of people of color that has gained white approval. Not the abolitionist movement. Not the anti-lynching movement. Not the Black Power movement. Not the civil rights struggle."

"Fingerprint Source Identity Lacks Scientific Basis for Legal Certainty"

"Forensic examiners have long proclaimed high levels of certainty that latent prints, based on their analysis, originated from an “identified” person, statements that multiple reports have called “scientifically indefensible.”  Studies by the National Research Council in 2009, a National Institute of Standards and Technology’s working group on latent fingerprint analysis in 2012, and, most recently, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2016, reached similar conclusions. Such assertions have led to false arrests and convictions.

While most examiners no longer claim the “100% accuracy” of a fingerprint analysis, the moderating terms now used in court testimony and reports continue to state that examiners can  “identify” or are “practically certain of” the source of a latent print, says the report.

“In reality, there is not, at present, an adequate scientific basis for either claim,” the AAAS report says. “There is no basis for estimating the number of individuals who might be the source of a particular latent print.  Hence, a latent print examiner has no more basis for concluding that the pool of possible sources is probably limited to a single person than for concluding it is certainly limited to a single person...

In calling for additional research to be undertaken without the knowledge of examiners, the report proposes that fingerprint examiners be walled off from police reports, rap sheets and other material that can unconsciously influence an examiner’s perceptions before forming an opinion about the fingerprints being studied."

https://www.aaas.org/news/fingerprint-source-identity-lacks-scientific-basis-legal-certainty

Bite mark analysis is totally not a thing, tire mark is unclear... Forensic techniques are not always the "science" they have been portrayed to be.

Related: at least one on forensics, one on arson investigations...

FB: It's all pretty much based on the bluster of the guy who first came up with fingerprinting. It's obviously useful, but there is no scientific basis for the assumption that two people can't have the same fingerprint 

"How a fight over Native American symbolism in Oregon brought to light the conflict at America's core."

"in the past few years, the geographically incorrect, faux-Native totem pole has become a lightning rod of controversy, with charges of cultural appropriation and concern that said pole might disturb prehistoric archeological ruins of actual Native Americans. The pole’s advocates, who are mostly white, did not simply acquiesce to the rising chorus of Native voices; instead, they attacked a relatively new diversity task force, belittled local tribespeople, and attempted to undermine the fair’s archaeology crew in order to raise the totem pole. How a group of hippies in a community purportedly tied together by peace, love, and understanding ended up sounding like a bunch of neocons speaks to the troubled dynamic between America’s aging — and largely white — hippie subculture and the Native American communities they’ve long imitated...

One of the fair’s many booths is called the Ritz Sauna and Showers, a 12,000-square foot series of ramshackle wooden structures offering cold showers and relaxing saunas for attendees at what is typically a hot, dry, and dusty festival... the Ritz was too established by that time for a name change; according to interviews Braddock gave before the story-pole controversy emerged, people also had a sentimental attachment to the saunas’ pink flamingo mascot. As he was reconceiving the Ritz, Braddock, along with an artist named Brad Bolton, tried to imagine if “by some magic of nature” flamingos lived in the Pacific Northwest how the Native Americans would have iconized them. And so the Native-ization of the saunas began...

Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Cree folksinger from Canada, visited San Francisco to perform during the infamous Summer of Love in 1967. At a dinner party one night, she was asked by a journalist from the Berkeley Barb about white hippies’ obsession with and emulation of Native Americans. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, these kids trying to be Indians,” she said. “They’ll never be Indians. The white people never seem to realize that they cannot suck the soul out of a race. The ones with the sweetest intentions are the worst soul suckers.”...

For hippies passing through the Pacific Northwest, sites of Native resistance and occupation were novel places to hang out and experiment with drugs. Some genuinely hoped to be helpful to Native activists; they (often ineffectively) guarded fishing nets from confiscation, collected firewood, shuttled Natives to meetings in their “hippie vans,” and kept the cause in the public eye. Asked by a Seattle Times reporter how he felt about hippies joining the Puyallup Indians for fish-ins, one tribal leader responded, “Well, you don’t see any of the good church people down here helping us, do you?”...

The Ritz Clan and those in favor of the pole responded to the criticism on and offline with a litany of excuses. Some suggested the problem was bigger than the pole (and therefore shouldn’t involve the pole), others argued that it was just art (“a single art project is not the appropriate venue to address this larger issue of land use”) and still others suggested that art and free expression are among the most important manifestations of the human spirit, and therefore so sacred that they cannot be touched by issues like cultural appropriation."

https://theoutline.com/post/2194/oregon-country-fair-story-pole-cultural-appropriation

FB: "After a few decades of successful fair experiences, members of the Ritz Clan decided to pay tribute to their own story with a celebratory totem pole. The floodplains where the fair takes place were once occupied by the nomadic Kalapuya Indians, who came to the land when the river waters receded in the summer, but they never carved totem poles. It’s not clear whether the Ritz knew totem poles were a geographically incorrect representation of the area... Braddock is now running for a seat on the board under the banners of “transparency” and “democracy,” two buzzwords lobbied against the board by pole supporters."

"Beware HGTV’s House-Flipping Fantasy Loop"

""We are supposed to be in rehab from our housing binge of ten years ago, the one that nearly bankrupted the country. We are supposed to be in a state of contrition. But our national love of HGTV suggests that the dream won’t die...

Today, House Hunters, like all HGTV shows, follows a formula as inflexible as the Latin Mass. You meet the buyers (usually a couple), learn where they live and what their budget is, and watch as they describe marriage-busting differences of opinion in a way that makes them look like they’re choosing what to watch on Netflix. He’s the breadwinner who wants to live close to work; she’s an at-home mom who wants to live in a far-off suburb. She’s a spender; he’s a saver. What they need is a post-nup; what they get is an expensive house an hour from his job, because HGTV women tend to win these quarrels, although he will usually get some concession — a north-facing patio so he won’t sweat like a dog when he’s out grilling... 

all of the makeovers on all of the shows are the same: blow out the walls around the kitchen so you can see the big screen from the center island; put some large furniture in the living room so that it looks grand; install hardwood floors or laminate that looks like hardwood; dress up the bathrooms with ceramic tile and walk-in showers; run some sod in the backyard and add some plants; and then quickly film the whole thing before the blossoms fall off $800 worth of annuals... 

Created to compete with A Wedding Story and A Baby Story, HGTV has always had its roots in a quiet social conservatism, a world where houses are containers for families and where the center of a family is a marriage...

HGTV makes big, expensive, time-consuming remodels look like two weeks’ work and a modest amount of money well spent. Moreover, it links these changes so definitively to personal and family happiness that you begin to wonder what, exactly, is wrong with you that you haven’t made some of them... 

What could the network be quietly motivating its viewers to do? With our real-estate-loving president — who has Property Brothers programmed into the TiVo on Air Force One and who is eager to do away with regulations, which are one of the forces supposed to protect us from another bust — we could be in the early stages of another crisis. "

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/the-ugliness-behind-hgtv-never-ending-fantasy-loop.html

This was a super compelling read. At first I thought the thesis was stretching, just to validate many excellent snarky descriptions of HGTV, but I was kinda convinced by the end: the housing crisis could happen again, as long as we stay so weird and inappropriately aspirational about housing. 

FB: "Caleb’s not going to do his homework at that stupid desk; on some level, we all know that. But the dream of a boy sitting happily in his mother’s kitchen, filling out his worksheets while she sips a big bubble glass of chilled Chardonnay and cooks — what? Quickie quesadillas? Three-step lasagna? — In her fantastically overbuilt kitchen is a powerful one, and for a few happy Act Three minutes, we dream that little dream, too."

"When ‘Not Guilty’ Is a Life Sentence"

"James, now in his 40s, has been in the hospital for almost two decades. This isn’t because he was sentenced to 20 years, or to 25. He was not sentenced at all; he is technically, legally, not responsible. The court believes beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the act he was accused of, a prerequisite for the state to accept an insanity plea. The plea does not, however, prescribe or limit the duration of his stay. The laws that govern the practice of committing people who are acquitted because of mental illness dictate that they be hospitalized until they’re deemed safe to release to the public, no matter how long that takes...

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled, in Foucha v. Louisiana, that a forensic patient must be both mentally ill and dangerous in order to be hospitalized against his will. But in practice, “states have ignored Foucha to a pretty substantial degree,” says W. Lawrence Fitch, a consultant to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and former director of forensic services for Maryland’s Mental Hygiene Administration. “People are kept not because their dangerousness is because of mental illness. People stay in too long, and for the wrong reasons.”...

when an N.G.R.I. defense does succeed, it tends to resemble a conviction more than an acquittal. N.G.R.I. patients can wind up with longer, not shorter, periods of incarceration, as they are pulled into a mental-health system that can be harder to leave than prison...

There is no accepted body of research to suggest that lengthy institutionalization leads to better treatment outcomes...

The question, according to Dvoskin, “becomes one of risk tolerance. America has become — to an extreme level that’s almost impossible to exaggerate — a risk-intolerant society.” Fears of people with mental illness persist, even though, according to the best estimates, only 4 percent of violent acts in the United States are uniquely attributable to serious mental illness. One study has found that those with mental illness are actually less likely to be seriously violent than the general population. (In addition, some N.G.R.I.s have been acquitted of nonviolent crimes, like public-order offenses, traffic offenses and prostitution.) Even if a mentally ill person has committed a crime, says Chris Slobogin, director of the criminal-justice program at Vanderbilt University Law School, “it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it again,” especially because their encounter with the forensic psychiatric system means they’ve received treatment. “This is a group of people that are incredibly stigmatized and misunderstood in terms of how dangerous they are"...

Emotions and prejudice easily come into play, even from experts. A 2003 study in The American Journal of Forensic Psychology, for example, showed that doctors are more likely to find minorities incompetent to stand trial and more likely to diagnose psychotic disorders in African-Americans." 

https://nyti.ms/2k1DhH7

This is a bad system.

"The Concept of Schizophrenia Is Coming to an End – Here's Why"

"Arguments that schizophrenia is a distinct disease have been "fatally undermined".

Just as we now have the concept of autism spectrum disorder, psychosis (typically characterised by distressing hallucinations, delusions, and confused thoughts) is also argued to exist along a continuum and in degrees.

Schizophrenia is the severe end of a spectrum or continuum of experiences... 

Another problem is that schizophrenia is portrayed as a "hopeless chronic brain disease". As a result, some people given this diagnosis, and some parents, have been told cancer would have been preferable, as it would be easier to cure.

Yet this view of schizophrenia is only possible by excluding people who do have positive outcomes. For example, some who recover are effectively told that "it mustn't have been schizophrenia after all"... 

Many medical conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, can be reached by multiple routes that nevertheless impact the same biological pathways and respond to the same treatment.

Schizophrenia could be like this. Indeed, it has been argued that the many different causes of schizophrenia discussed above may all have a common final effect: increased levels of dopamine."

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-concept-of-schizophrenia-is-coming-to-an-end-here-s-why

Not a super well-written article but interesting. 

"I think I know where babies come from, therefore I am human"

"there is an oft-overlooked plot in the human saga. It stars the ancient hominins who realised that they’re related to some people and not others, and that sexual intercourse might have something to do with that. The effects of this realisation are profound, and deserve some credit for our species’ widespread success on the planet... 

In eliminating the distinctions between human sexual behaviour and that of other primates, a murky anthropomorphism creeps in. The journalist Nicholas Wade wrote in The New York Times that male chimps and baboons ‘are prone to kill any infant they believe could not be theirs, so females try to blur paternity by mating with as many individuals as possible before each conception’. This suggests that non-human primates could know that semen transforms into a baby and that the act of sex, broadly, makes an infant. Further, it implies that they have a sense of relatedness, and that it extends to fathers. If not, then it’s deliberately narrating animal sex and violence like a scene from Game of Thrones, for our entertainment. And it works (it’s sensational and relatable) because a more scientifically grounded alternative – male baboons, gorillas and chimps might kill infants, but they’re less likely to kill ones clinging to females with whom they’ve mated because sexual relations between primates builds affiliation – isn’t nearly as scintillating...

Chimpanzees deftly navigate a world with gravity without thinking about gravity, or rationalising about it and making rules. In an equally naïve way, they deftly navigate a world with paternity without thinking of the consequences of sexual intercourse... 

Because our species is inextricably steeped in sociocultural context, you could argue that all human marriage is somehow arranged. This is a whole new approach to mate choice on the evolutionary scene. Like other social animals, we do compete for mates and we are choosy, but it’s not just because we want to have sex with them, it’s also because we want to make babies with them, to merge families with theirs, to make a future together. Reproductive consciousness isn’t just an aftermath to human mating. It has shaped it profoundly... 

Reproductive consciousness would have increased attraction to and competition for mates, male or female, who are observed to be good community members and good parents, or who have potential to be. It would have increased competition for mates or for families with resources they’re willing to share. Reproductive consciousness is a powerful context for boosting male-female cooperation, even beyond mates and into adult brother-sister relationships – effectively a uniquely human phenomenon... 

Reproductive consciousness is just one element in the invention of human culture – a whole cluster of behaviours, knowledge, values and beliefs that unhooks human destiny from the standard evolutionary model of other species. We humans do many things that undermine our evolutionary interests. We practise religious celibacy, contraception, abortion, suicide bombing. We adopt infants who aren’t our kin, we go to war, we kill our siblings. A lot of this we do voluntarily, and none of it perpetuates our own genes. In fact, it actively does not."

https://aeon.co/essays/i-think-i-know-where-babies-come-from-therefore-i-am-human

Related: that critique of evolutionary pychology; why we are underestimating chimps intelligence 

FB: "it’s the absence of the awareness that sex makes babies (which we’re calling reproductive consciousness) that makes it impossible for a monkey to know who the father is, or to have the concept of ‘father’ or paternity in the first place. Something else is driving marmoset fathers to care for their own biological offspring and not others...

When a dominant chimpanzee kills an unrelated infant, one set of explanations is needed. And it’s not enough to map those directly, with no recognition of the utterly distinct human experience of reproduction and family, on to human domestic violence."

"Nice, decent folks"

"The first time I noticed an ethnographer’s shock and confusion over nice white supremacists, I thought it was a fluke. But after I read the performed shock and confusion again and again, I began to wonder what the hell was going on. The juxtaposition between decency and white supremacy was frankly bizarre. It was almost as if these ethnographers imagined that white supremacists would be just like their pop culture counterparts: ignorant, aggressive, mean, and oh-so-easily-identifiable with swastika tattoos and Klan robes peaking out of their closets. Pop culture obscures the heartbreaking ordinariness of member of white supremacist organizations. They look like other white people. They speak like other white people. They act like other white people... 

What I realized was how tired I am of hearing how “nice” and “decent” the people are who voted for Trump. I’m so damn tired of this particular excuse because so-called nice and decent white voters put bigotry in office. “Nice” and “decent” don’t necessarily negate racism. Klan members can seem nice and still be racist. And “nice” and “decent” is often only extended by white people to other white people. This is pretty much only a shock to white people."

http://www.kellyjbaker.com/nice-decent-folks/#

FB: "More distressingly, I couldn’t understand how these scholars didn’t realize that Klan members were nice and decent to them because they were also white. Shared whiteness allowed for a certain kind of interpersonal treatment that wasn’t necessarily extended to people who weren’t white. I couldn’t get over how flabbergasted these scholars were by the disconnect between outward action and hateful ideologies. I couldn’t get over how white liberal scholars (yet again) managed deftly to avoid their own white supremacy."

"Christianists Want Dominion Over America — And It’s Not Rude To Say So"

"Andrew Sullivan first used the word “Christianist” in 2003 to describe Eric Rudolph, an anti-abortion and anti-gay American terrorist. He then expanded his definition in a 2006 article in TIME Magazine:

“Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. …It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”... 

The voting patterns of the Evangelical base of the GOP tell you much more about their identity politics than their faith — that is, about their Christianism, not their Christianity.

This is why Trump’s track record on the Ten Commandments and nearly satirical approximations of religious language didn’t finish him off with Evangelicals, as his primary opponents and some of our Pundit Overlords thought it would. His clumsily counterfeited piety didn’t have to convince anyone that he had a personal relationship with God (there are convicted murderers who exhibit more of the Fruit of the Spirit than the 45th President) — only that he could perform the nationalist flavor of Christians satisfactorily"

https://theestablishment.co/christianists-want-dominion-over-america-and-its-not-rude-to-say-so-b03abaa3c319

Ads Don't Work That Way

"This meme or theory about how ads work — by emotional inception — has become so ingrained, at least in my own model of the world, that it was something I always just took on faith, without ever really thinking about it. But now that I have stopped to think about it, I'm shocked at how irrational it makes us out to be. It suggests that human preferences can be changed with nothing more than a few arbitrary images. Even Pavlov's dogs weren't so easily manipulated: they actually received food after the arbitrary stimulus. If ads worked the same way — if a Coke employee approached you on the street offering you a free taste, then gave you a massage or handed you $5 — well then of course you'd learn to associate Coke with happiness.

But most ads are toothless and impotent, mere ink on paper or pixels on a screen. They can't feed you, hurt you, or keep you warm at night. So if a theory (like emotional inception) says that something as flat and passive as an ad can have such a strong effect on our behavior, we should hold that theory to a pretty high burden of proof...

Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. Whether you drink Corona or Heineken or Budweiser "says" something about you. But you aren't in control of that message; it just sits there, out in the world, having been imprinted on the broader culture by an ad campaign. It's then up to you to decide whether you want to align yourself with it. Do you want to be seen as a "chill" person? Then bring Corona to a party. Or maybe "chill" doesn't work for you, based on your individual social niche — and if so, your winning (EV-maximizing) move is to look for some other beer. But that's ok, because a successful ad campaign doesn't need to work on everybody. It just needs to work on net — by turning "Product X" into a more winning option, for a broader demographic, than it was before the campaign."

http://www.meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/

TBH this article makes its point like 1/5 of the way through and then harps on specifics for a long time, but the first 1/5 is interesting. I also think this is how politics works? Politicians appeal to your cultural identity way more than your individual needs.

FB: "For each of these products, an ad campaign seeds everyone with a basic image or message. Then it simply steps back and waits — not for its emotional message to take root and grow within your brain, but rather for your social instincts to take over, and for you to decide to use the product (or not) based on whether you're comfortable with the kind of cultural signals its brand image allows you to send."