This page is a mix of biology and philosophy

Nonsense

Take a tiger and a deer. The deal is: the tiger eats the deer. Then the just-a-little-slower deer was captured and the just-a-little-faster deer escaped and got baby deer that all were a little faster too. Then the tigers that were just a little slower starved and the tigers that were just a little faster catched deer and got baby tigers that all were a little faster too. And so the tiger and the deer changed in the course of time to the beautiful speed machines we see today.

But in fact it is nonsense. The deal remained unchanged. If tiger as well as deer had agreed upon the deal from the beginning, the result would have been the same. With hindsight I judge this evolution as nonsense. *a)

There is more nonsense in nature. Regard such a big tree full of large flowers, thousands of them, each flower composed of hunderds of very tiny flowers. Bee traffic fertilize flowers that form fertilized seeds that spread around, each seed one chance to become another tree. Trees with more seed on each square meter yield more chance to grow another tree than trees with lesser seeds on that same square meter.

If the trees would have agreed that about 12 flowers is enough, each flower composed of 12 very small flowers, the result would have been the same: the usual density of new trees that each square meter can sustain at the most.

When I see a tree full of big flowers, thousands of them, each flower made of hunderds of very tiny flowers, then I realize it is nonsense what I am looking at. Beautiful, but nonsense.

Of course I know the energy argument: making too much flowers costs too much energy. Trees spending less energy will survive better. Well, that may be the reason why not all plants that have flowers, are like those big trees.

When I for the first time red about evolution and understand it, I was 12 years old. I thought all evolution was as between those big trees. One variant just outnumbers another variant, without the variants influencing each others real life. A peacefull evolution.

Later I realized the tiger-deer argument. The eating of all those deers and the starving of the slower tigers was already less peaceful.

Finally I realized how evolution is between men: pushing each other aside in jobs. Steeling each others food so the other starve just a little earlier than you do. Killing each other, making love AND war. By no means peacefull at all.

But then again, as is mentioned in point 2 of the Discussion department of the previous page, humans, human society, doesn't seem to evolve. We don't learn from history. Making love AND war is no evolution, it is our final state.

The word nonsense is not adequate. The word crazy suits better.

It was about that time that I concluded that good and evil is present amongst the people at equal amounts and at all kinds of arbitrary divisions (A). That is what it is to be human. Not good, not bad, but something zero in between. Good is positive and Bad is negative and good and bad are summable, can be subtracted from each other to finally yield zero.

You cannot separate the good from the evil. Not with people.

Young adult people often suffer so much emotional pain that it is hardly bearable. Some commit suicide. Stronger feelings and stronger emotions are stronger drives to do the things of life that are necessary: finding a living, a partner and a home, mate and get children. Those with the strongest drives succeed the most. Those with the strongest feelings and emotions succeed better than those with less stronger feelings and pushes them aside, pushes them out. So ever stronger feelings and emotions will appear until it drives you over the edge and only there the ever-getting-stronger of feelings necessarily stops.

Once again, there is no evolution there, this is of all times. The states of virtual unbearable feelings will continue to exist until its very edge and that is our final state.       (1.1)

It is nonsense, just like the overabundance of flowers in the big tree.

When I look around and remember people I once knew, then it appears to me that not all of us have the same strong feelings. I guess half of us are less conspicious, less obtrusive, in their feelings, as well to the outside as to themselves. They are more stable. Stability means prolonging in time, which is a way of surviving too.       (1.2)

(1.1) pushes to ever stronger feelings, pushing each other out. (1.2) maintains lower strength feelings because they are more stable. Nature maintains two independent developments next to each other.       (1.3)

Does this mean there are only (1.1)'s and (1.2)'s? If I don't mistake I see a lot of half stable lifes too. So no, it's (1.1)'s and (1.2)'s and all that is in between them too.

Brain evolution

We, human beings, have developed in the course of millions of years intelligence, an amount of consciousness and a little bit of free will. That was not nonsense. It is very useful. It initially must be developed as an answer to threats from nature as floods, storms, droughts, too much heat, too much cold, etc. Subsequently war and crime, the fight agains each other (nonsense that is), have been the drive behind further development of intelligence, an amount of consciousness and a little bit of free will.

War and crime are the most recent drives behind the development of intelligence, an amount of consciousness and a little bit of free will           (2.1)

Mental diseases like psychosis, depression and all the others seem to indicate that brain development is given a lot of freedom to deviate from the proper track.

These days we know we have genes that do not work anymore. They are there in our genome, slowly decaying from generation to generation, having no function anymore. In a number of cases we found the same gene working well in animals and we were able to precisely point at the defect in the human gene why it doesn't work in us anymore. That's how nature works.

Maybe it is the same with brain parts. Maybe we have some parts in the brain that are there but inoperative, inactivated, maybe with errors too. In the course of millions of years those brain parts and the genes that steer their growth, are slowly decaying, diminishing and finally disappearing.

The reviving (repair the genes and bring them to expression) and subsequent activation of such an ancient brain part might reveal a lot about the evolution of the human brain.

But suggesting is one thing, proving it is something different. I am afraid we have to wait 100 up to 200 years until there are nanorobots with which we will be able to see what precisely is happening there in the brain and handle it properly.

See the storyline EXISTENCE, starting at page 4 of this storyline.

Happiness and pain

Happiness and pain are drives. Happiness is a drive to make us continue to do the things we feel happy with. Pain is a drive to stop the things we feel pain at.           (3.1)

See also the storyline EXISTENCE, page 7, paragraph Consciousness part 2.

Why two drives? Could there have been happiness as only drive for all things that have to be done? The end of all pain.

Happiness is there for all things that have to be done repeatedly, like sex. Happiness is for things that have to go on, happiness must go on. Pain is a drive for all things that have to be done only once, like retracting your hand out of the fire. Pain is for things that have to stop, pain has to stop.

Suppose you feel strong happiness in drawing your hand out of the fire, and no pain. Then you are incited to put your hand in the fire again and again in order to be able to retract the hand from the fire again and again. This might continue until the hands are so severely burned that the nerves in the hands don't relay signals anymore. Then the happiness stops and thus the drive to put the hands in the fire.

No, this will not do. That's why there are two drives, pain and happiness.

Evolution steers an act by pain or happiness, depending on whether it is accidentally an act that has to be done once, or an act that accidentally has to be done more than once, or even all the time. Therefore my conjecture is that the division of pain and happiness is a chance division: the drives for things that has to be done only once (the stop-action) just occur as often as the drives for things that has to go on. Pain and happiness are distributed on equal amounts according to a chance division.           (3.2)

Good and evil

Happiness = good           (4.1)

Pain = evil           (4.2)

This relates the biological functions happiness and pain with the moral judgements good and evil. The link between biology and philosophy. *b)

Free will

My first definition of freedom is:

Will is your ability to adjust your happiness capacities and pain capacities.           (5.1)

Happiness capacity is the power to be happy, the power to feel joy, happiness.

Pain capacity is the power to be sad, the power to feel pain.

The adjusting is done by your consciousness. Starting point is that happiness and pain are the drives of a human being, see (3.1). Free will is the ability to master those drives.

When you set your happiness capacity of an act (action) like e.g. eating, to zero, then you have no drive anymore to do the act, to eat. You will not perform the act, you will not eat anymore. But then you get pain, called hunger. The pain prompts you to do something to stop the pain and you know what that is: start eating. Leave out the not-eating-act. When you set the pain capacity of that act to zero too, you feel no hunger anymore. With no happiness capacity at all and with no pain capacity at all you will do nothing anymore at all.

If I don't mistake, pain as only drive would suffice. Evolution can make you do or make you leave anything necessary by inserting pain on you that only can be stopped by doing or leaving that things, the things that are necessary to survive.

When there is too much pain, the living creature will be seduced to commit suicide to end the pain. Then there will develop a lot of pain to prevent suicide.

Happiness as only drive will not do. But pain as only drive can do, in principle.           (5.2)

Why there is happiness? However not necessary, happiness is another drive. When you set the happiness capacity OR the pain capacity of an act at its maximum, then you are prompted to do the act OR you are promted to leave out the act. Happiness is an extra drive that make you do or leave more eagerly the things that are necessary for surviving than people with only pain as drive. That must be the reason why there is happiness.

When I consider the things that give me pleasure in daily life, then in half of the cases I do not directly recognize things that help me to survive better. But they give me pleasure, a reason to live. And obviously that's enough reason for nature to put these happiness capacities in me.

Mark the eating act is driven by happiness (you like eating) AND pain (hunger when you don't). Evolution considered eating as an important act. The same for drinking, sleeping, sex, social intercourse. Breath is a little different: much pain when you don't, not especially happiness when you do, and most of it goes automatically, needing no will at all.

By adjusting your happiness and pain capacities you steer yourself. The steering ability, when at your your disposal, is the free will.

My second definition of freedom is:

You are free when you feel free           (5.3)

That's all there is to freedom.

The storyline EXISTENCE, especially page 1 and also page 6 and 7, offer a new way to choose yourself, to choose your own brain structure, part by part. So you are even free to choose your own will, provided the will is in a brainpart. But then still the personal choices that you make how you will become, are the consequences of how you are at that moment of choice. You cannot avoid already be a being before you choose yourself.

Anyway, you will have a lot more possibilities than without the brain part copying procedure. And if nowadays society does not evolve anymore, according to point 2 of the Discussion department of the previous page, the brain part copying procedure will restart evolution, is my guess.

Concentrating properties

Sexual reproduction provides the possibility to store the genetic properties of the entire human race in one single individual. Suppose you are God and you are preparing germ cells for the two humans in the ark of Noah-the-second.

E.g. suppose the alleles of hair color provide black, brown, blond and red hair. Take 4 germ cells, sperm or ova. In cell 1 is put at its proper place the allele for black hair, in cell 2 the allele for brown hair, in cell 3 blond and in cell 4 the red hair allele.

Then take the alleles of eye color, e.g. brown, green, blue and gray. Put in cell 1 the brown eye color allele, in cell 2 the green, cell 3 blue, cell 4 the gray eye color allele.

Suppose there are 6 different alleles for 6 different skin colors. Then you need 2 extra germ cells to store the 6 alleles in the way shown. The extra 2 locations for hair color and eye color are filled in with copies of already used alleles.

The number of alleles of a property cannot exceed the number of the ova in the woman then. Or the number of sperms in the man.

The prepared germ cells are put in one single individual, or in both the man and the woman. But then again, how to get all these properties out into different people again?

Spreading out again

Suppose there is a family with good property number 1. Suppose there is another family with desirable property 2. And there are families 3 and 4 with still different properties 3 and 4.

The sexual matrix mixing of genes brings fast (fastest?) properties 1, 2, 3 and 4 together within one single family.

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