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Episode 228: Selfish Gene and Blueprint, faking orgasms, low mood stay at home mom
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I've been reading Robert Plomin book blueprint and have come to some confusion reconciling the selfish genes central ideas and Plumbing's description of genetics admittedly have an educational background in finance and only got into biology from listening to this show so perhaps I'm just missing something the confusion though comes from trying to understand how the notion of self selected pressures at the individual gene level would be possible when so many traits of the phenotype are the result of the interaction of several genes within the genome how can individual genes quote compete when each individual gene is reliant on how it correlates with the rest of the genome I did some quick research poking around trying to understand this cognitive mismatch in my own educational understanding and came across some researchers suggesting that there is now a contemporary group selection idea in evolutionary biology yet in some ways discredits Dawkins ideas I definitely feel well out of my league trying to even put together a coherent question on this topic and again maybe I'm just misunderstanding both The Selfish Gene and could be well served to read it again and in biting off more than I can chew with blueprint guard 'less I think this would be an interesting discussion on the podcast to really get into the weeds of the mechanics of evolutionary biology well group selection is one of Doug's favorite topics so I think he should yeah here's to go to town on the fun yeah I think yeah I think there's a little bit a little bit too much too many different ideas that their persons trying to they're definitely got some confusion and what they're trying to figure out the so let's let's begin with where it is that they are starting which is the confusion about how single gene can go about competing for its own interest inside the organism when it has to work in concert with so many other genes and so how would that work and the way it works if you don't think if you don't think of it as competition it's not like I mean Dawkins does a a you know once-in-a-lifetime job of transforming the language of genetics down into a way that we think of these things is that the conscious entities with with intentions okay so the The Selfish Gene was a was a revolution in thinking about biology by turning around the way we typically thought about biology before Dawkins and now how we think about biology post-post The Selfish chin so the the notion the gene isn't selfish what it does is it it it's a little program to program proteins to be made that will cause that organism to be more successful and it's in other words that specific gene is out to take its out it's actually out to alter the organism in ways that will be useful for that gene to be more likely to be passed on in general what that means is yet the gene that makes that organism better is going to be more likely to survive that genes more likely to be passed on there could be cases where where that might not be necessarily true so that you get into tricky areas of biology there and describing that is going to be beyond this discussion but to think about how a gene would be would have selection pressure he uses the word self selection that I think he's he's thinking about he's a little bit lost there but that's okay think about think about a painting or a a maybe maybe we should think about a very complicated machine super complicated machine that I don't know makes some kind of widget and think about a putting a different part in that machine that where the materials are slightly different and now that machine is less likely to fail so the whole machine is necessary to reap to make widgets but every little part of that machine is part of the machine and every little part of that machine could be improved and so the way evolution works is it works by changing one gene at a time so in so you might think well how does that go about how does this happen well think about the concept of let's suppose you're you've got a car you got I don't know a 57 Ford I don't know Edsel and they didn't make that tell maybe 59 but whatever yeah so it's got some part in there and there's like 10 different ways slightly different ways you could build the part that would be common so maybe you'll make it out of aluminum this one you make out a steel this one you make it out of steel but you put a little rubber gaskets on the end in other words slight alterations now all of them will work but one of them will work a little bit better than the other ones so this is how evolution works and in fact it works with of those ten then somebody comes up with an idea and alters something that you wouldn't actually have thought of or wouldn't even necessarily make sense but it you know we dip it we dip one end in touch a titanium liquid titanium and suddenly it works quite a bit better that's exactly how evolution works so evolution works by having a little mutation change in existing gene oh and that changes the the outcome of what that gene makes or what it creates and alters it a little bit and now suddenly it turns out that there's a tiny advantage to the organism because that's gene is better than its rival alleles okay so so evolution moves towards the the genes that are building the organism are wind up being a selected you know they're randomly generated by mutation and then they get selected gene by a gene to change the machines characteristics so that it's a better and better and better and better fit for the ecological constraints or the ecological pressures that it has on it so don't think of there's not like one gene for height in people there's thousands of genes that contribute to your height you can imagine know that under in certain habitats yet wid there would be an advantage to being a little bit taller or there would be an advantage to being a little bit shorter okay if you're a little bit shorter and you're a little bit smaller you could live on a little bit less food and if you wind up in a situation where there's a major constraint on the food supply that may be more advantageous and so that gene the gene that causes you to be shorter starts to be more effective in the gene pool becomes more numerous and that's how this works and that happens for example where there's usually when ecological disasters are some kind of bizarre situation where an animal gets isolated very often the smaller animals be becomes selected by evolution all very often the larger animals are selected by evolution so there's some size or we could just take in general the concept of height there's some height that would be optimal for the organism in it's given ecology we can see for example in humans the ideal height forgiving ecology are different in Africa than they are at Southeast Asia so the people are taller in Africa for for whatever reasons and we don't have any idea what those reasons are we just know that the genes thousands of them or hundreds of them at least they contribute the gene that makes you a little bit taller those genes have been more successful in those habitats so the the fact that the genes themselves have to work in concert with other genes to produce complex subsystems in a body that they quote have to cooperate play friendly with each other that's not a problem and that's not group selection so group group selection is theirs I don't even want to wander into that territory actually frankly so hopefully hopefully this is useful to understand there's no contradiction between anything that plumbing is talking about in anything that Dawkins is talking about so plumb and once again the fact that there may be a thousand genes that are responsible for you know a person's intelligence or a person's body morphology that doesn't mean that each time one of them is having their tiny little influence they're like little dot so on a canvas that it's making a painting and so the so they eat each of them has a tiny little contribution to the overall thing that you see and sometimes that dot if it gets changed is a little improvement for that habitat and that's so evolution takes place at the level of a given gene whining being selected by the evolution pressures to be more common in the gene pool than some rival gene that isn't quite as good for that habitat so we start to realize that the goodness and badness of genes a lot of times doesn't make sense unless we are talking about the specific habitat that those genes find themselves so genes will sometimes a gene will become more numerous for a while so maybe people will be taller for a while in a given habitat and then some ecological changes and now we start to see that the the shorter genes become more common so it could drift back and forth sideways upside down the gene gene frequencies can change it all simply depends upon how well that specific gene in its infant s Amole small influence on the overall package of the organism whether it's moving it in a positive direction for that given habitat or am- direction and that's how that's how that works if you want a an exceptional education in the nature of natural selection and how genes work in principle the the best thing i've ever read is the blind watchmaker by Dawkins so just to put in a little plug for Dawkins writings I haven't read much since I read the three the Canon of Richard Dawkins which is The Selfish Gene the extended phenotype and then the blind watchmaker after that I read The God Delusion I actually only read half of it and I'd seen enough the I haven't I tried to read the ancestors tale but it's just more more Dawkins you know grinding and dribble the the truth of the matter is those three are the main conceptual actually climbing mountain probable as again would be helpful for this questioner it also it's sort of an extension and reiteration of the blind watchmaker but I think the concept of incremental changes each little gene making its influence and then winding up either being more causing the organism to be more successful and therefore its self more numerous or not that is the that is the program of evolution and that in no way is in any in any contradiction at all to plummets work in behavior genetics Wow dr. lout thank you so much very good dr. Huck do you have a do you want to tackle any part of this no I don't think there's anything I could possibly possibly add to that there's there's always the balance on the podcast with them you know sort of the the whole the whole sort of general just to the podcast is practical solutions you know practical clinical solutions to real life problems but there is so much interest in this kind of thing I mean I get these questions all the time and I know that Doug does and so this is just a another another reminder to folks to come on over to our new website because we this is like we have this this new venue to really wind out on this kind of stuff and address these questions as they come up in life q and A's and videos and elsewhere so well we'll keep talking about that but if you visit a steam dynamics com that's um we have we have lots of opportunity to get into the trees and not just the forest well speaking of practical yes our next question dear doctors whenever I don't orgasm during sex I feel guilty this may be because I faked the orgasm I'm not sure where the whether this is my internal audience censoring me or whether I'm simply empathizing for my guileless husband or maybe something else why can't I be honest about my in orgasm yeah I don't always have a problem orgasm but around half the time I fake it it's not fun what say you this this just just seems like question for Jen this is a chat question I'm gonna give this to the resident female it's all the better for me to somehow get into trouble with this yes exactly oh my god where to begin so I I would want for the specific case to have a much better idea of what's going on sort of in the moment so I think I think it's quite common that you know we know that there's not a we know there's not a physical problem here that she's saying that she she's fine half the time she's able able to orgasm whether on her own or with her partner so this is not a physical problem that she's having this is this is a cost benefit and now it's just problem and so I think I think it's very very common that women are most women are not easily orgasmic all the time some are but most most are not some are very rarely orgasmic if at all so she's you know right in the middle of the bell curve and the thing is is like again I kind of want to know what's going on internally you know there's there's a point in every sexual encounter where you realize it's not gonna happen and you abandon the attempt decide to fake it so what's going on in that moment are you are you sort of you know it's getting late and you want to get to sleep and you're worried about things going on tomorrow are you because there's there's always this choice point for most women who are in the situation where you could probably get yourself there if you really gave it your full attention and a lot of effort and all-hands-on-deck so to speak and really really just made it your goal for the night but you're not making it your goal for the night you were you were opting out at some point in the process and you're deciding that it's it's better see be wise to fake it so I think it's probably less of a like the guilt you're feeling is essentially you're you're sending a signal of qualification to your husband that is that it's not entirely genuine and yet your internal audiences aware of that of the false signaling and you know is giving you some guff about it but I think it's more likely you're you're just feeling guilty for the the zero-sum redistribution of time and energy that you're taking away from you know this this well-meaning spouse who thinks that he's done a really good job and genu you've tuned out and you've you've been drafting your grocery list in your mind instead given the performance of a lifetime and so I think it's very very very common but it's it's going to come down to the the actual cost-benefit analysis in the moment in the in the encounter I'm not sure what else I could add to that I'm sure Doug has thoughts though yeah just just like a like a guy in my mind was drifting on when a male's mind when when your mind drifts it's not a problem when the female mind drifts it is a problem most females don't be very very present and engaged I would say certainly that that there there's probably details in these situations that if she's orgasmic half the time then probably she can be orgasmic 80% of the time the but there's details in this process that are that may be overlooked and so that you know that that's something to consider in a she doesn't know how to look for that sometimes there's people that are actually knowledgeable about that that might be helpful to consult with the there there's some very knowledgeable people out there in that arena so that but you know that's just sort of an aside the it sounds to me like the that everything that you have to say I don't really have too much to add to it other than the reason why that I'm sort of talking about this is the following that for some women it's very difficult and rare to have an orgasm and the and that is usually because there's things that they don't know about their bodies or maybe because their relationships certainly but a lot of times it's because the the nature of the interaction the whole process is actually lacking in some necessary and sufficient you know elements and sometimes they don't quite know exactly what those elements are and sometimes other people do know what those elements are and so just keep that in mind and keep an open mind to the possibility that there may be there may be a little bit to learn about your own sexuality and how to bring better elements in to those interactions that that may wind up improving that situation it's a very engineering way of looking at it it doesn't sound to me like there's any technical difficulties here I think women for women it is very very mental it's very like I think most women if they are not like really present in the moment and that is the that is winning the cost-benefit analysis for where they want to be and where they're putting their time and energy it's not gonna happen for a lot of women and it's a difficult trade-off when you've got a lot of things competing for your attention especially kids especially you know the the blooming responsibilities of the next day it's very very difficult to stay present and devoted to something that just seems like a lot of trouble for not that greater payoff and so it's like okay well at some point we abandon ship and I think you're you're having a very common experience but it's not necessarily anything to your the conscientiousness is probably driving more guilt than it needs to hear undoubtedly all right your your husband's mine in would you say there's any ego trap where the expectation from the husband made sending signals yeah well she should be orgasm yeah yeah I'm like he is ya know and not not in that sense but there can be a sort of like you know he it's you know step step just a through cue works in a certain order every every time and so if it's not working this time and she she detects that it's not going to work for any number of reasons because she's distracted or she's PMSing or she's tired or whatever it is then she when she's close he goes are you are you okay so I certainly have been in a situation I think most women have been where it's like oh god he's just not gonna let this go better better to fake it because clearly that the expectation is so high and it's gonna it's I'm gonna be looking at my watch it's going to be another two hours so so this is I it's completely completely normal so I wouldn't call that an ego trap but it is sort of a you've become a prisoner of the expectations of the encounter and and particularly if he's approaching it in a very rational engineering minded sort of way all right all right thank you so our next question dear doctors what would you recommend for a stay-at-home mom who has two small children and is constrained by time and energy to pursue her individual goals I am experiencing low mood on a regular basis and I don't want to turn to medication overall I don't have a strong sense of self-efficacy and feel like my best way forward is simply accepting my situation and letting go of my personal goals for the foreseeable future my husband and I are not in a financial position to use money as a way to provide childcare or outsource other tasks I wonder if I'm going through a recalibration process of lowering my goals and expectations which is the source of my low mood am i constrained by time and energy to not feel good until my children are more autonomous well a great question some complicated engineering you know in how the mind works here so let me let me sort of try to explain what's happening and give you a feel for how I would direct this person first of all all life the very nature of life itself is one of competing opportunities so you could call them competing demands if you want but what they are is opportunities and so you've got the possibility of doing X Y or Z and or more things but maybe X Y & Z are the three most prominent obvious targets out there for changing our circumstances in a way that might be profitable and so by profitable we mean it's going to feel good because it's aligned probably with genes survival so all life is nothing other than the creature examining its environment and trying to analyze competing opportunities now low mood in people signals a confusion that you may not be making in the right decision so it's it's a synapse and failure feedback and the failure could come from some effort to to achieve something and we're not achieving it and it could also be a sign of sort of a frustration because you can't solve the problem and yet we've got a confusion over competing priorities so the the decision rule that I have is that if you are having usually there are clues in other words it doesn't you're the reason you're kind of depressed isn't because you got you know a pain in your ankle so this person has clear evidence from what goes on inside of her mind and the data that arrives in consciousness that she's aware of what the conflicting demands are so she's aware that gee I'd really like to do some career opportunities or some personal goals that I have and yet my time and energy are being directed at childcare and it doesn't appear that I've got any other options I've actually examined the options I've looked at the constraints on the situation we look at the the time and energy investments that I could make elsewhere and it just doesn't add up and therefore I'm stuck until my kids are more autonomous now that's the that's the ten thousand foot view she has of the situation now from my standpoint I'm very bullheaded about about sort of living with these kinds of signals because to me these kinds of signals are saying change change change change change they are rattling the system and saying I believe that there's a better investment of our time and energy that would result in better payoffs the and so my rule is to change something change a parameter even a little bit even temporarily in order to let the system get more information and therefore see whether or not it's suspicion is right so what we have is the concept that financial constraints are stopping all forward movement for example on a career now let's think about that and let's see whether or not that's necessarily true so maybe this person has some career goals or some ideas and maybe there needs to be some very small investment maybe just energy and learning the stepping stones towards something that she might be interested in doing so maybe she envisions for example I don't know an online business selling organic oils I don't know what that stuff is what is that stuff ten essential oil like essential oils like yeah yeah okay I just made something up okay not necessarily organic fit yet good good all right might be Helms yes right yes so listen let's suppose that that's what she's thinking but she she feels like oh well there's some class and it costs three thousand dollars to take about how you're supposed to do this and so therefore I can't do this and we don't have the money etc or maybe she wants to I don't know become a paralegal or a lawyer and yet you can't you can't go to school for that don't have the money etc etc so my my question would be is there anything that we can do now because maybe we're three or four years away from the kids being more autonomous is there some stepping stone that we can hit is there anything that we can do and if there's anything that we can do that could be not very expensive in terms of time and energy that makes you feel like you're starting to make forward progress then the mood come left in fact it can lift instantly as soon as we get started at something so that may or may not work there may be for example another way to stick maybe maybe you think that you want to be some kind of a counselor or therapist etc so maybe you can find someplace to volunteer you know half a day a week for four hours to actually try to stick your foot in the water or maybe maybe you want to do childcare for a living and you want to go work one day a week god forbid leave your children if somebody else to take care of them while you can take care of their children I'm just making this up as I go along the notion is maybe you could do one day a week kind of a job and in that one day a week whatever it is that you make you pay for a babysitter to watch your kids so there's no financial gain in fact there may be a very small financial loss but it's small and by the time you do that for twelve weeks you may find out whether or not you know how interested you are in that that in that arena getting involved in whatever that arena is so these are all the notion here is is there something that you can do to move you towards what it is that you're dreaming about you're daydreaming about something that's what your daydreams are for there they are they are there to try to guide you and tell you where your nervous system believes that there are untapped opportunities for you to do things that will satisfy your nervous system that's what they're for that's exactly what they are and so they are sort of analogs living and breathing sort of imaginative analogues for the the assembly language subroutines that are taking place in wordlessly down in your nervous systems at the level of source code and so they're bubbling up into your imagination then you're thinking boy I'd really like to be doing this one day well see if we can take a 1% step towards though in any fashion they're almost certainly something you can do you know the when people are interested in learning things and possibly pursuing for their education etc I mean an amazing thing is I believe MIT has made like every course there is in the world available for free online it's like you don't get credit you don't get an MIT degree but you can get the outstanding presentation of the material so think about how valuable that would be as you pursue your further education if you've already had a whole course in I don't know torts okay so the so there's always something that you can do to move towards your dreams if we start to move for forward towards it we may discover some excitement and therefore the abatement of the depression so if nothing else it may turn out that the different little forays you make to try to make these small changes you may discover that you're not that while about the new domain of interest and that it doesn't feel like it's particularly worth it however just in making those explorations we may find that that you get quiets down your nervous system in terms of its of its belief or suspicion that there's a better place to be using your time and energy right now and so it's it's kind of like go checking out the house that we think we might be interested in while we're at escrow on the one that we're buying and then we were kind of upset because there may be something better and we're kind of depressed about the idea buying the new house we're not as excited about it and then we go see the other house and then it turns out oh no it turns out there's some problems there's a noisy neighbor a weird-looking with the beard and shotgun that lives behind there and it turns out no we wouldn't want to live there we're much more comfortable in the house that we're in so this is this is how it is that we go about things is that we take seriously disturbances in mood that are persistent and that's a part of the her question was that it's persistent and relatively long-standing this tells me there's an unconscious and conscious but certainly an unconscious process that is saying I don't think we're using our time and energy optimally I don't think we're using our time and energy optimally in the context of you know my husband and our finances and the kids this looks to be the best solution and nobody can tell me an obvious one better but I still nah believe in it okay so now the the next move is listen you don't have to make a huge decision decision rule is never make a decision a big decision when a small decision will do make a small decision moving towards your dream find out what that does to your mood yet may do nothing other than give you peace of mind about where it is that you are now when and make the next few years it's essentially less less disturbing and frustrating the this is a part of a the way these systems works as part of a bigger argument that I call how to solve a problem and it's part of a detailed systematic approach I use to approach problems as including orgasmic rough limitations of its application but actually Jen was sort of tapping me on the shoulder in the last week to make a presentation for our members part of our website and I did that but I wasn't smart enough to get the technology right because the first time I tried to do this so I'm going to be doing that this week and there there will be a more detailed explanation in this way that we go about looking the system of where it is that we begin or the architecture of how we solve any problem remember that a problem is just an obstacle between you and a goal that's all it is and if we look at it that way there's a generic approach to all problem solving and that what we then do here is we try to use essentially the generic program that I have in my head explicitly and Jen has implicitly and more artistically that but it's the same notion about how it is that we remove obstacles between us and our goals in a process that that is you know mean is meant to be pretty intolerant of human suffering so so anyway this is the cliff notes here which is that feelings are signals we take them seriously we change some parameter by trying to make at least a small decision that alters our situation and we will in fact learn something we will if nothing else we will improve in a sense of satisfaction that we are that we're better utilizing our opportunities so that's how you with more information we're going to be able to make better decisions so that's how that's how we're doing thank you dr. Lao and and by the way for the listeners who haven't heard the esteemed dynamics calm is where you can become a member and listen to the brand new you know library of information that dr. Hawk and dr. Lyle have have released hmm oh good all right all right so our final question do doctors why do so many of us seek entertainment over sleep even though we're very tired how could our minds possibly be so convinced that this is a worthwhile thing well this seems very similar to the orgasm question actually essentially the same question in a different clothing so it's kind of the theme of the show today is the cost-benefit analysis so you're choosing your choosing entertainment over sleep for the same reason you're choosing to fake an orgasm over the time and energy that it could could you know has in previous experience gotten you there and that could in principle get you there again seems like that would be the the more evolutionarily sound use of your time but not the conclusion that your nervous system is coming to and in this case I mean most people when they're seeking entertainment so if you're sitting there and you're watching YouTube videos or you're binge watching something on Netflix and you're you're putting off sleep even when you know you have a busy day tomorrow and it's it's you're sleep-deprived it's this it's it's tapping into this this notion that your nervous system is letting you know that there's something to be gained from the information of what you're watching or what you're reading or whatever you're using to entertain yourself it's essentially masquerading as important information in the Stone Age and we've talked before in very recent episodes and elsewhere about how how incredibly important and what would an incredible advantage it is to know something about the about village life about you know how to do things better than then you've been doing them already any kind of informational advantage that you can bring gets you gets you personally more status in the village and has all of this potential gain behind it if you can bring this information back to people who don't have it and so even something as you know time draining and fundamentally useless as a as a mindless mindless show on Netflix or a video game or anything like that is is tapping into that desire and that that those little circuits are getting all lit up and then there are other things going on too so if you're if you're spending all that time on social media if that's how you're entertaining yourself we don't know from the question what your drug of choice is but social media is bringing with it all of the pseudo esteem which is hijacking all of your esteem detection mechanisms and so you're you're posting things looking for likes looking for retweets looking for more followers whatever it is that is you know letting you believe that you're accumulating status in the village all of these things are much more important from a survival and reproduction point of view than just getting an extra hour of sleep because there's just so much greater advantage potentially to be gained by them so you're you're somehow hijacking the process you're coming to the conclusion over and over again that ya sleep would be great in principle but it's it's a form of a pleasure trap essentially why are you choosing crappy food over healthy food you know that it's the better thing to do to eat the kale and you're going for the Twinkie so you shouldn't be doing it and yet you are you have taken ancient decision-making rules and situated them in a modern environment with endless entertainment available on demand all night long with artificial light and electricity and everything else and you're really really constrained by that whole situation so you have to wait and uncle your way out of that habit just like you have to white-knuckle out of it with any kind of other pleasure hijacked hijacking process pleasure trap or not so but we would want to we'd want to know more about exactly how you're spending that time to give you more specifics but that should be able to get you started
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