It's a control thing: Religion and human reproduction

Christianity is, like many other religions, a reproduction control system.

Its various sects take great pains to enforce a sexual code of conduct—and for very good reason. There's no better way for churches to control group behavior and ensure the growth of their flock than through the control of human reproduction. This explains why many Christians find it so important to get involved in biotechnological and bioethical discourse; it's crucial for Christian leaders to show their followers that they have authority over these areas, as authority imbues a sense of ownership.

Catholicism is a prime example. The Vatican's uncompromising stance on virtually all facets of reproduction shows how integral it is to the faith. Birth control, abortion, homosexuality and recreational sex (including sexual acts and positions that cannot lead to procreation) are considered taboos as each of these things represent a kind of subversion. And as far as health science is concerned, procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF) are shunned upon as such practices wrest control away from the Church and towards individual couples and doctors. The injunction to 'not play God' is a memetic trick which convinces the faithful to avoid certain areas of inquiry traditionally reserved for the Church.

At the same time, Christians work to uphold so-called family values, knowing full well that the family unit is unquestioningly the most important vector for the entrenchment and spread of religious values.

Religious leaders and ideologues may argue that the reasons for their interest in human biology extend beyond mere reproduction. Instead, they argue that their domain extends into the realm of morality and spirituality, and that 'reproductive control' is a trite interpretation of their motives.

Now, I'm sure many of them are sincere when they make this case. That's how memes work, with hosts convinced that they're acting rationally and in the collective best interest. Memetics is, at its core, a study of the tendencies and vulnerabilities in human psychology.

In the case of human reproduction, Christians make the case for such things as embryonic personhood (or ensoulment) and espouse a strong interpretation of naturalism (i.e. humans were created in God's image). The problem with these arguments, however, is that they are rooted in fictions. The subsequent rationalizations and injunctions that emerge from these premises are thus intrinsically flawed.

Ultimately, once the arguments are stripped down and exposed for what they are, it's painfully obvious that the Christian memeplex is merely working to control human reproduction and the makeup of family units for the purpose of producing more willing hosts. One merely needs to stand back and look at the world's most successful religions as proof; those faiths that work to control human reproduction, namely Christianity, Islam and Hinduism (though Islam and Hinduism less so than Christianity) are undeniably the ones who have fared the best over the ages. It's the killer memetic adaptation.

As an example of the opposite effect, take the Shaker movement. It's a 250 year old Christian sect that acquired a rather disadvantageous characteristic—call it a maladaptive trait. According to Shaker law, all members of the faith are forbidden to engage in sexual activity. Reproduction is completely prohibited. The only way for Shakers to have children is through adoption, but even that was rejected in 1960. The only way new members could be acquired was from outside the community, which happened with great infrequency.

Today, the Shakers are all but finished. Their communities started to dwindle in the late 1800s. Although there were 6,000 believers at the peak of the Shaker movement, there were only twelve Shaker communities left by 1920. As of today, they are down to their last three members.

While most Christian sects have avoided this particular problem, they're not immune to changing social patterns and mores. The Vatican is having fits over the whole birth control thing. When it comes to family planning and recreational sex, Catholics and Christians alike are increasingly turning a blind eye to scripture. Couples want to continue engaging in sexual activity without having to have eight children. Additionally, infertile couples are choosing to have babies through IVF despite the Church's admonition against it.

The decline of Christian influence in much of the developed world (especially in Europe, but except, quite perplexingly, the USA) can be attributed to higher living standards and improved education—factors that lead couples to want smaller families and less to do with organized religion. Meanwhile, Christianity and Islam continues to spread in developing nations whose populations are still primed for religious memes.

But given the speed with which the developing world is catching up to the rest, it will only be a matter of time before they too start to shun religious laws that govern sexual activities and reproduction. Mark this as yet another reason to bring everyone up to first world standards.

Hunger improves mental clarity

For all you living on a calorically restricted diet, it turns out that you may be doing more than extending your lifespan—you may also be improving your mental clarity and wakefulness.

This revelation isn't a huge surprise to me. Several years ago I used to fast on a regular basis. The first couple of days were awful, but I remember feeling uncharacteristically alert and energetic as the fast went on. I could never account for this increase in brain power, but scientists at Washington University in St. Louis may have finally uncovered the mechanism behind this phenomenon.

New research in fruit flies suggests that hunger may provide a way to stay awake without feeling groggy or mentally challenged. It turns out that the need for nourishment pushes aside the need for sleep. While experimenting on fruit flies, the researchers discovered that starvation nearly tripled the amount of time they could survive without sleep.

What they found was that the ability to resist the effects of sleep loss was linked to a protein that helps the fruit fly brain manage its storage and use of lipids, a class of molecules that includes fats such as cholesterol and fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A and D.

"The major drugs we have to either put people to sleep or keep them awake are all targeted to a small number of pathways in the brain, all of them having to do with neurotransmission," says Paul Shaw, PhD, assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy. "Modifying lipid processing with drugs may provide us with a new way of tackling sleep problems that is more effective or has fewer side effects."

Scientists have long known that there is a complex relationship between sleep and dietary metabolism. Inadequate sleep results in obesity and contributes to the development of diabetes and coronary disease. But until now, no one had connected genes linked to lipids with regulation of the need for sleep; the results fit into a growing awareness that organisms use lipids for much more than energy storage.

"It's becoming apparent that fats serve as signaling molecules in a number of contexts. If you identify the appropriate lipids involved in sleep regulation and figure out how to control them, you may be able to decrease suffering associated with loss of sleep or the need to stay awake," says Clay Semenkovich, MD, a Washington University lipid expert not directly involved in the study.

Shaw uses fruit flies as models for sleep's effects in higher organisms. He has proven that flies enter a state comparable to sleep, showing that they have periods of inactivity where greater stimulation is required to rouse them. Like humans, flies deprived of sleep one day will try to make up for it by sleeping more the next day—what's called sleep debt. Sleep-deprived flies also perform poorly on a simple test of learning ability.

Scientists tested the starving, sleepless flies for two markers of sleep debt: an enzyme in saliva and the flies' ability to learn to associate a light with an unpleasant stimulus. Both tests showed that the starving flies were not getting sleepy.

Studies in other labs have shown that starvation or, in the case of human volunteers, fasting leads to less sleep. More recent research has also shown that starvation can change the activity levels of genes that manage storage and use of lipids.

"From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense," says Matt Thimgan, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate. "If you're starving, you want to make sure you're on the top of your game cognitively, to improve your chances of finding food rather than becoming food for someone else."

Source.

xkcd: Exoplanets

Yep, that's about right: Amazing discoveries that are now totally taken for granted.

Five ways to well-being [life extension]

There's no question that our sense of well-being is a significant contributor to our overall longevity. While it may or may not impact directly on aging, it most certainly influences the ways in which we engage in life and with others—and that most certainly impacts on our mental and physical health.

But the idea that we can actually choose to be happy is largely rejected in our society; much of Western culture is rooted in the idea that externalities control our mood and that we as individuals are merely reacting to either negative or positive stimuli. That's why the media constantly hammers us with the message that purchasing a next generation iGadget will unlock our happiness.

Fortunately, we have more control over our happiness than we think.

Back in 2008, the New Economics Foundation was commissioned by the UK Government’s Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Well-being to review the inter-disciplinary work of over 400 scientists from across the world. The aim was to identify a set of evidence-based actions to improve well-being, which individuals would be encouraged to build into their daily lives.

The NEF came up with five evidence-based ways to well-being:

1. Connect: Make an effort to be social, whether it be with friends, colleagues or neighbors
2. Be Active: Make an effort to be more physical, whether it be walking, running, cycling, dancing, whatever
3. Take notice: Stop sleepwalking and start being curious, inquisitive, and mindful; savour the little things
4. Keep learning: Learn a new skill, rediscover an old hobby, push past your comfort zones and what you think you know
5. Give: Do something nice for a friend or stranger, volunteer your time; see yourself linked to the wider community

The NEF suggests that we try to engage in all five of these activities over the course of each day.

Seems simple, no? Go for it—choose to be happy. And live a longer, happier life.

Happy planet

It has been very encouraging to see the recent increase in attention given to happiness and well-being studies. It's about time we started measuring these things—and started making our governments more responsible and accountable in these areas. Studies are increasingly revealing that gains in GDP and overall wealth are not having an impact on our personal well-being. It would seem that the capitalist interpretation of the 'pursuit of happiness' is just that: a perpetual quest for an illusory goal that leaves us unsatisfied.

While seemingly counterintuitive, it seems that beyond at certain Maslovian point where our basic needs are met we hit a peak in our relative happiness. As behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has revealed, once we hit $60,000 a year in salary we reach a kind of plateau with respect to the happiness of the experiencing self. It doesn't matter if you make $120,000 a year or $500,000 a year—according to his research you're going to be just as happy if you were making $60,000.

You should stop and think about that for a moment. That's a pretty amazing revelation.

Sure, you can convince yourself that you'd be happier in those higher salary ranges, but you'd be going against empirical data that suggests otherwise. What makes you think you'd be a special case?

Speaking of Kahneman, his TED Talk is one of the best out there:


Also along these lines is the Happy Planet Index (HPI), which measures human well-being and environmental impact. The HPI was introduced by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in July 2006 and was designed to challenge well-established indices of countries’ development, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI), which are seen as not taking sustainability into account. According to the HFI, the five happiest countries in the world are Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, and Vietnam—not exactly your G8 type of nations.

Statistician Nic Marks thinks he knows what's going on. Like so many others these days, he is starting to ask why we measure a nation's success by its productivity —instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. This is why he introduced the HPI. Moreover, he believes that a happy life doesn't have to cost the earth.

Marks argues that quality of life is measurable, and that true contentment comes not from the accumulation of material wealth but from our connections with others, engagement with the world, and a sense of autonomy. To back his claims, Marks has created statistical methods to measure happiness, analyzing and interpreting the evidence so that it can be applied to such policy fields as education, sustainable development, healthcare, and economics.

You'll want to check out his recent TED talk:


The HPI is not perfect (it ignores issues like political freedom, human rights and labor rights, for example), but Marks is on the right track. It's about time we started shelving the Puritan Work Ethic in favor of those things that will truly improve the subjective quality of our lives.

Science to the rescue! Helping the Chilean miners survive their ordeal

Quite a story developing in Chile: the 33 miners who are trapped 700 meters underground will have to wait about four months before they are rescued. That's obviously not going to be easy on the men who have been trapped for over 18 days already. Keeping it together psychologically, physically and socially for that extent of time will undoubtedly prove challenging.

But this is where science can step in and help. While this incident is dreadful for all those involved, it'll be an extraordinary opportunity to apply our knowledge and help these guys cope with the extreme isolation — and at the same time learn from it. The whole experience will serve as an important case study across several scientific disciplines.

This is why NASA has been called in to help. The space agency obviously has tremendous experience and expertise managing extended bouts of isolation, both from physiological and psychological perspectives. While it's still early days, NASA has already recommended that the men keep exercising and adopt a routine where days are separated from nights.

As noted, the two primary areas of concern are the men's physical and psychological health. While food and supplies are now being routed through a six inch tunnel, there are still extreme limitations in terms of limited social contact and the problem of having so many men live in such close quarters. They are living without natural sunlight and the temperature is hovering around 29.5°C (81°F).

Compounding this is the stress the men must feel; avoiding an impending sense of doom and bouts of claustrophobia can't be easy. I myself suffer from mild claustrophobia and my stomach tightens at the very thought. As of today, at least five of the men are experiencing severe depression. Chilean officials have already sent down anti-depressants to help the miners cope — though the miners have reportedly asked for some beer. Advisors have made it clear that the men, in order to keep it together, must maintain a healthy sense of optimism. How this can be achieved is easier said than done, but regular contact with the surface and frequent updates about the rescue effort will go a long way.

From a social psychology standpoint, it's interesting to note that the men appear to be in good spirits. They've also put the Lord of the Flies myth to rest; soon after the ordeal started they began organizing themselves. They're holding daily meetings, assigning tasks, and portioning out rations (they actually made three days of rations last 17 days). Their ability to self-organize and maintain order given such extreme circumstances is proving to be as fascinating as it is praiseworthy.

NASA has suggested that the miners do regular exercises to prevent muscle atrophy as they await extraction. This will prove beneficial from not just a health standpoint, but from a psychological one as well; it's well documented that exercise tends to improve mood. There's also word that, in addition to food and medicine, other items such as flashlights and games are being sent down. It's also very likely that they will be given sun lamps to help simulate natural sunlight. Otherwise, it's very likely that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) will kick in.

Scientists will undoubtedly learn from this episode and eventually apply the learnings to such things as a future expedition to Mars. The data will likely compliment that of the Mars isolation study currently underway in Russia. In this experiment, a crew of six volunteers are isolated from the outside world in a space measuring just 550 cubic meters.

Again, I hope that everything will turn out for the best and that this story has a happy ending.

Optimize your health with The Zone and Paleo diets [life extension]

If you're like most people these days you're probably very confused about what to do in terms of your diet, particularly as it pertains to maximizing your health and lifespan. For those of you who are serious about making substantive changes to your diet, I have a pair of recommendations to make that will take the guesswork out of your daily eating habits.

Now, before I get into them, these are not fad diets meant to help you lose weight. Sure, these diets can help you lose weight, but they're ultimately meant to help you optimize your eating habits, and by consequence improve your health. With these systems, food is looked at both from a therapeutic and aesthetic perspective; it's all about food that tastes good and is good for you. Consequently, these systems should be looked at as a part of a broader set of lifestyle changes. Many of us need to get over the quick fix mentality that's pervasive in diet culture, and instead make the commitment to permanently change the way we approach our food.

Now, the two systems I am referring to are the The Zone and the Paleolithic Diet. I don't wish to present these two options as the be-all-and-end-all of diets, nor as the best. I happen to have familiarity with these diets, and I know that they work. Moreover, they're a great place to start if you're feeling overwhelmed by all the diets out there.

The Zone

Developed by the biochemist Barry Sears, the Zone advocates consuming calories from carbohydrates, protein, and fat in a balanced ratio. It's a diet that requires weighing and measuring portions in accordance with your body composition (i.e. lean body mass) and degree of physical activity. This appeals to the science part of my brain; I know that the proportions have been carefully determined by experts. So, if you're not into weighing and measuring your food, you may as well skip down to the next section.

The Zone works off a "40:30:30" ratio of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, respectively. The exact proportion of the macro nutrients are broken down into what are called blocks, and each meal consists of a certain amount of blocks that have to eaten in this particular configuration. So, if it's determined that you are a 16 block person, you should aim to eat a total of 16 blocks per day. One block is equal to 9 grams of carbohydrates, 7 grams of protein, and 1.5 grams of fat.

The Zone also promotes balanced eating throughout the day. Zoners eat about five meals a day, and because lots of protein and low density carbohydrates are encouraged, some of the meals can be substantial in size.

The reason for such strict proportions is to ensure proper hormonal balance. When insulin and glucagon levels are optimal, specific anti-inflammatory chemicals (namely eicosanoids) are released, which have similar effects to aspirin. A 30:40 ratio of protein to carbohydrates triggers this effect, and this is called 'being in the Zone.' Sears claims that these natural anti-inflammatories are both heart- and health-friendly.

When the human body is in caloric balance it is more efficient and does not have to store excess calories as fat. The human body cannot store fat and burn fat at the same time, and it takes time (significant time if insulin levels were high because of unbalanced eating) to switch from the former to the latter. Using stored fat for energy causes weight loss. Other positive effects of the diet include increased energy and mental clarity.

The Zone diet is very flexible in terms of the foods involved (you just have to be strict about proportions) and it is vegetarian friendly.

There's a lot more to this diet than what I've described, but this book will help you get you started.

The Zone is great if you feel helpless and know nothing about food. As long as you stick to the principles, you're golden. Moreover, it will help you learn about food and the kinds of portion sizes you should be striving for. Lastly, in terms of credibility, while there may be some skepticism about this approach, the Zone is commonly used by professional athletes (including CrossFitters) to help them dial-in and regulate their diet; many athletes swear by it as they see measurable improvements in their performance.

The Paleo Diet

Also referred to as the Cave Man Diet, the Paleo Diet is a nutritional plan that strives to emulate the eating habits of our Stone Age forebears. And this is for very good reason: while our eating habits have changed dramatically since Paleolithic times, our bodies have not. We are not genetically primed to ingest and metabolize most of the foods we eat today, particularly processed foods. The Paleo Diet, therefore, encourages its followers to eat the same foods our ancestors did prior to the Agricultural Revolution.

It has been generally observed that modern human populations subsisting on traditional diets similar to those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers are largely free of diseases of affluence—namely type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, obesity and certain forms of cancer. In addition to this, studies of the Paleolithic diet in modern humans have shown some positive health outcomes.

As for the diet itself, it consists primarily of foods that can be hunted and fished, such as meat, offal and seafood, and can be gathered, such as eggs, insects, fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs and spices. So, no bread, rice, pasta, and cherry cheese cake. Other exclusions include all grains, legumes (e.g. beans and peanuts), dairy products, salt, refined sugar and processed oils, (although some advocates consider the use of oils with low omega-6/omega-3 ratios, such as olive oil and canola oil, to be healthy and advisable).

Essentially, if your food has more than one ingredient, it's probably not Paleo friendly.

Obviously, the Paleo Diet is not easy for vegetarians, but it is possible. Vegetarians should ensure that they're getting adequate protein intake using egg powder protein shakes along with some supplements like Vitamin B12, Taurine, Carosine, and Carnitine. If you're vegan, you should probably forget this idea and consider The Zone instead.

All this said, Paleo omnivores typically eat more "ethical meat" than those who on other diets; they tend to eat only lean cuts of meat that are free of food additives and from wild game meats and grass-fed beef since they contain high levels of omega-3 fats compared with grain-produced domestic meats.

You can learn more about the Paleo diet here.

Concluding remarks

For most of us, adopting the Paleo Diet would represent a massive paradigm shift in our eating habits. Going from a completely unrestricted diet to this one is probably a bad idea. If you're looking to change your eating ways, I would strongly recommend that you start with the Zone and work your way from there.

Again, I'm sure there are other diets out there that may be just as good or better than the two I've proposed. But like I said, they're effective and relatively easy to adopt—so long as the will is there. And most importantly, you will start to notice a dramatic improvement in health and performance. Not to mention your waistline.

Personalized Life Extension Conference, October 9-10

Foresight Institute's Christine Peterson recently announced that the Personalized Life Extension Conference will be held at the San Francisco Airpot Marriott Hotel from October 9 to 10. The list of speakers looks phenomenal, as does the program.

Keynote speakers include Esther Dyson and Peter Thiel. They'll be joined by Terry Grossman, Greg Fahy, Sonia Arison, Bruce Ames, Gregory Benford, Melanie Swan, Patri Friedman and many others.

And if you thought there isn't really much you can do or talk about in the ways of personalized life extension, check out the list of strategies and tactics to be discussed:

• Supplements
• DNA Testing
• Telomere Protection
• Blood Testing
• Finding a Life Extension Doctor
• Gadgets
• Inflammation
• Calorie Restriction & Intermittent Fasting
• Sleep
• Stress reduction
• Self-experimentation
• Exercise
• Enhancement & Brain Function
• Eating
• Standards of Information Quality
• Mood

Be sure to register today.

Singularity Podcast interview now available

I was recently interviewed by Nikola Danaylov for the Singularity Podcast. You can listen to it here.

Matt Ridley: Criticism

A Sentient Developments reader directs our attention to this deliciously scathing review by George Monbiot of Matt Ridley and his work:

He uses [Rational Optimist] it as a platform to attack governments that, among other crimes, "bail out big corporations". He lambasts intervention and state regulation, insisting that markets deliver the greatest possible benefits to society when left to their own devices. Has there ever been a clearer case of the triumph of faith over experience?

Free-market fundamentalists, apparently unaware of Ridley's own experiment in market liberation, are currently filling cyberspace and the mainstream media with gasps of enthusiasm about his thesis. Ridley provides what he claims is a scientific justification for unregulated business. He maintains that rising consumption will keep enriching us for "centuries and millennia" to come, but only if governments don't impede innovation. He dismisses or denies the environmental consequences, laments our risk-aversion, and claims that the market system makes self-interest "thoroughly virtuous". All will be well in the best of all possible worlds, as long as the "parasitic bureaucracy" keeps its nose out of our lives.

His book is elegantly written and cast in the language of evolution, but it's the same old cornutopian nonsense we've heard one hundred times before (cornutopians are people who envisage a utopia of limitless abundance). In this case, however, it has already been spectacularly disproved by the author's experience.

The Rational Optimist is riddled with excruciating errors and distortions. Ridley claims, for instance, that "every country that tried protectionism" after the second world war suffered as a result. He cites South Korea and Taiwan as "countries that went the other way", and experienced miraculous growth. In reality, the governments of both nations subsidised key industries, actively promoted exports, and used tariffs and laws to shut out competing imports. In both countries the state owned all the major commercial banks, allowing it to make decisions about investment.

More.