Hot from the PR presses.

Johnson down in Unconventional Justification sent me a copy of the latest draft of our proposal to Director Simmons. I'm not sure how he thinks the Director is going to buy into all that identity mumbo-jumbo, but that's spin for you.

Identity is a tricky issue in the modern world. We have to balance our need to find a group for safety with the urge to change and progress. As a result, many of our means of identifying ourselves are deeply rooted in the personality, and not in the physical body. Declaring allegiance to an ideology signals a strong adherence to a principle, and has for many millennia been considered a matter worth killing and dying for. However, the speed at which it can be abandoned is only limited by how many others choose to remember the previous alignment. You can’t choose whether or not to have an ideology, but it is extremely easy to alter which ideology you subscribe to.

There are other manners of identity that are not as easily shed; race and gender are both readily obvious to others, and to yourself. They cannot be ignored, and they are chosen for you. However, with enough resolve and sufficient resources, they can both be changed. For example, one can gain a new gender identity through an act as resource-intense and thorough as gender reassignment surgery or something as simple as a cunning alteration of your silhouette and style of dress. Even race can be changed, again via surgery, or sometimes simply by moving to an area where values concerning your race are different. Though you can’t change what you know about your race, you can change the identity of it.

Unlike race, religion, sex and ideology, genetic identity can be completely ignored, however, it is the only one that – once known – is utterly unchangeable and intrinsic to your person. Thankfully, for most people, genetics are a matter of probabilities; if you’re a woman and have BRCA1, your chances of developing breast cancer are ~ 36%, while if you lack it, your chances are ~12%. However for others, genetics are a binary matter. If on chromosome 4, you possess more then 40 repeats of the sequence (5’-CAG-3’) in the gene huntingtin, then you will very likely die a painful, jittering death as a mentally crippled invalid before you reach your 6th decade of life. The unavoidable and unchangable nature of the subject's genetics is, in this case, unavoidable, obvious and terminal.

As a nation, we have it within our power to change the rigid and set genetic patterns which have dictated the lives of our ancestors since the first proto-life copied itself in the thick, soupy seas of prebiotic Earth. We have the knowledge necessary to alter our nature for the better. We have the the technology to give this gift to our children. We have the resources to make this happen, starting today. Our mission, therefore, is to shepherd the genetic code of the American people into a more acceptable state, to allow us both a healthier future and a greater pride in our own genetic heritage.

If approved, this is probably going in the brochure that UP wants to show some select members of Congress. Oh, before I forget, I think we've got to register it separately for Top Secret status or it'll fall under the FoIA, Darwin, could you get the intern to do it? We haven't fired him yet, right?

Anger Reinforces People with High Testosterone

A new study from the University of Michigan found that individuals with high levels of testosterone receive pleasure from provoking anger in other people.

"It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," said Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study and a U-M associate professor of psychology.

The findings may explain why some people like to tease each other so much, he added.

"Perhaps teasers are reinforced by that fleeting 'annoyed look' on someone else's face and therefore will continue to heckle that person to get that look again and again," he said. "As long as it does not stay there for long, it's not perceived as a threat, but as a reward."

This article confirms the explanatory value of the Selfish Gene theory. Even an action which to most of us would seem to have no "selfish" value - provoking anger in others - can be attributed to the expression of a gene (in this case, genes causing a high level of testosterone).

Let's attempt experimenting with lowered testosterone levels to promote behavior which appears altruistic.

DNA Data

Here is the amino acid sequence of the offending genetic code (an enzyme which produces testosterone) of subject #865498A:

1 mwlylaafvg lyyllhwyre rqvvshlqdk yvfitgcdsg fgnllarqld arglrvlaac
61 ltekgaeqlr gqtsdrletv tldvtkmesi aaatqwvkeh vgdrglwglv nnagiltpit
21 lcewlnteds mnmlkvnlig viqvtlsmlp lvrrargriv nvssilgrva ffvggycvsk
181 ygveafsdil rreiqhfgvk isivepgyfr tgmtnmtqsl ermkqswkea pkhiketygq
241 qyfdalynim kegllncstn lnlvtdcmeh altsvhprtr ysagwdakff fiplsylpts
301 ladyiltrsw pkpaqav

I think you'll all agree that we have isolated the problem.

Memo to Dr. Jensen and co.

We're not aiming for something ethically compromised and morally bankrupt like eugenics. What we're aiming for is passive adherence to responsible policies concerning our national genetic security. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of modifying thier kids. Heck, remember that most states have tight regulations on even playing around with *abandoned* embryos.

Still, with our genome sequenced and new discoveries concerning the fundamental inner workings of the human animal emerging almost daily, our species has acquired a new way to identify itself. It's easy to imagine that, in several years, online dating services will allow clients to select potential mates with compatible immune systems, and perhaps help prevent two heterozygotes for a lethal or detrimental mutation from meeting. More importantly, this improves the nation as a whole, as it reduces the amount of money spent on treating congential defects, while simultaneously expanding our pool of productive citizens.

But why restrict this kind of thing to the private sector? After all, no matter how responsible these policies are, we'd be lucky to get 50% cooperation. Unfortunately, the project requires that we improve at *least* 76.3% of the cohort to ensure that minimal amounts of detrimental alleles make it to the next generation. Thus, it needs to be implemented on a national scale and applied to the entire population for the course of at least two to three generations.

Therefore, stop whining about "natural order", we're making a better American people, and our duty to ensure that outcome trumps anything else we might want to consider.

The Selfish Gene, Part II

Today’s threats to National Security are existential. Hackers and terrorists – both operating without a military to attack, boarders to invade, or citizens to target – threaten the day to day security of the American people. The problem is the democratization of technology such as computers or weapons. Now anyone can be as powerful as the governments attempting to control them. So what is the point of a government?

It is time to usher in a new era of social engineering to control the population. The time to control the spread of powerful technologies has passed – now we must mitigate the effects of this spread. We can do this by learning more about selfishness in an attempt to make compliance with society in the interest of these rogue elements.

Let us begin by demonstrating the inherent selfish value of altruistic behavior.

The American political scientists Robert Axelrod has created a “tournament” of computer programs, all equipped with a different strategy for dealing with a Prisoners’ Dilemma.

In each round of the Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament, there is a “banker” who controls the flow of money to the players. Each player has two options, “cooperate” or “defect.” Each player chooses an option simultaneously, so that one player’s move cannot influence the other’s. The trick is that each player’s winning are dependent on the other player’s move. There are four outcomes:

OUTCOME I: Both play cooperate. Each player wins 3 points.
OUTCOME II: Both play defect. Each player wins only one point.
OUTCOME III: Player 1 plays cooperate, player 2 plays defect. Player 1 wins 0 points. Player 2 wins 5 points.
OUTCOME IV: Player 1 plays defect, player 2 plays cooperate. Player 1 wins 5 points. Player 2 wins 0 points.

The competition is open to computer scientists and game theorists. One might expect the most vicious programs – for example, one that never cooperates – to win the tournament. But on the contrary, the winner of the first tournament was the most altruistic… “tit-for-tat,” a program that simply copied the move made in the round before.

In the next tournament, an even more altruistic program, “tit-fot-two-tats,” only defected if it was defected against twice in a row by the same program. It did even better than “tit-for-tat.”

Altruism works in this simulation, because like in human society, it is a non-zero-sum situation. Everyone can win.

My final post will discuss how to apply the strategy of selfishly motivated altruism to society.