Do Humans Have Instincts??

[sman]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

To separate the DNA aspects of instinct or the main river of basic instinct from the natural branches of species, from all the canals of human culture, it is necessary to first break each of the components down into simple terms.

The genetic based main river of common instinct is analogous to hardware emulating software. The analogy I have used before is an old fashion mechanical Coo Coo clock. The time keeping, the bird coming out, the coo cooing each hour, and then the bird going back into the bird house, is all done with springs, gears and levers. This is the type of control system is what one might expect from the DNA, using chemical feedback as hardware to create actions that sort of look like software. For example, when the food value in body or blood begins to get low (not exactly correct) this triggers chemicals, which trigger chemicals, etc. leading to chemicals associated with being hungry. It is a coo coo clock using only hardware but it is very amazing.

Although the DNA is fairly large or compose of a large number of genes, most of these genes are junk, while the majority of the rest are needed to take care of the thousands of activities within and between the billions cells within the body, all with swiss watch precision. This sets a practical limit with respect to how far this hardware emulation of software can go, relative to all the real time needs of the instincts with the dynamics of changing environments. The first branching of the DNA hardware river forms, what can be seen as firmware, which gets the brain involved. This are little fixed programs that assist the DNA hardware instincts. These can interact via feedback, but have a loop which sort of follows or parallels the hardware emulation.

For example, the animals gets hungry via the DNA hardware loop, due to whatever trigger the DNA has evolved for that animal. The little firmware programs help gets the legs moving, the nose sniffing, etc., with the sensory feedback having an impact of the firmware programs. But these firmware loop with with the DNA cycle. Once the DNA is satisfied, the firmware also stops.

Try this on:

The genome is a collection of instructions for embryology. The emergence of an organism from the womb is one step in this process, not necessarily the culmination. Humans are born very prematurely, that is, very early on in the embryological process. (This process does not culminate in an adult until about 25 years.)

I see this window of time, when the organism is exposed to the environment but while body and especially brain assembly is still taking place, as an opportunity for the genes to do things not otherwise possible. DNA instructions can go from "do this...then do this..." to "if...then...else", to reassume your computer jargon. It can take cues from the environment. This can enable DNA to adapt an organism to environmental situations that it otherwise could not forsee.

Keep in mind, the human genome represents about 40 meg (I think - something like that) and the fully assembled adult brain bares something like 10 trillion synapses. Even if these figures are grossly estimated, it's clear that the genome is not a large enough body of information to wire a human brain.

I know that the neurons involved in the visual apparatus do not wire up in the womb - in fact cannot - but wait for cues from the sensory input. A simple rule like "neurons that fire together wire together" bootstraps the prosses of assembling our visual machinery. The golden example of this trick is language aquisiton.

Does the 25 years or so humans spend in this window shed any insights on this topic?

[HydrogenBond]

I am of the opinion the DNA is hardware and firmware, with the firmware giving broad based capacity that is then differentiated at the level of the brain. For example, the DNA makes us hungry and has related firmware to rough in the needed actions. But whether I gather chocolate or vanilla is at the level of software. There is not a chocolate gene but rather that is learned and wired by opportunity based on the underlying flexibility designed in the firmware and the capacity to create software.

I am going to shift directions and talk about some firmware that is unique to humans. One thing that was already mentioned and well understood, is the human baby requires longer term care by parents, than other animals. Although most animals care for their young using instinct, their DNA and firmware loops have a finite duration because their young develop faster to autonomy. With humans, although we may have the same basic DNA and firmware, the human firmware loop appears to be left open ended for the needs of the longer term care.

For example, the mother cat will care for her kittens, just as the mother human does. This is very similar at the DNA and firmware level. At the software level, the specific care is different since humans read books and will get verbal help from their own mother to differentiate the behavior. The cat does not do either of these things but can do it all on its own. The cat will wind down the maternal behavior earlier as the kittens get more autonomous. But the similar firmware loop in humans, can often extend for decades or even a lifetime, with mothers being mothers even when the child is an adult. This minor genetic tweak to the duration of the animal firmware, to keep the loop more open changes the way the species interacts with the young.

One way to look at this firmware change within human parents, are the parents become a more permanent feature of the human baby's environment, with the selective advantage of human babies, based on the ability of the human baby (evolutionary terms) to genetically adapt to this long term environment. To put this into perspective, if a river was part of an animal's environment, selective advantage would go to animals that develop the genes that can make the best use of the river. In the case of generations of human babies, instead of the river, we substitute the perpetual landscape features called mom and dad.

Relative to evolutionary changes within human babies, selective advantage will go to those who can find advantage in this situation. If a baby was more like an animal, wishing to go out on its own as soon as it could walk and feed itself, it would not survive in the wild. But if it developed firmware that allowed it to remain within the context of mom and dad, for continuing supplemental software assistance, this would lead to selective advantage. In culture, this evolutionary firmware within humans allows the continued adaptability for sequential programming from parents and symbolic parents such as the supplemental parents called teachers, mother-father country, mother nature, heavenly father, etc.

[sman]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I am of the opinion the DNA is hardware and firmware, with the firmware giving broad based capacity that is then differentiated at the level of the brain. For example, the DNA makes us hungry and has related firmware to rough in the needed actions. But whether I gather chocolate or vanilla is at the level of software. There is not a chocolate gene but rather that is learned and wired by opportunity based on the underlying flexibility designed in the firmware and the capacity to create software.

I don't mean to pick this apart as it is a very nice post and I enjoy reading you. But I have a couple of concerns here. First, I'm compleatly ignorant of the term firmware and am confused about how it differentiates from software.
DNA is software, a stream of coded data. It's not the nucleic acids that interest us, it's the code. It contains instructions for growing hardware, and for growing on-board running programs that reside in the hardware. The nature of the programs is articulated by the structure of the hardware.

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I am going to shift directions and talk about some firmware that is unique to humans. One thing that was already mentioned and well understood, is the human baby requires longer term care by parents, than other animals. Although most animals care for their young using instinct, their DNA and firmware loops have a finite duration because their young develop faster to autonomy. With humans, although we may have the same basic DNA and firmware, the human firmware loop appears to be left open ended for the needs of the longer term care.

For example, the mother cat will care for her kittens, just as the mother human does. This is very similar at the DNA and firmware level. At the software level, the specific care is different since humans read books and will get verbal help from their own mother to differentiate the behavior. The cat does not do either of these things but can do it all on its own. The cat will wind down the maternal behavior earlier as the kittens get more autonomous. But the similar firmware loop in humans, can often extend for decades or even a lifetime, with mothers being mothers even when the child is an adult. This minor genetic tweak to the duration of the animal firmware, to keep the loop more open changes the way the species interacts with the young.

Books, and in fact spoken language, entered the scene too recently for selection to have had time to work on it. All our instincts were in place by the time of this invention - all were selected in Africa, on the savanna, between 8 and 1 million years ago. Remove one zero from this time scale and we can talk about the human story of tool use, story telling, and computer programming, but this is too fine a grain for selection to work sith in designing adaptive software.

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

One way to look at this firmware change within human parents, are the parents become a more permanent feature of the human baby's environment, with the selective advantage of human babies, based on the ability of the human baby (evolutionary terms) to genetically adapt to this long term environment. To put this into perspective, if a river was part of an animal's environment, selective advantage would go to animals that develop the genes that can make the best use of the river. In the case of generations of human babies, instead of the river, we substitute the perpetual landscape features called mom and dad.

Relative to evolutionary changes within human babies, selective advantage will go to those who can find advantage in this situation. If a baby was more like an animal, wishing to go out on its own as soon as it could walk and feed itself, it would not survive in the wild. But if it developed firmware that allowed it to remain within the context of mom and dad, for continuing supplemental software assistance, this would lead to selective advantage. In culture, this evolutionary firmware within humans allows the continued adaptability for sequential programming from parents and symbolic parents such as the supplemental parents called teachers, mother-father country, mother nature, heavenly father, etc.

I think parents as a permenant feature in the lives of their offspring is thoroghly explained by kinship altruism, or biological altruism in social animals. The idea that, from a gene's eye perspective, it's adaptive to perpetuate instincts for careing for your adult children and grandchilderen, and even neices and nephews (because one-quarter of their genes are identical copies of yours).

Here is good article on this:
Biological Altruism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

All that being said, I think you're on a good track. I feel computer science has much to add to this topic. It's very informative to approach human behavior and instincs with this language.

[HydrogenBond]

If you look at the love of parents for their children, the general dynamics of this instinct are common to any parent, with the instinct differentiating to their own children. The underlying commonality is the DNA chemical hardware river and its related firmware branches. Where it gets differentiated is connected to the software.

The firmware, related to the DNA hardware, has learning potential or the potential to extrapolate into related software, structured by the firmware. One could swap babies at birth and not tell the parents and their firmware would still extrapolate. But if later, a parent found out, it could effect their paternal software program, like a virus, unless they have counter software.

If you have even observed a proud parent, as they relate to their children, they will see exaggerated significance in little things, which may seem less significant to one who does not have the paternal firmware running. The proud parent is experiencing this deeply, because it stems from their DNA, its related firmware and extrapolating software. The outsider is observing more at the software level. The over reaction the parents gives is instinctive and is part of the sensory output needed for the firmware extrapolation in the child.

If you look at learning, especially within a small child, it is almost effortless as their brain's develop, because the brain is designed to learn, while being structured to be human by the instinctive firmware of the DNA. Forced learning, such as in school, departs from the natural firmware streams of the DNA. This type of learning is important because it can be used to dig canals between the natural paths of the firmware extrapolations.

[HydrogenBond]

The Colorado River basin begins in the Rocky Mountains and works it way through the Southwest USA and ends in Mexico-California. About 2/3 of the water is used for farming, while the other 1/3 is used for cities and the plants that grow along the river. By the time is reaches it final destination it is a stream in a once mighty river bed.

This is actually a good analogy for modern human instincts, with the original potential in the DNA and firmware flowing like the original river basin, which flows into the software and canals of culture, until the final instinctive effect is only a small fraction of the original potential. This allows willpower, since the natural impulse is smaller and more controllable due to the preemptive satisfaction of the potential. The potential is also being used to do other useful things within culture.

I would like to add another landscape feature that has an impact on the DNA rivers of natural instincts. It has to do with dams. The effect of a dam on instinct, will be dependent on the neural geology through which the the river of instinct flows. If a river is flowing through a plain, a dam will cause the river to split. If the river is in a valley, a dam will cause the river to back up into a lake. From this lake one can get hydroelectric power, using the potential or pressure head of the river further, upstream.

As an example of the shallow terrain and dam consider subjective laws of good and evil, which lack explanations. If we look at natural hunger, because humans are omnivores, whatever satisfies the natural hunger potential faster will be learned and become part of the software that is connected to the firmware. There are a lot of options available.

With subjective laws of good and evil, there is a dam set up with respect to all these natural choices, because now A, B and C are good, while D, E, and F are evil. Everyone can't just follow the singular flow of the instinctive firmware, but will hit the cultural dam and have to chose between two streams, with the split in the river allowing flow in both directions.

If one so happens to have developed natural software, that instinctively leads to A, B and C or the good stream, you get sort of a double pat on the back, due to satisfying the instinct and culture at the same time. If you dislike what is offered in the good stream, the pat on the back may or may not allow you to break even. If the kick of culture, for going down the bad stream, doesn't hurt that much, and D,E and F on the evil path gives more instinctive satisfaction, one may chose the bad stream. Culture may have to crank up the heat until the heat is stronger than this latter instinctive satisfaction.

One possible way to avoid people going down the bad stream, is when they reach the law dam and come to the split in the river, we add a dam to the bad stream, such as punishment, guilt and shame. This should cause the flow to favor the good stream or will it? Since the river is in a shallow plain, the dam on the bad stream will back up the bad water, until it will eventually merge with the good water, until good and bad water flow down the good stream.

A classic example were the Salem witch hunts. Being a witch was subjectively considered a boat ride down the bad river. The prevent this we set up a dam or punishment, until it was good to torture the witches, because the merging of the bad river with the good river, was flowing down the good stream, according to culture, so it was good. This is the historical problem with the binarius river split.

But not all laws use the shallow subjective terrains of subjective laws. There are some law dams that are built in valleys, which can create hydroelectric power by bottling up instinct into a lake, tapping into potential. With this type of law there is no split in the stream, but a lake will form.

As an example of the contrast, if I arbitrarily said you can't eat clams, without any explanation; that is the new law obey or be punished, I will cause a split because the mental landscape is too shallow because it seems totally subjective. If instead I said, you can't eat clams because of the red tide. The bacteria in the red tide will make you sick and you could die. This is deeper terrain. I am not going to punish you, if you eat clams, you will punish yourself. There is no back flow of bad into the good river of culture, which is a good barometer of the type of terrain given laws are using.

The elevation (deeper rational explanation), will set up a dam in the mind of those who like clams. A lake will form in their mind, until an alternative software habit begins to form to release the potential. Those who still eat clams are helped in hospitals and not beat up or their property seized like with shallow terrain. The lesson of hard knocks builds their dam in high terrain, from which they learn new habits because it renews the contact with the hydrodynamics of the firmware.