Prejudicems are Inherent and natural

John and others, Have a look at this URL! http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/~sabedon/campbl51.htm#imprinting

* And Debashish - it is fairly well established that natural selection can also account for behaviour as well as purely chemical reactions; John's argument here is based on the premise that prejudice is not a result of social conditioning and pressures but something that is hardwired into every human being as part of a natural survival instinct. I don't think we're actually far apart here. * Emily, I think you have never mentioned natural selection or even adaptation you have simply taken one mantra "gene theory" and used it as your ticket (sorry I am being little too candid here) to explain prejudice. From your present reply it seems we have a common line of argument. I have serious reservations against calling anything and everything that relates to our voluntary and involuntary learning/recordings/cognitive intelligence as PREJUDICE. For me prejudice is a behavioral mechanism, to segragate to differentiate to distinguish to avoid to care to nurture. I would agree it is somewhat programmed in our system, but then THIS understanding WILL generate ONE NOBEL PRIZE winning work. John, I believe human genome is NOT fully mapped till date. We cannot extend our studies on DROSOPHILA fly on anything and everything! All of us know about presence of mitochondrial dna, processes like polygenic inheritence, epistasis, pleitrophy et al. We all know how defective alleles are generally recessive, and how NATURE has endowed us with THIS natural selection. NO BODY has come up with a successful theory to fully explain acquired behavioral patterns being directly correlated down the species. More so, which characters are inherited and which ARE learned during life time have debates. What you call prejudice is in fact part of intra species learning/unlearning, WHICH has many unexplored parts and SHOULD NOT oversimplified to assume that social/behavioral prejudgement make the ENTIRE SET. I believe I am NOT being very cryptic here, which I often become. I am NOT a biologist, I am a theoretical physicist, so ANYBODY having a better technical knowledge over this can ALWAYS bash me. I love learning! Now, regarding the process of learning, any community which has intelligence of retaining one-state memory processes (say MARKOV processes) is BOUND to develop its own community learning mechanism. Let me give an example (I am sure all of you can do C or Fortran programming. ) Define an array say A (250,250) and assign each of these squares a random number (generated from a TRUE random number generator, TRUE in scale of experiment) from zero to one. Now make an updating rule, if your random number is 0 to .1 then it stays in its state, if it is greater than .1 and less than pt .5 and then it stays in its state UNLESS one of its neighbours have a state of .8 or more...make your own rules, but make sure sum of greatest intergers (of these numbers) are conserved. This is the MOST simple discretization of spatio-temporal equation we call "reaction diffusion equation", it is called the GREENBERG HASTINGS model. Have a look how, the entire system freezes beyond certain steps, change system size and check how it is dependent on system size. Check how the entire configuration converges, (becomes stable) into kind of a potential well... This is an example of learning, with single step memory. John, I don't think we can call EVERY community learning/genetic learning as PREJUDICE. Latter is probably exlusion of all other learnings, cognitions. I am sure all of us know Alzheirma is diagnosed by process of exclusion, when other causes of amnesia look improbable. Likewise, prejudice should be defined by a similar process of exclusion. D

Yes, a little too candid. John's initial argument was that "Prejudice can be shown to have a Biochemical origin that is natural to the survival of species and precedes the familiar Social prejudice-ms that we see in all cultures." I can't see how that can be anything other than saying that as a result of genes favouring distrust and caution around any member of your species who tends to be different tending to prosper in the gene pool and produce more ancestors as a result of Natural Selection and at the general expense of genes who favoured trusting and general benevolence towards members of the species who have recognisable differences to yourself. As you can see, that's a bloody long-winded way of saying what I tried to say in a shorter way by saying 'genes' - it's a shorthand used throughout most texts on genetics for exactly that reason. There's a more interesting point that you raise, which is whether in fact there are genes (or probably more accurately a package of genes in combination) which actually do as described above. That's much more of a moot point. I could see that one might be able to argue a case in which Natural Selection would favour a suspicious pattern of behaviour, but the fact that Natural Selection says that such behaviour could prosper in a gene pool doesn't necessarily mean it has actually arisen in our gene pool. John, I really wish you would just set out what your argument is. Are you saying that prejudice is hard-wired into us, or that it is learned behaviour, or a combination? What's riled me is the suggestion that it can't be helped, which is different from saying that it is not easy to overcome.

You guys can't see the forest for the trees.

No, Jasper - hot-wired is what you do to cars when stealing them. Hard wired means pre-set. Still not falling out - I'm quite often wrong and will gladly admit it, but not in this particular regard.

Interesting stuff Saptarshi and I am enjoying your contributions... however do space them out a bit using paragraphs... it will be easier on the eye, instintically I find it hard to focus on big blobs of texts.

Emily. I just arrived home so bare with me. Its been a hectic day. *John, I really wish you would just set out what your argument is. Are you saying that prejudice is hard-wired into us, or that it is learned behavior, or a combination?* I am making a distinctions between prejudice, at a Social level and Prejudice as an Evolutionary orientated defensives mechanism that I believe is DNA/RNA encoded. At a Social level Emily, we have the advantage of language. Language allows us to determine how we choose to act on our various instincts and so provides us with the means to 'chose' not to respond in what would be deemed to be in a prejudices fashion. So at the Social level we have choice. And are masters of our interactions with others people, but we are slaves to that initial instinctive reaction. It is this 'initial reaction' that I am interested in hear. At a Social level we can understand why people have developed territorial responses to any given unfamiliar situation. But you must remember that even that response has a Biochemical/evolutionary origin, which is coded for. So in that sense we are masters of our own instinctive responses to any give situation. But this is only at a Social level and dose not address the Biological origin of that, or any other human instinctive responses mechanism. At a biological level, I am arguing for prejudice 'as with others', as having an origin that is biochemically specific and DNA/RNA encoded.

Humm. This takes me back to my Social Sciences days. Behavioral Ecology: “A behavioral ecologist assumes that the proximate cause of a behavior is simply the mechanism underlying the means by which a behavior is manifest” From a behavioral ecologist point of view, behaviors and advantageous traits are retained by process of natural selection as an ‘’ mechanism in the retention of genes that will increase Darwinian fitness for a given species. “Behaviors that reduce Darwinian fitness we predict will be lost from gene pools while behaviors that increase Darwinian fitness we expect to increase in frequency with populations” “ Note, however, that while behaviors often have underlying genetic components, the ability of organisms to learn complicates our understanding of behavioral evolution; nevertheless, we have an expectation that organisms will have a tendency to behave in a manner that enhances their Darwinian fitness” Ethology: "One of the major findings of ethology was that animals can carry out many behaviors without ever having seen them performed. In other words, many behaviors are innately programmed. And while such behaviors seem purposeful because they are clearly beneficial, they are carried out in ways that show the animals are unaware of the significance of their actions." “Learning is synonymous with behavioral modification such that, ideally, a behavior is further optimized by the change. Learning can optimize behavior most obviously in a short term sense; however, for behavior to be truly optimized, it must be optimized in a Darwinian sense” "Nearly all biologists today agree that most behavior is a consequence of genetic and environmental influences. Even though an animal may not have to witness a FAP because the basic behavior is innate, learning is still involved. Most FAPs improve with performance, as animals learn to carry them out more efficiently." Sociobiology: “ Socio biologists, by contrast, emphasize that learned behavior, and indeed all culture, is the result of psychological adaptations that have evolved over long periods of time. Those adaptations, like all traits of individual human beings, have both genetic and environmental components. Social Sciences: “Social scientists regard culture – everything from eating habits to language – as an entirely human invention, one that develops arbitrarily” “Social science… promotes erroneous solutions, because it fails to recognize that Darwinian selection has shaped not only human bodies but human psychology, learning patterns and behavior as well.” All of these disciplines cross over each other in some way. For me, I tend to approach the question of Evolutionary predispositions to behaver, mainly form a Sociobiology perspective. My basic thinking is. Through the process of Genetic transmission, characteristics are passed on from one generation to another. Hear, I’m generalizing, that it is possible that ‘Darwinian enhancing’ be havers are genetically retained. Including behavioral characteristics that are deemed to be advantageous to fitness. My thinking hear is that Natural selection and the fact that some forms of diversity are more adaptive than others, that advantageous characteristics ‘and behaviors’, were retained to help survival and reproduction. We have good evidence that establishes that anatomy and physiology, -(bone structure and sense organs) for example, evolved over time as a result of their ‘usefulness’ in adapting to different environmental circumstances. But unlike physical characteristics, behaviors characteristics cant be traced through the fossil records, but surely it is a reasonable preposition that the retention of advantages behaviors could have been an important factor in evolutionary success?

*I am NOT a biologist, I am a theoretical physicist, so ANYBODY having a better technical knowledge over this can ALWAYS bash me. I love learning!* Debash. I to am not a biologist. Like your self, I am manly involved in theoretical Physics. I agree that prejudice at a Social level can be described in terms of intra species learning, group dynamics and Social ideological conditioning, I believe this merely focuses on the Social explanation of human voluntary/non voluntary response mechanisms. Where the genome is not fully mapped yet, this should not conclude that human Social response mechanisms can not be accounted for in terms of the precursors of biological specificity and therefor have not been coded for in evolution. I am not saying that the phenomena that we describe as prejudice is out of our influences, 'Social prejudices are not' but I am suggesting that it may have a genetic origin. The question hear is whether the human 'instinct' has a biological explanation and whether that instinct has been coded for as a evolutionary mechanism?

I believe it has, John. Prejudice, as a feeling, a force, is so powerful within us that it has to be instinctive - just has to be. It's one os those forces that occurs within us naturally. But, it's also a force on the decline evolutionary, I believe.

In my experience, the claim that everybody is prejudice is simply a social marketing scheme, which I had the joy of experiencing when I was a sophomore in college. The idea was that students were thinking that racism was dead, they weren't racist, things like that just don't happen nowadays, it's not an issue, etc. However, racism unfortunately does still exist. So, in order to shock students into thinking about the issue again, they redefined the word "predjudice" so that it applies to everybody. Since most people see "predjudice" and "racism" as synonymous, this got everybody angry, which got everybody talking about it again. The idea is that preference = racism. If you're white, and most of your friends are white, then you are predjudiced, and therefore racist. Most of the pamphlets that were passed out to me tried to make a distinction between predjudice and racism by saying predjudice is the inherent preference, whereas racism is acting on that inherent preference. A good example of this and some related social reprecussions is a comic I read by an art student who was taking a class called "Introduction to Black Studies:" The problem with schemes like this is it makes you hyper-aware of someone's "race," which just worsens the problem. The entire time that campaign was going on campus, I was ashamed to talk to non-caucasians, because I was terrified that I would start acting "predjudiced." Thank goodness my roommate was from Kenya. Made me realize that it was all a bunch of well-meaning but misguiding bull. The question in my mind is why I was always more afraid of acting predjudiced towards a black person rather than an Asian, Latino, or Native American person. I figure there are a couple explanations. Either: a) I really am racist. b) I grew up with kids that came from Asian, Latino, and Native American families, but I didn't grow up with anybody from a black family, so I'm just not familiar with it. c) The American history of slavery and all of the surrounding social issues that stem from it have been so ingrained in me by my 20-some years of schooling here that I somehow feel culturally responsible for these mass atrocities and I don't exactly know how to step lightly around this landmined history when around somebody who's black. I think it's a lot of c, and a little of b. As an intellectual exercise, though, the question of "Is everybody predjudiced?" can be interesting. -Elaine.

I believe that we all hold a preference for our own and I guess that could be surmised as prejudice but it only becomes bad when you put down others in support of your own via malicious intent. Even amongst our own groups we set up preferences. Which again is not bad as long as you respect and allow others to live and prosper as you in their lives. It becomes a problem when you say I only want these people in my neighborhood etc however we are way beyond much repair in prejudiceness agains classes, race and religon but we don't have to take the ignorant approach to it. Understand it yes but not try to live it

John, you have gone a bit 'Ralph'. Surely as a scientist you have read Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" and are familiar with the conclusions there that mankind, being possessed with intelligence, are in a position to overcome their genetic programming. Genetic predispositions are rules of thumb, not laws set in stone. Yes, thousands of years ago it would make sense to distrust anyone who you did not know very well and to be suspicious and sceptical of someone who looked very different to yourself, but human beings are smarter than that. An argument that because there was an evolutionary advantage to being mistrustful of members of other tribes in prehistoric days this justifies racism today is clumsy, inaccurate and rather creepy. Trying desparately not to invoke that law of the Net that Rokkit always talks about, this argument is a little like the unfortunate early history of eugenics. A male's genetic predisposition ought to be to impregnate every healthy female he has the opportunity to, but we do not do this at every opportunity because we are not prisoners of our genetic predisposition. Someone can say that they are not prejudiced because they genuinely believe that people should be judged on their own personal qualities and not for the colour of their skin. I don't find that an at all incongruous thing to believe and I'm sure that if you think about it, you don't either.

I'm not a racist, I just hate everyone equally..lol! Scernario: White Adam and Eve went down to the creek one day, carrying a green bucket, which God gave them to fetch water in. When they got there, Black Adam and Eve arrived on the opposite side of the creek, at the exactly the same time, carrying exactly the same green bucket. Was God a racist? Or did He/She simply have a fetish for silly green buckets?

Hi, I am new to this forum. I am a physician by primary training. I would say Prejudices are not hardwired. It's natural to have prejudice but they are acquired rather than inherited, and depending on where you grow up and who you grow up with- you may end up with having entirely different set of prejudices. I am neither a linguist nor a psychologist; and so request someone else to find an elaborate definition of prejudice. But my feeling (based on my rudimentary training in psychiatry and neurobiology) is that Prejudices are “soft” behavioral inclinations- not strong instincts like fear, hunger. Prejudice is like aversion or affiliation to things or ways of doing things in particular rituals based on vague feelings or weak pseudo-logics or some such personal philosophy. Fear of a particular object or situation may be prejudice but not fear per se; feeling more or less interested in a food item may be prejudice, but not hunger per se. Since human beings spend a lot of time with parents/guardians before reaching independence/adulthood, there is transfer of a lot of cultural, social, moral and professional values. Each such value system will have its bias/prejudice based on transferable subjective perception of associated advantages (rewards that may be indirect, or sometimes even fictitious). They may be also be initiated or strengthened by explicit external suggestions like advertisements (leading to fads or false “need”s) or prevailing social or peer views (eg racist viewpoints, shyness about taboo items). But many a times they are imitated from role models or parents. During adoption of such behavior there may be distortions making the tracing of it’s origin difficult. Extreme cases like delusions may look of complete internal origin. But there again the cognitive history has to provide the templates based on which a delusion can frame its pseudo-logical story even if it is abstract to any extent. So prejudice are learned behavior which of course will have counterpart mechanism inside the wiring but that is the dynamic wiring of an individuals learning and thinking and is something that is passed to the next generation by direct post-birth communication, more than by either genomic or epigenetic reproductive(vertical) transfer. Instincts may be called “hardwired” in the sense they are like reflex (heartbeat is a reflex that we can’t control but breathing can be controlled by reflex as well as voluntary effort). What is actually hardwired is the predisposition to react in a fixed way once exposed certain natural environmental cues during early development (may be in utero). And this fixing of the wiring to make the reaction would have evolved to become that way over many generation. Instincts may be directly related to fundamental emotions which are seated in what Radiodenver called “reptilian brain” or in technical terms- limbic system. But they may also be more complex and rooted in higher/cognitive areas. But any thing that is hardwired like this can also be partly rewired- within an individual- by a process called developmental plasticity (eg by exposure to wrong cues present in early environment or repeated training, before a critical age, to behave in a different way). But when it comes to soft behavioral signs like prejudice- it’s rather fluid- the wiring can be easily redone and the behavior changed consciously by an individual- something that Emily talked about. Let me go back to the strongly hardwired behavior like a natural instinct: if the individuals developmental rewiring is disadvantageous- cost may be death for an individual. What Annie talks about is the situation where rewiring is inheritable. It is only when rewiring is inheritable can it be acted upon by natural selection (and the result may be extinction of a wrongly rewiring species, or evolution of another re-rewired species that has an advantage- called adaptation.). If there is enough intrinsic variation in the hardwiring only then natural situation can select from among the variants and cause a shift in the wiring- a process that may take generations to come about and many more generations before it gets fixed. So if the initial statement- that prejudice is “hardwired” was true then it would take long to change them. So understanding the meaning conveyed by “hardwired” is important in this context. Any behavior will have hardwires behind it. But that is not what is “hardwired” hard wired means “pre-programmed” or “blueprinted” by pre-design which is not reversible. Instincts (like hunger or fear) are not easily changeable. They can at max be suppressed. Some aberrant individuals have rewired or mal developed instincts but they may not pass it on to next generation. Instincts may take many generations to get fixed as inheritable traits. So they are hardwired (or can it be said “written in the system files? Some one help me here- It’s not under my perview) in the species model and they are part of the identity of the model (here humankind). On the other hand prejudices are like the packages of soft wares presently installed that identifies an individual of the model (personality traits). They can be uninstalled or formatted or reloaded. But something equivalent to virus program may happen here too. If a prejudice keep reminding itself too frequently it is called obsessive thought and that may lead to compulsion of behaving in certain manners. It may take lot of efforts to suppress them, and may become distressful enough to disrupt normal life- a condition called OCD- obsessive compulsive Disease that may need treatment. See Aviator- an example of hand-washing OCD. One important thing to note is that predisposition to develop OCDs may run in families. This may be because of some hardwire defect that is inherited. But what particular OCD a person will develop is dependent on his developmental history and his immediate surroundings. However one need not think of an OCD first, when it comes to thinking about prejudice. As normal human beings we all have our individual bunch of prejudices which are part of our “normal” identity and our personal viewpoints which we became partly consciously aware of during adolescence, and so changed some of them into forms more satisfactory or to our “ego” defense. It would be very abnormal or rather impossible to live without prejudices. We generally adjust the prejudices as and when necessary in a society. When majority in a society are in harmony, minority with inflexible prejudices may be said to have “personality disorders”. Unlike OCD patients they do not suffer from anxiety or distress because of their prejudices. I am not an expert. Neither have I read the literature recently, which I should have quoted. If you want further clarification please see the section on personality disorders in any standard psychiatry text book (like Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry). The branch of human behavioral science has enormous literature of it's own- some under psychology, some under sociobiology, some under psychiatry etc. But understanding of many fundamental aspect do also come from animal behaviour. As for genes and human behaviour. Not everything is mappable directly to genes even if human genome would be fully mapped. Specially when it comes to complex traits like behaviour, its not only dependent on many genes, but also how those genes interact with each other and with the environment; and the history of their past interaction (which are embedded in time in complicated ways). More than a century of genetics and developmental biology has gone in investigating these deep questions.

* Prejudice is a natural instinct inherent to all people regardless of nationality, color or believes. To say 'I am not Prejudice', is to deny your own inherent instinct and natural tendency toward the preservation of race, culture and believes. According to this argument, Prejudice can be shown to have a Biochemical origin that is natural to the survival of species and precedes the familiar Social prejudice-ms that we see in all cultures. So how can some one say 'I am not Prejudice'! If this argument holds true? * Prejudice is generally considered as a LOCAL phenomenon, it is NOT necessarily so. But, prejudice, IN FACT, can be of three broad types-- 1) Local prejudice: one which involves memory of a local event, or a set of local events. It can also be as a result of a LOCAL interpretation of an event (or set of events) taking place remotely outside. Memory is the major player for such prejudices, and as the prejudice ages it takes different shapes. I think Somerset Maugham has once said, "As we age, we tend to remember, more concretely, those events which NEVER happened". This degenaration of memory, which in fact leads to noise than information presents an interesting scenario under such circumstances: prejudice becomes the JUDGE! Generations after generations suffer for this WHITE noise! (which is worse than ignorance). 2) Global prejudice: one which involves memory of a SET of global events. Every individual starts journey with a formattable hard-disk like object which we call our brain. Our brain, god knows, has NOT been fully explored. In chapter 1 (Consciousness and computation) of "Shadows of the Mind" Penrose states there are broadly four view points. (check P 12, Shadows of the Mind). I fact, we KNOW very little about HUMAN brain, but yes a heuristic understanding about how this hard-disk is formatted is as follows-- From the time of our birth up to fifteen years of age, our minds largely gather information...anything, be it "How to hold a forque and spoon" or "How to use remote control of your video game". Gradually as we age, a small part of our memory degenarates. (In some cases a large part, those are cases of Alzheirma, Dementia, et al.) As we grow the fields in our memory communicate with each other, bringing up the connections and OUR OWN LOGICAL HIERARCHY. Each individual has a unique logical hierarchy, YOU can see this in internet forums. Often in internet forums, you will be up against MANY names debating against you...but if you know about internet habits and understand logic, you can VERY WELL try to identify them in broad groups...like Group a) who CANNOT make a proper connection between statement and assertion. Group b) who CANNOT recognise numbers, WHO fear numbers and CALL it some occult misfortune. Group c) Those who know how to hide their identity by just going along with MAJORITY. I have taken internet as an example coz it can showcase a big (if NOT the whole globe) portion of globe. You will get to see every type of people, kiljos, dropouts, blowhards, and even scientists. You will find obsequous people, fawning for attention. If you read their behavior closely, and check how and what the majority agrees upon (especially ON issues where there are no mathematical answers) you will know what is global prejudice. It is an ENSEMBLE average of all the WAVELETS of prejudices. 3) Intermediate range prejudice: If you are from a place where a large of number of correlated factors have benifitted you; and if most of those benifits originate from one source then a regional scale of prejudice develops. E.g., despite president bush's mass unpopularity he won the US presidential elections, if you check where he got most of his support you will realise why! This regional prejudice played in his favor... Solidus, Debashish

Emily, * As you can see, that's a bloody long-winded way of saying what I tried to say in a shorter way by saying 'genes' - it's a shorthand used throughout most texts on genetics for exactly that reason. * Well, that looks a gross generalization. I have invited a scientist, who is a doctor and a developmental biologist, to have a look at this discussion. I don't know if Dr. Saptarshi (my friend) has time to present his view on this, coz I know he is very busy with his academic developments. John, Human genome is not fully mapped, and till it is NOT, statements some of us have been unleashing will remain grossly philosophical and abstract. John, first for a community learning mechanism, even a ONE step memory process will require parameters such as system size. Unless one knows about the size and place of particular genes one shouldn't explain them with hand waving arguments, or shouldn't even try. I have learnt a new terminology from Jasper, "genetic psychologist"...That term is perhaps not that formal. But yes, it reminded of some psychologists who tried to analyze behavioral patterns, e.g., crime bent mind, for criminals using pedigree analyses. John, prejudice is an exclusion diagnosis for prejudgement or memory retention, NOT every type of memory retention is prejudice. People have tried to connect phobias with genetic complexion. They have found heriditary connection for certain diseases, but then for prejudice to have a genetic origin will require a VERY rigorous proof. Simply, coz its definition comes out of exclusion! However, what we may be able to say is this-- Existence of prejudice can be programmed in our genes, but WHAT prejudices a progeny will acquire WILL depend upon its life not its genetic material. Even one may be able to come up with an answer of how many number of such mutually exclusive prejudices an offspring can have, but AGAIN what prejudices it will acquire WILL depend upon its life...John, you are probably forgetting a basic law of physics that cannot be violated anywhere...which is called "causality restriction". Even STR has retained it as its first postulate. Solidus, Debashish

Prejudice is a broad term. In some regards we have a pre-judging mechanism, however, Bigotry...is a learned behavior. I don't confuse the two terms though. We're back to the imagination vs knowledge thing here.

*We're back to the imagination vs knowledge thing here.* Radio, yes, they call it "looping a loop" syndrome. D

*In some regards we have a pre-judging mechanism, however, Bigotry...is a learned behavior. * I don't think any effect can appear before its cause...that is the GOLDEN rule of causily. For this prejudgement, you need some input some information! I believe, as you have rightfully mentioned, *we're back to the imagination Vs Knowledge thing here...* D

Instinct is a prejudging mechanism.

Does an newborn infant child possess..? 1. Instinct. 2. Imagination. 3. Knowledge.

Now it is a question of consciouness...Calling instincts is INDEED locally prejudgement, but then you are answerable for failure of CAUSALITY if you call instinct globally prejudging. Instinct develops and evolves with time. I coined different words for two different inventories. Instinct also depends on your memory, RAM factor comes into picture friend. Is RAM wholly random? D

It can't be random, as all species are born with instincts. A baby duck knows how to swim and doesn't need to learn it. Reptilian brains and all that stuff. Since most species inherit the same basic instincts of their species, there is no random factor to it. What causes it? Jeeezus...now we're heading into religion....

Thanks for the encouragement 1legspider. It's a nice experience to be able to express oneself and get some feedback. I shall take care to space out the text... Actually I was trying to compress it into looking less lengthy. Since the aim here is to communicate, rather than to write for ones own intellectual satisfaction, I am looking here for such constructive criticism as yours which would help me objectively analyse my wrting and make it more reader friendly.

* Does an newborn infant child possess..? 1. Instinct. 2. Imagination. 3. Knowledge. * A good answer is "WE DO NOT KNOW"... We can predict from indirect action of the child. One thing can be stated, a NEWBORN baby has a formattable harddisk. An intelligent guess will say, he doesn't have any post natal knowledge, he CAN have prenatal information and some rudimentary KNOWLEDGE of identifying some vibrations. I NEED more parameters, SIR! I will get back to this discussion after my dinner. See you after dinner, Debashish

Emily we may be intelligent but in my opinion these instincts which gave us survival advantages in our primitive past are deeply rooted and take thousands and thousands of years to be eliminated. I think John is right. You can see prejudice in operation in any group of humans of any age or culture. It must have been very important for survival all those millennia ago.

Annie, *gave us survival advantages in our primitive past are deeply rooted and take thousands and thousands of years to be eliminated.* That is called ADAPTATION! Adaptation and natural selection can NOT be directly linked to prejudice. D

Annie - a decent example is that of sugar and fat. Our genes say to us, Body - if you find something to eat which has fat or sugar in it, you should eat that and try to get more. This is a decent message to send out to any Body that exists in a world with a limited/scarce food supply, but unfortunately genes set down their programs many thousands of years ago and couldn't plan ahead for food production techniques. So, we have a predisposition to like and want food that in moderation is good for us but in excess is bad, because the gene programs didn't envisage an excess as a possibility. (I know I'm being anthromorphic here, but it is hard not to be - go back to basics - there was not a tendency in the gene pool to reward with greater numbers of offspring those Bodies who would be cautious about eating too much sugar and fatty foods because the condition didn't arise) It doesn't take thousands of years to get rid of humanities predisposition for unpleasant behaviour - it takes a few brain cells to think outside of our programming. I would imagine that we are not ever going to breed out of the gene pool an inherent tendency to be suspicious of others outside our social group, but society can within a short space of time adjust people's attitudes - remember how people felt or talked about drunk driving in the late Seventies? It was a laugh then, everyone did it, no guilt at all. It is wrong to think that because there are some common tendencies in the human species that we are in thrall to these and cannot overcome them by using their intellect. To cite another thinker who was misused and misunderstood by eugenicists - Man is a condition that must be overcome, what have you done to overcome him?

Jasper, *What you seem to be trying to prove, Deb, is that Nature is predictable under certain controlled conditions.* I am NOT proving anything, I am merely emphasizing the importance of various things, factors I mean. Please don't assume anything, if you have doubts raise POINTED questions and don't make metaphorical statements that you DON'T understand. I have never said A+B=A-B, or anything as such. I have NOT spoken anything about PROBABILISTIC or determistic world nor have I addressed cosmological constant or vacuum energy, so please, if you raise ANY issues from my comment, try to ask relevent questions (if you have!) D

Radio, *It can't be random, as all species are born with instincts. A baby duck knows how to swim and doesn't need to learn it. Reptilian brains and all that stuff. Since most species inherit the same basic instincts of their species, there is no random factor to it. What causes it? Jeeezus...now we're heading into religion.... * The various stages of morphogenesis, make compartments of information. I am NOT going to talk about TURING MACHINES and reaction diffusion equations straightaway. But then I would like to make a point here, scientific understanding of skills you mentioned is very limited. People have done simulation studies on these type of systems, OF COURSE, with gross simplicity...coz the computation times (and complexity in actual specimen) will take centuries to get any converging solution (I am sure all of us know about our computational handicaps). If you check the embryogenic development of any mammal you will get to see many similarities. They have similar shape and structure upto 80% of full maturity before birth. There are many stem cells in this stage, which can give rise to any other tissue. But gradually, once a baby takes its form these tissues become specialised. Each having a purpose of survival, each depending upon its own STABILITY condition(s). Each of these intermediate states represents a stable steady state. Ability of swim is endowed by the symmetry of the specimen you mention, it is ONLY due to selective symmetry selection. A specimen is preprogrammed to select its OWN symmetries. It has its own pattern recognition determinants. But then why ONLY question about baby ducks knowing swimming, WHY not question about symmetries of our own body, why we have two hands, two legs, two eyes, two ears... Have you seen a cat falling on ground from top, or even a kitten? It falls on its toes, why?? Is there any role of its structure, is there any role of its instints. After all what is instints? Can you so clearly define what is instinct, Radio? Solidus, Debashish

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Emily, thanks for your reply. This is an interesting matter to discuss because I could not disagree with you more. I am no expert on this topic mind, but my gut feeling is that these instincts are not so easy to shift as you seem to suggest. The seventies drink driving example relates in my opinion to something relatively superficial - an attitude to one tiny aspect of social behaviour. Prejudice, however, is something far far deeper. It is closer to the reflex blink when somebody throws something near our eyes. Even if we know for sure the object will not hit our eyes (Richard Dawkins demonstrated this very point in one of his lectures) we still blink. The desire to blink cannot be easily unlearned - in the way our reaction to drink driving can be. And anyway, there are still loads of people out there who think drinking and driving is a bit of a laugh.

Jasper - don't want to be picky, but T-Rex and humans have never co-existed. Boy, these theoretical physics guys know how to crush the spirit out of a discussion, don't they? The McLintock effect that you describe is an interesting one, Jasper. I'm not quite sure how it comes about, save that I know that it is something to do with smell or pheromone. I've read an experiment where women were given T-shirts worn by other women on a daily basis to smell and after a time their cycles adjusted in tune with the woman whose T-shirt they were smelling. I'm not sure it offers any evolutionary advantage, but of course it is fallacious to believe that any feature of a biological organism has to indicate some natural selection advantage. Often dumb weird stuff just happens. There's no advantage in humans having an appendix, and if the body blueprint could have produced genes for 'not having an appendix' then those genes would have prospered in the pool. But the body blueprint doesn't work that way, we're stuck with having an appendix the same way that panda bears were stuck with not having an opposable thumb because they were based on the bear blueprint - the panda's thumb is actually an enlarged wristbone. Jasper, do you really believe that life's diversity is accountable for by natural selection and evolution? I'm afraid that I won't be debating the issue with you if not, we'll just have to agree to disagree, but I've never met a real-live person who didn't believe in it.

Sorry, that should have said 'not accountable' - see what happens when someone who isn't conversant with C+ and Fortran tries to contribute to a debate?

Debashish, What if you tape buttered toast to the cats back?

Radio, that will be an interesting exercise *wink*. BTW read this article [URL]http://www.yurinsha.com/342/p6.htm[/URL]

And also http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~surya/cats.ps

Deb, Read this thread.... We've been trying to explain the meaning of life to John for a while now. He's still confused though. [%sig%]

I'll take English for 100. rhetorical questions?

Jasper, I just wanted to know what you actually do believe in that regard. Call it healthy curiousity. Although I suspect we're likely to disagree (and to an extent that would render a discussion about it with a view to convincing one another pointless), I'm still interested in finding out what other people think when they disagree with me. I don't see you being a Creationist, somehow, so I'm intrigued by your animosity towards Darwinism.

Annie - I suppose what I am trying to convey (and not doing so well at) is that although I accept that there are perfectly good, rational biological reasons for prejudice and that these are hard to overcome, I object strenuously to a person claiming that this justifies people acting on prejudice. Intelligence is such a huge factor to bring into play that I simply can't accept that human beings are held in chains by their genes. The problem with taking gene theory as not merely an underlying background to explain why people have certain tendencies implicit within them but actually saying that they can't help it, means that we absolve ourselves gleefully of responsibility for doing anything selfish. I utterly, utterly accept that there is something within us that gives us a tendency to be cruel, selfish and narrow-minded. I just think that we can and should overcome it. I genuinely believe with my whole heart that people have it within themselves to be better, more decent people than they would if they simply acted all the time on their hard-wired survival instincts. There are people who do not, I'd be foolish not to acknowledge that, but our freedom of choice lifts us up to a different state of existence to that of animals, who are slaves to their genetic programming. Interesting discussion.

Computer games would be my guess.

Annie and Emily, I don't know I should interfere in your discussion. But it seems I should from what I see, I feel you have misplaced "prejudice" with "natural selection" and "adaptation". Homoestasis with "gene theory". Where you come remotely close to gene theory, is your example of sugar/fat absorption...your explanation suggests you have grossly simplified have a very heuristic view about genetics. I beg to state, though I may be wrong here coz I have very little exposure towards biology...but what you mention about gene theory, fits for the old gene theory or the OPERON concept. I will have to get hold of the reference mentioned upstairs, but I seem some terminology has been misused and misplaced here and there... Unless I am totally wrong, which I CAN VERY WELL BE, I see you have your personal dogmas and prejudices about these words... Solidus, Debashish

Jasper, I have stated another thing which you have perhaps didn't read. Listen no statement is an assertion untill read completely. I told you "don't make metaphorical statements that you DON'T understand." Jasper, this is becoming too much. It is pretty clear to all of us in this thread (which I was avoiding to agree with others) that YOU don't have an IOTA of understanding and patience, that can give you such insights, to discuss such a serious issue as this. More so discussion has become very technical, and your terminology misuse clearly indicates your inability to continue in this. Jasper, however if you WANT to continue with the discussion from your standpoint (coz the issues you are dealing require special training) I can suggest you a few elementary SET THEORY and GROUP THEORY books to read...If you have already read them earlier, I will REQUEST you to REVISE them properly. You LOOK to be TECHNICALLY CHALLENGED both in MATHEMATICS and BIOLOGY, I am not claiming that I am an expert but then I think won't stall the discussion unnecessarily. If you don't understand my reasoning, henceforth, I will follow the golden rule. D

*Even Amoeba at the start, were not complex: But then they started tearing themselves apart and having sex * Amoeba reproduces by an asexual process called binary fission (unless my biology knowledge is NOT like a desert map). *A theory's best defence may very well be it is refutability.....but then a glass lens distorts all sense of perspective and focus to begin with. * They say "an abberation can prove a theory"....Second part of the answer--coz it is a lens, it has abberations to rectify and add its own in the process. Do you know a glass lens can never be perfect? Now, no more monkey business here. It is better I follow others, here! D

In that case emily I think we hold similar views on this but are coming at it from different directions.

Hi Saptarshi, thanks for that input to this discussion. I will have to read it several times and think about the points you have outlined, before responding with any queries of my own. I must admit Saptarshi, on first reading it dose seem to be a very persuasive argument. Will get back soon. *I'm beginning to worry now Emily* *Gulps* I to would like to know about Jaspers animosity to Darwinism? As you say, unlikely to be a Creationist.

As a Scientist, I assume nothing Emily. Yes I have read the selfish Gene, but I would not consider this work as representing 'Conclusions' that Intelligence, or 'self awareness' can override Biological specificity. I am not attempting to justify prejudices hear and you should not assume that my post represents my view's. What I am trying to do however, is address the notion held by many that the root of prejudice, whether local or global is necessarily a Social construct. It is naive to assume that Social prejudice can only be explained in this way. What I would also argue hear, is that the precursors of biological specificity are far more than a 'rule of thumb' Emily. Your argument seems to be based almost entirely on a Social explanation in accounting for prejudice. It assumes that prejudice is a learned behaver that is propagated after birth. I am arguing that Social prejudice could be the product of biological specificity I am most certainly 'not' suggesting that prejudice is in any way acceptable. Marley that a Social explanation is not the only explanation and that a biological/evolutionary explanation has equal if not greater significance. I have a question for you Emily. If a man can not recognizes his own pre disposition toward prejudice, how can he hope to over come it?