Meta Value - 46

Maybe 200 years from now, we will be laughed at for embracing moronic concentration of power by not lack of knowledge in neuroscience but unwillingness to connect the obvious dots between knowledge,  action and inability to change. 

Yes, there are regular "columns" about the foolishness of multi-tasking but yet we elect officials, presidents to multitask. We celebrate CEOs and so-called corporate leaders who multi-task. Even worse, we expect the same from doctors, nurses, cops, and fire fighters. 

They just don't multi-task. Their role and responsibility is to tackle, understand, and solve the new problem, issue et al at a spur of the moment while still solving the issue at hand and yesterday's unsolved issue. Oh yeah, they also need to deal with family, celebrations, mundanity, issues and sickness. Watch news, tv, movies, and sports.

And they need to eat, poop, workout, and sleep.

All this in 24 hours of time. 

No living being can do this. Lions don't chase Zebra's 24 hours a day nor do crocodiles. No living organism does this. 

Humans cannot eat, read while doing pull ups. 

But yet, our entire civilization, economy, politics, is built around the fabric of few humans who are capable of doing pulls while popping, eating and reading. 

The real issue is the messed up dichotomy of mind and body. There is no dichotomy. The mind is not magic. It is an organic matter with limited capabilities. 

Plus we breed smaller humans to make life altering decisions at 18 with their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.

It seems that the entire complexity of human civilization is built on Robert Trivers’ fragile ground of self-deception. 

The meta value here is - if one can not do any of the above, focus on few important things that matter in their limited time - one can not only thrive but have a wonderful and peaceful life. 

If by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Remembering Robert Trivers

Robert Trivers, who died on March 12, 2026, was arguably the most important evolutionary theorist since Darwin. He had a rare gift for seeing through the messy clutter of life and revealing the underlying logic beneath it. E. O. Wilson called him “one of the most influential and consistently correct theoretical evolutionary biologists of our time.” Steven Pinker described him as “one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought.”

I was Robert’s graduate student at Rutgers from 2006 to 2014. Long before I knew him personally, however, he had already established himself as one of the most original and insightful scientists of the twentieth century. In an astonishing series of papers in the early 1970s, he changed forever our understanding of evolution and social behavior.

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The next year in 1972, Trivers published his most cited paper, Parental Investment and Sexual Selection. Here he offered a unified explanation for something that had puzzled biologists since Darwin. Writing perhaps the most famous sentence in all of evolutionary biology—“What governs the operation of sexual selection is the relative parental investment of the sexes in their offspring”—Trivers threw down the gauntlet and revealed a deceptively simple principle that reorganized the field. From that insight flowed one of the most powerful and falsifiable ideas in modern science: the sex that invests more in offspring will tend to be choosier about mates, while the sex that invests less will compete more intensely for access to them.

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Each of these papers spawned entirely new research fields, and many have dedicated their careers to unpacking and testing the implications of his ideas. As Harvard biologist David Haig put it, “I don’t know of any comparable set of papers. Most of my career has been based on exploring the implications of one of them.” Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that his ideas gave birth to the field of evolutionary psychology and the whole line of popular Darwinian books from Richard Dawkins and Robert Wright to David Buss and Steven Pinker.

To know Robert personally, however, was to confront a more uneven and less orderly organism— to use one of his favorite words—than the one revealed in his papers. The man who explained the hidden order in life often struggled to impose order in his own. “Genius” is one of the most overused words in the language, with “asshole” not far behind, and I have known few people who truly deserved either label. Robert deserved both. He could be genuinely funny, extraordinarily generous, and breathtakingly perceptive, but also moody, childish, and needlessly cruel.

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I used to joke that one reason he was so good at explaining behaviors the rest of us took for granted was that he was like an alien visiting our planet trying to make sense of our strange habits—why we invest in our children, why we are nice to our friends, why we lie to ourselves. He told me that conflict with his own father was part of the inspiration for parent-offspring conflict and one of the observations that led to his insight into parental investment came from watching male pigeons jockeying for position on a railing outside his apartment window in Cambridge.

Robert also had a respect for evidence and for correcting mistakes that I’ve rarely seen among academics, a group not known for their humility. He cared more about truth than about his reputation and retracted papers at great cost to himself and his career when he thought there were errors. He also knew that he was standing on the shoulders of the giants who had come before him. 

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He was a lifelong learner with a willingness to do hard things. After his astonishing early success, he could have done what many academics do: stay in his lane, guard his territory, and spend the rest of his career commenting on ideas he had already had. Instead, in the early 1990s he saw that genetics mattered and spent the next fifteen years trying to master it. The result was Genes in Conflict, the 2006 book he wrote with Austin Burt, which pushed his interest in conflict down to the level of selfish genetic elements. Few scientists, after making contributions as important as he had, would have had the curiosity, humility, and stamina to begin again in an entirely new area.

Trivers was a great teacher, though not always in the ways he intended. He often asked dumb questions—’What does cytosine bind to again?’ in the middle of a genetics seminar and made obvious observations—’Did you know that running the air-conditioner in the car uses gas?’ But as he liked to say, ‘I might be ignorant, but I ain’t gonna be for long.’ He could also be volatile and aggressive and there were many times when he threatened to kick my ass. I may have been the only graduate student who ever had to wonder whether he could take his advisor in a fight. Once, over lunch at Rutgers, I asked about a cut on his thumb after he had returned from one of his frequent trips to Jamaica. He matter-of-factly told me that he had just survived a home invasion in which two men armed with machetes held him hostage. He escaped by jumping from a second-story window, rolling downhill, and stabbing both men with the eight-inch knife he carried everywhere he went. He was 67 at the time.

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One of the last times I spoke with Robert, a fall had left his right arm nearly useless. He described it as “two sausages connected by an elbow.” He was a chaotic and deeply imperfect man, but also one of the few people whose ideas permanently changed how we understand evolution, animal behavior, and ourselves. Steven Pinker wrote that “it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that [Trivers] provided a scientific explanation for the human condition: the intricately complicated and endlessly fascinating relationships that bind us to one another.” That seems just about right to me. His ideas are some of the deepest insights we have into human nature, animal behavior, and our place in the web of life. The mark of a great person is someone who never reminds us of anyone else. I have never known anyone like him. I’ll miss you, Robert. You asshole.

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Grounded In Reality Piece On AI Mania

I don’t say that because I think that AI models are bad or because I think they won’t get better; I think that AI models are very good and will get much better. No. The fault is not with the models, but with us. The world is run by humans, and because it’s run by humans—entities that are smelly, oily, irritable, stubborn, competitive, easily frightened, and above all else inefficient—it is a world of bottlenecks. And as long as we have human bottlenecks, we’ll need humans to deal with them: we will have, in other words, complementarity.

People frequently underrate how inefficient things are in practically any domain, and how frequently these inefficiencies are reducible to bottlenecks caused simply by humans being human. Laws and regulations are obvious bottlenecks. But so are company cultures, and tacit local knowledge, and personal rivalries, and professional norms, and office politics, and national politics, and ossified hierarchies, and bureaucratic rigidities, and the human preference to be with other humans, and the human preference to be with particular humans over others, and the human love of narrative and branding, and the fickle nature of human preferences and tastes, and the severely limited nature of human comprehension. And the biggest bottleneck is simply the human resistance to change: the fact that people don’t like shifting what they’re doing. All of these are immensely powerful. Production processes are governed by their least efficient inputs: the more efficient the most efficient inputs, the more important the least efficient inputs.

In the long run, we should expect the power of technology to overcome these bottlenecks, in the same way that a river erodes a stone over many years and decades—just as how in the early decades of the twentieth century, the sheer power of what electricity could accomplish gradually overcame the bottlenecks of antiquated factory infrastructure, outdated workflows, and the conservatism of hidebound plant managers. This process, however, takes time: it took decades for electricity, among the most powerful of all general-purpose technologies, to start impacting productivity growth. AI will probably be much faster than that, not least because it can be agentic in a way that electricity cannot. But these bottlenecks are real and important and are obvious if you look at any part of the real world. And as long as those bottlenecks exist, no matter the level of AI capabilities, we should expect a real and powerful complementarity between human labor and AI, simply because the “human plus AI” combination will be more productive than AI alone.

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The fascinating Insights Of Robert Trivers

Trivers was one of the most—perhaps the most—influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His work should be much more widely known in social and behavioural sciences, in particular in economics, as Trivers’ intellectual approach is very much in line with a game theoretic understanding of social interactions.

It is hard to overstate the importance of his work. Einstein famously published four groundbreaking papers in 1905, a year often referred to as his “Annus mirabilis”, during which he revolutionised physics. Trivers might be said to have had a “Quinquennium Mirabile” for the five years between 1971 and 1976, during which he produced a series of ideas that revolutionised evolutionary biology.

Reciprocal altruism - 1971:

The human altruistic system is a sensitive, unstable one. Often it will pay to cheat: namely, when the partner will not find out, when he will not discontinue his altruism even if he does find out, or when he is unlikely to survive long enough to reciprocate adequately. And the perception of subtle cheating may be very difficult. Given this unstable character of the system, where a degree of cheating is adaptive, natural selection will rapidly favor a complex psychological system in each individual regulating both his own altruistic and cheating tendencies and his responses to these tendencies in others. As selection favors subtler forms of cheating, it will favor more acute abilities to detect cheating.

Parental investment -1972:

Since the female already invests more than the male, breeding failure for lack of an additional investment selects more strongly against her than against the male. In that sense, her initial very great investment commits her to additional investment more than the male’s initial slight investment commies him.

[—]

Critics of evolutionary theory sometimes argue that it does not make any predictions that can be tested and that it only rationalises what has already been observed. Trivers’ work is one of the best examples disproving this accusation. In his paper on parental investment, Trivers argues that the differences in behaviour between males and females should reflect the degree of asymmetry in their parental investment. As a result, animals with more parental investment asymmetry should show greater asymmetry than those with less, and if we ever find animals with role reversals, we should also observe reversals in strategies. And indeed, we observe that in animals with less asymmetry in parental investment, like swans, the differences between males and females are less noticeable. In the rare cases where male investments are larger, like in seahorses, where the females literally place their eggs in the belly of the male who incubates them, we observe a role reversal, with females courting males and competing for access to them.

Parent Offspring Conflict - 1974:

The offspring can cry not only when it is famished but also when it merely wants more food than the parent is selected to give. Likewise, it can begin to withhold its smile until it has gotten its way. Selection will then of course favor parental ability to discriminate the two uses of the signals, but still subtler mimicry and deception by the offspring are always possible.

[---]

Obviously, overall parents tend to love their children and children tend to love their parents, but Trivers showed—with a theory now largely supported by empirical research— that the whole picture is more complex, because there are always also elements of conflict in parent-offspring relations.

Self-deception - 1976:

In the preface to Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, Robert Trivers proposed a solution to this problem: our tendency to self-deceive, to think we are better than we are, may serve as a mechanism that enables us to deceive others more effectively. He wrote:

If … deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray – by the subtle signs of self-knowledge – the deception being practiced. —Trivers (1976)

Commenting on this assertion, psychologist Steven Pinker remarked, “This sentence... might have the highest ratio of profundity to words in the history of the social sciences”

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In a 2011 paper with Bill von Hippel, Trivers developed this idea further, listing how self-deception can help. When trying to deceive, people may face cognitive load (the cognitive work required to make sure a web of lies does not have glaring contradictions). Given that lying is a betrayal of trust and is sanctioned when it is found out, it is risky, and people can get nervous about being found out, possibly showing signs of nervousness. Finally, people might try to mask signs of nervousness, thereby also behaving in a way that indirectly suggests lying. Self-deception, by inducing people to believe in their own lies, so to speak, can eliminate these possible clues while leading others to believe the preferred story of the person self-deceiving.

Trivers’ theory of self-deception has been supported by empirical research (including research I have contributed to). It explains what seems to be one of the most irrational patterns of human behaviour as emerging from strategic incentives.

Trivers has been one of the most influential evolutionary biologists, and his papers are still worth reading today. His insights, published more than 50 years ago, are fascinating. They often align very well with economic theories of behaviour, and it is therefore regrettable that his ideas are not more well-known in economics, and in particular in behavioural economics.

A key feature of Trivers’ take across these contributions was to see that beneath the world of social interactions we observe, there are deep structures in terms of incentives that shape the game we play. Understanding these games and their structures helps us make sense of the seemingly endless complexity of human psychology and social dynamics. In several key contributions, Trivers helped lift the veil on the underlying logic of human behaviour.

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Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming

By roughly 14,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies across Europe had discovered dogs, scientists reported in two new papers, which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The studies provide the first definitive genetic evidence that dogs existed during the Paleolithic period, before humans developed agriculture.

The researchers, who used several approaches to analyze DNA extracted from ancient canine specimens, identified Paleolithic dogs at five different archaeological sites in Europe and Western Asia. The oldest of these dogs lived about 15,800 years ago, pushing back the oldest known genetic evidence of dogs by nearly 5,000 years.

These early dogs came from sites that extend from Britain to Turkey, and were associated with several very different hunter-gatherer populations. But the dogs themselves were closely related. Across the five sites, the dogs were more genetically similar than the humans were, the researchers found.

“The people are so different, but the dogs are very much the same,” said Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors on both new studies, which were conducted by large, international scientific teams.

The finding suggests that these early human societies were exchanging dogs or acquiring them from one another.

“It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around.” Dr. Larson said. “And it’s useful and it’s interesting and it’s probably cute.”

The research provides new insight into the early history of dogs, as well as the genetic legacy and the interspecies relationship that extends to today.

“It’s really a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of humans and dogs,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved in the research.

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The finding suggests that these early human societies were exchanging dogs or acquiring them from one another.

“It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around.” Dr. Larson said. “And it’s useful and it’s interesting and it’s probably cute.”

The research provides new insight into the early history of dogs, as well as the genetic legacy and the interspecies relationship that extends to today.

“It’s really a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of humans and dogs,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved in the research.

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Happy Brithday Saroo & Blue!

March 24th 2024; the day Saroo and Blue came to Max's home. This day became their birthday. 

Life hasn't been mundane ever since they came :-) 

Happy 9th birthday my little ones!

What Was The Very First Plant In The World?

The story of plants begins in the water. The earliest plantlike organisms were simple, tiny green life-forms such as algae. You can still see algae today as seaweed along beaches or as green slime on rocks in ponds.

Algae have lived in Earth’s oceans and lakes for over 1 billion years. They can make their own food, using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to create sugars. This process is called photosynthesis; it releases oxygen – the gas we need to breathe – as a byproduct.

At first, Earth’s atmosphere had very little oxygen. Over millions of years, photosynthesizing organisms like algae and some bacteria slowly released oxygen into the air. This change, sometimes called the Great Oxygenation Event, made it possible for larger and more complex life to evolve. Without oxygen-producing organisms, animals, including humans, could never have existed.

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Moving onto land was not easy. Water plants are supported by water and can absorb nutrients easily, but land plants faced new challenges. How would they avoid drying out? How could they stand upright without floating? How would they get water and nutrients from dry ground?

To survive, early plants evolved important new features. One key adaptation was a waxy coating, called a cuticle, which helped keep water inside the plant. Plants also developed stronger cell walls that allowed them to stand upright against gravity. Simple rootlike structures, called rhizoids, helped anchor plants to the ground and absorb water and minerals from the soil.

The earliest land plants were very small and simple. They looked similar to modern mosses, liverworts and hornworts, which still grow today in damp places like forest floors and stream edges. These plants did not have true roots or stems, and they stayed close to the ground. Fossils of early land plants, such as Cooksonia, date back to about 430 million years ago and show small branching stems only an inch or two tall.

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Happy 20th Birthday Max !

My everything would have been 20 today! 

20 years! 

Two insignificant creatures became one this day to make earth a little better place than the one we inherited. 

Happy Birthday Max! 

You know I talk to you every hour if not every moment of the day - I am in you and you are in me. 

Together we bought beauty, magic, awe, wonder, and peace into our lives and it will persist for eternity my love. 

I love you, I miss you every moment.

                                                                2009, Max's 3rd Birthday!

Underrated Ways To Change The World

Wonderful list here!!

Good Bye Robert Trivers

He was the only person, I wanted to meet but never met (although he lived in NJ).

Humanity hasn't scratched the surface of his work's; thank you for everything sir.