[info] [technoliberation] Re: Fairness was an evolutionary advantage for homo sapiens

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Nerissa <nerissa_ab at yahoo.com> -----

From: Nerissa <nerissa_ab at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:57:39 -0000
To: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [technoliberation] Re: Fairness was an evolutionary advantage for homo sapiens
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Hi everyone,

The alphaøsy blog at http://www.cognition.ens.fr/~alphapsy/blog/?
2006/10/10/83-ultimatum-game has a related post that may be of 
interest. The "I wish I'd thought of it" great subject heading 
is "Life's so unfair (says the dorso-lateral part of the prefrontal 
cortex)."

While the author disagrees with the interpretation, scientific 
findings suggest that the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is most 
important for determination of fairness.

The links below furthermore indicate that this area of the brain is 
most involved in creative intelligence. Which has been shown to be 
damaged by religious upbringing.

Leading me to conclude that the purpose of organized religion is to 
instill a lack of sense of fairness in people so that they may be 
manipulated by those in charge of the religions*. Consider 
Christianity. The key tenet being one works themselves to death so 
they can be rewarded after death. On the way there they can give 
their earnings to their leaders and oppress people not of their faith 
since their lack of fairness encourages such behavior. This 
strengthens the religion and is good for the leaders but the 
resultant lack of creativity and fairness leads to things like the 
Dark Ages as well as the hopelessly underdeveloped overly religious 
Middle East.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/26/10023
...involvement of left posterior DLPFC in perceptual decision making 
transcends both task and response specificity, thereby enabling a 
flexible link among sensory evidence, decision, and action. 

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?
id=1163343&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618
Analysis of the left hemisphere brain regions encompassed by the 
lesions of these patients found that poor performance was linked to 
left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage. We propose that patients 
with left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lesions have difficulty 
making a decision requiring the conceptual comparison of nonverbal 
stimuli, manipulation of select representations of potential 
solutions, and are unable to appropriately inhibit a response in 
keeping with the final goal. 

*Note that the only way this works well is if the religious leaders 
do not believe in their religions. Can anyone doubt this premise? 
Look at the widespread abuse of religious tenets by religious leaders 
as with Priests and small children.

Nerissa

 --- In technoliberation at yahoogroups.com, "Hughes, James J." 
<James.Hughes at ... wrote: 
 
 ...Economic theory has contrived a species it calls Homo economicus-
a "rational maximiser" who grabs what he can for himself. But, 
curiously, he makes no appearance in the ultimatum game, a classic 
economics experiment. 
 
 In this game, two players, a proposer and a responder, divide a 
reward. It could be a cake. It could be cash. It could even be a 
bunch of grapes. The game is so named because the proposition is an 
ultimatum. The responder can either accept the division or reject it. 
If he rejects it, both players receive nothing. 
 
 Homo economicus would accept any division in which his share was not 
zero. But that is not what happens. Scores of studies have run the 
ultimatum game across cultures and ages. Universally, people reject 
any share lower than 20%-apparently to punish the greed of the 
proposer. People do not act like Homo economicus. Instead, they are 
the arbiters of fairness. ...



 
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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