There is such a thing as degrees of advanced thinking.  For example, a professional mathematician is more advanced (in mathematics) than the average grade-schooler.  Define an intellectual realm, and a reasonable measure can be imagined for grading an individual's degree of advancement within it.

Now, I want to suggest that within a specific realm people are most interested in someone else's thoughts if their degrees of advancement are approximately the same.  Implicit in this statement is that a person's loss of interest in the other person is proportional to the percieved "proficiency discrepancy" - regardless of who is more proficient.

There are several interesting implications based on this simple hypothesis.  Before journeying into "implication land" let's consider some everyday examples of the hypothesized phenomenon.

Specific Examples of Hypothesis

To support my hypothesis that "like likes like" I will present examples from my life's experience.

Whenever I've reviewed a colleague's manuscript my interest level really wanes when the manuscript is hopeless.  I find myself neglecting to mark corrections, and I forego making suggestions.  The reading process speeds up, as if to complete the task more quickly in order to make a mere general comment of the manuscript's failings.  On the other hand, when the manuscript is good, and I understand everything the writer is writing, I strive harder to suggest improvements.  My review of such a manuscript resembles the process of working on one's own manuscripts during the "polishing phase."  Occasionally, I've been asked to review a manuscript that deals with something I'm unfamiliar with, and as I grope to understand it, and gradually realize that I am unequal to the task, my editorial comments wane, I lose interest, and I eventually give up.

Another example of my hypothesis concerns games:  card games, chess, ping pong, etc.  I strive the hardest with a comparable opponent.  I lose interest with the "beginner" - and lose hope with the champion.

Friendships based upon intellectual exchanges require that the intellectual development of the other person be comparable to my own, or somewhat more advanced.  I lose interest in people whose fundamental limit is easily seen to be lower than mine.  However, I can become interested in people who have ability that is undeveloped and may advance beyond mine.  I like being with people more advanced than myself in a subject, while recognizing that they may not be interested in explaining things to a novice.

Theoretical Case for Existence of Hypothesis

Before departing on journeys based on this hypothesis, it will be instructive to consider the reason people are like this.  The question is "Can being like this be adaptive?" - by which I mean "Does it reward genes that code for such behaviors?"  I think the answer is an easy "Yes."

A person's growth is optimized when they associate with people who are knowwledgeable or proficient in matters that we value and are still trying to master.  This can account for our interest in associating with our superiors.  But to account for a decline in our interest in associating with people far superior to us we must recognize that there is little prospect that those who are far superior to us will take an interest in helping us for the simple reason that we have nothing to offer them!  Thus, a mutually helpful association is one in which both individuals "bring something to the table" that has value to the other person, and this requirement is most likely to exist among "equals."  By "equals" I mean equal in overall advancement, which often means unequal in the details of knowledge or know-how.  The end result is that the details of knowledge or know-how constitute a useful exchange.  Over-arching fundamentals are unlikely to be exchanged since the opportunity for this would be likely only when one of the partners is greatly advanced in relation to the other.

Individuals are not necessarily designed to maximize growth.  Rather, individuals are designed to maximize the rewards to genes within a setting called the "ancestral environment."  In the AE humans lived in tribes. To the extent that tribes either prevailed or were decimated, genetic rewards took into account an individual's contribution to tribal viability.  Thus, a tribal artisan who knew how to construct good arrowheads would do his tribe a favor (and his genes, as well) by training an understudy in a way that preserved his skills for future generations of tribesmen.

Sociobiological accounts are possible for an individual's interest in growth, and a discriminating sharing of knowledge.  And it is theoretically possible to understand why an individual shuns those who are far more advanced than themselves.  Schopenhauer recognized that human nature is practical in wanting only those things that are concievably attainable when he wrote "...the ills that have once become joined to our individuality, or the good things that must of necessity always be denied us, are treated with indifference..."  He believed that human endeavors are aimed at things that are just within our reach, since all lesser things have already been attained, all great things are beyond attainment, and we are left with the sole prospect of grasping for things that are barely feasible.  He intuitively understood the thesis of this essay, that human associations are predicated upon an approximate equality of ability.

Implications

Now, for some journeys into lands of thought that are made possible by the recognition that it is human nature to seek associations with people having a similar intellectual advancement to our own.

Journey #1

It must be rare for things of great importance to be exchanged between people in a personal association.  The exchange of something profound is more likely to occur through an impersonal medium, such as a book.  Indeed, as I consider my intellectual development the greatest advances have come from reading.  Conversations have served to provide the details, and to consolidate my paradigm advances; but I cannot think of an instance when a conversation led to a paradigm advance.

Even if Edward O. Wilson had been my neighbor, I doubt that our conversation would have wandered into the territory of evolution occuring at the level of the genes, which is the basis for the sociobiological paradigm - the greatest idea of the 20th Century.  It was from his book that my thoughts on this matter congealed into a concrete theoretical framework.  This paradigm advance came from a book, written by someone far more advanced than myself; it did not come from a conversation with an associate.

Journey #2

Why would an "alien" be interested in humans?  Our intellects would be so different that if they were less "intelligent" than us our interest in them would be as specimens, whereas if they were recognizably more intelligent than us most humans would be instinctively disinterested in an intellectual exchange.  If the same "laws of sociobiology" govern the alien's nature, they also would be less interested in us as partners for intellectual exchange than as specimens.  Could this view explain why SETI has been unsuccessful to date?  Could it be used as an argument  for designing SETI strictly as a program to intercept signals used by them to communicate across large distances between communities of the same alien species, intended for themselves as opposed to receipt by a different species such as us?

The laws of sociobiology can be overcome by "domesticating" a species.  To date, domestication is conducted by an intelligent species upon a less intelligent species that can be of service to the domesticating species.  There is hope that humans will someday be able to domesticate themselves!  By this I mean that humans will adopt eugenic practices to improve not only physical health and intelligence but also behavioral predispositions - i.e., "human nature."  Who knows whether or not such a long-term endeavor would ever lead to a species that takes an interest in "fellowship" or communication with aliens far inferior to themselves.

Some would argue that the very existence of a human SETI program is evidence that some humans are interested in "fellowship" and communication with individuals far superior to themselves.  I question this!  It is difficult to imagine an alien who is really very different from ourselves.  In my imagination the alien is basically someone who has a perfect memory, can invert matrices in his head, but is otherwise like me.  He will have a personality, and it will be likeable, of course.

But how realistic is it to expect an alien to have a likeable personality?  A human personality is likeable for reasons that sociobiologists have barely scratched the surface to understand.  As I contemplate this daunting task, I am frightened by the prospect that after a few exchanges the alien would come across to us as unlikeable!  Our "projection" of likeable human traits to the alien is unwarranted.  It is more likely that we will be dumbfounded by the alien, both intellectually and on a personal level.  What a great disappointment this non-meeting of minds could be!

Journey #3

Why are the uneducated masses not clamoring for instruction by modern experts who have finally mastered many arcane subjects?  We act as if the human brain is evolved for the purpose of understanding things.  How naive!  The human mind is fashioned for the sole purpose of serving a genetic agenda, an agenda that can most efficiently be described as securing an immortal future for the genes that assemble us.  It is only when a category of insight has served this genetic agenda that the genes have provided intellectual power for it.

The mind is a terrible thing to trust, and we mistakenly trust that its goal is to understand things for the sake of understanding.  For that neotenous minority of humans called "scientists" this is an easy mistake to make, since our individual ontological development is arrested at the juvenile stage of wanting to know everything in preparation for that nasty life the genes have in mind for us.  We have to be forcefully reminded that the hoi poloi doesn't care about new knowledge, or greater understandings, or even the SETI project.  If an average human were to confront an alien, how embarrassing that encounter would be!  But the average human in that encounter would walk away disappointed that the alien didn't know who won the World Series!

The scientist smiles a forgiving smile upon having these embarassing things pointed out.  "Yes," the scientist replies, "but we humans are on an upward trajectory, and it's just a matter of time until all humans become respectable."  I used to be an optimist, but I've reluctantly become a realist.  Civilization is a precarious thing, and we are lucky to be living within one (Rise and Fall of Civilizations).

The point of this journey is to suggest that every SETI civilization, if any exist, must overcome evolutionary forces that work to thwart its continued upward evolution.  And an upward evolution of a species requires that logical parts of a brain be allowed to continue their evolutionary march toward subjugating the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain.  And that this desired scenario is not in the genetic interest, since individuals who are logically endowed are a threat to the genes in the gene pool out of which these few individuals have sprung.  For humans, this 50,000 year conflict has taken the form of a fast-evolving left-brain taking over functions from a slow-evolving right-brain!  The left-brain's accidental new creation, called "civilization," is on precarious trajectories, because a restive right-brain is intent on safeguarding the genetic agenda by surreptitiously undermining the individual liberation which was a precondition for each civilization's creation and is a requirement for its continued existence.

The indifference of the various strata of society to each other, as manifested by the preference of association which I have termed "like likes like," is an impediment to the continued upward evolution of a species.  A deeper interpretation of this apparent personal association preference is to be found at the level of genes evolving in competition with each other.  In my opinion, this is a problem for those who believe that sentient species will evolve throughout the universe, and to my knowledge it has not been dealt with.

Any endeavor to understand the human dilemma must start by acknowledging that individual humans are created by genes for getting a gene job done; we have not been created for the purpose of having rewarding individual lives and creating civilizations that meet individual needs.  If we personalize any other than the genetic agenda we risk being "discovered" by the genes (through reductionist mechanisms) in a way that will eventually marginalize our hard-won liberations.

No other species exhibits the immense breadth of ability, from the best 1 % of individuals to the worst 1%, for anything that can be measured.  This is partly because we are now a fast-evolving species, and some gene pools have been "left behind."  More importantly, though, individual endowment is so diverse because we have become a specializing species.  The human tribe has created "culture" and this culture provides an environment that has many niches.  Each newly created cultural niche that evolves represents a new opportunity for genetic occupation.  But every adaptation to a niche comes with a price of lost adaptation for things not needed by the niche which formerly were essential.  This leads to a poplulation of great diversity of types, where an individual may be very good at one thing, and terribly deficient in others.

Diversity may be wonderful, but artisans tend to associate with artisans, warriors tend to associate with warriors, because some of the tribes vitality requires that personality types discover each other and form the associations for performing specific tasks.  It is natural that artisans will work together, that warriors will wage war together, and these separate missions that contribute to tribal vitality does not require that the various specialists intermix.  This new dynamic empowers the tribes that adopt it, and those that have failed to adopt the new rules get left behind.  The downside to living with culture, and an occasional civilization, is that those winning tribes enter an evolutionary landscape with which they have only introductory experience.  They are unknowingly vulnerable to genetic forces that pull them down, dissolving the civilization and returning them to a more gene-friendly medieval environment.
 
 
 
 

This site opened:  November 10, 2001.  Last Update:  November 10, 2001