De Waal & Hrdy in New York City & Obsessions about Genes

De Waal & Hrdy in New York City, 3/24/99
James Brody, Ph.D.
3/30/99

The following is continuation of the series -- "Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Reproductive Behavior" -- at the Hunter School of Social Work on East 79th in Manhattan. The talks are summarized here and my remarks follow. I'm grateful to Walter and Dori LeCroy, M.D., the CUNY Faculty Development Program, and the CUNY Ph.D. Programs in Psychology, Biology, and Anthropology both for their contributions that made the series possible and for making it open to the public at no charge.

Frans de Waal, Ph.D.,* Founder of the Living Links Center, Emory University
"Bonobo or Not Bonobo: Why Models of Human Evolution Cannot Continue to Ignore our Sexy Relative." (Approximately 80 people attended Dr. de Waal's presentation.)

Chimpanzees were thought to be peaceful creatures that studied Rousseau until we learned again that Cain slew Abel when we discovered "chimpanzee violence" in the 1970s. Today, we recognize chimp abilities for raids (Richard Wrangham, Demonic Males) and for hunting (2) as well as empathy and reconciliation (Frans de Waal, Good Natured, and Chimpanzee Politics) as similar to our own. Chimpanzees are presently identified as our closest relative on the basis of our mutual similarities in gene content and social behavior.

Recent observations of Bonobos -- that live just across the Zaire River from chimpanzee groups-- suggest that they might be regarded as a separate species from the chimpanzee. Indeed, Bonobo physical characteristics and their use of sex for trade, resolving tension, and just for the fun of it may put them closer to the human branch of primates. De Waal suggested a "flexible human lineage" that result in an array of traits in different niches.

Physical: Chimps have tremendous upper body strength, thick arms, and relatively constant ear size from birth through maturity. Bonobos show signs of "neotenization," having a thinner neck, more mass in their legs, longer legs and a more upright stance, a frontally positioned vagina, a more human larynx (and adult vocal patterns that are more similar to humans and to infant chimps) and minor physical traits that are customarily thought to reflect immaturity, traits that are retained into adulthood by Bonobos but not by chimps.

Sex -- Female Bonobos cycle every 64 days and are receptive for 48 of them; females are receptive for about half of their life. Chimp females cycle every 35 days, show swelling for 5-10 days, and are receptive 5% of their adulthood. Bonobos have frontal intercourse, exhibit vocal intensities that suggest female orgasm, and make eye contact during intercourse. A Bonobo -- except for mothers and sons -- will have sex with any other Bonobo regardless of the partner's sex, position, or opening. Infanticide is unknown (lack of observation or missing due to other factors?) in Bonobos, perhaps because continuous sexual receptivity obscures paternity.

De Waal found that Bonobos in captivity (San Diego Zoo) are most likely to have sex just after a fight and during feeding -- perhaps a resolution of tension. Bonobos in captivity fight as often as chimps but reconcile faster -- approximately 50% of quarrels end within 10 minutes. For example, a tiff between an older and a younger male will end with eye contact, embracing with eye contact, and the older male's masturbating the younger one. One slide was of two younger Bonobos having intercourse in missionary style, the male held a piece of orange in each hand and gave one to the female after climax. Amy Parish, Ph.D. (University College, London) -- a former student of de Waal's and Hrdy's and present for these talks -- concluded that 85% of Bonobo sex is for political reasons but older females are more socially dominant even though of smaller size and don't barter sex to get an orange but take it for themselves.

De Waal speculated that increased female receptivity reduces male sexual competition and leads to greater female dominance. For example, female chimps don't share food with males but wait until the male is finished eating; female Bonobos do share. Indeed, the females will sometimes chase males away from food and will inflict serious injury on them.

De Waal noted there is "no good explanation" for these differences between chimps and Bonobos. Resource availability varies and may be a clue. Food is more abundant in Bonobo ranges and allow females to travel in groups and form alliances with each other and sometimes against males; food is scarce in chimp habitats and females must forage separately in order to support themselves and an offspring. Chimp and Bonobo ranges are separated by the Zaire River which is 2 miles wide in places.

Systematic field comparisons are underway by Takayoshi Kano, a former chimpanzee specialist who is now observing Bonobo. Kano -- strongly praised by de Waal as perhaps the only specialist to invest major time and ability into the study of both chimpanzee and Bonobo under field conditions -- sees "incredible differences" between the two groups. Although females are the same 86% of the males' size in chimps, Bonobos, and humans and there is no difference in skull sizes, there are huge differences. De Waal noted that fossil remains are our current data source about our Pleistocene ancestors and an archeologist examining Bonobo and chimpanzee skulls would never suspect the presence, degree, or content of behavioral differences between the two groups. Likewise, we know and may never know about possible behavior differences that once lay inside identical dried crania.
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Comments:

*Dr. De Waal organized the brilliant symposium "Origins" at the Living Links Center, Emory University, held January 15-16, 1999. Several of us trekked through frozen airports and over iced roads to get to Atlanta to hear E.O. Wilson, Richard Wrangham, Dorothy Cheney, William McGrew, Steven Pinker, and De Waal himself. De Waal indicated to me before his talk at Hunter on the 24th that the Links Symposium would not be repeated. Harvard? Texas? Somebody PLEASE adopt this. DORI?!!!

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Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, University of California-Davis
"The Optimal Number of Fathers: Evolution, Demography and History in the Shaping of Female Mate Preferences."
Approximately 100 people were present and seemed to be a more mature audience than was present for talks on earlier dates by Crawford, Trivers, Buss and Gangestad.

Mating: Mosaics of Payoffs and Female Gambits

Hrdy challenged dated, stereotyped models of evolutionary psychology which described a male strategy of spreading gametes and a female strategy of collecting gametes but restricted to one source and experiencing great pain, inflicted by males, if caught gathering outside of her boundaries.

Data from H&G societies as well as from other species in regard to variations in female sexual strategies, showed that females "play" and in ways that improve both their access to "good genes" as well as their immediate economic benefits. Formal polyandry -- one woman, several husbands -- rarely occurs and under very harsh environmental conditions; however, the informal games between wives and delivery men or police officers is very common whether in the Amazon or Antwerp.

In one South American tribe, women may have 24 lovers in a single afternoon, some of the trysts in public. In another, the Aache, there are no single mothers -- substantial provisioning even past weaning is needed to rear a child and 60% of Aache males have been involved in polyandrous arrangements. Aache fathers, however, lose partnership and sexual interests in a women just after she produces a new baby. Fewer "fathers" is associated with higher rates of infanticide, illness, and lowered survival of children until age 15. Survival of her children depends, therefore, on her having alliances with more than one male.

Aache mothers are said to cover their bets even when monogamous because of the uncertain quality of their lives. About 63% of Aache children are ascribed to multiple fathers and the effect of layers of sperm donated by each one. A newly pregnant Aache female immediately seduces a good hunter. Aache women consider 2.1 to be the ideal number of fathers, a number that may correspond to the extra efforts needed to feed her and her child.*

Hrdy's argument -- that females play for both economic and genetic benefit -- was reinforced by examples from several non-human species.
- Female prairie dogs who have more male partners have more and healthier offspring; larger mothers have larger litters and such mothers also have more partners.
- Female macaques have different patterns of receptivity as a function of the number of available males. A choice of men keeps the lady in a longer phase of receptivity; one male with several females is associated with the females showing brief peaks in receptivity. It appears that she has different strategies that vary with the amount of female competition that she faces.
- Primates have hidden ovulation but a number of them advertise with massive, pink genital swellings. Gorillas, Orangutans, and human females do not. (Hrdy's slide of nude primates, including a human female, showed little difference in mass or location between the glutes of the human female and the genital swellings of chimps and Bonobo! Do both appeal to similar sensory mechanisms in males? And would chimp males be attracted to larger bumpsters on human females?)
- In several species, having multiple male partners is associated with larger offspring, more of them, less infanticide, more provisioning by several males, and greater survival of children until they reach adolescence. A new male often slays the children from the mother's previous relationship and gets her pregnant earlier than might have occurred had she remained with her former partner and his children. Thus, she will experience extra pregnancies over the course of her life and before she has recovered from earlier ones.

Hrdy pointed out that nomadic Hunting and Gathering groups do not accumulate wealth and a female can have alliances and dalliances with many men. Sedentary groups accumulate wealth, primarily by older males who then enforce patriarchy to their gain and the female's loss. Since her need for "good genes" continues, she may be more circumspect about her partnerships and male jealousy more obvious. There is an inverse correlation between infidelity and social class -- blue collar communities appear to have more families with children from multiple fathers in European and American communities.

Child Support in Boyertown

Hrdy's talk occurred just after a man from Boyertown, Pennsylvania -- 15 miles away from me -- petitioned relief from court from paying child support because DNA tests showed that he could not possibly be the biological father of "his" 12 y.o. son. Despite his evidence, he lost. Gerald Miscovich did not want his $30K past child support returned but he DID want to invest future resources in his new partner and the children they might have. However, Pennsylvania law -- since the 1500s -- stipulates that a husband is responsible for supporting any children that come from his wife, that he is the presumed father of all such.

Hrdy, glad that the case was mentioned, had not come to any conclusions about it.

My own conjecture is that NOT excusing him from support will probably encourage future mate guarding and DNA testing could be become an extension of mate guarding by males. DNA testing MIGHT shift female reproductive strategies IF husbands don't have to underwrite the offspring from wive's affairs.

I predict that NO significant changes will occur. My male clients with these dilemmas almost never confront their wife; the economic costs and loss of self esteem are too great, and most of these guys -- getting a bit older and not particularly wealthy -- would have difficulty replacing her. So, "Mum(my)'s the word" even if there were several possible Daddums; women with "good genes" -- see below -- wanna' and are gonna' have fun and Hrdy could have stayed home to collect the identical data without eroding a vanishing culture.
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* I recall a few of my ladies clients who had "challenging" kids and neglectful husbands and who seemed unusually dependent on my suggestions. A reflection of the same tactics exhibited by Aache mothers? On the other hand, I'm never attracted to one of my depressed female clients; perhaps a protection by my preferences for vitality and one shared by the Aache male? However, my reactions are opposite for female hygienists and nurses who tend me. Data needed!

Sideshows

Hrdy had a large audience but probably didn't pull it all by herself. The NY Times published a snide article about "evo psychos" by a Times staff writer about a month earlier. The article coincided with the writer's new book; she was also in the audience to listen quietly to Hrdy. (There are rumors that Helena Cronin had already skewered the book and the Times wouldn't publish the review!) The Times and several more abstract handmaidens to Hrdy's ideas have greater import than her talk did.

Still, Hrdy's talk raised a number of concurrent obsessions for me, a few of them are sketched below in regard to the overlap of many "male" and "female" traits, our use of the term "genes" and perhaps needing to find a less difficult concept at this stage of our science, and the dilemmas that we face in regard to "genes" and our language about them.

Female reproductive loss in exchange for male gains has its mirror. Men are also forced to conform, both by other men and by women in varied rites that demand we prove ourselves. Fellow men require us to hanging from thongs, experience scarification, accumulate decorations, and test our pain and drug tolerance perhaps in order to screen out the weak and to enhance standing of the "fit" aka, the built, coordinated, symmetricals. Women do likewise at dances, parties, in school, and at work as they assess health and political skills of applicants.

Men are also forced to conform by mothers and school teachers. It can be argued that most schools are feminine setting that stress language skills, sitting skills, and being sensitive to the feelings of others. Males systematically get in more trouble than females and are forced -- by our mother's concerns that we not embarrass them -- to act for 12 years in ways contrary to our nature. Many guys that I know do better academically once in college where their learning became self-selected and they took courses more consistent with their personal talents and less consistent with what mother believed to be important.

My hunch is that females also gain at the expense of male reproductive opportunity, that nature's equations are in balance much of the time, that evolution is never still in regard to the arms races that continually redefine the terms of cooperation between competing entities whether microbes and humans or women and men.

Darwin's Ledger and Epigenetic Grout for Hrdy's Mosaic

First, girls WILL play -- certainly yesterday's news a very long time ago before there was Margaret Mead, a very long time indeed. The more subtle notion -- perhaps a rationalization but perhaps not -- is the suggestion (from Buss and Gangestad among others!) that male traits are a result of female tactics. That guys puff up and beat each other in order to impress women. De Waal also carries this banner to the extent that he feels Bonobo females -- with their extended receptivity -- both accrue personal dominance and lessen male competition simply by sharing their bodies more easily and with nearly everyone, including each other. A Puck might suggest a trial study in Manhattan or HBES, I admire De Waal's hypothesis and the way that he tacked it to female alliances and their feeding patterns that are perhaps secondary to niche characteristics.

Next, Hrdy, a very bright and lively individual herself as well as one who projects humility about her hard and careful work, faces an array of "just so" possibilities that arise as you begin to assemble explanations from her observations that involve multiple societies and multiple species. Even though I like her and would like to know her better, the specter of self-selected information is her bane and lover although no more so than for most of us correlation managers. However, Charles Crawford (Hunter School of Social Work Seminar, 2/17/99) reminded us that correlations don't make causation apparent. Sometimes, correlations can be fine. Astronomers like this arena and give us magnificent theory and prediction; EP findings may acquire a similar luster over the decades, however, we're not there yet.

In this instance, differences between female strategies and male reliability or food supply may be attributable to "good genes" or to women's (and men's) possessing several strategies for solving a problem (as modeled by Crawford at the first meeting in this series) in different environmental conditions. Environment "tunes" genetic outcomes and genes have a lot to do with choosing and modifying their environment.

Along these lines, Geoff Miller (coming to Hunter next month!) has talked about "liveliness" as a positive factor in mate selection (Crawford & Krebs, 1998, Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology). Further, "liveliness" in humans is associated with better physical coordination, less need for sleep, greater sexual activity and with more partners, earlier first children, more quarrels with parents, more social manipulativeness, and somewhat earlier death.

This next speculation bridges several realms of data that are joined more by "consilience" than by systematic PCR analyses; it, however, is also consistent with Gangestad's observations on human female mating strategies -- that EPCs and shifts in attraction to varied male features occur in a subset of women and not in all of them. I suspect that Hrdy's polyandrous prairie dogs, grasshoppers, and Aache ladies share the same good genes as Gangestad's EPCs, genes that, if not buffered, sometimes produce bipolar disorder in humans. Are the non-roamers beaten and frightened? Or, genetically different from the start? My own bet is with the latter.

Darwin's Ledger -- men and women have competing interests but no more so than between 2 men or 2 women in regard to resource acquisition and social standing. Separating political (survival?) interests from reproductive interests may be helpful. Hrdy's conclusion -- that male domination exerts a cost on the female needs further consideration. There is another side to the accounts and concepts of non-shared environment and of "tuning" help us balance the totals.

(a) There is a continuing political and economic barter that occurs between each of us, regardless of sex. It occurs every day of our lives from birth when the nurses tell little boys to "shape up" but hug little girls in maternity wards and lasts until our personal dotages.

(b) Niche variations -- in economic conditions, social standing, age, hormonal state, medications, seasons, temperature conditions -- will change the set points of such negotiation.

(c) The girls DO shape the guys during child rearing and elementary school when peer contests become important sculptors. Despite mom's and teacher's tactical advantages for 12 years, males DO become male even if the ladies make us unhappy about it.

(d) Females also advance themselves at cost to other females and for an audience of those same females. Shunning, teasing, and competition to be in one particular alliance or another are intense and the girls are often without mercy. It may also be true that inhibited females calibrate their standing in regard to men but first experiencing their standing in regard to other females.

(e) Non-shared environment acts and we neglect it -- inhibited women MAY be selecting more powerful contacts for their own gain. (I've met numerous "enabler" females and males who get more recognition and economic support because they are paired with a conduct disorder. They experience abuse but they are ahead in regard to their net impact on other people. Instead of depending on everyone, they only have to depend on one person and gain tribute from us as a price for intervening on our behalves. Someone's Blessed Virgin did it but was not the first one, many still ask Her to do it.

(f) The less inhibited, more lively, defiant, manipulative females -- and possibly more symmetrical and likely to be in Gangestad's group that goes on follicular romps -- form their own alliances, push themselves to excellence while generating post-hoc explanations that begin with "because" or "in spite of." De Waal's older lady Bonobos take the orange slice regardless of being only 85% of the male's size; diminutive Natalie Angier writes hostile books without asking permission from some MAN.

The point? Hrdy's thought about males gaining at female cost may sometimes be misleading or have things backwards.

A procedural issue -- the audience for Hrdy was significantly different than that for Buss and for Gangestad. Her group was larger and older and wore more suits and jackets; they also missed the earlier talks. I was surprised that Hrdy seemed nervous, stumbling in her speech. However, she relaxed as soon as the question period started and I suspect that she had attempted to walk a line, defending evolutionary approaches but excluding older versions of male/female mating strategies, stereotypes now expressed currently by one or two female writers, making some bucks and "tattling on the boys to the rest of the class and so teacher overhears." David made his belief clear that our arrays of strategies are common to human males and females and that some characteristics of either sex are "driven" by characteristics of the other. Unfortunately, stereotyping and the "us/them chip" are more likely under seriatum conditions such as these and a manifestation of non-shared environment -- that is, we go to talks that agree with our passions. It would be wonderful to have David and Sarah on the same stage at the same time; their data and interpretations are mutually consistent -- aside from a possible dig given about questionnaire methods vs. field observations. (Do we suspect that Universal Human Nature produces Universal Social Desirability? Should Margaret Mead have relied on questionnaires?)

Other Sideshows.

Genes: Intervening Variable or Hypothetical Construct?

Hrdy (and Gangestad and perhaps Buss also) referred to a "good genes" model of sexual mating strategies for males and for females. Darwin missed the significance of Mendel; Morgan, Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Huxley, Mayr, Simpson, Hamilton, and Trivers did not. Neither did Richard Dawkins. Genes appear to be dynamic, high turnover events and with large chunks that have unknown functions. Further, most of us are interested in continuous, not binary, traits. We might get excited if we had either a nose or no nose; such is rare and we generally track sizes and shapes of noses instead. Medical disorders are often traced to missing "gene(s)" but the behavioral stuff, per Mike Bailey (Crawford and Krebs, 1998) arises from teams of 3-10 active members.-- An implied digital event is likely to be comprised of 3-10 cooperating elements, none of which have we seen.

The older days considered an idea to be an "intervening variable" if you made it up to help your thinking even if there was no possibility of your ever seeing the variable itself. "Hypothetical constructs" were those ideas for which you pretended a physiological base to exist and about which you were reasonably optimistic that you would someday see, smell, and squish it between your gloved fingers.

"Genes" so far and for many domains of EP have been more like intervening variables because we reach conclusions without pointing to specific genes; if so, we might have more intellectual freedom if we consider non-gene models when we try to account for the rich texture of human conduct and our experiences of it. We will also suffer fewer embarrassments when our shabby efforts are compared to astronomers who infer black holes but never see one.

Signal Detection Theory

I suggest that we consider a supplemental model for the time, one that avoids the either/or stereotypes that are so easily misunderstood in relation to "a gene for" but respects our addictions to "genes" and being part of a dramatic frontier. (Did John Milton anticipate us when he commented that "they also serve who only stand and wait"?)

One option is a signal detection model as introduced by Swets, Tanner, and Birdsall (STB) in the late '60s and applied to psychophysics. You probably remember that psychophysics studied our detection of very tiny events and tried to discover absolute thresholds for sensory activation in vision, hearing, and touch. Psychophysics -- like many evolution studies -- relied on verbal responses and studied both binary responses and sorting tasks. However, contrary to expectations, absolute thresholds were tremendously variable until ST&B offered a crucial distinction -- that between "detection" and the "decision to report." As it turns out, "detection" is routinely very very tiny -- about 3 photons for light -- but the decision piece varies tremendously as a function of the matrix of consequences for the conditions of stimulus present/absent in combination with detected/undetected. For example, if you are a frightened sophomore working off your requirements for an introduction to psychology and if you land in a dark room with flashing tiny lights and a dour experimentalist, you will be VERY sure that a light is on before you report it. Inattention is more forgivable than lying -- at least it was in Fechner's day.

Signal detection approaches produce a curve of "decisions" -- a "receiver operating characteristic" (ROC) -- that varies with modality and outcomes. If we substitute "trait" (male sexual jealousy) for "signal present/absent" and "resources and social outcomes" for consequences, the model begs to be adopted and we can accept that sexual jealousy is present in both males and females and will display varied intensities in relationship to age, income, past histories, and whatever else interests us. After all, we can describe the behavior of our radio under different conditions but without discussing transistors and we know the rhapsodies on our favorite compact disk are epiphenomena of silver bits; we can enjoy our behavior without transforming it into a "gene" quite so often. That is, we may continue to talk about genes while ROCs keep us closer to our data.

Genes and their Baggage

I'm personally not sure that we're ready for these ideas and write them with some worry. Memories of Germany are part of my fear, Ed Wilson's experiences in the 1970s are another. My intention is NOT to offend but my greater and opposing fear is that our choosing to remain ignorant of genes almost guarantees their driving us in surprising ways in response to environmental -- geological or social -- changes. However, there are some nasty dilemmas if we continue to account for analog behavioral and physical traits as the outcome of digital events such as "genes" but invoke "culture" when we need it.

-- Gangestad and Hrdy (and Miller?) talk about "good genes," a phrase that begs for someone to get upset by that language. What may be happening in regard to "genes" is that women (and men) are most attracted to "good outputs." Gangestad noted in his talk that the continued variability in human traits is puzzling, that some mechanisms must exist to account for the continued existence of trait variability. He suggested mutation as one possibility, genes being less than a stable structure (Kauffman, 1992) is another. Instead of saying women look for good genes, they could be accurately described as conducting their personal eugenics program, cleaning out the "bad" ones over successive partners. After all, drosophila should be perfect by now since 10% of the males produce 100% of the kids. Are the girls choosing new genes or non-defective existing ones? Lawyers, female mating strategies, or cellular apoptosis -- the functional equivalents to a bulldozer in the older sections of Rome. Plausible tactics but not prettily described to people who are fond of their personal irregularities! Given that "good" is defined by outcomes, contexts and time frames, we should drop "good" altogether.

-- Chimps and Bonobos are isolated geographically, a prime factor in the formation of two species (Mayr, 1976). The Zaire River puts a 2 mile fence between 2 societies of ape. Human societies are also mutually isolated but are not considered to be separate species despite differences in many physical and social characteristics and reproductive practices. "Animals" are two species even if they might produce viable offspring; people are not. We defend our inconsistency by noting that the range of variability in genetic codes within any human group exceeds that seen between human groups.

The problem is still with us however, in regard to possible genetic foundations for human differences because the range of variability in that exists in gene sequences has not been translated into information about what sequences have what outputs. One gene in 50,000 may regulate the size of our sphenoid bone and guide the slope of our face and brow. As Peter Frost has noted, it is not how many genes are the same or different but WHICH genes are the same or different.

Second, "nonshared environment" IS with us as a poorly assessed concept that will eventually comfort us or be considered as the "Dark Side of the Force." There are suggestions from twin research that we need to consider 4 sources of influence on variance in outcomes -- genetic, shared environment, nonshared environment, and error. Plomin, et al. (Behavioral Genetics, 1997) estimate that shared environment accounts for 0% of the variance that is observed in outcomes for some personality tests. Again, that's ZERO PERCENT. The implication is that attributing differences in human outcomes to differences in cultural experience becomes less tenable than before. Notions such as "tuned" responses to resource availability, weather, social standing, time of life, or hormonal status make more sense.

Nonshared environment may produce 2 reproductive casualties (I have NO expectation that our current generation will adapt to or adopt the concept but our children might.) Anthropologists may stop using "culture" to explain differences between societies. Differences in "culture" may translate into differences in physical environments and the varied responses of subtle genetic differences in the management of environments. If you examine functional relationships and functional skills of people, then Stephen J. Whosis was wrong, the "tape" might be replayed and with outcomes that do not vary beyond "noise." ("Culture" still has an important role, comparable to that played by our memories, parents, and genes -- that of buffering response variability from generation to generation and between individuals of the same generation in a common society.)

If we stick with genes, we will have to acknowledge the possibility of systematic genetic differences between human groups AND THAT SUCH DIFFERENCES ARE HELPFUL. Eventually, we may understand that we are different and it's useful that we're different, that diversity of genes as well as of customs is a protection for our species. Most importantly, we need to grasp the idea that "GOOD GENES" ARE "GOOD" ONLY IN PARTICULAR CONTEXTS AND FOR PARTICULAR DURATIONS; SHIFT THE CONTEXTS AND ANOTHER SET HAS THE ADVANTAGE by the ghostly standard of reproductive success. (Driving any human trait into extinction is highly unlikely short of nuclear incidents and meteors because most of our traits are outcomes from multiple causal sequences. How many of our past strategies are still encoded in my typing fingers' cells, waiting for severe environmental disruptions in order to again function? It also follows that "genocide" is NOT about genes but is a convenient excuse in battles to control territory and wealth.)

AGAIN, I'm personally not sure that we're ready for these ideas and write them with some worry. Memories of Germany are part of my fear, Ed Wilson's experiences in the 1970s are another. My intention is NOT to offend or create division between us. My greater and opposing fear is that our choosing to remain ignorant of genes almost guarantees their driving us in surprising ways in response to environmental -- geological or social -- changes.

Useful Outputs of a Combined Gene/ROC Approach

I'm told that "tuning" has been used by geneticists since the '30s; it seems to apply to many of our descriptions of genes and settings. (A review by J. Maynard Smith in Nature highly praises a book by Enrico Coen, The Art of Genes: How Organisms Make Themselves, for comparing genetic mechanisms as working in a manner similar to an artist who works without a plan but who continuously interacts with his paint and changes direction in response to what it does.)

-- Varied behavior will be expressed by an individual at different times of life, the day, the month, or the year and after varied social victories and losses. There will be male and female overlaps and extremes in the behavior of either. Thus, some men will be "sensitive" and women will partake in Wrangham's "Chimp War Parties," perhaps working to destroy targets by destroying social standing and not by immediate homicide. Someone noted that a chimp alone is soon dead; exclusion, gossip, ridicule, and shunning can be lethal even if legal.

-- Observations such as those reported by McGuire and Troisi (Darwinian Psychiatry) are less surprising. The status of male vervets and their response to changes in the availability of serotonin seems to be entirely dependent on the presence and supportive behaviors of females.

-- Many effects of medications for psychological distress can be described in terms of adjustments in social standing. There is no change in genes but the proximate foundation for medication effects may well be activation of some genetic outputs and suppression of others.

-- Men and women can have with identical traits but varied outcomes in relation to resources (social standing, environmental, ability to manage alliances, psychological adaptations, executive functions) and task demands. Many women will overlap many men depending on trait & circumstance.

-- A range of adaptability can exist with extremes on either side of average. We can have "bad genes" in 2 directions in the sense of being too lively, intelligent, big, strong, sexually driven and needing lithium to slow you down, risperidone to impart some humility, Ativan to buffer your separation anxiety, and a bit of stimulant to give you a sense of the future. Otherwise, you can be "bipolar" and likely to kill yourself. Our common sense reacts that we can have too much of any trait ... antler size or breasts, liveliness and risk taking -- tuning models are consistent with that observation.

-- Tuning allows us to consider balances between strategies for reproduction and for resources acquisition. These are possibly not the same systems and mating gambits sometimes risk hierarchy.

-- THE MOST USEFUL OUTPUT FROM A TUNING MODEL IS THAT WE ALL CAN BE OUTWARDLY ALIKE REGARDLESS OF GENETIC UNDERPINNING (GIVEN RANGE OF OUTPUT) BUT WILL ACHIEVE EQUALITY BY DIFFERENT STRATEGIES AND AT DIFFERING PERSONAL COSTS. WE CAN ALSO BE INWARDLY IDENTICAL BUT OUTWARDLY DIFFERENT DUE TO TUNING EFFECTS.

Finally, male or female outcomes, genes, and tuning characteristics are AN OUTCOME OF the PROBABILITY OF REINFORCEMENT, the survival value of different traits. This is "ANTIQUE BEHAVIORISM" such that a behavior or a colored feather or an individual or a species is an instrumental response, emitted at different frequencies and with different mechanisms for reacting to cues and consequences. Natural Selection or Probability of Reinforcement -- perhaps the latter guides the former.

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I thought of Sarah, David, Frans, and Steven as I waited in traffic to get into the Lincoln Tunnel -- I had 90 minutes to sit still and to think -- fully in control of my vehicle and trapped by complexity -- in the driver's seat of my 300 ZX. Baby is black and sleek and quick and no longer to be found in showrooms, probably an eventual extinction event, choked by the barnacles of excess population called "Geos." I noticed the Blond before I noticed that she also drove a 300 ZX, identical to mine except metallic blue and lots cleaner. Neither of us were going anywhere in that niche yet we had the same interests and would behave synchronously insane on open, winding roads. She was 20 years younger than me, elegant, symmetrical and made eye contact, smiling and waving before I did. I know that we would have gotten along. I also know that in another setting and without the cars, she would have reacted first to the puffy eyes and scowl that also led my father ... but that's another essay.

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