Origin Gaps and the Eternal Sunshine of the Second-Order Pendulum

The rich experiences of an intentional, goal-oriented life emerge, in an unpredictable fashion, from the basic laws of physics. Here I argue that this unpredictability is no mirage: there are true gaps between life and non-life, mind and mindlessness, and even between functional societies and groups of Hobbesian individuals. These gaps, I suggest, emerge from the mathematics of self-reference, and the logical barriers to prediction that self-referring systems present. Still, a mathematical truth does not imply a physical one: the universe need not have made self-reference possible. It did, and the question then is how. In the second half of this essay, I show how a basic move in physics, known as renormalization, transforms the "forgetful" second-order equations of fundamental physics into a rich, self-referential world that makes possible the major transitions we care so much about. While the universe runs in assembly code, the coarse-grained version runs in LISP, and it is from that the world of aim and intention grows.Comment: FQXI Prize Essay 2017. 18 pages, including afterword on Ostrogradsky's Theorem and an exchange with John Bova, Dresden Craig, and Paul Livingsto

Inductive Game Theory and the Dynamics of Animal Conflict

Conflict destabilizes social interactions and impedes cooperation at multiple scales of biological organization. Of fundamental interest are the causes of turbulent periods of conflict. We analyze conflict dynamics in an monkey society model system. We develop a technique, Inductive Game Theory, to extract directly from time-series data the decision-making strategies used by individuals and groups. This technique uses Monte Carlo simulation to test alternative causal models of conflict dynamics. We find individuals base their decision to fight on memory of social factors, not on short timescale ecological resource competition. Furthermore, the social assessments on which these decisions are based are triadic (self in relation to another pair of individuals), not pairwise. We show that this triadic decision making causes long conflict cascades and that there is a high population cost of the large fights associated with these cascades. These results suggest that individual agency has been over-emphasized in the social evolution of complex aggregates, and that pair-wise formalisms are inadequate. An appreciation of the empirical foundations of the collective dynamics of conflict is a crucial step towards its effective management

Music notation: a new method for visualizing social interaction in animals and humans

BACKGROUND: Researchers have developed a variety of techniques for the visual presentation of quantitative data. These techniques can help to reveal trends and regularities that would be difficult to see if the data were left in raw form. Such techniques can be of great help in exploratory data analysis, making apparent the organization of data sets, developing new hypotheses, and in selecting effects to be tested by statistical analysis. Researchers studying social interaction in groups of animals and humans, however, have few tools to present their raw data visually, and it can be especially difficult to perceive patterns in these data. In this paper I introduce a new graphical method for the visual display of interaction records in human and animal groups, and I illustrate this method using data taken on chickens forming dominance hierarchies. RESULTS: This new method presents data in a way that can help researchers immediately to see patterns and connections in long, detailed records of interaction. I show a variety of ways in which this new technique can be used: (1) to explore trends in the formation of both group social structures and individual relationships; (2) to compare interaction records across groups of real animals and between real animals and computer-simulated animal interactions; (3) to search for and discover new types of small-scale interaction sequences; and (4) to examine how interaction patterns in larger groups might emerge from those in component subgroups. In addition, I discuss how this method can be modified and extended for visualizing a variety of different kinds of social interaction in both humans and animals. CONCLUSION: This method can help researchers develop new insights into the structure and organization of social interaction. Such insights can make it easier for researchers to explain behavioural processes, to select aspects of data for statistical analysis, to design further studies, and to formulate appropriate mathematical models and computer simulations

Why Are Male Social Relationships Complex in the Doubtful Sound Bottlenose Dolphin Population?

Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Detecting Instability in Animal Social Networks: Genetic Fragmentation Is Associated with Social Instability in Rhesus Macaques

The persistence of biological systems requires evolved mechanisms which promote stability. Cohesive primate social groups are one example of stable biological systems, which persist in spite of regular conflict. We suggest that genetic relatedness and its associated kinship structure are a potential source of stability in primate social groups as kinship structure is an important organizing principle in many animal societies. We investigated the effect of average genetic relatedness per matrilineal family on the stability of matrilineal grooming and agonistic interactions in 48 matrilines from seven captive groups of rhesus macaques. Matrilines with low average genetic relatedness show increased family-level instability such as: more sub-grouping in their matrilineal groom network, more frequent fighting with kin, and higher rates of wounding. Family-level instability in multiple matrilines within a group is further associated with group-level instability such as increased wounding. Stability appears to arise from the presence of clear matrilineal structure in the rhesus macaque group hierarchy, which is derived from cohesion among kin in their affiliative and agonistic interactions with each other. We conclude that genetic relatedness and kinship structure are an important source of group stability in animal societies, particularly when dominance and/or affilative interactions are typically governed by kinship

Post-Conflict Affiliation by Chimpanzees with Aggressors: Other-Oriented versus Selfish Political Strategy

Consolation, i.e., post-conflict affiliation directed from bystanders to recent victims of aggression, has recently acquired an important role in the debate about empathy in great apes. Although similar contacts have been also described for aggressors, i.e., appeasement, they have received far less attention and their function and underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. An exceptionally large database of spontaneous conflict and post-conflict interactions in two outdoor-housed groups of chimpanzees lends support to the notion that affiliation toward aggressors reduces the latter's aggressive tendencies in that further aggression was less frequent after the occurrence of the affiliation. However, bystander affiliation toward aggressors occurred disproportionally between individuals that were socially close (i.e., affiliation partners) which suggest that it did not function to protect the actor itself against redirected aggression. Contrary to consolation behavior, it was provided most often by adult males and directed toward high ranking males, whereas females engaged less often in this behavior both as actors and recipients, suggesting that affiliation with aggressors is unlikely to be a reaction to the distress of others. We propose that bystander affiliation toward aggressors may function to strengthen bonds between valuable partners, probably as part of political strategies. Our findings also suggest that this post-conflict behavior may act as an alternative to reconciliation, i.e., post-conflict affiliation between opponents, in that it is more common when opponents fail to reconcile

Social tolerance in wild female crested macaques (Macaca nigra) in Tangkoko-Batuangus Nature Reserve, Sulawesi, Indonesia.

In primates, females typically drive the evolution of the social system and present a wide diversity of social structures. To understand this diversity, it is necessary to document the consistency and/or flexibility of female social structures across and within species, contexts, and environments. Macaques (Macaca sp.) are an ideal taxon for such comparative study, showing both consistency and variation in their social relations. Their social styles, constituting robust sets of social traits, can be classified in four grades, from despotic to tolerant. However, tolerant species are still understudied, especially in the wild. To foster our understanding of tolerant societies and to assess the validity of the concept of social style, we studied female crested macaques, Macaca nigra, under entirely natural conditions. We assessed their degree of social tolerance by analyzing the frequency, intensity, and distribution of agonistic and affiliative behaviors, their dominance gradient, their bared-teeth display, and their level of conciliatory tendency. We also analyzed previously undocumented behavioral patterns in grade 4 macaques: reaction upon approach and distribution of affiliative behavior across partners. We compared the observed patterns to data from other populations of grade 4 macaques and from species of other grades. Overall, female crested macaques expressed a tolerant social style, with low intensity, frequently bidirectional, and reconciled conflicts. Dominance asymmetry was moderate, associated with an affiliative bared-teeth display. Females greatly tolerated one another in close proximity. The observed patterns matched the profile of other tolerant macaques and were outside the range of patterns of more despotic species. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of females' social behavior in a tolerant macaque species under natural conditions and as such, contributes to a better understanding of macaque societies. It also highlights the relevance of the social style concept in the assessment of the degree of tolerance/despotism in social systems

Cellular expression, trafficking, and function of two isoforms of human ULBP5/RAET1G

Background: The activating immunoreceptor NKG2D is expressed on Natural Killer (NK) cells and subsets of T cells. NKG2D contributes to anti-tumour and anti-viral immune responses in vitro and in vivo. The ligands for NKG2D in humans are diverse proteins of the MIC and ULBP/RAET families that are upregulated on the surface of virally infected cells and tumours. Two splicing variants of ULBP5/RAET1G have been cloned previously, but not extensively characterised. Methodology/Principal Findings: We pursue a number of approaches to characterise the expression, trafficking, and function of the two isoforms of ULBP5/RAET1G. We show that both transcripts are frequently expressed in cell lines derived from epithelial cancers, and in primary breast cancers. The full-length transcript, RAET1G1, is predicted to encode a molecule with transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains that are unique amongst NKG2D ligands. Using specific anti-RAET1G1 antiserum to stain tissue microarrays we show that RAET1G1 expression is highly restricted in normal tissues. RAET1G1 was expressed at a low level in normal gastrointestinal epithelial cells in a similar pattern to MICA. Both RAET1G1 and MICA showed increased expression in the gut of patients with celiac disease. In contrast to healthy tissues the RAET1G1 antiserum stained a wide variety or different primary tumour sections. Both endogenously expressed and transfected RAET1G1 was mainly found inside the cell, with a minority of the protein reaching the cell surface. Conversely the truncated splicing variant of RAET1G2 was shown to encode a soluble molecule that could be secreted from cells. Secreted RAET1G2 was shown to downregulate NKG2D receptor expression on NK cells and hence may represent a novel tumour immune evasion strategy. Conclusions/Significance: We demonstrate that the expression patterns of ULBP5RAET1G are very similar to the well-characterised NKG2D ligand, MICA. However the two isoforms of ULBP5/RAET1G have very different cellular localisations that are likely to reflect unique functionality

Wall roughness induces asymptotic ultimate turbulence

Turbulence is omnipresent in Nature and technology, governing the transport of heat, mass, and momentum on multiple scales. For real-world applications of wall-bounded turbulence, the underlying surfaces are virtually always rough; yet characterizing and understanding the effects of wall roughness for turbulence remains a challenge, especially for rotating and thermally driven turbulence. By combining extensive experiments and numerical simulations, here, taking as example the paradigmatic Taylor-Couette system (the closed flow between two independently rotating coaxial cylinders), we show how wall roughness greatly enhances the overall transport properties and the corresponding scaling exponents. If only one of the walls is rough, we reveal that the bulk velocity is slaved to the rough side, due to the much stronger coupling to that wall by the detaching flow structures. If both walls are rough, the viscosity dependence is thoroughly eliminated in the boundary layers and we thus achieve asymptotic ultimate turbulence, i.e. the upper limit of transport, whose existence had been predicted by Robert Kraichnan in 1962 (Phys. Fluids {\bf 5}, 1374 (1962)) and in which the scalings laws can be extrapolated to arbitrarily large Reynolds numbers