Social Insect Societies, Human Societies, and ReligionWhat May Be the Roles of

Bluff and Gullibility?

Magnus S. MagnussonResearch Professor, directorHuman Behavior Laboratory

University of Iceland, www.hbl.hi.is

Seeking a PerspectiveAn Average Galaxy Like Ours has about 100 Billion Stars

and there are 100 Billion Galaxies

Hubble Telescope image of a nearby galaxy similar to ours, but 25 million light-years away.

A dauntingplace intime andspace.

Humans have existed for only a tiny moment.

A few thousand years ago: a flat earth on the back of a turtle.

In the beginning of the 20th century: a single galaxy.

Today: 100. 000.000.000 galaxies.

In 1917 even Einstein’s universe only had a single galaxy.

One Milky Way rotation takes 200 million years

“The first ever close-up view of a single molecule. “.. “Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.”

“Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time”

Monday, Oct 17 2011: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209726/Single-molecule-million-times-smaller-grain-sand-pictured-time.html

2011

Knowledge ExplosionMathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology,..

• At the time of the Greeks all mathematical knowledge would fit in two volumes.

• At the beginning of the 20th century eighteen volumes.

• At the end of the 20th century one hundred thousand volumes.

• Explosive increase in knowledge has occurred in parallel in numerous other areas of human knowledge.

Two Recent Middle-Eastern Religions Involve 50% of Humanity

• In many scientifically advanced Christian countries people are still taught that a super being created the universe and humans especially (in its image).

• And that this being, about 2000 years ago, worrying about their situation decided on a remedy that included having a woman in the Middle-East made pregnant.

Archaic naïveté triumphs over the modern science?

Mass-Believe in the Same Gods• Why do millions of educated modern humans

apparently believe that gods exist and that they frequently intervene crucially in everyday life – often quickly or immediately on personal demand (prayer)?

• Why do many states encourage such believes?

• Extreme conditions and mental illness facilitate this through realistic hallucinations and delusions,

• but what may be further reasons for the emergence of mass-believe in common gods.

Non-human Primates

Early Humans

Modern Humans

Social Insects

Large brain capacity yes yes yes noSocial learning yes yes yes yesSignaling yes yes yes yesHierarchy yes yes yes yesConsiderable referential communication no yes yes yesFixed location, social construction of living spaces; hives/cities

no No Yes Yes

Transportable messages and considerable accumulation of durable organized combinations of communicative stimuli

no no yes yes

Agriculture no no yes yesDomestication of other species no no yes yesHighly organized societies with millions of members

no no yes yes

And centralized social blocking of behavioral (brain) potentials

- - yes yes

Brain Power and Mass-Social EmergenceIs Excessive Cognitive Power a Hindrance?

Great cognitive power is neither necessary nor sufficient for mass-social emergence.

Modern humans are the only primates living ‘like’ social insects.

Algorithms - Specialists - AlgorithmsSelf-Organization

• “The algorithms of caste development and behavior are the first level in the construction of a superorganism. ”

• “These specialists, working as a functional unit, are guided by sets of behavioral rules..”

• “Nothing in the brain of a worker ant represents a blueprint of the social order…colony life is the product of self-organization.”

B. Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson (2009) The Superorganism. P. 7.

Self-Organization ThroughInteracting Settings and Algorithms

Ibid p. 56.

“If in a given context the worker encounters certain stimulus, it predictably performs one act, and if the same stimulus is received in a different context, the worker preforms a different act. For example, if a hungry larva is encountered in the brood chamber, the worker offers it food; if the larva is found elsewhere, the worker carries it, whether hungry or not, to the brood chamber and places it with the other larvae. And so on through a repertory of a few dozen acts.The totality of these relatively sparse and simple responses defines the social behavior of the colony.”

Hölldobler, B. & E. O. Wilson (2009)The Superorganism. p. 7.

Interacting Settings and Algorithmsin Human Cities

R. Barker (1968) Ecological Psychology, p. 170.

Specialized Citizens Without Brains

Bodies as Emergent Cities of Cells

Cells as Emergent Cities of Proteins:

From Protein-City Text (DNA) to Protein-City Specialists

The process is assisted byspecialists (proteins) in special settings (ribosomes).

These specialists often have special communication modulesand are ‘socially’ very selective.

Emergence of (Super)Organisms Cells, Bodies, Hives, Cities

• A number of different interacting sub-sets of specialists each have a few behaviors with algorithms regarding their use in a few particular circumstances (job descriptions).

• Citizens often have specialized body-parts for tasks such as

communication (interaction). • Each sub-set of citizens is selective regarding interlocutors.

GullibilitySome Dictionary Definitions

• Tendency to believe too readily and therefore to be easily deceived.

• Disposition to believe something on little evidence.

• Naivety; the state or quality of being naive; ingenuousness; simplicity.

• Credulity; the trait of believing in the honesty and reliability of others.

• Gullible: Innocent, trusting, unsuspecting, simple

BluffSome Dictionary Definitions

• To mislead or deceive.• To impress, deter, or intimidate by a false display of

confidence.• An expression of self-confidence for the purpose of

intimidation.• To frighten or deter from accomplishing a purpose by

making a show of confidence in one's strength or resources.

• Deception - a misleading falsehood.

Bluff and GullibilityTricksters and Their Victims

• Without some gullibility bluffing is hard.• Without bluff we might not be talking about

gullibility. • People seem selectively gullible, that is, not

every kind of bluff works as easily.• Bluff that reduces stressful uncertainty or

promises good things to come seems to be favored.

Reducing Cognitive PowerProtecting Algorithms and Hierarchies

• Why encourage people to search for– Reasons for their plight where they are not -- will of gods– Remedies without real effect -- praying to godsand feeling better while they do?

• Is this cognitive spin in vacuum with soothing?

• If mass-social self-organization requires countless predictable interactions between simple algorithms, could superfluous cognitive abilities be a disturbance?

From Human-City Texts to Human-City Specialists

The process is preformed byspecialists (teachers) in special settings (schools).

These specialists have special communication modulesand are ‘socially’ very selective.

Behavioral/cognitive blocker and pacifier.

From DNA and Proteins to Hives/Cities Citizens with Tiny vs. Huge Brains

Human city texts (strings of letters) may be religious, literary, legal, scientific, technical,.. different texts, different specialists. Reduction of intelligence through bluff seems essential to religious texts.

Behavioral/cognitive blocker and pacifier.

Ethical Questions

• Bluff concerning essential aspects of life seems crucial in the two principal modern religions.

• Should some people have the right to deceive others concerning, for example, the existence of an afterlife with gratifying or terrifying post-life consequences of their lifetime actions?

• If so, who or what gives them this right?• Should such bluff and gullibility be encouraged also in

the 21st century after possibly the most spectacular increase ever in human knowledge?

• Is it compatible with basic human rights and democracy?

Bluff, Innocence, and ReligionPersonal Conclusion

• Religion typically serves the hierarchy, that is, the ruling sub-set of individuals through blocking or misleading cognitive power.

• Bluff is an essential part of religion which exploits human innocence (gullibility, ignorance and trust).

• Possibly this is one consequence when highly evolved primates evolves a mass-social lifestyle like the proteins in its cells and like social insects.

Thank You