With a little bit of science, you can take control of nature’s design to unlock a hidden pleasure center in your brain.
Quite aside from the question of whether it leads to evolution, natural selection shows how a gene that contributes to its own preferential survival and reproduction will tend to proliferate. That’s not a theory; it’s a tautology. When the phenomenology suggests our genes are leading us toward a certain behavior, we can use the rubric of natural selection to test the theory.
The mechanics of altruism have been well explained by Richard Dawkins’ seminal work, “The Selfish Gene.” It’s mathematically provable that helping your family, even to your own detriment, will ultimately increase the survival of your genes. To encourage this behavior, your brain rewards you with pleasure chemicals. In order to prevent abuse, how well you are rewarded is directly related to how close you are to the beneficiary.
This mechanism is quite primitive, and can be easily hacked via the feedback loop that exists between the body and brain. It’s a simple two-step process.
First, fool your brain into believing your family is bigger than it really is. Our modern world allows a level of interaction far beyond what the brain is prepared for. If you take an interest in other people, by talking to them, learning about them, or visiting them, your brain will assume they are family and activate your empathy reflex.
Then, help those people. It doesn’t matter if you share sample code with your new family of developers, or buy food for your new family in Madagascar. When you help people you feel for, your brain rewards you.
This the same thing you are doing when you take pleasure-inducing drugs. The major difference, aside from the lack of foreign substances, is that the government has not banned altruism, and in fact encourages it through tax breaks.
My own extended family is well known. Since the tremendous success of Club Thievey, I’ve been a lot closer with the Madagascar Fauna Group, and I’ve come to know another, much smaller group in Madagascar that’s become a sort of hobby for my hobby.
That’s pretty much the only reason I heard about Cyclone Ivan, which hit Madagascar a few days ago. Cyclones are hurricanes, or, more accurately, hurricanes are a type of cyclone. Ivan was pretty severe, but luckily most of the aftermath my friends are reporting amounts to property damage.
You know you’re living on the edge when having your house completely destroyed by a storm is the good news. The bigger problem is that crops are in the field during this part of the year, so the food supply has been severely constrained. Prices are skyrocketing, which, in a famine prone country like Madagascar, is more than just a budgetary inconvenience.
In a cruelly ironic twist, Ivan destroyed the MFG’s model station, which teaches modern farming techniques. Glad you survived the storm. Hope you’re not hungry.
Or injured. My friends the Radfords, missionaries in Tamatave, sent me a letter to let me know they were OK before going dark. Their biggest concern was that the storm had blocked fuel delivery. Their home has solar cells and water catchment, but being out of gas stymies their ability to drive people to the hospital or deliver relief supplies.
The last few days around here haven’t been a picnic either. The beta of Delicious Library 2 just around the corner, and we’re working gangbusters to get ready for it. I’ve suddenly got a huge number of new localizers to deal with, since gods know I can’t implement anything without making it into a manifesto. I’ve also got a basket of side projects and other obligations waiting in the wings.
But still, when the coffee shop closes at midnight and I stumble home for a few hours of fitful sleep, at least I know there’s a roof over my head, there’s a few bucks in my wallet, and there’s a meal around the corner. The things I have to deal with are so relatively petty.
So, amidst all of that, I’ve been thinking desperately of anything I could do to raise some money. Trouble is, like the Radfords, I’m out of gas. I’m exhausted. I don’t have the energy to do something big right now. I have a few things planned, but they’re in the future, and I need them to stay there.
Imagine my delight when I got a check in the mail. Nothing huge; just $500 from the insurance company to compensate me for the “pain and suffering” of being run down by a Buick. I suspect the amount was inspired by the dent in my iPhone.
I realize that covering my expenses is the least they could do, but the adjuster was so cool and so forthcoming most of my anger just evaporated. It became obvious I have much better things to do with my time than pressing a lawsuit, so I settled. Frankly I feel like they payed for all expenses incurred and that’s fair and reasonable.
Since the dent didn’t actually keep my iPhone from working, I’ll have to find some other pain and suffering to relieve. So, I’m sending this money straight to the Madagascar Fauna Group. It’s not enough to repair all the damage, but I know it will certainly help.
Doing good feels great.
This the same thing you are doing when you take pleasure-inducing drugs.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Brain Hacking
