Posted by Eddie Sylvano on September 25, 2002, at 14:34:33
In reply to Re: addendum » Eddie Sylvano, posted by Mal on September 25, 2002, at 12:31:06
>Isn't there some room in the "program" for each individual to have some randomness that is unique, unscripted.
-----------------------------In much the same way that no two snowflakes look alike, the systems that our DNA generates guarantee that no two people will be exactly alike. Snowflakes are obviously much simpler than people, but the fact that the tiny differences in their formation (based on their immediate environment, and the small differences in shape between the dust specks that they each form around) can account for such a great diversity is crudely illustrative of the vast potential for differentiation inherent in people.
The DNA isn't infallible, either. Mutations occur in it, errors get introduced in its execution, etc, so that even on a biological basis, identical twins will harbor small differences (such as fingerprints). The fact that the environment we're in is so rich in stimuli, and we're designed to be so receptive to it (and manipulate our interpretations of it on higher levels than other creatures), leads to almost infinite range of behavior.
>Perhaps I suffer from a DENIAL of a bleak reality, but I see a gap between apes and humans in the realm of self awareness, "civility", and sensitivity that I can't explain.
-------------------------There's definately a difference between us and other orders of animals, that difference being our enhanced ability to evaluate our experiences for patterns (i.e. "think" about our lives). Lower animals spend a lot more time in the present than we do, without as much rumination on events. Also, this enhanced pattern recognition and comparison is responsible for our ability to use language, which gives us a unique mechanism for communicating our patterns to other people, and makes it easier for us to structure our internal patterns for comparison. Language is our premier facility as humans, and opens the door to both an exponential swapping of ideas and a means of storage and archival of previous generation's ideas (and a way to post on psychobabble). Thus, we get to benefit from the experience of everyone before us, while animals must learn for themselves, in a shorter lifespan, without the ability to label things internally for more efficient categorization. Language also ties us to other people much more strongly, because we benefit from exchanging ideas with them (though we would percieve it in practice more as "being social"). This makes us a social species on a much larger scale than other animals, and introduces a new environmental dynamic which shapes us as thinking, feeling people. It also gives us the incentive to be "civl" and, well, "human."
In short, then, we're highly advanced, with a dazzling repetoire of expression, because we're designed to organize our behavior by linking patterns from our environment (which is dripping with difference), using a finite set of rules that is programmed into us (and differs very slightly between us). A gross oversimplification, to be sure, but I think that it's a decent big picture. Part of the great difficulty in understanding ourselves as a species is that we're so immersed in being human, that we don't think about it. It's intrinsic and automatic. We only experience the end result of all these simpler processes, and we percieve it to be irreducible and genuine because that's how we're supposed to percieve it. Otherwise, it wouldn't work. I've had to come up with my ideas about the process by thinking about how to make something like a human mind from a simple sequence of genetic information. The fact that that's how we start out has ramifications that I've mulled over for a while. I'm probably off the mark, but it's fun to tinker with.
poster:Eddie Sylvano
thread:1117
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20020829/msgs/1139.html