Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others

Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others. Lee Alan Dugatkin. The University of Chicago Press, Apr 2022. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo127023354.html

From the shell wars of hermit crabs to little blue penguins spying on potential rivals, power struggles in the animal kingdom are as diverse as they are fascinating, and this book illuminates their surprising range and connections.

The quest for power in animals is so much richer, so much more nuanced than who wins what knock-down, drag-out fight. Indeed, power struggles among animals often look more like an opera than a boxing match. Tracing the path to power for over thirty different species on six continents, writer and behavioral ecologist Lee Alan Dugatkin takes us on a journey around the globe, shepherded by leading researchers who have discovered that in everything from hyenas to dolphins, bonobos to field mice, cichlid fish to cuttlefish, copperhead snakes to ravens, and meerkats to mongooses, power revolves around spying, deception, manipulation, forming and breaking up alliances, complex assessments of potential opponents, building social networks, and more. Power pervades every aspect of the social life of animals: what they eat, where they eat, where they live, whom they mate with, how many offspring they produce, whom they join forces with, and whom they work to depose. In some species, power can even change an animal’s sex. Nor are humans invulnerable to this magnificently intricate melodrama: Dugatkin’s tales of the researchers studying power in animals are full of unexpected pitfalls, twists and turns, serendipity, and the pure joy of scientific discovery.

Letters To A Spanish Youngster CCLXVIII

Letters To A Spanish Youngster CCLXVIII

[...]

Your Honor the young person of sensibility & beauty to whom I ask for mercy,/Su Señoría el joven de sensibilidad y hermosura a quien pido piedad,

I read V Nabokov's words about himself and his marriage*/He leído las palabras de V Nabokov sobre sí mismo y su matrimonio, dirigidas a su esposa:

[I know that I am a very boring and unpleasant man, drowned in literature... But I love you.]

[Sé que soy una persona muy aburrida y desagradable, sumergido en la literatura... Pero te quiero.]

I am also boring and unpleasant... But I love you, Your Honor :-( ./ Yo también soy aburrido y desagradable... Pero le quiero, Su Señoría :-( .

---

I also keep writing down the young ibn Gabirol’s poems**:/Sigo reproduciendo los poemas del joven ibn Gabirol:

[On love's instability/De la inestabilidad del amor]

                                                      [Que solo en la presencia de las gentes

                                                       sonríen los que aman,

                                                       mas en sus tiendas lloran      y amargamente gimen.]

[To a friend in illness/A un amigo enfermo]

                                                      [Amigos, habladle dulzuras;

                                                       tal vez haga entonces que torne su juicio a mi alma.

                                                       Pues él dispersaba mi llanto

                                                       al tiempo que yo lo reuniera,

                                                       y cuando mi alma se hallaba dispersa,

                                                       aquél la reunía.

                                                       [...]

                                                       [Mi alma ha sido acrisolada

                                                       en el horno de las aflicciones]]

[Giving thanks for a letter and a gift/Agradeciendo una carta y un regalo]

                                                      [Vive Dios, que conoce mi alma y que entiende

                                                       las cosas ocultas de su pensamiento,

                                                       que te amó desde aquel mismo día

                                                       en que yo te escuchara

                                                       y que fuiste honorable y preciado a sus ojos.

                                                       Y yo debo aplacar a mi amado,

                                                       [...]

                                                       [llevar la dulzura a Su cara.]

                                                       Mas perdona mi falta y espera

                                                       como el juez que pronuncia sus juicios con pausa.]

[Commending a generous man/Alabanza a un hombre generoso]

                                                      [¡Ay, que mis huesos ruedan!, pues se entremezlan

                                                       mis aflicciones.

                                                       [...] mis amigos

                                                       cuando se fueron

                                                       se llevaron mi alma con mi sosiego.

                                                       Por eso lloro:

                                                       no se interrumpen

                                                       ni de noche mis lágrimas ni de día.

                                                       Si las puertas del rezo Dios ha cerrado,

                                                       clausuradas no han sido las de las lágrimas;

                                                       pues mis angustias

                                                       y mis temores

                                                       sobre mí han aumentado y han recrecido.

                                                       [...]

                                                       Alabados han sido en él la risa

                                                       de su boca y el júbilo de su cara

                                                       así como sus dádivas.

                                                       [...]

                                                       Este poema habla de su clemencia,

                                                       llenos están de gozo por él sus versos.]

[On a friend/Describiendo a un amigo]

                                                      [Si es el lirio el remate sobre una rama,

                                                       ¿tu, sobre el fuste,

                                                       un capitel de oro no eres acaso?

                                                       Como un sol que camina pausadamente

                                                       sobre el Zodiaco,

                                                       ¡ay!, va robando

                                                       sin violencia y despacio los corazones.

                                                       Es un cervato;

                                                       cuando se ruborice por tu presencia,

                                                       verás al alabastro trocar su aspecto

                                                       por el del pórfido.

                                                       [...]

                                                       De querubín de oro tiene la imagen:

                                                       extendidas sus alas, como extendidas

                                                       las tenían los ángeles situados

                                                       sobre el Propiciatorio.]

[Complaining of being abandoned by a benefactor/Quejas por el desvío de un mecenas]

                                                      [Desnudo está mi brazo contra los golpes

                                                       de la fortuna

                                                       y en contra mía

                                                       la espada del destino desenvainada.

                                                       En riada de angustias fui anegado,

                                                       como espiga agostada permaneciera;

                                                       en cuidado me tienen mis aflicciones

                                                       y resuello y jadeo, pues me ha absorbido

                                                       aspirándome el hado.]

[To someone who sees him as a rival/En contestacion a quien le cree su enemigo]

                                                      [Oculto está en mi alma      mi amor por ti y lo muestra

                                                       mi corazón haciéndolo patente.]

[Funeral hymn for his father/Endecha por su padre]

                                                      [de tu queja, los cielos se anublaron

                                                       [...]

                                                       [...] de tanto

                                                       padecer, me dejaron las angustias

                                                       endurecido [...]

                                                       [...] fue tu mal mi daño,

                                                       sobre mí fue gravoso y prolongado.

                                                       [...]

                                                       Si contigo las joyas de la tierra

                                                       compararan, entonces menguaría

                                                       su valor como el tuyo ascendería.]

Fully grasping the degree in which Your soul was prized with the gods' favor, & how much You were loved by the gold goddess, my benevolent master, Yours faithfully/Alcanzando plena consciencia del grado en que Su alma fue premiada con el favor de los dioses y cuánto fue Vd. amado por la diosa dorada, mi dueño benevolente, Suyo fielmente

                 a. r. ante Su Señoría

--

Notes

*  V Nabokov's Letters to Véra. Penguin Books, 2016. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/176961/letters-to-vera/9780141192246.html

**  Adapted from Selected Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol, translated by Peter Cole (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2001), & the Spanish version from Selomó ibn Gabirol—Poesía secular, by Elena Romero (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1978)

The Autodidactic Universe: An approach to cosmology in which the Universe learns its own physical laws

The Autodidactic Universe. Stephon Alexander, William J. Cunningham, Jaron Lanier, Lee Smolin, Stefan Stanojevic, Michael W. Toomey, Dave Wecker. arXiv Sep 2 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.03902

Abstract: We present an approach to cosmology in which the Universe learns its own physical laws. It does so by exploring a landscape of possible laws, which we express as a certain class of matrix models. We discover maps that put each of these matrix models in correspondence with both a gauge/gravity theory and a mathematical model of a learning machine, such as a deep recurrent, cyclic neural network. This establishes a correspondence between each solution of the physical theory and a run of a neural network. This correspondence is not an equivalence, partly because gauge theories emerge from N→∞ limits of the matrix models, whereas the same limits of the neural networks used here are not well-defined. We discuss in detail what it means to say that learning takes place in autodidactic systems, where there is no supervision. We propose that if the neural network model can be said to learn without supervision, the same can be said for the corresponding physical theory. We consider other protocols for autodidactic physical systems, such as optimization of graph variety, subset-replication using self-attention and look-ahead, geometrogenesis guided by reinforcement learning, structural learning using renormalization group techniques, and extensions. These protocols together provide a number of directions in which to explore the origin of physical laws based on putting machine learning architectures in correspondence with physical theories. 

In high-income countries, relation of women’s labor force participation & fertility is now positive; father contribution rates to child-raising are more important for fertility; & fathers seem most interested in children in Norway, the least in Russia

The Economics of Fertility: A New Era. Matthias Doepke, Anne Hannusch, Fabian Kindermann & Michèle Tertilt. NBER Working Paper 29948. Apr 2022. DOI 10.3386/w29948

Abstract: In this survey, we argue that the economic analysis of fertility has entered a new era. First-generation models of fertility choice were designed to account for two empirical regularities that, in the past, held both across countries and across families in a given country: a negative relationship between income and fertility, and another negative relationship between women's labor force participation and fertility. The economics of fertility has entered a new era because these stylized facts no longer universally hold. In high-income countries, the income-fertility relationship has flattened and in some cases reversed, and the cross-country relationship between women's labor force participation and fertility is now positive. We summarize these new facts and describe new models that are designed to address them. The common theme of these new theories is that they view factors that determine the compatibility of women's career and family goals as key drivers of fertility. We highlight four factors that facilitate combining a career with a family: family policy, cooperative fathers, favorable social norms, and flexible labor markets. We also review other recent developments in the literature, and we point out promising new directions for future research on the economics of fertility.

---

h/t Tyler Cowen https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/04/new-developments-in-the-economics-of-fertility.html : Another result is that quality vs. quantity tradeoff models for children no longer perform very well.  And fertility-education relationships are greatly weakened, just as the income-fertility relationships are.  The marketization of childcare is likely an important cause of this shift.

Italy and Spain are two countries where the income-fertility relationship is not being reversed.

Father contribution rates to child-raising are growing in importance for fertility.  Fathers seem most interested in their children in Norway, and least interested in Russia, of the countries sampled.

If a couple disagrees on having another kid, the chance they do is relatively small.

In Denmark in 2015, six percent of all births occurred with some kind of medical help related to conception.

There are now positive correlations between public childcare provision, though I do not in this paper see any reliable causal estimate.

The paper has a section on social norms, but it oddly fails to consider religion.

There is some evidence for peer effects mattering for fertility, for instance in a workplace.

21% of autosomal DNA in eastern chimpanzees derives from western chimpanzee introgression & all four chimpanzee lineages share a common ancestor about 987,000 y ago (much earlier than thought), with a male reproductive & dispersal skew

Estimating bonobo (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) evolutionary history from nucleotide site patterns. Colin M. Brand et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 2022 | 119 (17) e2200858119 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200858119

Significance: There is genomic evidence of widespread admixture in deep time between many closely related species, including humans. Our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, may also exhibit such patterns. However, assessing the exact degree of interbreeding remains challenging because previous studies have resulted in multiple inconsistent demographic models. We use an approach that addresses these gaps by analyzing all lineages, simultaneously estimating parameters, and comparing previously models. We find evidence of considerable introgression from western into eastern chimpanzees. We also show more breeding females than males and evidence of male-biased dispersal in western chimpanzees. These findings highlight the extent of admixture in bonobo and chimpanzee evolutionary history and are consistent with substantial differences between past and present chimpanzee biogeography.

Abstract: Admixture appears increasingly ubiquitous in the evolutionary history of various taxa, including humans. Such gene flow likely also occurred among our closest living relatives: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). However, our understanding of their evolutionary history has been limited by studies that do not consider all Pan lineages or do not analyze all lineages simultaneously, resulting in conflicting demographic models. Here, we investigate this gap in knowledge using nucleotide site patterns calculated from whole-genome sequences from the autosomes of 71 bonobos and chimpanzees, representing all five extant Pan lineages. We estimated demographic parameters and compared all previously proposed demographic models for this clade. We further considered sex bias in Pan evolutionary history by analyzing the site patterns from the X chromosome. We show that 1) 21% of autosomal DNA in eastern chimpanzees derives from western chimpanzee introgression and that 2) all four chimpanzee lineages share a common ancestor about 987,000 y ago, much earlier than previous estimates. In addition, we suggest that 3) there was male reproductive skew throughout Pan evolutionary history and find evidence of 4) male-biased dispersal from western to eastern chimpanzees. Collectively, these results offer insight into bonobo and chimpanzee evolutionary history and suggest considerable differences between current and historic chimpanzee biogeography.