Darwin Re-Elected

There never was a vote,
since he is emperor in perpe-
tuity, even from the crypt.

The Emperor’s New Clothes, Act II: A funny thing happened after Emperor Charley was exposed by that little boy on the parade route. One would have expected his courtiers to rush to cover up His Eminence. Instead, they plotted a very different strategy. They all removed their own duds, so as not to draw so much attention to the Emperor, and continued the parade. And then the Royal Media issued a proclamation: the emperor’s attire is the New Normal! The official minimum dress standard is none at all. Anyone laughing or complaining would be henceforth banished from the empire.

The townspeople, fearing exile, silently disbanded and went back to their homes and businesses, not staring at the spectacle before them, not daring to call it weird. Agreement with the New Normal became a requirement for membership in the Darwin Party, without which no scientist could expect funding or acceptance among their peers. Not all scientists chose to wear the emperor’s new clothes. If they ever spoke or wrote about origins, however, they had to have the Emperor’s imprimatur to get published by the Royal Society for Storytellers and other official journals. And if they wanted to attend science conferences, they had to show their D-Merit Badge with the image of Charley’s royal robes to get in.

And thus the Empire endures to this day. In their quiet quarters, the townspeople may be in stitches, but the Expert Class holding the Official Narrative About Origins has no shame. They are the normal ones! The snickering peasants are weird. Accepting their lot as non-experts, the peasants figure that the Experts, also known as the Naked Apes, must know the scientific account of How Things Came To Be.

The fable explains why today’s scientists feel no obligation to adorn their writings with testable evidence. Some of them try to cover up their views with empirical fig leaves, but often those optional items are on back order.

Monkeys know who will win the election – primal instincts humans share with them shape voters’ choices (1 Nov 2024, The Conversation). Michael Platt (U of Pennsylvania) argues that we’re all monkeys, aren’t we? Monkeys don’t wear clothes, do they? What is so weird about our Emperor, then? If you complain, you’re not rational. Why? Because nobody is rational! We’re all irrational products of a mythical evolutionary past.

New research I conducted with rhesus macaque monkeys suggests that when it comes to decisions like voting, people are not nearly as rational as they would like to believe.

If someone wonders how he can say that without discrediting his own rationality, Dr Platt jumps up into his Yoda Complex platform where he can pretend to speak above the realm of evolved organisms.

Our findings suggest that voters instinctively react to cues of physical strength – cues that are equally evident to our monkey relatives. This “evolutionary hangover” illustrates how traits and behaviors that were once essential for survival persist even when they are no longer relevant.

Inexplicably, Platt tries to convince his readers that they should become “intentional” about voting with “understanding” of our evolutionary past. But if rationality evolved, is it rational at all? Stop worrying. Pass the Darwine and don’t fear the “evolutionary hangover” tomorrow morning.

The hangover must really ache right now for Dr Platt. According to his article on “gaze bias” among rhesus macaques written 3 days before the US Election, “among the three most recent Democratic candidates, based solely on visual features, the monkeys predicted Harris stands the best chance of winning against Trump.”

Humans evolved to share beds – how your sleeping companions may affect you now (29 Oct 2024, The Conversation). Two Darwin Party experts, Goffredina Spanò of Kingston University and Gina Mason of Brown University, presented a scantily-clad story of why “humans evolved to share beds” in some far-off whimsical past. First they must dispense with outdated notions of modesty.

In western society, many people expect to sleep alone, if not with a romantic partner. But as with other group-living animals, human co-sleeping is common, despite some cultural and age-related variation. And in many cultures, bedsharing with a relative is considered typical.

We’re just animals; that’s their premise. Co-sleeping fits with the New Normal; that’s the plot line. But Goffredina and Gina have a problem. Why don’t all human animals behave the same in this regard? Answer: whatever happens, it evolved—even if we don’t know why.

Despite its prevalence, infant co-sleeping is controversial. Some western perspectives, that value self-reliance, argue that sleeping alone promotes self-soothing when the baby wakes in the night. But evolutionary scientists argue that co-sleeping has been important to help keep infants warm and safe throughout human existence.

Peasants know they must accept the expertise of evolutionary scientists. They must not ask why co-sleeping continued long after the infants grew old enough to become self-reliant. It seems odd for them to hear the Experts relate so many different habits in various countries if humans evolved to keep infants warm. “Many questions about co-sleeping remain unanswered,” they admit.

Remember, though, that evidential fig leaves are no longer required in Imperial Science. Evolutionary experts with their D-Merit Badges are permitted to flaunt their unclad theories without fear of laughter from the peasants who have been taught to accept the New Normal. “Co-sleeping doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer,” they say with authoritarian airs. “But remember that western norms aren’t necessarily the ones we have evolved with.”

The evolutionary benefits of being forgetful (4 Nov 2024, The Conversation). Darwin Party experts Sven Vanneste and Elva Arulchelvan of Trinity College, Dublin spin this evidence-free yarn out of invisible thread. Visions come into their heads as they enter the Darwinian trance.

From an evolutionary standpoint, forgetting old memories in response to new information is undoubtedly beneficial. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have repeatedly visited a safe water hole, only to one day discover a rival settlement, or a bear with newborn cubs there. Their brains had to be able to update the memory to label this location as no longer safe. Failure to do so would have been a threat to their survival.

Like all Darwin experts, Vanneste and Arulcehlvan feel no obligation to identify specific genes that “might have” been naturally selected to switch a memory from safe to risky, or how many naked apes had to die before the lucky mutation happened along. The futureware Will Call desk can supply those fig leaves later. The unclad story is sufficient for now.

In summary, “forgetting has its evolutionary advantages,” they promise, as they hope their readers will find their tale “sufficiently interesting that you won’t forget its contents in a hurry.” What could be more interesting than science porn?

But what if a reader wants to forget their tale for the evolutionary advantage of forgetting something stupid? Oh, they forgot to cover that part.

And so we see why Emperor Charley’s science experts are able to cavort shamelessly and maintain Job Security. Explanations no longer need to be covered in empirical evidence. If they are “sufficiently interesting,” that’s good enough to meet the requirements of the New Normal. The peasants will forget their shame, too, especially if inebriated with free doles of Darwine. The Party even has that recipe down to a science: two pints of Darwine make one cavort, and four cavorts make one gallivant.