If you missed my first newsletter… too bad! You should’ve subscribed a little earlier! BUT, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. Luckily for you, we have some great recommendations in this edition, with research that is just as interesting - if not, more.

In it, we explore what genes are from the perspective of Richard Dawkins, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin himself. We look at what the academic literature has to say about incorporating hunter-gatherer “exercises” into our own lives as a means to optimize health. We dive into the roles that fiction and storytelling have played in human evolution. Finally, I challenge you to find those extra couple of minutes in your day to crank out some exercise snacks.

Book.

Title: The Selfish Gene

Author: Richard Dawkins

Published: First edition - 1976; Second edition - 1989; 30th anniversary edition - 2006.

Summary/Analysis

As referenced to in the introduction, Richard Dawkins is a powerhouse in the field of evolutionary biology. His insights from the mid-to-late 20th century are just as significant today as when they were first formulated. The Selfish Gene is, according to him, his most commercially successful book. To many colleagues and scientists, it is his most important and influential. In it, he presents his stance on a hotly debated topic in biology at the time: what is the proper level of analysis to study evolution by natural selection? In other words, does natural selection act upon genes, individual organisms, groups of organisms, or all simultaneously? Judging by the title of the book, you can probably guess which side of the debate he is on.

The debate is a complicated one, with nuanced arguments from all sides. It’s depth exceeds what I can fit into this newsletter, so I will keep its summary brief. Many biologists believe that individual organisms are selected for or against according to their traits. Those with better adapted traits are favored by natural selection, and as a result more likely to survive and reproduce than their counterparts. Others believe that the same logic can be applied to groups. For example, a more cohesive group of people could outcompete a less cohesive group of people, so the former will be more likely to reproduce and propagate their traits into the future. Dawkins suggests that neither is correct. He argues that natural selection primarily targets genes, as they are the most fundamental form of a biological replicator (i.e., that which strives to reproduce itself). Accordingly, individual organisms and groups of organisms are simply vehicles, or as he calls them “survival machines”, that genes use to propagate themselves into the future. In essence, genes are “selfish” in that they are driven to manipulate their survival machines, in order to replicate and persist through time.

He provides examples of how these selfish tendencies can result in organisms taking advantage of others - the theory’s logical conclusion. Despite this inherent self-centeredness, he goes on to discuss the paradox of how altruistic behaviors can evolve. Some of which involve more mechanisms from theoretical biology like kin selection and reciprocal altruism, but you’ll have to investigate these ideas further on your own time. I’d like to dedicate more of this analysis to two ideas that I found to be much more fascinating - memes and the extended phenotype.

We all know of internet memes - those captioned images that go viral on social media due to their humor. You many not know that in this book, Dawkins actually coined the term “meme”. A meme in its original sense is a cultural equivalent of a gene. Like genes, they strive towards replication and abide by the same principles. He uses fashion as an example. Fashion trends change over time and some are imitated more than others. Style modifications (mutations) arise and the ones that people adopt more widely are more successful. When looking at modern culture we see novel memes all around us, many with unhealthy implications; fast food is a meme, the chairs we sit in all day are memes, and the screens we stare at are memes. Alternatively, there are “rival” memes (like competing alleles in gene replication); whole food diets are memes, standing desks are memes, and social media detoxes are memes. Importantly, Dawkins notes that in order to replicate, memes need not be advantageous to the person imitating them, only to themselves. This means that cultural traits can be maladaptive to people, but still spread and, in some sense, continue to parasitize people… social media comes to mind.

He ends the book with his theory of the extended phenotype. This is the idea that genes don’t only manipulate their survival machines to their advantage, but they do so with inanimate objects, and even the survival machines of other genes. For example, the genes of a squirrel program that squirrel to forage for sticks in order to make a nest. Thus, that nest is an extension of the squirrel’s genes. Dawkins uses beavers and their damns as one of his examples. Viruses will often cause their hosts to cough or sneeze. In doing so, they are manipulating their host to their advantage by increasing their ability to spread to more hosts. The body of the host is now part of the virus genes’ extended phenotype.

Genes approach the environment around them as a tool to be used for increasing their replication. From a gene’s-eye view, organisms and groups of organisms are just vehicles for replication within that environment.

I come away from this book with a new perspective on our modern condition, primarily one of skepticism and curiosity. In what ways are we are subconsciously tending to the whims of our genes by manipulating our environment? To touch back on the memes discussed earlier, our genes are programmed to search for and consume calorically dense food, regardless of its nutritional value. Is the entire fast food industry a phenotypic extension of our genes? Could the same be true of desk jobs and smartphones? I‘ve come away with more questions than answers, but at its core, this is the essence of learning - Is it not?

Quotes

Academic Paper.

O’Keefe, James, et al. 2010. “Organic fitness: physical activity consistent with our hunter-gatherer heritage.” The Physician Sportsmedicine 38(4):11-8.

Summary/Analysis

It has been shown that hunter-gatherers exhibit great cardiovascular health and do not suffer from many of the chronic, non-communicable diseases that we do in the west. In this paper, James O’Keefe and colleagues argue that the great health of hunter-gatherers is due largely to their active lifestyles. More importantly, they provide some suggestions for incorporating hunter-gatherer inspired activity into our modern lifestyles

They begin by arguing that our genes are still adapted to the environments and cultures in which we evolved. For millions of years, our ancestors had to earn their survival. Proactively seeking food over miles of terrain was an everyday occurrence. Having to physically avoid predators would not have been uncommon either. Accordingly, humans who were better adapted to these circumstances were more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass their genes on to the next generation. The genes of our species would have been selected to navigate this physically active lifestyle.

There is a paradox here. While it is true that our genes “expect” to be in environments that are physically demanding, they are also incentivized to preserve energy when it is not required. To be efficient at surviving in the past, our ancestors had to balance these two modes of being. First, they had to be physically capable of using energy when needed. Second, in anticipation of those more demanding times, they had to minimize energy output to save it for later. Today, the times of high-energy demand are exceeded by times of preservation because of our sedentary lifestyles.

As a prescription to the many burdens that come with sedentary living, O’Keefe and colleagues outline some protocols we can use to increase our health through physical activity. They provide 13 protocols which are based on their analysis of the frequency of these activities in the lives of hunter-gatherers. Here are some of my favorites:

1.) Daily physical activity that is low-to-moderately intense. This would include things like walking or jogging.

2.) Weight training 2-3 times per week.

3.) Higher intensity interval training 1-2 times per week.

4.) Regularly exercise outdoors and in natural settings.

5.) Engage in group exercises when possible. This can include normal exercise classes or recreational sports.

In addition to these recommendations, they provide a list of ancestral movements with modern alternatives that are comparable in biomechanics and energy expenditure. Things like carrying groceries or luggage are akin to carrying logs for firewood; wearing a backpack while walking - carrying meat back to camp; interval training - hunting, stalking animals; gardening - digging for food; general housework - tool construction.

We often see many of these modern alternatives like carrying groceries as annoying chores. Alternatively, we can view them as opportunities to practice movements that made our species healthy in the past. Don’t avoid doing housework, avoid the couch - avoid stagnation. This simple shift in perspective could bring you closer to what it means to be human.

Quotes

Podcast.

Summary/Analysis

Have you ever wondered why books, movies, political movements, and religion all elicit similarly emotional responses from the human organism? It’s because they all revolve around storytelling. In this podcast, Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, joins computer scientist Lex Fridman to discuss this fundamental feature of the human experience.

Harari’s philosophy argues that what separates us humans from all other species is not our brain nor our brawn. It is not some special ability that one individual person has. It is our collective ability to believe in shared narratives - to align with a story. He contrasts us to our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals. Having lived in similar geographic locations up until about 40,000 years ago, only our species continues to thrive today. Yes we likely interbred, but our Homo sapiens DNA is certainly dominant within the modern human population. Harari suggests that Neanderthals would have outcompeted humans at the level of the individual. But, humans as a collective were far more successful. Homo sapiens groups were more cohesive and cooperative. What was the mechanism which allowed for this cooperation?

This high degree of cooperation, at the large scale of human-sized populations, is made possible by “stories, fiction, imagination.” According to Harari, without fictional stories, other species are limited in the degree to which they can act as a collective. They are limited mostly to their kin groups. In order for unrelated strangers to peaceably assemble without descending into chaos, those strangers must believe in a shared story. This is where humans have the advantage.

Harari breaks down his ideas by showing how fictional stories can be advantageous over true stories. The truth is often complicated and painful. Fictions, on the other hand, can be made very simple and painless. By distilling stories down to simplified fictions, people can be more easily unified under a common cause. Unfortunately, this function can be taken advantage of. For example, he describes how Adolf Hitler effectively constructed a simple narrative of German “superiority” which culminated into the Nazi regime. Our storytelling instincts can be used to construct a cohesive and functional society or one that is deeply pathological.

A common theme throughout the podcast is humanity’s future with artificial intelligence (AI), and how it relates to stories. Harari discloses two eye opening facts about AI that everyone should consider:

1.) AI is the first tool in history that can make decisions by itself.

2.) AI is the first tool in history that can create new ideas by itself.

The combination of these two abilities suggests that it is the first tool to take power away from humans, rather than grant us new powers. One of those powers will be to create stories. This, Harari suggests, could lead to a world where AI gains control over our species through story-driven manipulation. These AI systems could reach a point where they understand us better than we understand them. At that point, they could inferably generate stories that are most attractive to our human instincts, but are aligned more with whatever the agenda is of the AI systems. Our humanistic pursuits may take the back seat and our social well-being could be in the hands of an AI dictated state of some kind. Will the stories produced by AI result in humanistic, functional societies? Or will they result in pathological dictatorships? The future of human evolution will follow which path is taken.

Stories are powerful.

Quotes

Fitness Challenge.

This month’s challenge is for those working a 9-5 desk job who struggle finding time for exercise. For the month of October, I challenge you to fit in a weekly routine of exercise snacks. These are quick bursts of physical activity that can be done throughout the day, in most office buildings, and you wont even break a sweat. Studies show that they can have positive effects on strength and cardiovascular health.

Dr. Gumm recommends the following protocol:

• Climb 3 flights of stairs (at a relatively intense pace).

• 3 times per day.

• 3 days per week.

Time is finite. Allocating it properly is a skill. To improve that skill requires practice. Exercise snacks are a great way to start building that skill by prioritizing quick but meaning workouts. Now go find a flight of stairs.

Fit Fuel Song Suggestion.

Title: UXO

Band: Enforced

Album: Kill Grid (2021)

PR Moment - 2:50