Evil wood spirits

Evolutionary psychology is a disciple that has taken off in recent years (although some Republican presidential candidates may not have gotten the memo). It basically examines how natural selection has shaped human beliefs and behaviors.

An example of this is the idea that people are hardwired to look for agency in the world. Agency in this sense means intelligence and purpose. We tend to see the world as inhabited by beings more or less like ourselves, i.e. with intentions, thoughts and feelings. This belief was adaptive in the sense that false positives (thinking there is a tiger when there is no tiger) are safer than false negatives (thinking there is no tiger when there is).

In a word, we are all animists by nature. Who, after all, hasn't spoken to their car or some other inanimate object at one time or another?

El Cabrero is as devout an animist as his hunter gatherer ancestors. My agency detector has been particularly active lately in trying to reduce a disorderly wood pile into nice, wood stove sized pieces to burn this winter.

The woodpile has been there a while and all the easy pieces have long since been split. The ones that remain are tough and knotty. Some indeed seem to be imbued with a preternatural obstinacy and malevolence as they resist the splitting maul and all that a wedge and a sledgehammer can throw at it. Such a trait might be commendable in a living tree but seems highly inappropriate in a piece of dead wood.

In the case of some particularly stubborn pieces, it gets personal. I have probably expended more calories on a few of them lately than they will put out this winter. After a while, it's less about heat than vengeance. When at last I stand victorious over the shattered foe, I exult over the remains like some kind of atavistic troglodyte, saying, in effect, "Take that, ************!"

A rational animal indeed...

NOTE...El Cabrero is on the road and too lazy or busy to hunt up links.

Causes and reasons

I've frequently heard people say "everything happens for a reason." Often when people say this, they seem to imply that there is a greater purpose behind apparently unrelated events.

It would be more accurate to say that everything happens due to causes, although we are not always able to ferret out what the causes are. Still, we seem hard-wired to attribute our experiences to conscious, purposeful agents or beings that are acting in some way.

(This might explain why I attribute deliberate evil intentions to a machine when it doesn't act the way I want it to. Or why some winters--like this one so far--seem to have nasty personalities.)

Evolutionary psychologists believe that this is an adaptation that has helped us survive. Among early humans and our non-human ancestors, thinking that a predator might be behind an unexpected sound would prompt defensive actions that could save a life. This tendency is referred to as agency detection.

Often we're wrong in attributing agency to things that just happen, but in evolutionary terms the consequences of a false positive are not as bad as that of a false negative. Being mistaken in trying to escape an imagined tiger isn't as costly as not trying to escape from a real one.

Some evolutionary psychologists believe that agency detection is behind belief in supernatural beings when things go bump in the night or when we have good or bad experiences. Overly active agency detection can manifest itself in paranoia or seeing conspiracies behind every that that happens.

It seems that humans are pattern seeking animals. And if we look for a pattern, we'll probably find one, whether it makes sense or not. The universe probably isn't personally out to get us and probably won't go out of its way to do us special favors either, but sometimes we see things that way.

TAXING AND SPENDING. Here is a look at the biggest right wing untruths about this perennially favorite political topic.

NOT TERRIBLY STIMULATING. Here's a pessimistic assessment of President Obama's deal with congressional Republicans on tax cuts and unemployment.

ENDING HOMELESSNESS. Here's an interesting approach that seems to be working.

OH GOOD. Forty percent of Americans believe that humans were created 10,000 or so years ago. To tell the truth, I thought it would be more.

COLD CASE. Scientists have found the remains of a 50,000 year old Neanderthal family in Spain that appears to have been the victims of cannibalism.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL