Criminality–a WIP; your thoughts appreciated

I’ve been thinking about criminality, inspired by a friend’s musings on why didn’t he turn to crime during his decades of homelessness and schizophrenia. My answer was relatively simple: I think my friend just isn’t a criminal sort of person.

To clarify what I mean: let’s assume, similar to IQ, that each person has a “criminality quotient,” or CQ. Like IQ, one’s relative CQ is assumed to basically hold steady over time–that is, we assume that a person who rates “Low CQ” at 20 will also rate “Low CQ” at 30 and 60 and 10 years old, though the particular activities people do obviously change with age. Absolute CQ decreases for everyone past 35 or so.

A low CQ person has very little inclination to criminal behavior–they come to a full stop at stop signs, return excess change if a cashier gives them too much, don’t litter, and always cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. They are a bit dull, but they make good neighbors and employees.

A mildly CQ person is okay with a few forms of petty crime, like shoplifting, underage drinking, pot smoking, or yelling at people. They make fun friends but they litter and their party guests vomit in your bushes, making bad neighbors. You generally wouldn’t arrest these people, even though they do break the law.

A moderately CQ person purposefully does things that actually hurt people. They mug people or hold up conbinis; they get in fights. They mistreat animals, women, and children. They defect on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. They make shitty friends and shitty neighbors, because they steal your stuff.

A high CQ person is a murderer; they have no respect for human life.

A common explanation for criminality is that poverty causes it, hence my formerly homeless friend’s confusion. Obviously poverty can cause people to commit crimes they wouldn’t otherwise, like stealing food or sleeping in public parks. But in general, I suspect the causal arrow points the other way: criminality involves certain traits–like aggression and impulsivity–that make it hard to keep jobs, which makes criminal people poor.

Good people, reduced to poverty, remain good people. Bad people, suddenly given a bunch of money, remain bad people.

I’m not sure how one would test the first half of this without massive confounders or terrible ethics,  but the latter half seems relatively easy, if you can just find enough petty criminals who’ve won the lottery and aren’t in prison–although now that I think about it, it seems like you could look at before and during data for people affected by essentially government-induced famines or poverty events. Just a friendly wager, but I bet Jews during the Holocaust had crime rates lower than American inner-city-lottery winners.

But “criminality” is a complex trait, so let’s unpack that a little. What exactly is it about criminality that makes it correlate with poverty?

Subtraits: aggression, impulsivity, low intelligence, lack of empathy, low risk aversion, high temporal discount.

Any of these traits by themselves wouldn’t necessarily induce criminality–people with Down’s Syndrome, for example, have low IQs but are very kind and have no inclination toward criminality (that I have ever heard of, anyway.) Many autistic people are supposed to be low in empathy, but do not desire to hurt others, and often have rather strong moral compasses. Low risk-aversion people can just do xtreme sports, and high-time preference people can be bad at saving money but otherwise harmless. Even aggressive people can channel their aggression into something useful if they are intelligent. Impulsive people might just eat too many cookies or dye their hair wacky colors.

But people who have more than one of these traits are highly likely to engage in criminal behavior.

However, these traits do not appear to be randomly distributed (thus, criminalitty is not randomly distributed.) Rather, they seem to belong to a complex or archetype, of which “criminality” is one manifestation.

This complex has probably been more or less the human default for most of human history. After all, chimps are not especially known for not tearing each other’s faces off. And saving up wealth for tomorrow instead of eating it today doesn’t make sense if the tribe next door can just come in and steal it. In a violent, chaotic, pre-state tribal world, “criminality” is survival.

Over at Evo and Proud, Frost has been talking about his paper on the genetic pacification of Europe via executing lots of criminals, and various counter arguments, ie, In the wrong place at the wrong time? and How many were already fathers?

To summarize, briefly, Frost proposes that the precipitous drop in W. European crime levels over the past thousand years or so has been due to states executing criminals, thus removing “criminal” genes from the genepool. The sticky questions are whether the drop in crime actually happened when and where his theory suggests, and if enough people were actually killed to make a dent in criminality.

I suspect that Frost is at least partially right–many people who might have had children were executed instead–but there is another factor to consider:

A land where criminals are executed is a land where criminals are already useless or less than useless. They have gone from assets to nuisances (horrible ones, but nuisances nonetheless), to be swatted like flies.

In a land where criminals are useful, we do not call them criminals; we call them heroes. Is Che Guevara a murderer or a freedom fighter? Depends on who you ask. Is the man who crushes enemies, drives off their cattle and hears the lamentations of their women a hero or a butcher? In Mongolia, there are statues of Genghis Khan and he is regarded as the father of Mongolia. Vlad Tepes is a here in Romania.

In a land where marauding tribes are no longer a concern, you have no need for violent tribesmen of your own. In a land where long term saving is technically possible, people who do can get ahead. In these places, the criminality complex is no longer favored, and even mildly CQ people–too mild to get executed–get out-competed by people with lower CQs.

However, I do caution that recent data suggests this trend may have reversed, and criminals may now have more children than non-criminals. I wouldn’t count on anything being eternal.

Looking back over my own thought on the subject over the years, I think this is essentially reversal of sorts. Our legal system is built on the Enlightenment (I think) idea of redeemability–that criminals can be changed; that we punish the individual criminal act, not the “criminality” of the offender. This may not be so in the death penalty or for certain egregiously heinous acts like child rape, but in general, there are principles like “no double jeopardy” and “people who have served their time should be allowed to re-integrate into society and not be punished anymore.” The idea of CQ basically implies that some people should be imprisoned irrespective of whatever crimes they’ve been convicted of, simply because they’re going to commit more crimes.

There’s a conflict here, and it’s easy to see how either view, taken to extremes, could go horribly wrong. Thus it is probably best to maintain a moderate approach to imprisonment, while trying to ensure that society is set up to encourage lawful behavior and not reward criminality.

Your thoughts and reflections are encouraged/appreciated.

A Zombie-Free Uncanny Valley

Maybe the Uncanny Valley has nothing to do with avoiding sick/dead people, maybe nothing to do with anything specifically human-oriented at all, but with plain-ol’ conceptual category violations? Suppose you are trying to divide some class of reality into two discrete categories, like “plants” and “animals” or “poetry” and “prose”. Edge cases that don’t fit neatly into either category may be problematic, annoying, or otherwise troubling. Your brain tries to cram something into Category A, then a new data point comes along, and you switch to cramming it into Category B. Then more data and back to A. Then back to B. This might happen even at a subconscious level, flicking back and forth between two categories you normally assign instinctively, like human and non-human, forcing you to devote brain power to something that’s normally automatic. This is probably stressful for the brain.

In some cases, edge cases may be inconsequential and people may just ignore them; in some cases, though, group membership is important–people seem particularly keen on arguments about peoples’ inclusion in various human groups, hence accusations that people are “posers” or otherwise claiming membership they may not deserve.

Some people may prefer discreet categories more strongly than others, and so be more bothered by edge cases; other people may be more mentally flexible or capable of dealing with a third category labeled “edge cases”. It’s also possible that some people do not bother with discreet categories at all.

It would be interesting to test people’s preference for discreet categories, and then see if this correlates with disgust at humanoid robots or any particular political identities.

It would also be interesting to see if there are ways to equip people with different conceptual paradigms for dealing with data that better accommodate edge cases; a “Core vs. Periphery” approach may be better in some cases than discreet categories, for example.

Theory: Americans are fat because we don’t eat enough

I’ve long had a theory that dieting makes people gain weight. Just think about it for a second: at the very least, the correlation is tremendous.

Lots of studies have shown that diets are pretty useless–people tend, on average, to lose little to no weight on them. The whole diet industry, from diet sodas to lite beer to Weight Watchers, is, of course, basically a fraud.

The reasons are probably simple: One, humans have evolved no mechanisms to resist eating whenever possible. Your ancestors are people who ate when they could, not people who were indifferent to food, especially not tasty food*. And two, we live in a society with abundant, cheap, delicious food. Chances are good you’ve never even lived through a famine, much less had to go without for significant periods every few years of your life.

*Or have we?

I have watched people try to diet (mostly relatives.) The process goes something like this:

1. Relative declares, “I am going to lose weight for sure this time!”
2. Eats meager breakfast of oatmeal and apples.
3. Eats more apples for snack.
4. Comes over to my house, devours all my chips.
5. Weight-loss fails.

(A lot of people claim that you are supposed to feel “full” using various diet methods, but I’ve watched this happen enough times to enough different people to suspect that it’s a pretty common scenario.)

So tonight I was getting a bowl of icecream for a sick kiddo. Normally when getting icecream, I sneak a bite at the end. I can’t eat a full bowl of icecream, because hypoglycemia, but the taste is very tempting. But tonight, I looked at the icecream, and said, “No, I don’t want icecream.” What the hell was wrong with me? I’d just eaten a bowl of beans + cheese. I was full.

I suspect that our willpower, our ability to resist the kinds of foods that we can basically all agree aren’t really great to be eating, goes completely down the drain when we are hungry. And people are most likely to be hungry when they are dieting. So if you eat nothing but apples for breakfast, then somewhere along the way, you’re likely to eat nothing but cookies for dinner. But a solid breakfast of eggs, toast, and even a little bacon will probably leave you feeling full and happy, rendering temptation less, well, tempting.

The Incompatibility of Christian Morality and Evolutionary Morality

Christianity pretty explicitly states that moral acts should be done for no reason other than that being moral is good/god says, “go be moral.”

“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:2-4

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Hebrews 13:16

“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” ” Luke 21:1-4

“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” 1 John 3:17

“Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” Luke 12:33

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” Acts 4:32-35

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Matthew 16:26

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” Matthew 5:43-48

“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:31

The result, of course, is that Christian morality is very communist, and anyone who says otherwise is lying or ignorant. Self-interest is occasionally referenced so far as to say, “don’t worry about giving everything you have away, because god will make sure you don’t starve as a result,” but the general thrust of “don’t store up money, don’t do things for material rewards, take care of each other without regard to whether or not you can pay each other back, don’t make a big public deal out of your piety and generosity, etc.,” is pretty consistent.

Christianity is not necessarily quite on board with “treat everyone on earth equally,” since it is coming out of an explicitly ethno-nationalist religious tradition, but it is clearly moving in that direction.

In western society, this leads to a generalized notion that good deeds should be done for their own sakes, that seeing “gifts” as social exchange is bad and that all gifts should be given without strings attached, etc. Since this contradicts reality, people end up fighting over the implications of, say, buying someone dinner.

In reality, while some true charity and kindness exists (and I encourage it to,) most morality exists because we are descended from people who acted that way. We don’t actually take care of our children because of some divine command to do so, but because people who take care of their children historically had more surviving children than people who didn’t, and thus we are descended from people with child-rearing instincts.

The notion that morality is actually a self-interested attempt by our genes at continued propagation conflicts directly with our cultural, Christian norms of morality.

In general, Christian morality is probably a decent kludge, but forgetting reality is not good. If a moral system leads to its followers actually reproducing less than others (say, Shakerism,) then of course the result is that the followers of that morality die out.

Sickle Cell Anemia Metaphor for Depression

Depression and suicide have non-immediately obvious distributions–countries with things like low crime rates, social equality, and plenty of food tend to have really high rates, while poor, violent countries seem to be quite happy.

Latin American countries, for example, score quite high on happiness surveys, despite being some of the world’s most violent places.

By contrast, the Japanese and Scandinavians have some of the world’s highest rates of suicide.

When something doesn’t make sense, try inverting it: Why might it be useful to be depressed?

I posit that in societies where delaying gratification, working hard, and tolerating high densities of people without getting into fights are prerequisites to reproducing (which has historically been true of China, Japan, and the West,) mild to sub-clinical levels of depression helped people succeed.

(Remember, the phenomenon of most orphans and illegitimate children surviving infancy is only about a hundred years old. Historically, these children almost all died.)

This is where I draw an analogy to Sickle Cell Anemia. With SCA, No SC chromosome = you get malaria. One SC chromosome = you’re not as healthy, but you’re protected against malaria. Two SC chromosomes = you die.

With depression, No Depression => Fun, risky behaviors => you never get a farm and die without any surviving offspring. One Depression trait => you’re not quite sure about this “fun” business => work hard, get a farm, and have children. Two Depression traits => Suicide.

(Obviously depression need not be caused by a mere one or two genes for the idea to hold.)
Seems like the question for Utilitarians becomes, “Is there a way to make people productive, non-violent, and happy, all at the same time?”

Guilt is a Thing inside of You

Guilt does not care whether you deserve to feel guilty or not. It does not care about right and wrong. Guilt is just an evolved mechanism to make you feel like shit if you threaten the stability of your own place in the social order. Guilt forces you to forget everything and grovel on your hands and knees until you are accepted back into your clan, not because your clan is good or right or just, but because outside the clan lies nothing–wilderness, lions, and death.