Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Bottom-up quality control

1. 
   Amazon.com recommendation
   
   1. 
      You write reviews.
      
   2. 
      Good reviews are rated/weighted in terms of quality
      
   3. 
      Those who wrote the 'good reviews' have more judgment power over other reviewers
      
   4. 
      Thus emergent, bottom-up quality
      
2. 
   What are the drawbacks to bottom up quality control?
   
   1. 
      Early on it's pretty haphazard before true quality control emerges
      
   2. 
      Assumes people who write good reviews are also good judges of reviews. Not necessarily true
      
   3. 
      Can produce tremendous conformity. Everybody's told to try other similar things instead of something truly unique and potentially interesting.
      

How does emergence apply to humans?

1. 
   Our 2% of genetic difference from chimps: ~1% is olfactory differences, body hair, immune function, reproduction. The OTHER ~1% are things like TFs that amplify differences in things like neuronal cell divisions.
   
   1. 
      We have the same neurons as any other animal
      
   2. 
      We just have a lot more of them and thus more capacity for emergent properties.
      

Summary of chaos/complexity/emergence themes:

• 
  More is different.
  
• 
  The simpler the iterative components, the better.
  
• 
  Encourage random encounters.
  
• 
  Look for gradients of information.
  
• 
  Pay attention to neighbors.
  
• 
  Generalists are more valuable then specialists.
  
• 
  There are no idealized norms.
  
• 
  Complex, adaptive systems occur without blueprints
  

Example Exam Questions for chaos/complexity:

1. 
   What is a fractal? (2 pts)
   
2. 
   What could the rule be for a fractal gene encoding bifurcations in a system? (2 pts)
   
3. 
   What might be the effect of a fractal mutation? (2 pts)
   
4. 
   In no more than two sentences, give a real-world example of convergence: (2 pts)
   
5. 
   In a fully-developed brain, what structural component is described by a Power Law? (2
   
6. 
   A number of examples in class were presented in which chance plays a large role in a seemingly deterministic process. List two: (2 pts)
   
7. 
   Give an example of a system that is based on the attraction/repulsion rules of cellular automata: (1 pt)
   
8. 
   Give an example of a human invention that has been generated with a bottom-up approach: (1 pt)
   
9. 
   If two identical dynamic systems have almost-identical starting states, then their ending states will be similar (circle one) (2 pt)
   

TRUE FALSE

10. 
    If two identical dynamic systems have almost-identical final states, then their starting states must have been similar (circle one) (2 pt)
    

TRUE FALSE

11. 
    Give two examples of bifurcating systems: (2 pts)