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Ten Things We Still Don't Understand About Humans
ParticleGirl writes "New Scientist has an article examining 10 human features (bugs?) that we still don't understand, like blushing, laughing, and nose-picking. There are some interesting, speculative evolutionary explanations listed for each. '[Psychologist Robert R. Provine] thinks laughing began in our pre-human ancestors as a physiological response to tickling. Modern apes maintain the ancestral 'pant-pant' laugh when they are tickled during play, and this evolved into the human 'ha-ha.' Then, he argues, as our brains got bigger, laughter acquired a powerful social function — to bond people. Indeed, Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford has found that laughing increases levels of endorphins, our body's natural opiates, which he believes helps to strengthen social relationships.'"
Does anyone else just immediately stop listening when they see words like 'meme'?
Perhaps 'meme' is a fnord.
Kurt Vonnegut sort of agrees (about the reduced defenses) : "Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward â" and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner."
Laughter is certainly not always pleasant, as anyone who's laughed to much will tell you. You know the laughter that borders on hysteria and sometimes ends in tears. It IS a cleansing experience though, your body's safety valve for letting out stored up emotion and frustration.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The main evolutionary reaction to incest is the Westermarck effect, which basically means that people usually are not sexually attracted to anyone they spent a significant amount of time around during the first six years of their life. As that usually includes their parents and siblings, it greatly discourages incest.
There are other posts on this thread suggesting that teenage rebellion only occurs in some cultures, so biological evolution does not explain it, although you could perhaps argue that cultural evolution does... but I am not really sure how that would work.
Centralization breaks the internet.
I recently discovered a general list of unsolved problems, which I find fascinating. It's like a summary of the current limits of science and human knowledge and understanding.
TFA was ridiculous.