New Blogging for a Friend

Just a note, I will also be posting science blogs on Tony Sterle's blog: www.alittlebitofliberal.com

It's a cool political blog with some very smart people and it already has a ton of followers (LITERALLY).  Definitely check it out!

A Closer Look at Our Penises

            Compared to the other male primates, men have very different looking penises.  For starters, a man’s has a bulbous tip (the glans) that most other species lack.  Why is it there?  A better way to frame the question is: what evolutionary function did it serve?  Can answering this question give some sort of insight into human sexuality?

            Let’s try to address the issue of what purpose this mushroom shape serves by noting another important attribute of a man’s member: its size.  The male reproductive organ of a human is much larger than any of the other primates’.  Even the average 450-pound male gorilla has an erect length of only two inches, approximately three times smaller than the average man’s.  This comparative largeness coupled with the explosiveness of ejaculation (up to two feet) suggests that during sexual intercourse, the man is trying to reach the uppermost parts of the vagina.  This would not only maximize the coverage of fertilization grounds in the woman’s body but also fight off semen that other men may have left behind.  After all, most sperm cells are not for fertilizing the egg but for fighting off other sperm.  (Note that this would not have been necessary if women weren’t promiscuous to some degree; there’s not much we can do about that now although countless societies have harshly tried.)

            Now, we can get to the glans’ function: to scoop out whatever semen might be left in there.   Evolutionary psychologists have conducted experiments with artificial penises, vaginas, and semen that show the mechanical sexual (ergo evolutionary) advantage of having a glans as opposed to a straight shaft.  The fake penises (commonly known as dildos) with the glans scooped out over 90% of the “semen” in the “vaginas,” much more than the ones without one (less than 40%).

            How would the man make sure to not remove his own?  Well, all of this information suggests that the refractory period precisely remedies this possibility.  As soon as he ejaculates, the penis decreases in size and hardness and becomes very sensitive, making further stimulation uncomfortable.  This temporary impotence prevents him from undoing his doing.

            There are many fascinating insights into human behavior from combining evolutionary logic with human physiology.  Why are our brains so large, particularly our cerebral cortexes?  Why are men’s testes larger than gorillas’ but smaller than chimpanzees’, despite the fact that we smaller than the former but larger than the latter?  Why do most women have unnecessarily large breasts?  (The size is mostly made up by fat tissue that doesn’t provide any more space for milk production or storage.)  In the future, I will post more topics that will explore the study of evolutionary psychology, the science of why we behave the way we do by tracing back to human nature’s origins.

            For more information about this interesting aspect of nature, check out this great article from the Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secrets-of-the-phallus

Summer Reading at Harvard

For Cambridge residents: Check out the basement of the Harvard Bookstore on Mass Ave.  There are LOTS of very cheap books.  Here are some of the books I found:

The Universe and the Teacup by K. C. Cole
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Euclid in the Rainforest by Joseph Mazur
The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker

The books by Cole and Mazur are about how mathematics explains the world.  Dawkins' book is about the evidence that supports the validity of evolution.  Greene's book is about the nature of space and time (aka spacetime as Einstein called it).  Pinker's book is about how language provides a window into the workings of the human mind.

My Youtube Channel!

Hey, I decided to make a Youtube channel to promote my music online.  Here is the weblink: http://www.youtube.com/user/LesterKimMusic

I hope you enjoy this.  The video I posted is an original that I wrote a year ago.

Science -> Atheism? My Biggest Concern about Christianity

In general, scientists (even American scientists) are far less religious than the general public.  Why would that be?  Does science necessarily lead one to believe that the God of the Bible is a product of human imagination?

This is a delicate issue.  The best answer is: not necessarily but it is perfectly understandable why so many scientists don't believe in God.  You could reason that science is only good at explaining certain phenomena: evolution, mutations, chemical interactions, planetary motions, etc.  Science is not quite as effective in explaining how people behave, why we appreciate beauty in art, and what influences our worldviews.  Nevertheless, the power of science is undeniable and scientists are coming up with better scientific explanations of why we love, have ethics, and have aesthetic intuitions.

Now, I don't have an issue with other people believing in God.  People should be free to believe whatever they want as long as they do not end up hurting others, including themselves.  In fact, you can even think that atheists have no moral inhibitions because they are not scared of going to Hell and don't see Heaven as a reward.

My concern with Christianity is that it confuses some people's moral intuitions.  What in the world does gay marriage have to do with morality?  Or what about condom use?  Or pre-marital sex?  Or belief in God?  None of these issues directly concerns whether someone is doing good in the world.  All around the world, there are gay, condom-using, atheist bachelors who do charitable works and because I like this sentence I will end with it.

Note: I realize that many outstanding Christians are in favor of gay marriage, condom use, pre-marital sex, and have no issues with atheism.  At the same time, I personally know of some converts who actually developed moral concerns with the issues mentioned above as they became more devout.  I just wanted to mention this so that I am not oversimplifying the issue too much.

Helen Fisher on Love and the Future of Women

Fascinating!  I'm not sure if she's right about certain things (e.g. men and women had equal amounts of power in pre-history) but it is very interesting nonetheless.  Enjoy!

A Case for Evolutionary Psychology

I have talked to two friends about how evolution played an important role in shaping human behavior.  Both opposed my claim and admitted that they do not believe in it.  I, too, have issues with evolutionary psychology, but for different reasons.  It is incorrect for you to assume that evolutionary psychology is wrong because you find it disturbing (e.g. leads to biological determinism, removes the divine mystery of emotions, etc).  You may think that this is obvious but you would be surprised by how often people buy into this faulty way of thinking.  I am rather unhappy with my college grades but that does not mean that I can think that those grades are not on my transcript.  In this post, I will make a case for why an educated human being should be familiar with evolutionary psychology and its results.  The truth is independent of your opinion of it.

The first thing we have to admit is that we are not born with equal abilities.  This is true physically, but also psychologically.  We know that depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and various other mental illnesses are highly heritable.  Intelligence (particularly linguistic proficiency and quantitative reasoning) is largely inherited but so is personality.  This has been confirmed most convincingly by twin studies.  Identical twins who share exactly the same genes are separated at birth and are studied when they meet again as adults.  These studies show that the personalities between the twins are stunningly identical.

(For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_studies)

I will now discuss where evolutionary psychology is most commonly applied (which also happens to be where it is most controversial): human mating.  Even people who think that most of human behavior is conditioned by the environment will admit that the urge to have sex is innate.  However, there is no good reason for you to stop there.  Every species exhibits sexual behavior that is most certainly NOT learned.  In every sexualized species, the females are often pickier and less promiscuous than the males.  This is because there is a greater cost for a female to engage in sexual intercourse.  A male produces sperm very quickly and abundantly whereas a female only produces one egg per month.  The latter also bears the burden of carrying the developing fetus.  Any biologist will tell you this.  Why would this apply to all the other 5000+ mammalian species but not us?

What about emotions like jealousy?  Jealousy is essential for making sure that your genes are passed on.  This is especially important for men.  The advantage of being a woman is that you know that your children are yours.  This is not true for men.  Thus, men have to be wary to make sure their partners don’t cheat on them.  Men who lacked jealousy would end up raising other men's children and fail to pass on their genes.  Women need to be jealous too because they need to make sure their partners stay and support their children.  This is why men are more agitated by sexual infidelity and women are more troubled by emotional infidelity.

It helps to observe the mating behavior of the other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans), our closest evolutionary cousins.  (Humans are considered great apes.)  Every adult, male gorilla, also known as a silverback, leads a harem of females and their children.  He is the only one who has sex with the females and attacks any male that tries to copulate with one of the former’s females.  If a silverback wishes to mate at all, he has to kill the silverback of the harem and all of the females’ infants.  This biologically rewires the females to be able to have the new silverback's offspring.  This also explains why gorillas have very small testes.  There is no sperm competition from other males because a female only has intercourse with one male at a time.  Male chimps have very large testes since they frequently participate in group sex.  Interestingly, men’s testes are somewhere in between (not very large but also not very small).

Arguably, male orangutans demonstrate the most disturbing sexual behavior.  Some males are very large, approximately twice the size of females, and females find them highly attractive.  Females willingly have sex with these large males and will even compete for their attention and resources.  However, there are also much smaller males that are no bigger than the females.  They execute a different strategy.  These small males sneak up behind females and forcibly penetrate them.  We know that the females are not willing because they scream, run around, and try to push the males off.  Shockingly, these male orangutans occasionally try to rape women (including Julia Roberts).

For now, I would like to end with the following note.  None of this information morally justifies any human behavior.  If some men have built-in, biological impulses to rape women, that does not exonerate them from punishment.  If these men cannot do anything about it, then they should be quarantined from mainstream society.  It is very difficult to unlearn innate behavior as Ted Haggard, Exodus International, and other “ex-gays” will admit.  I will write more evolutionary psychology posts in the future.  Feel free to comment, correct, or question below.