From theoretical genetics comes the idea of a “green beard” gene, which a) gives you some clear physical sign of its presence (canonically, a green beard), and b) modifies your behavior so that you’re nice to people with that physical trait. And by “nice”, we’re talking about altruism: you do things to benefit them even when there’s no benefit to yourself.

The trouble is that such a gene would have an Achilles heel: genetic freeloaders. Suppose a mutation appeared that gave you a green beard but DIDN’T affect your behavior. You’d gain the benefits of the green beard gene (green bearders would be nice to you), but wouldn’t have to pay any costs. Such a mutation would theoretically outcompete the legitimate green beard gene until the value of green beards was destroyed.

Or would it? Did cubic zirconia destroy the value of diamonds? The presence of fakers doesn’t seem to render authentic items worthless – or if it does, it does so in an arbitrary and unclear way. Certain moths have evolved the yellow and black banding of wasps (freeloading off the wasps’ “I am poisonous” heraldry)…but flying insects with yellow and black banding are still scary. It seems that there’s a delicate equilibrium between reals and fakes that can exist without tipping one way or another. After all, it benefits the fake green beard gene for there still to be some social cachet to a green beard.

None of these genes are known to exist. But there are cultural, information-based green beards.

Gang tattoos, for one. Items of religious faith (such as a cross, or a hijab), for another. These are props that signal to other gang members or believers “I am part of the in-group. Favour me.” According to the fake green beard principle, you’d expect to see lots of “fake green memes” – people who wear a cross and reap the benefits, but don’t bother going to church or paying any other price for their faith. And sure, you could put guys like Tim Lambesis in that category.

But at the same time, fake Christians aren’t wildly outcompeting true Christians. Generally people who wear crosses do go to church, and do believe. Obviously, there are limits to how far this sort of memetic fakery can reach.

Maybe this is why so many religions insist on public, costly shows of faith – to help keep the flock pure of non-altruistic green beard fakes. And maybe this explains why so many religious rites seem bizarre and strange to outsiders – they’re that way by design. Why would you insist someone do something sensible to show his faith? It’d be like a college fraternity where joining requires that you change your car’s oil, brush your teeth, and call your mom every week.

This could explain things like the Grishneshwar Temple Baby Toss, where newborns are flung from a tower to a canopy 50 feet below. No way would a fake green beard do that. Rituals like this are sieves, meant to separate the sheep from the goats, and the costlier and more dangerous, the better. Remember, fake believers water down the purity of the religion. You cannot allow freeloaders to benefit from the in-group’s altruism. And it’s ironic that this green beard memetic behavior is actually damaging its subjects at the genetic level.

This is probably Dickie Dawkins’ big contribution to the philosophy of biology: recognising that humans aren’t just a canvas for recombinant DNA, but also a canvas for information-based replicators of all kinds. DNA isn’t the only way to play this game, we have other things trying to spread themselves via our bodies – and sometimes they can even override the power of genes.

Catholic priests are celibate – a drastic act of faith that takes your reproductive fitness down to a number closely resembling “zero”. Why? To prove the seriousness of their beliefs. That seems odd to outsiders: killing off your genetic strain for the sake of making a point. But I wonder what sorts of green beard memes are currently infesting your mind.

It’s time for Helloween to start providing reasons why they should continue to exist. We’re now three albums past their supposed comeback effort Gambling with the Devil, and now they’re barely getting dressed for work. Not only have you already heard this entire album many times before, including bonus tracks, but their occasionally experimental touches actually repulse you back towards their more familiar songs. Yeah, this is the kind of album where you hang on to the fillers for comfort.

“Heroes” sets a generic tone for a generic album…bouncy main riff, 16th note double bass, snare on the 2 and the 4, shouty gang chorus with lots of multiband compression…it’s not offensive, but I’ve heard it SO many times before (contrast with “Saber and Torch” by Edguy, “Army of the Night” by Powerwolf, “Far Away” by Battle Beast…and those are songs released in the past year alone) that its impossible to muster much excitement.

“Battle’s Won” and the title track are tolerable and fast. Maybe tolerable because they’re fast – an acceptable baseline for a Helloween song these days is “doesn’t overstay its welcome.” Then the album really starts to come apart. Track after track of Deris-penned composed filler tracks, all of them bouncing along at a fairly fast clip and all of them feeling utterly interchangeable. In “Lost in America” they just repeat the chorus of “Who is Mr Madman” with different words. Fuck off, guys. If I wanted a glorified cover band I’d listen to Unisonic.

As often happens these days, Weikath saves the album a bit. I liked the Boston-sounding “Creatures in Heaven”, and the savage and energetic “Claws” – which retells “Eagle Fly Free” from a less idealistic and more primal standpoint. Romanticise eagles if you want, but never forget the claws. “You, Still of War” is cute. Don’t know if you’d put her in a major movie, but you’d fuck her on the casting couch.

Basically, we’re spoiled for choice in 2015, and we can and should expect better than makeweight efforts from nostalgic past giants. In a world where Black Majesty, Battle Beast, and Rhapsody represent the state of the art, Helloween seems dated and old – a jalopy on a scalper’s lot with a new coat of paint. Two or three genuinely interesting songs, and for the rest I’m struggling to stay awake. It’s not “My God Given WRONG hurr hurr”, but we’re getting there.

Gregory Cochran is what you’d call a “hyphen man.” Formerly a physicist, now an anthropologist, with ancillary interests in various other topics, it is said that if you speak a falsehood to a mirror three times, Greg will appear in the reflection and yell at you.

I’ve collected some of his quippage.

[Innumerable uses] “You’re wrong.”

“When you think about it, falsehoods, stupid crap, make the best group identifiers, because anyone might agree with you when you’re obviously right. Signing up to clear nonsense is a better test of group loyalty. A true friend is with you when you’re wrong. Ideally, not just wrong, but barking mad, rolling around in your own vomit wrong. Movement conservatives have learned this lesson well.”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/megafaunal-extinctions/

“Ron Unz explains that his model took no more than five minutes to produce. I believe him.”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/hamilton-rules-ok/

[On the origin of homosexuality] “The Emmdees say that when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. When explaining homosexuality, people think of pterodactyls and unicorns.”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/homosexuality-epigenetics-and-zebras/

[On the existence of the Kinsey Scale] That would make exactly as much sense as a bell curve of food preferences ranging from steak at the left to granite at the right, in which people in the middle liked steak and rocks equally well. Is an even split between a behavior that works and one that never does what you expect from biology? Do you expect half the geese to fly north for the winter?
http://www.unz.com/pfrost/origins-of-male-homosexuality-germ/

“Homosexual men are nature’s Petri dishes”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/recantation/

[On Iraq] “There are now a number of talkative idiots saying that Bush has made a mess of Iraq…I compare this to someone who has had a bad sexual experience with a porcupine and is now trying to decide just where he went wrong. Should he have used Brylcreem on the quills? Should he have sent flowers? Did he ‘come on too strong’?”
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail309.html

“There is no threat out there that can be usefully addressed by a larger ground army. In fact, there’s not much of a short-term threat out there at all. Except the threat from within: crazy people. That one is serious, as always.”

[Later] Many of you seem to think that invading a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 was a reasonable response, just as we always attacked the Navaho or the Cheyenne in response to Comanche attacks. Ah, but we didn’t, because that would have been pointless and incredibly stupid. Nor did we talk as if the redskins were the coming threat to Western Civilization, even though jihadists are actually relatively weaker than Sitting Bull was. […] If accuracy or making sense mattered, I can think of a a few hundred pundits who would be cleaning septic tanks right now.”
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/08/wheres_snow_whi.html

“…if Iraq had been about 50 times cheaper, in terms of money and casualties and reputation, I could maybe see someone reasonable arguing that it wasn’t a mistake, or at least wasn’t the stupidest thing this country has ever done. But it wasn’t 50 times cheaper.”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/a-god-damned-hippie/

[On the Chelyabinsk meteoroid] “If this meteor had exploded at a lower altitude, it would have smashed that city flat and killed hundreds of thousands of people. How likely that was depends on the details—most meteors are not strong enough to hold together during that kind of re-entry, although some nickel-iron meteors may be. The Tunguska explosion would have utterly destroyed any city it hit. It’s not quite as bad as a nuclear weapon: It would only kill you with fire and blast, rather than fire, blast, and radiation. You’d only die twice—Sean Connery might survive.”
http://takimag.com/article/paranoid_about_asteroids_gregory_cochran

“What’s Arcturus really like? The real Arcturus, not the touristy parts?”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/charade/