A Mathematical Theory for Why People Hallucinate
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Evolutionary theory is founded mostly on untouchable mechanics that operate at nearly geologic time scales, so we look, and we see slight incremental changes, and say to ourselves, yeah that holds up the rest.
But at it's core, the fundamental question is: Why did the human brain explode onto the scene? Why wasn't that change gradual? Why did it only happen once? Was there an accelerant in the mix?
To say that it happened fast is to speak in relative terms. It still would have happened across multiple generations, in movements of 10 and 20 years, according to sexual maturation. But to jump the rails, the change would have had to represent an ignition of sorts, to kick off a chain reaction that spreads outward from primary events, and is easily replicable crossing regional boundaries, once a successful game changer is cemented as viable.
The human brain isn't totally unique in it's structure, if you look at elephants and dolphins. But the relative brain size to body size ratio, as an emergent evolutionary trait, seems to be pretty unique.
Diet sounds like a plausible point of origin, when considering that the brain is a nutrition-greedy organ. So, the Stoned Ape Hypothesis is reasonable, in the sense that it layers nutritional augmentation on top of evolutionary theory. On the one hand, you still have evolutionary mechanics as the operating framework, but the dietary augmentation produces behavioral effects that change mating strategies.
So then, selection processes take over, and the successful live, and the others die. The successful produce alike offspring, and combinations of traits group together. But all clustered around this drug induced behavioral mess, where you find these apes getting into catnip and going nuts.
The idea is not without precedent. Consider the Greek Oracle, as a temple ventilated with toxic volcanic gases, acting as the mind altering substance. People willfully producing an altered state, by effectively huffing volatile, oxygen depriving vapors not unlike spray paint fumes, to gain insight and augment decision making.
Which brings us around to the crux of the idea. It should be possible to replicate the process, even at a small scale, by modeling the scenario with other animals. Usually mice have a short enough lifespan to push their genes around with careful engineering. So, what about talking mice that modify their environment? Could drugs and rampant sex make that happen in a time frame comparable to the fossile record for humans?
But geeze, talking mice that invent and implement conceptual ideas? What would we do with them, once they're here? What if they escape the lab? Would their population explode as an invasive species? Capable of direct lilliputian competition with humans?
Once the invasive species status is realized, all the rest fits into place. We wouldn't want to let the mice escape into the wild. So the only missing piece, regarding the mechanics of the idea, is the bridge in between dumb mice and smart mice.
Why did some primates emerge with brains twice the size of their ancestors, over many thousands of generations, during the course of several million years?
This hypothesis can only fit inside the huge knowledge gap. Many times, accelerated evolutionary changes signify arms races and bottle necks. An arms race like the Cambrian explosion has lots of things happening at the same time, a form of evolutionary tit-for-tat game. A bottle neck is something like the dinosaurs disappearing. The invasive species concept is, many times, kind of in between.
Since we can't access or develop a perfect map of primate migration patterns from an ideal fossil record of all historic skull sizes over time, demonstrating how the expanding brain case trend took shape, the details for the specific drivers of these changes are unclear.
We have a grand canyon sized void of information, and all we can really do is consider bridge designs that utilize natural forces to connect the empty space separating both sides. Figure, maybe, the stoned ape concept is like some epic beaver dam between us and our predecessors.
Since the human brain is an unprecedented organ, we have few avenues for corollaries. Like the big bang theory, we'll get stuck with whatever idea connects the most dots, fits inside the knowledge gap, whether it ousts other ideas or not.
Even if incorrect, the big bang fits what we see, but can never tell us why time started at all, if material existence truly began as a singularity, or whether something existed prior to moment zero. It may be that the big bang is an event that can only be obscuring prior information, due to some unknowable cosmological process that destroyed any such information predating this mysterious expansion event. Perhaps some crunch or freeze, reduced the sampleable scope of the universe we inhabit and currently observe into a pin-prick singularity we are forced to guess only broad, basic details about. How would we inform ourselves of what exists beyond the observable universe, or learn of events prior to a moment that destroyed all preceding facts or information?
As a hypothetical idea, the stoned ape hypothesis will always deal in uncertainty, at least until we discover the next ground-breaking evidence that changes the current picture. Same with the big bang: we can't really know if it's correct, so much as we can only deal in observable facts evident to our perspective, and that can be unsatisfying.
If multiple stories fit inside an evidence-starved narrative (brains doubling in size), these competing stories will sit deadlocked until a tie-breaker appears, usually with the most easily reasoned hypothesis carrying preference until rendered untenable. Science and institutional academia often shuns juicy excitement, which is where this theory's incredible story is found wanting of incredible evidence.
I'm saying we may never know the real story, in that no single theory might ever accumulate enough backing evidence to be proven correct, by virtue of the processes being examined. SAH operates in a space where we may only find utility in thought experiments.
I can see one or two points of evidence emerging, that could simply blow SAH to bits and put the nail in the coffin of debate. But just as easily, I could see a fossil jump out of the ground, and upend our thinking overnight. The evolutionary tale of human prehistory is that brittle, based on what we have in front of us right now.
The only ways I see SAH being proven, are forward looking replication of results, or longshot statistical truths, found in subtle clues which are very hard to measure, all in one place. Meanwhile, literally any other theory could burst onto the scene with a stronger, more convincing and reasonable narrative, and bury SAH so deep in its own wild and extraordinary whimsy that we never think about it again. But neither has happened yet, so we can still navel gaze on this one.
But, take anything you want. Any externality, leveraging selective pressure, but leaving scant traces of ever even having happened, and you've got a good competing hypothesis with legs under it. Instead of psychoactive substances, why not body lice, for example, as a selective externality? Although less charismatic than SAH, just as reasonable of a story, but just as tough to tease out a smoking gun.
How would body lice influence circumstances favoring for genetic brain size? We might easily hypothesize an illness spread by one kind of louse, whereby the head lice versus the body lice is the deciding factor to produce the selective brain outcome in the same time span. But why the bigger brain on the other side of it? Same as with SAH, the brain size could be an incidental trait. That's the way bottlenecks, invasive species explosions and fitness arms races work in evolution. Some outcomes are non-deterministic, so we never get satisfying proof.
If you raise a dog in complete social isolation (not even human contact) it will be unable to cope in the outside world. The same applies to people, if a baby is raised with no interaction, they will not be capable of functioning as a normal human. There's a very well written, Pulitzer Prize winning article on one such case in Florida: http://www.tampabay.com/projects/girl-in-the-window/danielle...
I think that a convincing argument could be made that psychedelics could work to kick-start this mental expansion. There are plenty of stories of people suddenly being able to understand complex abstract concepts after using psychedelic drugs.
That's not to say that I believe that the Stoned Ape Hypothesis is "solid", I haven't done any research into it to be able to make that judgement, but it is plausible.
Most people I know who either smoke tobacco or marihuana, are addicted to either and can smoke the other without getting addicted. In my case I am addicted to nicotine, and I like smoking weed but never get addicted to it. I.e. one addiction is sufficient. But for what?
Another observation is that individuals that never smoke don't feel addicted, i.e. there is no innate attraction towards a substance, only after using it for a while.
Any smoker knows that after a while you need to smoke again.
The jokke/hypothesis is as follows: fire was important for human survival, tribes with fire were at an advantage over tribes without fire. Yet smoking is not healthy. The tribe only needs a few members to keep the fire going, so instead of innate attraction to keep the fire going (which would be unhealthy to each member of the group), only people who are initiated by the current fire-man get addicted, but should get addicted lest they not neglect the fire (i.e. a biological timer reminding you to inhale from the portable pipe). This way nomadic tribes that had a propensity for addiction had access to fire and its applications, and the tribe survived better than those tribes that could not get addicted (and occasionally lost their fire, possibly executing the specific fire-man at fault, a selection pressure).
I say joke, and that I don't take it serious for multiple reasons: species that probably never benefitted from fire -like spiders- feel the effects off say nicotine.
Another hole in the theory is that tobacco was imported after the discovery of the new world. But I can immagine other plants having fulfilled similar roles.
I underwent some very serious periods of sleep deprivation (Army) and our 'hallucinations' were of a totally different kind: having conversations with people that were not there, seeing things that were not there, misidentifying people whom you know really well who are right on front of your face, taking on different personalities etc..
It's also very scary once you do realize that you've been having a conversation with 'nobody' (or a 'ghost' is what one might think) for quite some time - it adds quite a degree of neuroticism.
On a funny/scary note - the weirdest of all is seeing two people apparently 'having a conversation' ... but upon closer inspection you find they are just taking turns talking near gibberish at one another. All of the manner, body language and tone of a 'conversation' but really, it's just two temporarily crazy people mumbling ... with automatic weapons. Thankfully with no live rounds in most situations :)
Is there a meaningful difference?
On LSD (at least up to moderate doses), you don't hallucinate anything that doesn't exist. You don't see anything that isn't there, or hear voices, everything is just an altered version of reality.
Hallucinations from sleep deprivation (and certain drugs) are different though, you do start to see things that aren't there, often in the corner of your vision, and you do start to genuinely hear voices that don't exist. It's a surreal experience when you're suffering from severe sleep deprivation and you can hear your family talking to you, despite knowing that in reality they're 1000 miles away.
I see spirals every time I meditate. I find it interesting the suggestion that meditation allows more random noise into my neurons.
It feels very similar to the dream state where the content usually has clear connections to my real life but is randomized just enough to produce some odd effects.
In the end, understanding dreams or hallucinations feels like interpreting art to me.
The "Google deep dream" look very... acidic to me, but there were deliberately induced by reinforcing a particular signal. But I wouldn't be surprised to get similar effects by adding noise to the proper type of neural network.
That raises interesting questions about what is real and what is not, but also questions about how much of reality is really the residue of culture and worldview.
(TBH this should probably be titled HOW people hallucinate)
Consider LSD hallucinations, for example. I recall especially complex entangled "ropes". Brightly colored, and in constant motion. Both spinning on axis, and writhing. But the motions weren't just three dimensional. There was a sense of stuff rotating and moving through other dimensions.
Also, the "ropes" had lots of detail. Almost like strings of characters. A little like that G/E/B block on the cover of Hofstadter's GEB. I also recall this guy who argued that all Hebrew letters were two dimensional projections of some multidimensional object. He released a video, which reminded me of LSD hallucinations. Very Kabalistic. And perhaps one inspiration for Aronofsky's "Pi".