Puppy Pregnancy in Humans: A Culture-Bound Disorder (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Puppy Pregnancy in Humans: A Culture-Bound Disorder (2003)

journals.sagepub.com

17 pointstokai82 comments

The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can gain hold and even spread. If some people can believe that a dog bite will make a male pregnant with a puppy, and this irrational idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population, then even the most ridiculous idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population.

Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.

I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process.

Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.

Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.

People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought.

Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.

Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net?

At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases.

I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.

When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons).

So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?

I think you and I are agreeing here? That rationality is hard and not automatic.

Yes we indeed are agreeing.

I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool.

That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.

I mean, it depends how you're defining rational thought, but there are some very basic irrational ways of thinking that seem to be the default (particularly around probability and risk; the classic one is that something randomish having happened recently makes it less likely to happen again soon). People tend to misapply those even in their own domain.

As this behavior is apparently universal amongst humans, if you are a darwinian then you must accept that this irrational behavior has some basis in the fitness of societies.

It may be rational, as a society, to be irrational.

Evolution doesn’t efficiently optimize everything. On a mechanical level every person has several mutations but failing to reproduce is a very weak signal to correct them.

Clearly beneficial or harmful mutations have significant pressure, neutral ones don’t.

It's not survival of the fittest, its survival of the ones that survive.

An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough that they dont drag it down to complete extinction.

Survival of the survivors is comically tautological. Surely there is still something that survivors have in common that makes them the fittest, or non-survivors have in common that makes them the not-fittest.

The point is more that the fitness occurs on a net-basis. The more-fit traits outweigh the unfit traits.

It is equally possible that humans as a species or sub-groups of humans are fit _despite_ irrationality as opposed to irrationality being adaptive.

I suspect, however, that irrationality is actually a collection of a wide variety of cognitive traits and heuristics, some helpful in some circumstance, some not helpful, and these are not only situational but also vary by degree.

> An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough

... Thus making it the fittest [among the population]?

I'm curious how tied these delusions are to unfulfilled narcissism. For the most part, I've only seen these wild claims in folks who... well... have nothing going on in their lives. I mean, take most bigfoot or aliens-abducted-me folks. If they didnt have that, they're incredibly boring people. Like, they dont even have a hobby they're mediocre at. Add a sudden urge for attention due to mild narcissism or mid life crisis, they'll leap to anything for a group to give then attention.

What makes this worse is mass media in general. One person gains attention, then the copycats get triggered to do the same thing. Hell, as an innocent parallel, we do the same with fashion. We see someone looks cool/beautiful wearing a certain outfit, people buy it to get the same looks/attention. Omega watches really only do well because of James Bond. Anyways, the whole thing snowballs. More and more people do it with each instance of successful attention gained.

Just an observation I think applies to like 80% of these people. Sure, 20% or 10% are true believers. I think the other 80-90% just need to take up painting or woodworking to get the attention they want from others. Fuck... I hope so at least... or I dont want to live on a planet where guys think they can have a litter of puppies. The amount of stupid in that is painful to comprehend.

What you are describing is called Munchausen Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...

Hmmm, totally related, I agree. But I feel like that's a, "give me attention because something is wrong with me". I think, and wtf do I know, conspiracy quacks are, "give me attention because I have special knowledge/I know the truth/I connected the dots". I might just be splitting hairs. Either way, thanks for the link.

The reality is many high ranking officials and professionals have seen things and gone on record. What you are commenting on is how something is protrayed in the media / film. That stereotype isn't accurate but it is accepted truth from late night talk show hosts.

> Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process

IMO it's human nature, we're inclined to an authority based mentality; either appeal to authority and defying authority.

Consider that I'm likely to take statements from my friends and family at face value because A. I've built trust with them and B. it's expensive to sit down and thoroughly verify every little detail. And vice-versa.

This is a feature not a bug! It's more pragmatic to have 1 person verify 1 thing than to have everyone trying to verify the same thing.

This is true at the scale of society as well, for ex. I'm not smart enough to understand how mRNA vaccines work, but I'll accept their word and the data at face value that it does what it's supposed to.

But the real question is what is straining our trust in society and each-other?

(Again IMO) due to technology, we live in an unprecedented era of illusion and fake-ness.

Our news is fake, internet celebrities cultivate fake lifestyles

deep-fakes

likes, upvotes, and ad-clicks are fake

the reviews are fake

the comments are fake

algorithms track and "select" our content

and on the flip-side, our entertainment, movies, and TV shows have never been more realistic

And to top it all off, now there are UFOs!

The line between real and fake has been totally blurred.

Automating disinformation is a new thing, and we've been totally saturated with noise and information.

We're in a transitional period and our old institutions are not equipped for what new technology is capable of.

And it's a feedback loop where as institutions decay, our leaders become increasingly corrupt.

Our politicians and scientists have incentive to be dishonest, and have admitted to giving false narratives that are "in the best interest of society".

Therefore there are many who no longer trust authority figures who were meant to be ambassadors of the truth.

Therefore some believe we can become pregnant with puppies.

So if a family member starts believing they will give birth to puppies, you will instantly give that credibility? How does this follow when irrationality is clearly at an extreme?

And what if your father believes in UFOs and your mother doesn't? There's something more than just giving credence due to authority, especially in these extreme circumstances.

did you believe in santa and the tooth fairy as a kid?

I did not expect this paper to be about people believing they literally can become pregnant with a puppy from interaction (e.g. bite) with a dog. I was hoping it was a paper on the modern obsession in American culture with owning a dog as a pet. Dog ownership is a phenomenon that feels pervasive in my social circles but not one I feel that I can explain beyond “people like dogs”.

Modern obsession in American culture?

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/feb/archaeol...

Do a search on "oldest dog burial" and you'll find that humans, from many different cultures and regions for thousands of years, have had dogs in such high esteem (pets) that burying them was important. Theres even some studies that claim humans and dogs evolved together in some respects due to the high prevalence of interaction for 40,000 some odd years. Dogs as pets or even family/tribe members ain't new, by a long shot.

As an American, yea, the USA is awesome, but we're not so awesome that we invented having pets.

People like dogs, and your dog at least appears to like you back. If they don't really like us, their behavior is enough of a facsimile that it doesn't even matter.

I spend more time with my dog than anyone except my wife and kids; and it is pretty close to the amount I spend with my teenagers given that they have their own interests and activities. With that much time together, there is just naturally a bond.

I think the OP might have been speaking more toward the people who feel the need to take their dog everywhere. Things like carrying them in purses or bags, sneaking them into stores where they're not allowed and having verbal or physical altercations when challenged, getting documents (fake or otherwise) certifying they're emotional support animals to take them on planes, and the overall making them a part of your identity.

It's not unlike the anti-maskers or anti-vaxx people presently during the pandemic. The difference being that current circumstances (i.e. the pandemic) are causing society to challenge those people and their behaviors but aside from Airlines banning emotional support animals, there really isn't anyone questioning the crazy dog people.

Dogs and humans have been working and living together for quite a bit longer than modern America has existed, so I don’t think you can chalk it up to that or really diagnose it as a disorder after several thousand years of evolving together the way we have.

In my experience the explanation is, that people like dogs.

and dogs like people.

People have emotional needs that they might get from other people or might get from animals.

I think the post though is talking about a syndrome that happens in India.

I have seen many people get bit by a dog in the US and never heard anybody say they thought they were pregnant.

Work around animals for a bit and you lean that a sweet critter that becomes pregnant or a new mother are often the nastiest things imaginable. Only to go back again after babies have moved on.

yep.

there was that time a woman walking her dog ran into a couple of giraffes protecting a baby and the male did a one-hit kill.

when i was a kid I never was able to hang out with a peer group of other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs and I realized that was why I was much better with dogs than my wife despite the fact that she is a professional animal handler (teaches people to ride horses.)

There was a time when I wasn't sure what it was I lived for and realized I get limitless joy from experiences with animals be it my pets or seeing birds, deer, battling with the beavers that try to plug our culvert pipe or otherwise.

Like all primates, we humans organize ourselves in social status hierarchies.

Your hierarchy position is very important, and though we may not talk or even think much about it, we crave being on top very much.

Of course this is a true Zero Sum Game. Half the people are by definition always in the bottom half.

I think part of the attraction of dogs is that they happily will join your social hierarchy below you. Get a dog, and you get to fulfill that primal craving of having someone admire, obey and worship you.

My former boss had an interesting explanation for this: it's sort of a safety valve.

Trying to control every aspect of your life leads to suffering, so in order to keep such tendencies at bay you introduce some unavoidable chaos - and dogs are chaos incarnate.

My dog seems to love me a lot, and that feels nice.

Having kids has become expensive and uncool. Pets make a sufficient substitute for many people.

See: the huge and growing market for kids-items-disguised-as-pet-items.

I was having a conversation about the pandemic with a friend who is a dog trainer, and she commented that the shelter she works with saw a lot of people get dogs during the pandemic when they were homebound, and now those dogs are starting to come back to the shelter.

Note that this is one anecdote, not well sourced data.

I just assume that humans and dogs coevolved.

Is "puppy pregnancy" a medical term, or something? The way this is written makes it sound like it's a pre-existing concept in the space.

Probably a new case that deserves to be in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases

If delusions are contagious with no biological carrier, and in otherwise healthy humans, what does that say about mental illness in general?

Memes (ideas/beliefs) behaving like viruses is the subject of lots of prior material. Delusions fit in this category just like things like fashion/religion/culture/language do. They don't directly spread physically, but by others being exposed to the concept whether via social media, in-person contact, books, whatever.

I don't think you can extrapolate too much about physical/chemical mental illness aside from some people being more receptive to certain ideas/delusions than others (maybe from background/upbringing, or just personality).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com