Map and Maze Puzzles

This past weekend was the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, and every year I say that I'm just not going to care that much, and when the hunt actually starts, I reneg on everything I've said and go peddle to the metal. Of course, I then forget this change of mind a year later and it all happens again. The exception was the 2008 hunt, which actually sucked enough for me not to do any meaningful work for it - I can't remember working on a single puzzle from that year.

This year was not an exception to the pattern, which is unfortunate since I am in Africa and remote solving from a netbook over a crappy ADSL connection is extremely frustrating. Plus I'm unable to access most of the puzzles. In spite of this, I've done what I seem to be a satisfactory amount of work and solving. Which is why I can now divert my attention to writing this post which I have been thinking about for a little while.

In the realm of puzzles, some people are specialists. There are the crossword freaks, sudoku nerds, anagram weirdos, cryptic punks to name a few. I'm a map puzzle specialist, as it turns out, and its generally my opinion that way too few people appreciate a good map puzzle. Consider the atrocities and monstrosities I've had to put up with in previous hunts.

My predilection towards map puzzles is a curious thing. One could easily attribute such a strength to one's puzzle upbringing; the title of this post is taken from the puzzle book which is my traditional all-time favorite (it is sort of like a little hunt unto itself, made up entirely of this sort of puzzle and without any need for the internet), thus we can surmise that my library was at least partially an influence.

However, in 9.10 - Cognitive Neuroscience, we spent a class discussion gender difference in cognitive capacities, which was the first time I encountered the literature behind such stipulations. Gender differences are everywhere in the brain, but what I found intriguing were the differences in spatial ability between the sexes. I dug up an old meta-analysis (Linn and Peterson, 1985) of various spatial tests to have a look at just what the data says.

I do mean, old, too - the review is from 25 years ago and more recent analyses have been published. However, publications in purist psychology journals tend to be more resistant to the Open Access revolution, so I couldn't obtain anything more current. This is unfortunate because I don't like this paper too much - its geared towards developmentalists, not... genderists? Sexists? In particular, it provides only a couple of highly lacking tables and figures for the gender comparison data, placing unwarranted emphasis on the age data. The name of your article is "Emergence and Characterization of Sex Differences in Spatial Ability..." Come on.

So, how does one approach evaluate an individuals ability to think spatially? Traditionally, there are different tests for the tree main types of spatial ability.

Rotational analysis refers to ones ability to visualize 3D objects and rotate them around and accurately revisualize them. This is the kind of skill one would find useful in games like Homeworld or X-Wing, and probably general path-finding.

Very simply put, spatial visualization requires one take an image and alter it, usually in a fairly complex way, following multiple steps.

The bottom line:

Males are significantly better at mental rotation and in spatial perception, females are slightly more able than males at age 4, but at age 5 male ability accelerates and by adulthood, males well-outperform females. In spatial visualization, tests have not revealed significant differences.

I am inclined to attribute map puzzle skill to the one's ability in spatial visualization, due to the highly complex nature of both tasks. This would imply that gender has nothing to do with the matter, which doesn't exactly jive with the stereotypes. Gender stereotypes and bad and all, though usually contain a kernel of truth somewhere within. A small array of tests as we have examined only provides so much information on the big picture of how the brain processes spatial info across the genders. Map and maze puzzles themselves come in all shapes and sizes, thus further obscuring the question.

Which is why the real moral of this post is that one should not too earnestly mix sleep deprived marathon puzzling orgies with stuffy science literature.

Now that the males have a step up at least in the majority of spatial cognition, I'll have to eventually write a counterpoint to level the playing field with the females. Perhaps I'll write about that infuriating female aptitude for multitasking, which is very real. Be afraid.


References:
1. Emergence and Characterization of Sex Differences in Spatial Ability: A Meta-Analysis. Marcia C. Linn, Anne C. Petersen. Child Development, Vol. 56, No. 6 (Dec., 1985), pp. 1479-1498.

Let's see how far we've come

I've had a long and tiring week, so I will divert the planned substance, and give you something lighter.

I saw Invictus in theaters a couple weeks ago. It was enjoyable. If you haven't heard, it is directed by Clint Eastwood and is an adaptation of Playing the Enemy by John Carlin. The movie was better than Eastwood's previous movie, Gran Torino, yet despite being set in transitional South Africa, it manages to display fewer racist characters. Its really light on the racism I thought - it was as if Eastwood decided to he didn't need to worry about it since the movie was "clearly" about a racist struggle.

The movie cost me about 4 dollars. I was ecstatic. Blue Route Mall is amazing, but true explanation of its glory shall be saved for another time. The show was definitely worthwhile, solely so I could see Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon tromp through baboon poop in the scene filmed right in the middle of where I work everyday.

In related news, hoppzor sent me this link to an amusing blog, and a particular relevantly amusing post.

Also, try playing the "Where's Diapadion's Comment" game while you're browsing.

Troop Mind Journal 01/07

The whole troop came down from the trees, and did what it usually does: Sit. Some troops like to wake up at the crack of dawn and burst up the hill, filled with early morning energy. This troop likes to laze about for a bit and take their dear sweet time. I'm very thankful for this.

There comes a time when all good things must come to an end, and the troop must move on to begin the daily foraging routine. What pushes the troop beyond the threshold? Males are believe to play an awfully big role in this process. I witnessed something this day which is an interesting example of a male not displaying power of his troops movements.

Aaron, the alpha, appeared to be growing tired of sitting under the trees, and wished to move toward the feeding grounds, about half a kilometer away, and well within view across the fynbos. Having enough of lounging beneath the pines, Aaron stood up and walked into the fynbos, and sat down on a whitened tree stump about 20 meters into the bushes. Aaron grunted a few times, movement grunts (one of the major categories of baboon grunts). Then, the waiting began.

Nothing changed. The females continued to lay about and groom each other under the trees, and the juveniles continued to play amongst themselves or lay around in silly positions.

Perhaps you didn't hear me the first time, I imagined Aaron thinking. He moved back to the main body of the troop and settled down. He grunted frequently, and slowly moved bit by bit into the fynbos a second time.

And a second time, his advances were ignored by the body of the troop. Defeated, but not showing it (at least to my unaccustomed sapien eyes), Aaron returned to the core of the troop once more, and satisfied himself with a nap on a soft bed of dried needles.

Eventually the troop did enter the fynbos and committed themselves to seeking the feeding grounds. However, their path lay on a different angle from that intended by Aaron, and the alpha was not fearlessly leading the group as he had intended. New questions arise: was someone else leading the troop, like the young adult Damian? And more interestingly, how was the troop mind able to so completely resist Aaron's impulses?

Groom to fight, fight to groom

Primates' social intelligence overestimated: Primates groom others if afraid they'd lose fight
from ScienceDaily:

"The grooming behavior displayed by primates is due to less rational behavior than often thought. According to a computer model, one basic rule explains all possible grooming patterns: individuals will groom others if they're afraid they'll lose from them in a fight."

...um, so I've gone ahead and read the actual article to this one because I needed to figure out if I was missing something deeper in the text that would explain how this assertion isn't very misguided. In summary, I didn't find anything.

Firstly, their model is based entirely on macaque data... no new world monkeys, no apes, certainly no baboons. This isn't inherently broken, but it simply is not satisfying when one considers that social grooming is ubiquitous in primates, and a crucial device.

Second, I've seen baboons violate this rule on many an occasion. Since males and females do groom each other, and the model does not appear to exclude such behavior, I have a bit of an issue.

Intergender grooming is a bit problem for this model. It happens. It doesn't follow these rules. Let us stipulate that a fully adult male can beat any female in a fight. This is a fact. On many occasions, I've seen a male, even the alpha male. Plop his shaggy form down next to some female who is sitting, minding her own business. If there is any behavior which say "groom me," its this. Yet, a lot of the time the female will just walk away.

This alone would not be enough to discount their findings. However, on several occasions, after his failed attempt to solicit grooming, the male will follow after the female and begin grooming her. Sometimes its a different female. However, the key is that by all accounts, he has initiated the grooming behavior, not the female. He is not afraid of losing to her in a fight.

So why does he groom her? Well, this paper is trying to discount much of the complex social jockeying and diplomacy that researchers believe grooming to be crucial to. Diplomacy is a damn good reason to groom. I'm not at all convinced of the authors' conclusions. Maybe in some monkeys, this is the case, but saying "all primates" is pushing the boundaries... a lot.

Fear and Loathing in Los Fynbos

Baboons like cars. Its probably their novelty that attracts them. You've all seen what they've done on YouTube. Those incidents are outliers, as you've probably guessed. Normal baboons don't want bras, they want food.

Or they want a fun new playground. Cars are like a giant toy: they have all this stuff sticking off of them that you can break, plus some entertaining moving parts. Look at it from a baboon's perspective: they spend all day romping through the forest, jumping up and down on logs, rock, and branches, breaking anything they want, and of all those thousands of objects, no one cares a lick.

Rainer and I ran into an isolated car while following the baboons, one innocent day. As I said, baboons like cars, so the juveniles were already swarming over the automobile. Then I noticed something odd going on... or at least I perceived it to be odd that the time.

These baboons really liked licking this car. I'd never seen this before.

I'm not sure what the baboons got out of this exchange. The car was covered with dirt and dust from the park, and soon to be covered with baboon feces and urine. The all that the car brought with it that was not already readily available to the baboons were particles from the streets. And of course, the paint itself... I wonder...

When baboons lay down, they move heard first, so that the forehead or cheek bumps into the surface before the rest of the body plops down by it. One of them sat on the roof and half-lay down so his head was pressed into the top of the roof and his tongue fell out of the corner of his mouth, furiously licking at the paint job.

"Depraved is the only applicable word which can satisfactorily describe this baboon," I narrated. "He looks as if he were a fiend under the influence of this car's hallucinogenic paint, and his mind is centered on one thought: More."

The baboon raised himself from his half seated position and stared at me indecipherably.

"I don't think he liked what you said," commented Rainer.

Circling around to the rear, I saw a baboon had torn a sticker free from the back windshield, and had begun to eat it. "Congratulations," I offered the absent owner, as the sticker was slowly devoured. "You're been promoted. You're no longer a learner driver."

And now, the truth. I've still got no better idea why they lick cars. They lick the windows too. Novelty is about all I can imagine, and baboons have no concept of disgust. They look at the new cars, touch them, smell them, hear them, so why not taste them?

Return of the Monkeys

In case you hadn't noticed, monkeys are "cool" again, so I decided to write more about them. And I finally got my schedule together to make it happen. You can see the recent products just below, and if you scroll back or search with my the newly enabled box on the right, you can find revised old entries about the baboons. I've finally finished satisfying myself with them, but there should be a few more favorites still to return.


Oh, and I re-enabled comments so you can have your way with my text boxes. In other words, gogogogogo.

Troop Mind

A slice of like scientists and lay people tend to easily throw around the term "Hive Mind." At a glance, the wikipedia disambiguation page reveals the popular associations this slice makes. It comes as no surprise that science-fiction is given the most entries, by far. But look, there's even a little note for usage in animal behavior. Of course, it redirects one to the topic of social insects.

Entomology was, and remains, a massive sub-field within ethology. Queen-centric insects like bees and wasps contributed the word "hive" to the term, and along with termites, ants, and some other colony insects, these hive creatures defined our initial conception of the hive mind.

Thus, in order to have a hive mind, you kind of need to actually have a hive and queen and drones and workers. It part of the definition. However, big social groups have been theorized to have collective consciousnesses of their own, similar to that found in the hives.

So where am I going with this? Well, when you spend your days watching baboons, particularly big groups of baboons, you will inevtiably to wonder how they figure out what to do and where to go every day. It turns out this is a hip issue in primatology, and once again, who better to study it in than the gregarious baboons?

Simply put, a baboon's life consists of moving between a set of safe sleeping sites over the course of a day, while eating. Some form of "troop mind" manipulates the baboons so that they eventually end up at a clear destination, and usually the route they take will pass through some bountiful feeding areas.

What comprises this troop mind? The answer, of course, is that no one knows. But I've seen a few things and have a couple ideas.

The obvious assumption one would make is that the alpha male leads the group. The alpha will certainly exert his will, but its far from being so clear cut. For instance, an alpha male is little more than a donkey following a carrot when he's stalking a female in heat, his head bobbing in rapture a meter behind the female's bright red swelling. During those times, the alpha is hardly the one doing the leading. The female may exert considerable control over when, where, and how often they copulate, and the effectively controls the alpha if he wants to get the sex.

There are of course the other males in the troop as well. Unusually, the cape is home to many old males, who will of course influence the movements of the troop in part. Sometimes I'll see old Chester, off by himself, while Aaron sits in the middle of the troop watching over his females. Chester will slowly saunter ahead a little ways, bit by bit. He could be anticipating the movements of the troop, or he could be guiding them. He is an experienced and wise male, probably a strong alpha ten years ago. He doesn't get many chances to copulate anymore (if he's even interested in sex at his age), so its in interest to look out for the troop as a whole. Afterall, who knows how many of the females and sub-adult males are his children?

Those sub-adult males are a force to be reckoned with as well. When they hear another troop nearby, they'll all meander towards the edge of the group, and if they can, they'll pull the whole troop with them so they can get as close as possible to the excitement of that unknown group.

Similarly, a big fight among females might send a half dozen of them chasing each other a hundred meters away from the center of the group. The troop might be pulled in that direction, and once the whole group is reunited, what then? Do they resume their prior course, or can the momentum be shifted another way?

Troops definitely have goals they seek throughout the day, some more goals being more desirable than others. If a troop is aware of a tasty fruit orchard growing two hills over, they will all wish to head that way and feast. If the monkeys live somewhere more desolate or if the fruit is simply out of season, then the decisions become more complicated.

And when it gets this complicated, my gut observations cease to useful in distilling a root behavior. Big time research needs to be done... and some of its underway... There are benefits from being at very least tangentially involved in this stuff, you see. Much of the existing research looks at how baboons range under different conditions, but that doesn't even to begin to answer the question of who is leading the troop and just how much the baboons listen to particular individuals.

But there's always my gut to fall back on. Sure, the females can manipulate the dudes when they're in estrous, but most of the time, its the males herding and chasing the females wherever and whenever they please. The alpha female might hold the same sway as an average sub-adult male, but the strong males appear to possess what I might call veto power.

This is the great part about this kind of research: you can be gathering all kinds of quantitative data throughout the data, and still be learning more things on the side. A million social interactions happen out there which are too subtle for me to pick up, but there are still a thousand which I can wrap my brain around just by watching with my inferior human visual system.

Mortimer the Midlife Crisis Male

I don't visit the second troop very often, but over the course of my visits I have been more and more struck by the behavior of a grizzled male called Mortimer.

Senior males cannot be described as typical because outside of the Cape Peninsula, they are quite rare. The life of a male is short and violent. My guys lead violent lives to be sure, but they are not all that short because there are no predators to pick them off after they are injured in a fight. Thus, we have a unique culture of older males in these troops.

Mortimer is certainly not young. I say this because he is missing all of his canine teeth. Baboons are not carnivorous, so their canines only get use in heated brawls. Over the years, you'll see the massive canines yellow and chip away. I don't know if they fall out from the accumulated strain or have to be broken out by a traumatic event because this kind of thing can only happen four times in a male's lifetime, and they fight far too often for me to be able to pick out the moment when a baboon loses a coveted fang.

Morty also has the big coat and deeply lined muzzle of an elderly baboon. Though, his coat isn't a massive ball of shag like that of Chester. We debate over just how old Mortimer is, since he looks old but exhibits youthful behavior which I shall describe.

When a foreign troop can be heard (often through wahoos) nearby, the sub-adults of a troop will often edge to the periphery of their troop, in the direction of the offensive sounds. Male baboons inevitably "disperse" when they come of age. In order to preserve the flow of genes and reduce incest, young adult males will change troops. When males this age skirt to the edge of their own troop, they might be seeking any and all information that can be gleaned about the territory and behavior of the neighboring troops... one of which they will go on to join.

The funny thing is, Mortimer engages in this behavior as well. When the sub-adults wander towards the adjacent troop, Mortimer is commonly found at the front of the bunch, keenly interested in the prospects afforded by other troops.

To my knowledge, there are no studies which describe dispersing fully adult males. Once a male joins a new troop, it is assumed he will stay there for life. Yet, Mort acts like a sub-adult, getting into fights, acting aloof, showing interest in other troops. The key difference is that he is larger and much more experienced that the sub-adults of his troop. If he is on the young side, as some believe, then maybe he's in a bad position, for the alpha male of the troop is a commanding individual. Mortimer is no wimp of a baboon, so perhaps he has some virility left in him and wishes to have the chance to use that fire before it goes out.

A Policy of Reconciliation

One morning with the troop, I witnessed a scuffle between two small juveniles. The baboons were little more than infants, aged between one and two years. Both had probably been weaned very recently, and one of them might still be darting in for a quick nip once a day.

I arrived at the scene after the tumult had begun. These two little tykes were biting and screaming at each other. This is hardly news in Baboonland; monkeys will scream during almost every instance of play. However, there is a thin line over which one baboon can cross, and across that line is aggression rather than "simple" play... I'll save the treatise on how the two behaviors are phylogenetically equivalent for another time.

One of these guys clearly broke the pact of playful violence. This, too, is common place. One of the little ones will scurry away, and repeatedly wail his discontent away. Often, older juveniles will come to aid the others, break up the tussle, or perhaps diffuse tension with their mere presence.

The struggle between these two juveniles was somehow perceived by me to be a level or two above the usual scuffle. Even in the presence of the older juveniles, the two were not dissuaded from battling. Eventually, they broke apart, but the violence was far from ended. Each displaced their frustrations on other surrounding juveniles, lunging and swiping at the others. A few smaller fights ensued, but it was clear that these were only half-hearted struggles. Once the two juveniles broke apart, both would emit this rhythmic low whining sound, a bit like a off and on growl or grumble.

The grumbling continued for several minutes, until finally the two broke away from their fellows, whether by choice or for ostracization I could not tell. Then, the two growling baboon juveniles began closing the distance between them. Slowly they creeped towards one another, their motion persistently supported by their growls.

This is it, I thought eagerly. These two are going to have it out with each other right here and now! What trump moves have they not yet played?
 
The unexpected happened. There was no intense brawl, no torn flesh, or vicious screaming which I have become so accustomed to seeing. The two animals came within reach of one another, clasped each other in their arms, and hugged.

The grumbling continued for a bit, and the two looked about warily, but t'were completely comfortable in the embrace of the other. It was an unconditional reconciliation. The two were clearly still agitated, and the grumbling continued for some time before gradually abating, but the climax had passed, and the two baboons became noticeably calmer over time with the help of the other's assurances.

After witnessing the cruel and unforgiving world of baboon sociality for these months, it was nice to see something different. It is good to be surprised.

Repeat: That was a weird book

This post is borrowed from my old journal of years past. I liked/wanted the content enough to carry it over and bring it up to date.

I picked up a copy of "The Cognitive Neurosciences" Third Edition from the MIT Press garage sale by chance, which was a damn nice find (its a fatty and probably would cost about a hundred bucks new - I paid ten); one of those texts I see often on the shelves of grad students, post-docs, and profs in Course 9. When glancing through it, I found that Sapolsky contributed a section for it called "Stress and Cognition," which sums up much of his own academic research, plus that of others, and is pretty much exactly the research I am talking about when I attack MIT student life circumstances. Plus, its quite a well written piece. It unfortunately isn't available for public consumption on the web, but here are a few articles that talk about the same issue to a less complete degree.

However, my desire is to talk about an entirely different book. My 9.20 professor urged me to try reading a book he had mentioned to me entitled "Sperm Wars." Its about the underlying science (I can't stress this enough, the author is a professor of Biology at Manchester, and has spent years running carefully regulated studies involving thousands upon thousands of samples) of human sexual behavior. So I'm interested in this sort of stuff, and the book seemed pretty cool (and if you examine the back cover, already mildly shocking), so I gave it a read.

The stuff in there is really weird. Downright boggling. Also fascinating, for a number of reasons. For example, one of the scientific findings highlighted in the book is that 10% of all children born to married couples do not possess the genes of their "father." Another: male and female homosexuality exists as a genetic balanced polymorphism. Because of the very real reproductive advantages given by bisexual genes, homophobia probably developed in heterosexuals because the others were a threat to reproductive fitness, plus there is that unfortunate problem of the spreading disease. Its worse in industrial societies; secluded populations with less disease exhibit much higher rates of bisexual behavior and little taboo exists. There's a lot more where that came from, too.

The primary goal of the book is to discuss the anatomy and physiology of human reproduction, leaving all aspects of societal influences out of it. The anatomy and physiology is certainly enough to fill the book since there is some weird weird shit that does make sense from an animal behavior perspective, but is stuff I would not dream of on my own. It is a strange strange thing we've got going for ourselves. I'm not sure I always agree with his uses of "scenes" to illustrate examples of behaviors. Some of it is pretty shocking, which is probably the author's intention, since without presenting the reader with realistic shock value, the legitimate points he is trying to get across simply wouldn't set in.

Perhaps the author's primary takeaway point is that naturally, human reproduction is not innately cooperative. To our Freudian Id (Actuality: Hypothalamus, lower brain areas, endocrine organs, etc.), tis an everlasting conflict against the opposing gender. The male "shotgun" approach is often viewed derisively as crude and stupid, but there is a lot more intelligence in these behaviors than it appears. Its quite unsettling how much simple hormones and unconscious planning/scheming are able to manipulate our actions without our conscious understanding. Due to the drastic difference in "how stuff works down there," the science says males should spread their genes to as many people as possible, minimizing personal risk, and women should try to collect the strongest genes possible (again minimizing risk) while maintaining supportive relationships with at least one male. What does it mean to be the strongest? Well, that's always changing and fluctuating, but that unconscious machine happens to know damn well what's "best," and its often not what our minds are seeing.

In one of Sapolsky's published essay collections, he wrote a little piece about the neurophysiology of escalating arguments amongst people: where they come from, why the develop, how they end up exploding, and at the very end of the piece, what we can consciously do to take advantage of our own physiology and stop ourselves from being stupid. This book is not that. To the author's credit, he explains that he wanted to present the bare facts, unclouded by bias or agenda. To alleviate small arguments is easy, but to take a stance on what people should or shouldn't do sexually involves many questions of morality and ethics, issues we've been seriously debating for hundreds of years. To delve into that would needlessly distort what the book means to do.

Which is to provide fair and balanced view of both genders and the various behaviors and structures involved. He does a relatively good job. After all, the guy knows his ethology and sociobiology, and he's in no way just pulling this out of his ass. I'd have liked to see more data, but that's not what this book is for. Hundreds of additional articles exist for that purpose. Plus, the book really does only touch on one side of human behavior. If we were talking about dogs, bears, monkeys, or any other animal, then this would be it. But, we're not that, and the author recognizes this from the outset.

I'm not sure if this a book that I really think everyone ought to read. The information contained within is important, but its presentation is perhaps not ideal, which is unfortunate because people really should be aware of how we actually work. Some stuff in the book should probably be viewed with skepticism, but many of the results have been shown to be reproducible... Ha. Ha ha.

I think what it really boils down too is, as those silly G.I. Joe cartoons used to say, "knowing is half the battle."