When In Doubt, Defect

Chapter 12 of The Selfish Gene brings a very interesting theory on relationships between living things. This theory, which can be applied to almost every altruistic action towards another being, consists of two options for each participant (Cooperate and Defect) and four outcomes (CC, CD, DC, DD). This is the matrix chart for the "game":

As you can see, the four outcomes bring very different results for Player A. If Player A cooperates, A can win a moderate sum or lose a small sum; but if he defects, he can lose nothing or win a big sum. According to logic, Player A should defect: it gives him or her the best results. But should Player A step over Player B in case B chooses Cooperate and cause Player B to lose points, money or effort (whatever the case is)? In that case, What should Player A chose? This game can be applied in many situations in real life and the results can be extrapolated to see the severity of the players' actions; the best example is The Prisoner's Dilemma, created by Albert W. Tucker. 


This situation consists of two people. They are both suspected of collaborating in a crime and sit in different rooms to be interrogated; both obviously want to lessen their time in jail. The key to understanding this situation is that they can't speak to each other while this is happening and couldn't speak beforehand, either. The police agents invite both to DEFECT their partner by giving in evidence against the other and lessening their time in jail. If one defects and the other doesn't say anything about the story imposed on him (COOPERATE), the one who cooperated will get a big jail sentence, while the other will have his sentence shortened or get out unharmed. If they both cooperate, or stay silent, they both will get a moderate sentence. And if they both defect, they are both convicted of the crime but get a somewhat reduced sentence for giving in evidence.


This gets me to my point. What should we do in this case? Can we trust the other participant and cooperate for an equal gain, but risk the defection of the other? Or should we betray others in search of a big reward? I guess this is a very solid theory not only on human relations, but also of other living things' relationships. By playing this game in class, I could see that most people who were betrayed once, never fell into the trap of cooperating another time. The exception was Camilo, who after being betrayed by Connor, kept on cooperating even after Connor had chosen defect.  

Science in a Fun Way

Personally, Biology isn't one of my favorite subjects of all time, and I don't have a good time trying to understand the small details of it, like what does the mitochondria do or the process of photosynthesis inside a plant cell. I prefer to learn about something that I can relate to and can see the results of, like natural selection or the theory of evolution. This is why I have been able to understand (at times) the explanations in chapter 3 of The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. 

I have heard, from other people who have read this book, that it is very difficult to understand and that it is very monotonous and boring. I agree with them in the way the book can render you to close your eyes little by little, and later realize you have lost your time because you have not taken in anything from what you have read while you were unconsciously day-dreaming while scanning the words on the page. That could happen. But what is true is that the metaphors and applications of the theories of evolution that Dawkins utilizes causes the reader to be able to relate and understand the text better. The strategies the author uses certainly help me understand the things he writes about, which without these examples, could be just a big mess of letters for all I can see. For example, the analogy where Dawkins uses a boat race team to explain the intricacy of building a competent living thing on page 38 helped me clear up the terms and relationships he had been talking about on the pages previous to the metaphor. 


When I received this book for the first time, I thought it was going to be another novel with a strange form and weird content, like Invisible Cities or A Simple Heart. In fact, the first pages we read in class seemed like it was going to be like I had imagined; apparently, I was wrong. The Selfish Gene is a scientific novel, but it is not written as a scientific report or as if it was the finding of the century. It has a very strange style and tone. As I see it, it is written in order to be read by as many people as can get its hands on it, not by an exclusive community of biologists and geneticists. The author's use of the word "you" creates a relationship with the reader as for him or her to think that Richard Dawkins was right there with the reader explaining the rise of the genes and its survival machines. The book also includes some exercises in which Dawkins involves the reader, which I think is great in helping his audience get a better grasp on what his book is talking about. And lets not mention that it also helps the reader stay awake!

Important Words in The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, is a scientific research book about the evolution of genes and its role in the lives of living things. Dawkins introduces many terms, many are related to biology, and I think it is important to know them. We defined them in class.

1. Gene: replicator with high- copying fidelity. Any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection. 
2. Altruistic Selfishness: a concept where acts that are seen as purely being for the good of others, are really selfish and done for the survival of the organism that did the act. 
3. Acquired Characteristics: traits that are gained or changed throughout a living thing's life, but are not passed on to the next generation since they are not embedded in the animal or plant's genes.
4. Body: according to Richard Dawkins, gene preservers.  
5. Proteins: chain of amino acids.
6. DNA: nucleic acid that contains the genes of living things.
7. Allele: rivals for the same slot on a chromosome.
8. Mitosis: a process where a cell divides into two new copies, each with 46 chromosomes.

Is This The Real Life..

Calvino has touched the topic of reality on several occasions in the book. First of all, his cities (or Marco Polo's cities) don't seem very realistic at all, to be honest. Who would believe that a city where "there is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks" exists, especially in the eleventh century or whenever Marco and Kublai Kahn lived? (75) This takes me to think that these cities are made up, or are a product of the emperor's or the merchant's wildest dreams. After all, Kublai and Marco do tell to each other of cities they saw in their dreams many times throughout the book.

The part of Invisible Cities where reality is most played with is in of the encounters between Polo and Khan. The dialogue between both characters shows they start to question if they really do exist, if the things surrounding them are really there. Kublai says: "I, too, am not sure I am here, strolling among the porphyry fountains..." to which Marco replies: "Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadows of our lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped:.." (103). As seen, Calvino expresses the idea that our lives, the world we know, might only be a dream of ours; and that maybe, one day, we will wake up from it and live an entirely different life. 


Reality sometimes can seem like an illusion, an illusion created by our own stubborn minds. We chose what we believe in just because we don't want to believe in anything else than our own views. This is seen in Invisible Cities in a conversation between Kublai and his loyal companion, Marco. Kublai starts to list different things that undoubtedly exist in his empire, such as stonecutters, rubbish collectors, and many other things. He then says he never thinks of them, to which Marco responds "Then they do not exist" (117). This conversation shocked me quite a bit. It made me think of my own perspective on what the reality I am in is.  This is a very deep analysis on society and human behavior. In some ways, our reality is like a  very big video game with almost infinite levels. We chose where to go, what to do, and that is what we think the game is all about. But what we don't notice are the things we don't do, the places we don't visit, so we don't count them as a part of our reality. That is why we have to take into account the things we don't see or experience ourselves, just for the knack of knowing our environment better.

So Much Pressure

A recurring theme in Invisible Cities is the role that decisions take in our world. We make decisions that cause an impact on our lives and other's lives every second. Sometimes we think some events are insignificant, but even the smallest of our judgements can change a lot in the world. This is what I interpreted that Calvino wanted to say in some parts of the book. 

In one part of the story, Italo Calvino imagines Marco Polo in an event that happened to him on his journey. He was on a city square, looking at someone that was "living a life or an instant that coud be his; he could now be in that man's place"(29). He continues to describe that if Marco Polo had "long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square". This is the importance of decisions. If even the smallest of Marco Polo's paths in life had gone just a bit different, he could have ended up in the position of that man in space and time, or even in the position of any other person in the world, or another entirely different position. There are stories of people who decided to wake up two minutes late on a work day and if it hadn't been for those two minutes, they would have been in the site of an accident, or people who missed a speeding bus by an inch, an inch they had lost while tying their shoes. These decisions saved these people's lives, and Marco Polo's decisions made him stand where and when he was that day. This is what Italo Calvino is expressing here: the impact of our decisions, no matter how small, can go a very long way.

This theme is also seen in a description of a city, Fedora. Marco Polo describes the globes in a building in the center of Fedora:

Looking into each globe, you see a globe city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today... every inhabitant visits it... imagining his reflection on the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up),... (32)

 The role of decisions is perfectly portrayed in this book. The globes with the other Fedoras represent roads not taken, paths that could have been but aren't real because of some thing or another. This is exactly what decisions and judgements are. I believe the building with the globes are an excellent metaphor for looking at the decisions we have made. We must stop and ponder at the globes with the realities that could have been if we would have taken another road, but we must live in the present we chose, because it is the one that convinced us most. We can not live in the past, it is another reality than what is occuring around us. 

Invisible Words

Here are the words I don't understand from the book, along with the page number they are in and their definitions:

1. Braziers: a metal receptacle for holding live coals or other fuel, as for heating a room. (5)
2. Beseech: to implore urgently. (5)
3. Scepter: royal or imperial power or authority; sovereignty. (5) 
4. Chalcedony: a microcrystalline, translucent variety of quartz, often milky or grayish.(12)
5. Languish: to lose vigor and vitality. (16)
6. Jutting: an extension beyond the main body or line. (53)
7. Stridor: a harsh, grating, or creaking sound. (21)
8. Quarry: an excavation or pit, usually open to the air, from which building stone, slate, or the like, is obtained by cutting, blasting, etc. ( 47)
9. Chaste: refraining from sexual intercourse that is regarded as contrary to morality or religion; virtuous. (52)
10. Balustrade: awkward or unwieldy. (73)
11. Estuary: that part of the mouth or lower course of a river in which the river's current meets the sea's tide. (61)

Brazier

Tricky Language

I have noticed that language has been brought up several times in chapters two and three of Invisible Cities. Marco Polo, at first, doesn't know neither the language spoken by Kublai Kahn nor the languages spoken in the cities he has visited. He tried very hard to learn Kublai Kahn's language but as seen in page 39: 

"... and yet when Polo began to talk about how life must be in those places, day after day, evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces, glances." (39)

Here is the issue with language. There has always been the idea that spoken dialects like ours can't describe ideas, situations, objects, etc. entirely and with very accurate perspectives. That is why there are so many languages: humans can not settle for one and continue to develop new tongues in order to get a better grasp on the description of things. The use of language depends on perspective; you will never find two people's description of an object the same. This is hinted at in the book when Marco Polo says:

"No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it." (61)

Marco Polo says this because the description he gives and the words he chooses have nothing to do with the object (the city). He described the city of Olivia in one way, and when Kublai Kahn or anyone else travels to that city, they will draw their own conclusions about it and explain it in other ways. 


The perfect description does not exist. It is so hard just to find the words to write this, even harder for a poem or to explain how something works or how a person looks like. Language will always be an illusion; it doesn't exist but it helps us understand the world around us.