Can human traits be formalized?

[Posy McPostface]

I've been wondering about modeling human traits that seem to have a universal aspect of nature. Though this is worthy of another topic, on a more fundamental level or serving as a good example, can 'masculinity' have a more objective measure of measuring it and formalizing it. In other words, is it a purely social construct or can something about it be said objectively about it, and even more complex cases, as in relation to what?

There's no doubt in my mind of how important these aspects of human nature are. Take for example prison populations or game theoretic scenarios where one nation wants to display an attitude of dominance or some derivative of masculinity over another nation.

Is it possible to formalize such traits or behavior based on those traits, and thus understand decision making and social dynamics in greater detail?

If there's any reading material, I'd be interested in exploring or delving into the topic further based on research or studies on the matter from possibly some evolutionary biologist or evolutionary game theory.

 

[Posy McPostface]

I bring this up after a short study in one of my game-theoretic class. Namely, there's an aspect of human behavior that seems consistent with human traits like 'masculinity', which are manifest in terms of strategic play of dominance and hierarchy. However, I've never heard of formalizing traits like 'masculinity' into decision making, and the prisoners' dilemma outcome might be radically or just different for females rather than males.

 

[rootone]

I'm not sure what your point is.
Yeah humans typically behave as humans typically do.

 

[Posy McPostface]

I'm not sure what your point is.
Yeah humans typically behave as humans typically do.

My question, not point, is whether human traits can be modeled or formalized (taking, for example, expressing or displaying a human trait of 'masculinity' for a male or even female in some decision-making process or human/nation relation). I hope there's no confusion there.

 

[rootone]

Sure, that sort of modelling is routine stuff for computer games, particularly RPG.

 

[Posy McPostface]

Sure, that sort of modelling is routine stuff for computer games, particularly RPG.

Could you elaborate on that?

Is it some sine qua non for a good RPG game to have a gun and walk around shooting enemies?

 

[256bits]

sine qua non

I had to look that up.
Translation:

si·ne qua non
[ˌsinā ˌkwä ˈnōn, ˌsinē ˌkwä ˈnän]

NOUN
sine qua nons (plural noun)

1. an essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary:
   "grammar and usage are the sine qua non of language teaching and learning"

 

[256bits]

My question, not point, is whether human traits can be modeled or formalized (taking, for example, expressing or displaying a human trait of 'masculinity' for a male or even female in some decision-making process or human/nation relation). I hope there's no confusion there.

Investigate the myths surrounding male/female traits.
male - leadership, decisive, definite game plan, unwavering, ...
female - collaborative, consultative, nurturing, ...
or whatever else one can think of as being a trait assigned to a gender.
Of course there is cross over for the hero or heroine, but is that to be expected as being a character flaw or not.

Margaret thatcher was labeled as the Iron Lady in her term of office. A male might not have achieved that characterization.
In movies, the 'hard' myths are expressed as being necessary in most cases, especially for action films and others of that sort.
Romance films, the good ones, show more complicated behavior.

In real life, the myths may be believed, by some people, in which case they aren't really myths.
One is supposed to act in a certain way just because of gender. ( ie a male never hits a woman, girls like pink and fuzzy )
Others disregard expected behaviors as being superfluous for meaningful interactions.
Does it come down to culture.

I am not sure if that is what you are looking for - female.
I am sure that is what you are looking for - male.

 

[russ_watters]

My question, not point, is whether human traits can be modeled or formalized (taking, for example, expressing or displaying a human trait of 'masculinity' for a male or even female in some decision-making process or human/nation relation). I hope there's no confusion there.

I think the confusion is that you don't have to "formalize"(whatever that even means) traits to model them. You just need to observe them.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Hmm. I think I qualify as an evolutionary biologist - population biology.

@russ_watters is spot on. Yes we could formalize, if those traits that you appear not to understand too well, were something you could formalize. Anthropologists and sociologists early on tried to do that. It had merit and drawbacks as well.

Formalize: I am assuming you are taking that concept to mean universally seen behaviors. Anthropologists actively study male and female roles. Humans are sexually dimorphic, and exhibit extremely plastic social behavior. E O Wilson has a book on this topic that would help you get out of the culturally-centric, Judeo-Christian assumption set you seem to have. 'The Social Conquest of Earth' is a great book, IMO. And having that assumption set is not necessarily an impediment socially - it is more or less standard in Western culture, with broad interpretation. Evolution works on the fitness of individuals and also groups. It does not function against what we think, but what we actually do.

That really varying social behavior I mentioned has women assuming what, in the Judeo-Christian tradition "should" be a male "role", but was assumed by women. There are several cultures that have what most of us would view as complete role reversal - women as part of or as the entire warrior class.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...games-herodotus-ice-princess-tattoo-cannabis/

This interview has a dumbed-down aspect, but anybody should be able to get through it. Science reporting can be annoying that way.

 

[Posy McPostface]

I am assuming you are taking that concept to mean universally seen behaviors.

Yes, that is what I am wondering about. Is there an objective measure of human traits in general? As an example, is the ratio of men to women in prison populations across the globe similar or varies greatly due to cultural norms? I will definitely get the book you pointed out.

Thanks.

 

[jim mcnamara]

A sort of counterexample about prisons:
FWIW: Suppose you personally want to have as many children as possible and have them survive to adulthood. Women control rate of the growth of a population, using this definition of fecundity: "the ability to produce an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertility"

Since the age at first onset of menses controls generation times, and so affects this equation - $N_1=N_0^{ert}$ where t= time, r=rate. Shorter generation times mean higher growth rate. You can achieve this two ways:
improve caloric intake fats have more impact (US is a prime example:
average age at onset of menses in 1900 was 18, in 2000 it was ~11.8 )

This means in for most humans and in a practical sense, have multiple wives/women with extra cost for support

This fact was not lost on people. Polygamy has been a common cultural norm in many places. High fat diets, except maybe among Inuit peoples, has been a pretty rare thing, on average, for most of human history. So it was not an option.

As a result women imprisoned are likely end up as sex servants, men prisoners are far more expendable. So, what does that tell you about "bad" people worldwide? Not much.

What I am trying to say: do not attempt to find a good means of sexually segregating behaviors, except in a closely defined cultural context.

That is what you are unconsciously doing in your prisoner question.

There are genetically controlled abilities and physical traits that differ between sexes. But traits that can be at least partially overridden by strong cultural norms probably will be, are, or have been socially enforced. Somewhere, sometime, as I just indicated.

Or stated another way: it is usually easy to find exceptions for most categorization schemes.. Too many exceptions most often means the categorization scheme (formalization) is weak.

 

[Posy McPostface]

There are genetically controlled abilities and physical traits that differ between sexes. But traits that can be at least partially overridden by strong cultural norms probably will be, are, or have been socially enforced. Somewhere, sometime, as I just indicated.

Assessing to what degree do social and cultural norms superseding biological functions is fascinating. Everyone talks about nature vs nurture; but, I see little substance in that (almost) truism. Have you come about figuring out how much does behavioral conditioning factor in this nature vs nurture truism?

Basically, what I'm saying is how does one reach a baseline or demarcation in the measure of nature vs nurture if there's nothing objective that can be said about these culturally relative concepts of 'masculinity' or 'femininity'?

There is none and we're really that malleable as a species to learn behaviors?

 

[jim mcnamara]

E O Wilson deals with this topic. The real reasons why the world is becoming more homogeneous and less traditional results from the dominance of Western culture. Not that it is a good or a bad thing. English has become a standard for business communication particularly between companies based in different countries.

'Guns, Germs, and Steel' by Jared Diamond explains what happened to the world in terms of plant and animal geography. Western culture won the domesticated plants and animals lottery a long time ago, then fell into good technology because of it.

Example - In North America before 1590, there were approximately 600 languages. Langauge count is a proxy for cultural diversity - language is culture. Now everyone in North America speaks either English or Spanish, possibly French* with about 60 "background" languages like Navajo, Keres, and Nahuatl. Of these, two (AFAIK) have the most speakers: Nahuatl ~1 million, Navajo ~400,000.

Western dominance and subsequent homogenization is what precludes our understanding the real diversity of human cultures for the past 10000 years. And hides the extreme social plasticity from folks living in Toledo OH or Manchester UK. Like you and me.

And basically that is what we are discussing here. And there is not that much to it, IMO.

*Edit - I neglected French in Quebec. Do not know numbers.

 

[Drakkith]

Assessing to what degree do social and cultural norms superseding biological functions is fascinating.

You're assuming that social and cultural norms are actually superseding biological functions. Which also implies that there actually are certain hard-coded behaviors which can be overridden. However, as far as I know, the only hard-coded behaviors are low-level behaviors like reflexes, not high-level behaviors like which gender/sex takes on the provider role or the caretaker role or even which one takes on specific personality traits. Evolution has given us highly adaptable brains instead of hard-coded behaviors, which has proved to be of great benefit to us as a species.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't certain behaviors or traits more common to one sex than the other. From what I've read there are, but these are relatively easily "overridden" and no one can say whether this difference in behavior arose because of intrinsic differences between the sexes or because of some other reason. Not that some haven't proposed possible reasons, such as differences in hormones and brain structure.

 

[BillTre]

My view is that human behavior is highly variable in many ways, including how it sorts out across biological sexual differences.
Any accurate "formalization" would have to include multiple levels of information.

You could formalize the behaviors (which I am interpreting as defining a behavior by making a description of: what it does, what it useful for, etc.).

However, determining how those behaviors would be expressed by the different (individual) human agents (of the various sexes) would require
a separate set table concerned with: how often, when, how strongly a particular behavioral set would be utilized by a particular individual.
This would amount to a second table of each individual's behavioral probabilities.
For example:

• likelihood (vs. different situations) of doing embroidery
• likelihood (vs. different situations) of playing soccer
• likelihood (vs. different situations) of going hunting
• ...

Each real person will have a different set of these probabilities. This should be represented by a second formalized table.

 

[Posy McPostface]

Just to clarify, as upon rereading my posts, that what I might have professed a hardwired gender-based version of what qualifies as 'masculine' or 'feminine' based on the anatomy of an individual - which was not me being prejudiced against genders based on the anatomy of an individual in any way. Meaning that I hold no qualms with a female doing the breadwinning or the male being a nurse or a transgender doing whatever they would wish to do irrespective of what outdated and old gender-roles people might have in mind. We have, as mentioned, our Western culture to thank for that, without implying that our way of living is in any way better or worse than other cultures. That's just that way things are.

Anyway, I have my reading material to ponder over for a good while, thanks for the enlightening posts!

 

[Vanadium 50]

Of these, two (AFAIK) have the most speakers: Nahuatl ~1 million, Navajo ~400,000.

Is Central America part of North America? If so, there are several million speakers of Quichean. (Don't ask how I know or why I bothered to post)

 

[jim mcnamara]

I think Mexico is the the Southernmost country in North America. looking it up... yup, you are correct, I'm not correct.

It is a language family like Athapascan or Indo-European:

The Mayan family consists of thirty languages. Typically, these languages are grouped into 5-6 major subgroups (Yucatean, Huastecan, Ch'olan-Tseltalan, Q'anjob'alan, Mamean, and K'ichean).

So quichean (K'ichean) is a group of languages.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_languages.

 

[256bits]

Nature/nurture, was mentioned, and so was the word 'annoying' written in another post.
Try beating this subject to death as it were.
Way back to 2001
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1002-divorce-is-written-in-the-dna/
"Divorce could be genetic, but we are not sure'
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/10/05/divorce-genetic_a_23233797/ ( 2017 )
Still not sure.

 

[rootone]

Could you elaborate on that?

Is it some sine qua non for a good RPG game to have a gun and walk around shooting enemies?

No, but things like strength, agility, intelligence, charisma, or even luckiness; they are.

 

[Posy McPostface]

Nature/nurture, was mentioned, and so was the word 'annoying' written in another post.
Try beating this subject to death as it were.
Way back to 2001
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1002-divorce-is-written-in-the-dna/
"Divorce could be genetic, but we are not sure'
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/10/05/divorce-genetic_a_23233797/ ( 2017 )
Still not sure.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that traits and personality are all epiphenomena of hereditary genetics and upbringing. I guess you can model those factors to some degree and have what can be called 'traits'.