Cuteness as an evolutionary strategy

I've been assured by fellow codexian bloggers that I'll double my readership if I start adding pictures of my cats. At first I thought, yeah, that's not going to happen. Readers of this blog come here for my discussion of politics and religion, as well as the occasional advice on writing. Cuteness has never really been part of the mix.

Then, I thought, well, why not? So, here they are, in all their feline glory:

Isosceles is 14 years old, blind in his right eye, and cannot drink water like a normal cat. He must instead splash the water all over the kitchen, then like his paws. I'm told that this isn't that strange of a behavior, that, having evolved in deserts, cats dislike large still bodies of water. I feel like evolution has had more than enough time to get them out of that habit, but what do I know.

Sarah is about 9 years old and insists on drinking her water straight from the faucet. She also assumes that the bathroom sink was built as a cat bed. She is perhaps the least aloof cat in the world. She has absolutely no fear of strangers, and if you sit down on my house, she has some sort of lap-radar that will bring her running to sit on you.

Since it's been a while since I did a science post, one of the things that most interests me about cats is how humans and cats (and other animals) are co-evolving. We seem to be selecting them for increasing cuteness. It's obvious that they've thrived as a result--there are cats in the US with better health insurance than many kids. Somehow, cats trigger all the instincts in humans that make us treat them as if they are our own babies--small, crying creatures that respond to perpetual nursing.

It's obvious why cats benefit from this relationship. But, it's also easy to see that, by evolving instincts that found cats to be cute, humans increased their survival odds as well. Having lots of cats around is a good way of not having lots of mice and rats around--or, for that matter, spiders, snakes, and various other creepy crawlies that my cats seem hardwired to hunt. So, in some ways, they repay us better than babies, which just lay around all day and are real slackers in the vermin hunting department.

Of course, I don't have a lot of mice or snakes around my house reguardless. And, snakes would be just as good at keeping the mice population down anyway. So, perhaps my theories about cuteness as an evolutionary strategy has a few holes in it.

If any has any suggestions on how to get either of these critters to reliably drink from a water bowl, I'd love to hear it by the way. There's nothing quite like getting into bed and having a cat with cold wet paws walk across your back.

By the way, it remains unlikely I will be posting wacky pictures of them with "I can haz" captions.

Unless the hits on this post really spike. Then, I can't promise anything.

What would it take to make me change my mind?

I was at Ravencon in Richmond, Va on Friday and Saturday. It's a great con. Very well organized, good attendance, and I thought the panels had interesting topics. There were plenty of actual science panels to go with the writing panels and gaming panels, etc. As a science fiction writer, and a science geek in general, I like being in the company of people who know what they are talking about.

On Friday, I moderated a panel on Global Warming. I went into the panel well prepared to make my argument that the case for man-made global warming isn't the slam-dunk, no further arguement needed conclusion presented by folks like Al Gore. I anticipated being a lone voice of dissent on the panel, so I tried to gather as much data as possible before going into the room. Instead, out of about 30 folks in the room, it turned out that fewer than five thought that man-made global warming was a reality.

I was actually somewhat bothered by this. Anytime I find myself on the side of a majority opinion, an instinct kicks in that makes me start questioning my own beliefs. And, beliefs is the operative word here.

One of the panelists who doubted global warming kept referring to scientists she knew who thought that man-made global warming was BS, so, ergo, it was BS. But, while I like talking to experts, I dislike relying on faith in experts as a foundation for my beliefs. To me, this is more faith than reason. Plus, it leads to the standard media "news" treatment of dueling experts. "My authorities are better than your authorities" begins to pass as reasoned debate. People no longer listen to evidence--they listen to "leaders," and this strikes me as a risky way to run a world.

I'm human. I have limited time and limited resources with which to judge the world. On a lot of important issues, it really isn't reason that guides me, but gut. I suspect the same is true of most people, and I don't find this a particularly bad human trait, as long as people retain the ability to listen to reason when they hear it, and follow reason instead of thier guts if needed. Over the years, I've found that I keep asking myself one simple question about my beliefs. As long as I know the answer to it, I feel that my beliefs are reasonably ones for me to hold; I'm not just being dogmatic to believe in evolution, or libertarianism, or whatever.

That question is: What evidence would convince me that I'm wrong?

As long as you are open to evidence that your beliefs are wrong, then you know you've still got a sliver of reason guiding your guts.

So, if you believe in God, what evidence would it take for you to believe that you are wrong?

If you don't believe in God, what evidence would you need to see to doubt that you were right?

If you believe in global warming, what evidence would make you think that the theory didn't have merit?

If you don't believe in global warming, what would it take to convince you that it's real?

Here are a few of my core beliefs. Here's what evidence I could encounter that would make me pretty sure I'd been wrong:

1. Atheism. This is simple: If I were to witness the rapture, I'd just sigh and say, "Well, I called that one wrong."

2. Evolution. This is also pretty easy: If we were to discover, clearly, repeatedly and predictably, human fossils through all geologic strata, then I think there's be a good case that humans were seperate creations from the rest of the world's biology.

3. Global Warming. This is a tough one, alas. I don't think you could gather enough data over a human lifespan to genuinely document a cause and effect relationship between the current warming trends and human emissions. You would need centuries of hard data; right now, the numbers before the last few decades are somewhat muddy. We're documenting changes of tenths of a degree. Today, we have thousands, if not millions, off hard data points from all over the globe, measured with digital instruments that are accurate and calibrated against all the other instruments. Unfortunately, we are comparing our increasingly precise numbers against data that was gathered for much of the last century by somebody looking out a window at a red-line on a thermometer and writing down the number it showed.

Still, I can think of one thing that could persuade me: As we get better data from Mars, if we were to document a multi-decade cooling trend there, or even temperature stability, while at the same time documenting a warming trend here on earth, then you could make the case that the warming isn't due to natural flucuations in the sun. Right now, though, Mars is showing a warming trend as earth is showing a warming trend. Of course, again, the data for Mars for more than a few decades isn't great data. Still, if I must form an opinion on this in my life time, then that seems like a good starting point. If Mars cools or remains stable between now and 2020, and earth warms over the same time span, then I think I'd swing over to believing in global warming.