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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191007T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191007T000000
DTSTAMP:20260507T032830
CREATED:20200922T221043Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T005111Z
UID:4429-1570406400-1570406400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Brooke Scelza - Husband\, Lover\, Pater\, Genitor: Paternity and concurrency in northwest Namibia
DESCRIPTION:Brooke Scelza: University of California\, Los AngelesResearch on human mate preferences has been conducted mainly in industrialized societies\, where multiple mating and concurrent partnerships are heavily stigmatized. However\, cross-culturally\, extra-pair partnerships are more common\, and there is significant variation in the acceptance of such relationships\, particularly for women. In order to better understand how a system of concurrency can be maintained\, I will present data from 10 years of fieldwork with Himba pastoralists living in northwest Namibia\, a culture where nonmarital partnerships are both common and normatively sanctioned. After presenting demographic data on the rates of concurrency and paternity in this population\, I will discuss the potential benefits to women of having multiple partners\, using both quantitative and qualitative data. Next\, I will explore the reasons why men might tolerate\, or even support\, such a system\, despite the paternity loss that accompanies non-marital sex. Finally\, I will discuss how social norms about extra-marital sex\, jealousy and paternal care support a system of concurrency in this population.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/brooke-scelza-husband-lover-pater-genitor-paternity-and-concurrency-in-northwest-namibia/
CATEGORIES:2019,Past Presentation,Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191014T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191014T000000
DTSTAMP:20260507T032830
CREATED:20200922T221043Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T005111Z
UID:4430-1571011200-1571011200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Lynette Shaw - Cognition\, Culture\, and Complexity: Modeling the Emergence of Shared Social Realities from Individual Mental Representation
DESCRIPTION:Lynette Shaw: University of MichiganThe cultures we belong to affect far more than our practices and beliefs – they also fundamentally shape how we perceive the world\, each other\, and ourselves. Many rich theoretical traditions in the social sciences and humanities have emphasized these “socially constructed” aspects of our experienced realities. To date\, however\, insights in this arena have largely resisted formal specification and modeling. In this talk\, I will show how this historical barrier can be transcended by using insights from complex systems to theorize how the individual\, automatic cognition responsible for reflexive sensemaking in situations (i.e. mental representation and associative processing) can\, in social contexts\, account for the emergence of shared social realities and a suite of other recognizable cultural dynamics. I conclude the talk by discussing how this perspective can be used to build further analytical extensions and to develop new approaches to the empirical study of social construction.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/lynette-shaw-cognition-culture-and-complexity-modeling-the-emergence-of-shared-social-realities-from-individual-mental-representation/
CATEGORIES:2019,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191021T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191021T000000
DTSTAMP:20260507T032830
CREATED:20200922T221044Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T005111Z
UID:4431-1571616000-1571616000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Terry Deacon - On Human (Symbolic) Nature: How the Word Became Flesh.
DESCRIPTION:Terry Deacon: University of California\, BerkeleyAbstract: The concept of human nature has been challenged by social scientists because\nof its inability to clearly delineate the distinction between the biologically inherited and\nexperientially acquired attributes of being human. Yet the very fact of being susceptible to acquired cultural influences irrelevant to other species makes clear that this is an evolutionarily constrained susceptibility. Symbolic processes are the source of the most important and distinctively human acquired influences\, and include both linguistically mediated and habitually reproduced social conventions. Susceptibility to these influences arose due to the evolution of neurological adaptations that support symbolic communication and cognition. Although human brains do not include any structures that lack ape homologues\, the slight reorganization that made symbolic abilities ubiquitous has also created the possibility for socially transmitted information to radically reorganize mental functions. In this talk I re-analyze the concept of symbolic reference in order to overcome equivocal and ambiguous uses of the concept that obscure the special nature of these adaptations and thus blind research to the complex bio-cultural interactions that produce some of the most ubiquitous and unprecedented features of being human. These include modifications of memory functions\, emotional experiences\, the nature of identity\, and the range of mental plasticity.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/terry-deacon-on-human-symbolic-nature-how-the-word-became-flesh/
CATEGORIES:2019,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191028T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20191028T000000
DTSTAMP:20260507T032830
CREATED:20200922T221045Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T005111Z
UID:4432-1572220800-1572220800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Tao Gao - Modeling Theory of Mind for Competition\, Cooperation and Communication
DESCRIPTION:Tao Gao: University of California\, Los AngelesTheory of mind (ToM) refers to the attribution of an agent’s motion to its mental states\, including belief\, desire and intention. Modeling ToM is built upon two principles. First\, the “rationality principle” (utility theory)\, assuming that an agent takes actions to maximize its utility. Second\, the Bayes’ theorem\, solving ToM by maximizing the posterior of mental states conditioning on the observed actions. A model of ToM is a model of social commonsense that can explain a wide range of human interactions. I will start from a zero-sum chasing game\, in which a human-controlled prey detects and avoids a computer-controlled predator. Both human and modeling results show that perceived chasing is severely disrupted when the predator’s actions violate the rationality principle\, enabling the predator to stalk the prey stealthily. ToM becomes more prominent in cooperative tasks. Multi-agent ToM is challenging due to its recursive nature: I infer your inference of my inference of you. Here I advocate an “Imagined We”(IW) approach that avoids this recursion trap. “We” is defined as a super-agent that can rationality and centrally control all agents as body parts to maximize the joint utility. However\, this “We” agent does not exist in reality. Instead\, each agent actively imagines what We believes\, and follows “what We wants me to do” voluntarily. IW predicts spontaneous “role assignment” and “goal commitment”. Furthermore\, IW also serves as a cognitive infrastructure of human communication. I will show that the combination of cooperative logic\, utility theory\, and Bayes’ theorem strongly constrain the interpretation of even highly ambiguous signals\, enabling humans to communicate so much by expressing so little.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/tao-gao-modeling-theory-of-mind-for-competition-cooperation-and-communication/
CATEGORIES:2019,Past Presentation,Presentation
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