This post — a proposal which, like Erik’s, could solve a significant world problem if only anybody would listen — originally ran on March 12, 2012.
A week or so ago, I commented on an Abstruse Goose cartoon about probabilities. My brother-the-statistician commented on my comment, taking me apart – lovingly — for missing the point. Then I commented on his comment and said I didn’t understand statistics anyway. Then Tom commented on my comment and said he never understood what his brother-the-physicist was saying either and wondering whether it’s a math/science thing or a sibling thing. It’s a sibling thing, I said. Among siblings, knowledge is a closed system. In a closed system, there’s only one pie and any of it you eat, I don’t get. So anything my brother knows, I don’t know.
Also: my sister can bake pies, I can bake only cakes. Christie only does running, her sister knows football and baseball; Christie doesn’t know who’s playing the Super Bowl. Heather loves gadgets; she gave her brother a GPS watch that sat in its box until someone else showed him how to use it. Tom’s sister is a yogi who bends herself into unusual shapes; neither Tom nor his physicist-brother can bend over far enough to tie their shoes. Closed-system sibling knowledge, I thought, was a subject that psychology hadn’t gotten around to yet.
I was wrong. Psychology calls it “sibling deidentification” (on a list of annoying and confounding scientific jargon, this goes near the top). The idea is that siblings need to avoid competition. Sibling competition is nothing to take lightly. Sibling colonies of bacteria secrete antibiotics that kill each other off. The first African black eaglet out of its egg pecks the second one to death. A quarter of spotted hyena pups are killed by their siblings. The siblings are competing for their parents’ resources and attention, of which the parents have only a certain amount. So the siblings are operating in a closed system, one pie only.
But Cain and Abel aside, we humans can’t go killing off our siblings, so we agree to go our separate ways, we deidentify, we stake out separate niches. To be honest, I don’t see how that makes the pie bigger or the parents have more resources; it just keeps us off each others’ backs. But something about those lethal siblings’ closed-system thinking seems to have stuck with us: it seems hard-wired. Heather’s brother is good at finances, so she can’t be.
And here’s the charm of it: a closed system might be lethal for competitors but it’s golden for cooperators. If my brother and I are one system and he knows statistics, I don’t need to; any statistic that needs to be done, he does. When Heather’s brother gives financial advice, Heather only has to listen. Closed-system cooperation is a great labor-saving device.
The People of LWON say this extends to spouses. Erika has a near-perfect geospatial sense; Tom no longer remembers how to read a map. Cassie knows biomedicine, her husband knows physics; Cassie suspects physics is making it up as it goes but still, together they make one hell of a science writer. Christie reads poetry, medicine and the experience of war; her husband reads foreign policy, everything energy-related, and the New Scientist cover stories on physics; between them, they keep track of the modern world.
It helps with domestic friction too: Michelle looks out the window and wonders why her husband is digging a large hole in the yard but he is the household’s Knowledgeable Digger of Large Holes, so she doesn’t even ask, she assumes his reasons are good.
And so, out of self-interest and honest admiration and with minimal murder, sibling and spouses become families. And families make a town in which they divide up the services and trades; and towns make a country in which they divide up finances and manufacturing and recreation and mining.
Now I have an epiphany: use closed-system sibling knowledge to create world peace. Northern Ireland should bake pies, England should bake cakes; the Arabs should do football, the Israelis should do running; Pakistan should do biomedicine, India should do physics. Wait, says my husband, who does international relations (I do literature and music): those wars aren’t just sibling, they’re also religious. Small adjustment, I say: Catholics bake pies, Protestants bake cakes; Muslims do football, Jews do running. Etc.
This could work, I think; who should I call?
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Photo credits: brother & sister – Cuito Cuanavale; sisters – David Stephensen; brothers – Jesse Draper
As the oldest of 6 siblings, all with our distinct areas of specialization, I very much enjoyed your article.
As someone who has studied hyenas I have to point out that more recent studies have shown that siblicide is actually much less common than previously thought, and that, survivorship in the first year of life is higher for twins than singletons.
Thanks for the excellent blog!
Source: Siblicide in the spotted hyena: analysis with ultrasonic examination of wild and captive individuals
http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/6/974.full.pdf+html
Hmm. Out of my three brothers and me, there are three lawyers and two engineers. Out of my dad and his three brothers there are three dentists. Looks like sibling identification to me.
Maybe it’s not a big deal now that families move apart from each other.
*favorite*!
Also, I’m going to walk around all day today saying “siblicide.” Not because I want to–I loved my closed system–but just because it fits the mouth so well.
Though in our family, siblicide was a near thing given that we grew up on a small farm under too often unsupervised conditions. I remember how entertaining it was for certain a sib when I climbed on top of a car parked underneath the low hanging electrical lines to our house, and hung from the wires and bounce. On the other hand, I also remember convincing my younger brother to test the nifty wings we had built from plaster lathing and burlap sacks by jumping off the barn roof holding them over his head. Closed systems imply there are fixed boundaries, but we kept finding ways to redefine them. Our system was a bit “fluid”.
adw: I’m relieved on behalf of the spotted hyenas, and higher survival for twins than singles? you mean they’re actually looking out for each other? That doesn’t fit my model.
Brent: Yes, closed-system sibling cooperation works that way too. I told you it was a winner.
Tom & Bruz: I didn’t use that word “siblicide” on purpose in case the joy of saying it gave people ideas. Which, apparently, accounts for the dearth of spotted hyena siblicides being compensated for by the farm kids.
Writ large, this dynamic becomes “comparative advantage”: Wikipedia: comparative advantage.
Great article. Thanks for the word “siblicide”. It’s going to come in very handy.
The hypothesis about higher survival in hyena twins vs. singletons is that at 9-12 months, when the cubs leave the den and start exploring on their own, twins tend to hang out together and having two animals being vigilant decreases mortality. (I worked on a study about vigilance in groups, but it hasn’t been published yet.) Mortality is quite high during this period and (at our study site, anyway)it’s usually due to lions or humans.
Hyenas get so much bad press, I always try to put in a good word for them when I can.
Explains why I went into biophysics and write about everything. I’m an only child.
Siblicide – does that include daring sweet, rosy cheeked younger sisters to jump off of high places onto dangerous ground?
The opposite seemed to happen to me. As the oldest, all my younger sisters copied my every move (and still do), undertaking every fad and activity I also enjoyed to the point that I could no longer enjoy them, every time I tried something new, they would appropriate it for themselves, drawing, running, music. And it definitely felt like infringing behavior, especially since my parents encouraged them to overtake me (like a friendly competition). I have a great deal of rage about it, to this day… since some of them have gone on to be successful while I have struggled. (my parents also singled me out for abuse, my younger siblings were never touched, and I often protected them) Recently for my birthday, my sister belatedly (months later) sent me a copy of her published material, with a note on the inside cover saying “you were my inspiration” I felt that it was a complete slap in the face, I feel bad for being upset, but it feels like a bag of poo left on my doorstep. So there you go folks, sibling rivalry sucks.
I think I must have scored the humour slice of pie!
When I was at a career crossroads I realized that what my brother did for a living (storyboard artist, film industry) would perfectly suit my skills and personality as well as the meat-and-potatoes aspect of my existence. But it was almost like considering marrying him. It lasted all of 10 seconds and I moved on.
What’s interesting to me is how profoundly we’re affected by something so evolutionarily so primitive. I mean, we’re not spotted hyenas (ok, they can be nice too) here; we’re First World developed countries, and we’re still driven by this deep competition/cooperation.