invented. By 2006, the amount of spam was higher than ever, having doubled in the previous year alone. Spam, of course, is a human invention for human purposes, with the computer and the Internet serving as the tools of replication.
After an initially successful counterattack by the anti-spam forces that resulted in a decrease in spam, the protective measures introduced could all be circumvented so that by the end of 2006, roughly nine out of every ten e-mail messages were junk. The initial attack against spam blended three filtering strategies. Software scanned each incoming message and looked at where the message was from, what words it contained, and which website it was connected to. The first was bypassed in spectacular fashion by devising programs that infected other computers with viruses that sent out the spam instead. In late 2006, an estimated quarter-million computers were unknowingly conscripted to send out spam every day. This achieved two aims at once: no sender’s address that could be screened, and no additional cost to send.
The second screening device searched statistically for word usages suggestive of spam, but this maneuver was overcome by embedding the words in pictures whose extra expense was offset by the first device, the use of pirated computers. Efforts to spot and analyze images were, in turn, offset by “speckling” the images with polka dots and background bouquets of color that interfered with the computer scanners. To block detection of multiple copies of the same message, programs were written that automatically changed a few pixels in each picture. It was as if an individual could change successive fingerprints by minute amounts to evade detection, reminiscent of the ability of octopuses (see Chapter 2) to rapidly spin out a random series of cryptic patterns, again to avoid targeting. The HIV virus uses the same trick, mutating its coat proteins at a high rate to prevent the immune system from concentrating on it. As for the problem of linked sites, some scams do not require any. Spam can hype so-called penny stocks (inexpensive stocks in obscure companies) that may give a quick 5 percent profit in a matter of days, when enough people invest to raise the value, after which the spammer sells his or her interest in the stock and it collapses.
The point is that each move is matched by a countermove and a new move is always possible, so deceiver leads and deceived responds with costs potentially mounting by the year on both sides with no net gain. Intellectual powers among programmers increasingly will be required on both sides. One inevitable cost in this context is the destruction of true information by spam detectors that are too stringent, thus excluding some true information. This, as we saw in Chapter 2, is a universal problem in animal discrimination. Greater powers of discrimination will inevitably increase so-called false negatives—rejecting something as false that is in fact true. So as we act to exclude more spam, we inevitably delete more true messages. And now there is something more dangerous, called malware—special infiltrating codes that download proprietary information and ship it to one’s enemies. As with newly appearing natural parasites (such as living viruses), malware is increasing at a more rapid rate than defenses against it.
HUMOR, LAUGHTER, AND SELF-DECEPTION
One striking discovery is that humor and laughter appear to be positively associated with immune benefits. Humor in turn can be seen as anti-self-deception. Humor is often directed at drawing attention to the contradictions that deceit and self-deception may be hiding. These are seen as humorous. Reversals of fortune associated with showing off—usually entrained by self-deception—are often comical to onlookers. A staple of silent films is the man strutting down the street, dressed to the nines, showing off, with head held high—so that he does not see the banana peel underneath him, producing an almost perfect visual metaphor for self-deception. The organism is directing its behavior toward others, with an upward gaze that causes him to pay no attention to the surface on which he is actually walking. Result: cartwheel and complete loss of bodily control, of the strut, of the head held high, and of the well-presented clothes—the whole show destroyed by a single contradiction.
Those who are low in self-deception (as judged by a classic paper-and-pencil test) appreciate humor more (as measured by actual facial movements in response to comedic material) than do those high in self-deception. At the same time, those with greater implicit biases toward black people or toward traditional sex roles laugh more in