It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. Humans have many natural tendencies that are not socially accepted, and better behavior can be learned and tendencies suppressed. Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.

>Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.

The "addicts for life" is an American puritan view (by AA and other such groups) -- not some scientific fact. Certainly not the view everywhere in the world. You can have an alcoholic of 5-10 years that recovered and can still enjoy the occasional drink just fine without getting back to regular drinking.

Neal Stephenson does a good job of presenting that sort of attitude in Cryptonomicon:

"I don't like the word 'addict' because it has terrible connotations," Root says one day, as they are sunning themselves on the afterdeck. "Instead of slapping a label on you, the Germans would describe you as 'Morphiumsüchtig.' The verb suchen means to seek. So that might be translated, loosely, as 'morphine seeky' or even more loosely as 'morphine seeking.' I prefer 'seeky' because it means that you have an inclination to seek morphine."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Shaftoe says.

"Well, suppose you have a roof with a hole in it. That means it is a leaky roof. It's leaky all the time--even if it's not raining at the moment. But it's only leaking when it happens to be raining. In the same way, morphine-seeky means that you always have this tendency to look for morphine, even if you are not looking for it at the moment. But I prefer both of them to 'addict,' because they are adjectives modifying Bobby Shaftoe instead of a noun that obliterates Bobby Shaftoe."

Stephenson is great, but just for the record, the claim that Germans understand "süchtig" as "seeking" goes too far.

Süchtig is the adjective to Sucht (addiction), not to Suche (search), and although the etymological link is clear, there's nothing romantic or compassionate about the word.

Thanks: I'm sure I would have gone a long ways before discovering anything more about the context of that statement. However, I note that Stephenson does seem to have described this as a loose translation. Is the German word used as an adjective, or is that also an issue of translation?

Süchtig is an adjective, yes, and 'seeky' is actually a sensible literal translation. But just like the word addicted, it carries the connotation of a destructive obsession, not just a tendency-to-seek-out, and it is just as obliterating a word as its English equivalent.

The more specific statements about addicts become, the more cautious I tend to be.

That said, I do at least agree that your quote is rather particular to AA, and not shared by other programs, like SMART.

The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can be disastrous.

The way I see it, a less dichotomous perspective such as that of SMART is a better starting point than the 'once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic' approach of AA. And if SMART doesn't work, AA might very well be the only solution left.

> The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can be disastrous.

This, absolutely this. And since it is impossible to know in advance if moderation is possible for a given person, AA optimizes for the worst case scenario and assumes that no one can handle moderation, which has the greatest likelihood of success for all who use this strategy.

Although different substance, I'm a heavy smoker and moderation has always proved impossible.

I've kicked the habit once by NRT and once cold turkey. I'd gone well long enough for any physical withdrawal symptoms (many months).

Both times, I thought just one wouldn't hurt, socially. Both times I started right back up again.

There was a time I could smoke socially. I know people who did that and then went on to live a smoke free life. On the flip side, I've known smokers go years without and just one "oh go on then" hooked them right back on it.

So if nicotine addiction is anything to go by, it would be possible in other addictions too. Unfortunately, the only alcoholics I knew lost their battle and never achieved any semblance of sobriety. They were both at a point where the withdrawal would kill them without clinical supervision.

Not necessarily. The AA model is then unforgiving. This can create tremendous pressure, with the consequences of non-compliance being infinitely greater.

When it works, it works the best. When it doesn’t work, it’s a cliff. E.g. “20 years out the window”.

AA isn't so much a recovery program as a submarine Christian conversion program; it's seldom better than nothing, and often worse. Very consistently and well-marketed, though.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr...

(Fun fact: when it started, it wasn't anonymous -- except one of the founders kept showing up drunk in public, and they realized this itself was pretty quickly debunking their success claims!)

I think this is a rather unfair distortion of AA. I know many who have been tremendously helped by the program. It does work for many. It's explicitly unreligious -- they have a notion of a higher power, but make the conscious effort to allow each member to have their own definition of this higher power. It's not a religious process in the sense most would think of it. I also don't think it's fair to mention any one particular person's success or lack thereof with AA when making sweeping generalizations about the program (including the founder, which I don't know if what you say is actually correct or not -- it just doesn't matter).

The other important thing that AA does, which is quite critical, is get individuals with problems frequent, implicit counseling from others who have been through the same thing. This is very hard to get in modern life in most other ways. It's possible, but AA makes it the default process. You can throw away all the other stuff about AA and dismiss it, and you are still left with the fact social therapy in any form is very effective, and AA promotes that.

When it's been studied for effectiveness, it turns out AA works for between 5% and 10% of the people in it; as it also turns out, that's about the same percentage of people for whom any group support program would work.

This isn't a distortion, this is the empirical view of AA.

As for explicitly unreligious, I would like to include the twelve steps here:

1) We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2) Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10) Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I am struggling to find an unreligious interpretation for steps 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, and 12, even if the "higher power" isn't an Abrahamic religion "God".

What's a spiritual awakening to an atheist?

I think the key here is that people function better, and break addictions better, when they realize and submit to the concept that they do not (and can't) have complete power and control over their own lives. The notion of a "higher power" or "God" can help people get into that posture of "letting go", which helps them find real support outside of themselves (and their addictions).

Being a Christian myself, I know I function much better when I'm consciously in an attitude of trusting God -- it lets me relax and simply be who I am and do what I need to do, without worrying about "fixing things" outside of my control. (And yes, I do take an intellectually rigorous approach to my faith, but that's a different topic.)

I'm not a religious man myself, but I think your perspective is wiser than most of those who call themselves Christians, and frankly, I think what you have expressed here runs deeper than the particulars of any specific religion.

>It's explicitly unreligious -- they have a notion of a higher power, but make the conscious effort to allow each member to have their own definition of this higher power.

Very magnanimous of them. But why would a rehabilitation program have a notion "of a higher power", and especially it's own notion of it?

Probably because it helps people? If it is useful in helping people to not harm themselves and others then I don't see anything wrong with that.

> If it is useful in helping people to not harm themselves and others

this is a big if. the way AA is structured (they don't themselves collect any statistics about efficacy whatsoever) makes it extremely difficult to draw any conclusions about how helpful it is.

as other people have said, AA essentially provides free group therapy, which is likely to be at least slightly helpful. i'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest that the 12 steps or higher power aspect yield any benefits over generic group drug counseling.

There is some evidence that the higher power business works[1]. Anyway, it will always be difficult to directly judge a particular organization rather than its methods.

[1] The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg : while not scientifically spotless, the book directly addresses the methods of AA. To successfully establish a change in habit, one needs a belief that I can change : there is some sound evidence presented in the book.

Smart Change, by Art Marckman : he is literally a scientist and I can't find anything scientifically incorrect in this book. He also mentions and gives evidence for the advantage of belief in one's ability to change : here the context is not directly AA.

> It's explicitly unreligious -- they have a notion of a higher power, but make the conscious effort to allow each member to have their own definition of this higher power.

I knew about this 'misunderstanding' that most people have about AA and its 'higher power' thing.

I actually attended meetings though, and their 'unreligious process' is actually anything but.

As someone who attended AA meetings for a few months when my depression/anxiety/substance abuse was getting out of control I have to agree with this.

A couple of the chapters were fine, and listening to people tell stories of their experiences was great, but there is a heavy cult-like vibe pushed on you relentlessly at most.

They parrot on about the fact that you are helpless to effect change in your own life and without the group, you will inevitably drink again.

That turned me off completely and I never went back. Still haven't had a drink in a year since either.

AA is sometimes jokingly referred to as the last house on the block (NA is the last room in that house).

I know a great many recovered individuals that tried everything to get clean and only found success (and more importantly satisfaction) in 12 step.

Most institutions don’t want to let their clients go—why should AA be any different.

i think you have it backwards- institutions that don’t self sustain, don’t survive.

That's an explanation for the observed phenomenon, not him getting it backwards.

IDK. There’s no shortage of alcoholics, so they could deal with people exiting after 2y or so, without dissolving. Instead, they are like boy/girlscouts for grownups without the age limit.

> It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring.

That ability is itself part of the fundamental biological nature of humans, or whatever. The way you phrased it suggests a Cartesian dualistic interpretation.

I have heard it frequently mentioned by interesting scientists (most recently, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson) that this ability to live against natural biological tendencies is unique for humans among the rest of the animal kingdom. So while it may be fundamental to humans, it is not apparently fundamental to the general biology of the world, and humans appear to be an interesting exception.

Color me skeptical of the idea that humans can really go against the grain of their evolved instincts. What seems much more likely is:

1) A large subset of people possess instincts that were successful for reproduction in the ancestral environment, but are no longer so. See also plummeting birth rates despite being at the historical peak in terms of access to resources for the average person (in the developed world, at least).

2) Some people's evolved instincts are to play a long game based on building reputation and then leveraging that reputation over the long term, rather than pursuing immediate wants and desires. Such an instinct will produce a lot of behavior that seems out of line with a naive interpretation of how we "should" be evolved to behave.

Dogs do it, albeit with human help. Considering that humans that grew up alone, ie. feral, seem to have no self control either I would think that dogs get to count too

Can you give an example of dog behavior that does this? I'm curious.

Here’s that behavior on display: https://www.reddit.com/r/rarepuppers/comments/9ime34/heckin_...

Not sure why you are being downvoted. This link is one of the recent examples I was thinking of. The dog has been taught to not eat the food even when a human isn't around protecting the food. That requires ignoring one part of its biology for other benefits.

Just read about ibogaine if you'd like to learn about how possible and easy "curing" addiction can be. :)

> Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally).

That's our bodies, not us. "Every time I find interesting (and fighting)" that people believe they are nothing but a collection of cells, chemicals and feelings. Most people (outside the audience of the HN perhaps) don't even recognize that the feelings are actually the chemicals and have little to do even with the objective reality, needless to say with their true self. Believing you are your body is almost the same as believing that you are your car or your GitHub account. That's not we, that's our bodies, our "cars" with baggage (memories etc) in them, in our true self "we are all Kosh" © Overwhelming majority of people just live in permanent "rubber hand illusion". Getting rid of the illusion and recalling who you actually are is, however, easy as 1-2-3: 1. get cousciously aware of your emotions and thoughts, distance from them and obseve them 2. turn your inner gaze from them to the direction of where do you feel you observe them from 3. recognize that what you see there (it looks like just nothing, just conscious "empty space") is the actual you and you will never be able to "unsee' that. One doesn't need any kind of religion or spirituality to realize this (although it actually is taught in the Tibetan religious tradition of Dzogchen), it is as simple as realizing the rubber hand is not a part of your body.

You're a substance dualist, then?

The obvious opposing view to what you've just expressed would be that you are your body, and that what you just described as your true self is merely one part of you introspecting about another part of you.

And of course, as far as I'm aware science can say nothing convincing about all of this at present so it's purely an exercise in philosophy and logic.

> You're a substance dualist, then?

Not really, I am a non-dualist actually but introducing non-duality in the current context would be a way too off-topic and unnecessary. I prefer not to go into the spiritual stuff beyond what can be easily experienced by everyone unless asked by a person specifically interested in this kind of information.

> it's purely an exercise in philosophy and logic

It's not. It's of little use as long as it is. One has to experience that. That's why I've mentioned the rubber hand illusion. Imagine your hands have been covered from you since you very birth and you have been believing the rubber hands are your real hands for your whole life, then the cover is removed and you experience your actual hands for the first time - it feels like this (approximately). This is how I've got into Buddhism - all the major religions tell you unverifiable things and demand you to believe and here the whole clue is a thing we can experience directly. I've used a quote from the Babylon-5 show because it's a lot about this and you suddenly find yourself understanding the Vorlons' "Who are you?" and "We are all Kosh" after you experience that.

I also suspect this kind of realization may happen to render people nearly-immune to addictions, I would even do some sort of clinical testing if only I had enough money (by the way, some time ago we have already seen news about mindful people being scientifically proven feeling less pain here on HN).

>> it's purely an exercise in philosophy and logic

> It's of little use as long as it is.

I didn't mean to imply uselessness; my previous comment was worded poorly. Aside from the spiritual aspects, logic and philosophy alone often manage to achieve (or form the basis of) incredibly useful things.

> the whole clue is a thing we can experience directly

The trouble I have with this is that trying to differentiate between "true self is separate from body" and "body is all there is" based on an experience seems to beg the question. If the former is true, then the experience is what it seems. But if the latter is true, then the experience itself is yet another bodily event - one that results in you (the body in this case) coming away with a false understanding.

A parallel might be someone who feels quite certain about a fact (ie experiences a sense of knowledge), but that "knowledge" later turns out to be false. In light of this, how can we use a direct experience to differentiate the above?

Of course this line of reasoning can be (repeatedly) applied to anything, so at some point I suppose we just have to accept that there are enough separate lines of evidence and that something is presumably true. But I don't think a single direct experience which itself involves the system in question (ie the body) is enough.

As an aside, my rambling on about unknowable-ness isn't intended as an attack against your interpretation of things but rather just general pondering of the (current?) limits of human knowledge and experience.

Don't worry, I appreciate your care but don't mind "an attack against my interpretation" :-)

It seems that I will have to introduce the actual Buddhist (Nyingma/Bön Dzogchen) non-duality interpretation of this in a more or less simplified way to make it (including the "We are all Kosh" part) more clear but be warned, it may sound a way too bizarre. I don't insist it's true and my initial intention was to leave it for the people interested in going this way to discover on themselves as it makes little if any sense before the experience. Ready? The "true self" you can directly perceive this way is just one for every sentient being (my true self = your true self, "by reference" not just "by value", it's the same object, not just same class) and it is kind of the absolute, the only thing that actually exists, everything else (including our feelings and beliefs (our ego), bodies, cars, events and everything) is an emanation of it, like a wave on the surface of a lake. The idea of everything being just an emanation of yourself seems less weird or even rationally obvious if you apply this to "everything in your dreams" but the real life is considered to be a phenomenon of little fundamental difference from a dream. I am not a real guru and may probably explain the things wrong so whoever interested should better watch a lecture of the actual Buddhist (Bön) teacher[1] (it's rather fun, easy to listen and made as free of any religious mumbo-jumbo as possible, the chant in the beginning is very short but the guided meditation that follows the introductory speech is important).

Obviously, the interpretation of a skeptic materialist capable to experience this "true self" and observe their ego is going to be it hardly has anything to do with any kind of absolute and probably is not a real object (needless to say shared between everybody) but just a sort of feeling produced by our bodies.

I believe neither of these interpretations can be rationally proven correct or wrong (it's a transcendental matter) but regardless to which one do you stick to it seems fairly easy to recognize that your feelings, your beliefs, your addictions, your DNA and dopamine receptors are you in the same degree as your left hand thumb is.

Keeping consciously aware of this as constantly as possible may gift a person with an amazing level of emotional balance and having the direct experience of "the true self" can strengthen it to an incredible level (and as a bonus probably let you actually feel less pain when it hurts physically[2]). Deep recognition of the Buddhist interpretation ("rigpa") also gives an awesome sense of union with everybody and everything, blissful presence in every single moment and sets your free of sorrow and worrying.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQVcizEkmI

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17935554

Are we not a little bit our car and our github account though? Growing up I wondered whether you could peel the banana all the way to its core of nothingness.

My recommendation is to keep wondering.

As for me it took me about 30 years of wondering before I've suddenly found it (by stumbling upon this fairly fun Buddhist monk lecture[1] while being extremely depressed and afraid and searching through YouTube looking for some psychological technique to relieve that). Whatever what I've found is from the philosophic or spiritual point of view, from the pragmatic point of view it seems an extremely powerful key to emotional well-being.

AFAIK there is a fair amount of scientific research effort taking place around mindfulness and other Buddhist stuff, perhaps sooner or later this is going to draw some scientific attention too. By the way, it seems at least some scientifically-minded people happen to come to similar ideas occasionally, e.g. I've recently stumbled upon similar concepts in a book by Itzhak Bentov and was delighted by his scientific manner of exploration of the question of "life, universe, and everything".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQVcizEkmI

Is that like saying “we are nothing but atoms”?

I agree that atoms are necessary, but how do we know they are sufficient for consciousness?

Can you prove the “nothing but” part?

Reminds me of one of my favorite books titled:

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, by Charles Seife

One item discussed in the book that we as humans may just be a transport method for the data within DNA to survive time. Because without some replication it would get trapped and cease to exist.

The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) actually explores the idea that organisms began as DNA replicating 'machines'.

We are code. And often buggy code at that. Yet it's the random and imperfections that allow us to - for better or worse - persist.

All eukaryotic mitochondria probably used to be free-living organisms too.

We aren't just a product of that, we are also a product of human sexual selection and epigenetic inheritance of individually acquired traits. Many of your important traits (such as general intelligence) were acquired in part by conscious processes by your ancestors.

That's a bit circular...I may choose to breed with someone, but i do that because I find them attractive (because DNA tells me what is attractive), because my (known in humans to be inaccurate) risk assessment says it is worth it, etc.

Plus, of the countless decisions I make every day, almost none of them are conscious. I can retroactively justify them as if they had been, but studies show we are far less conscious thinkers than we think we are.

Ultimately, until we resolve the mind-body problem, we cant say that our decisions are based on more than a chaotic soup of interacting proteins and electrical sparks that are only marginally distinct from our environment.

I think selection for intelligence was a feedback loop. I think you're interpreting my idea as circular, and I disagree.

Here's what I think was part of what lead to the development of large brains (and general intelligence). Keep in mind that biology and psychology are not my fields.

Intelligence was inherently advantageous for humans because they allowed us to operate better in different environments. That's where natural selection took effect.

Human tribes were and are (like most populations of social species) characterized by hierarchies, particularly among males in the species. Females tended to choose (and still tend to choose, as far as we can tell) males higher up in social hierarchies when all else is equal (just like most social species, even favoring position in a hierarchy more highly than most other traits). If a tribe has many different possible kinds of hierarchies for males (e.g. they inhabit many different kinds of environments), then one trait that enables a male to do well across many hierarchies is general intelligence. When females select males as high up the hierarchy as possible (in general), they are in effect sexually selecting for intelligence.

I think something similar likely happened with males selecting females with higher intelligence, but it was likely more subtle of a process than I can grasp, since males tend to mate far less selectively than females among humans (and most other animal species), which complicates it quite a bit for me.

Also, just because a choice is unconscious does not mean it is illogical. Many unconscious human choices are quite logical and make a lot of sense, but are not well suited to our current environment.

The photo-electric radiation emitting from my computer monitor is considerably more than marginally distinct from the chaotic soup of interacting proteins and electrical sparks in my brain. Just a few seconds ago, I, of which my brain is certainly a part of, made a decision based off of the computer monitor that is in my environment.

Grappling with chaos and complex interacting and intertwining systems is very difficult. It helps to not be led too astray by the easier to access tools we have (such as verbal language), which help, but many of which are woefully inadequate towards a coherent understanding of these issues.

You cannot choose to breed with someone who is already dead. Even if you succeed in breeding with someone (alive), if their genes are not very good your children won't live to breed.

Thus if intelligence is a factor at all in survival (and it seems like it should be) your ancestors may not have had a choice but to select for intelligent.

> Thus if intelligence is a factor at all in survival (and it seems like it should be) your ancestors may not have had a choice but to select for intelligent.

And this explains the large collection of (in our understanding) not-terribly-intelligent creatures on the planet how?

Not trying to be snarky, just pointing out that intelligence is just one of many paths, and it's very hard to have strong conclusion about how something so rare fares in evolution, and if the tend will maximize or if it pays off to be "just a little" intelligent, just like it pays to be "just a little" able to swim.

There's also the possibility that our concept of intelligence is totally wrapped up in our very anthropomorphic worldview. And we're simply incapable of understanding forms of intelligence that aren't distinctly our own.

Thus my "in our understanding" - I personally believe our view of intelligence, sapience, and self-awareness is pretty limited even from what we CAN relate to. It is easier to go through life we if assume the status quo of understanding.

I didn't mean to imply intelligence was a large factor, it need not be. There are thousands of factors, some more important than others. Some are even in direct conflict (intelligence is in fact in direct conflict with not needing too much energy to survive hard times - even while potentially providing more energy for those hard times). What humans have found successful doesn't say anything about about what any other animal will/should find successful.

So, while yes, we have lots of fmri data that suggests our mind makes decisions for us, then convinces us that we made the decision conciously. I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions.

Even if consciousness is a complete illusion that our mind fabricated for us, we still seem to have some control over our reactions. I say this as someone who is teaching my children better reactions to what life throws at them, and similarly having to mediate my own responses to mistakes they make.

Even if all this is happening at the margin, that seems to be enough for us to have some profound differences in how successful we are at navigating life.

> I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions.

And I don't! I consider it unproven, but a duality option definitely remains an option. Plus, there's always the default excuse that if I assume consciousness is reality when I can't in fact decide, well, then I can't be blamed for coming to that conclusion :)

That said, I think we really need to pay attention to how many "conscious" decisions we don't bother to be conscious for. I have a personal theory that consciousness is a state that is generally invoked only when the mind doesn't have a preset behavior - consciousness is invoked to ponder "what if" and decide what to do. Once we have prescribed behavior, consciousness shuts down. Thus, we might be "conscious" for only a few hours or even less in an average day. If so, we CAN be self-aware more often, but it takes effort.

Side Note: This theory is based in part on the idea that there's an advantage in minimizing conscious time - be that caloric requirements or an innate danger of being too aware. I've recently read some claims that hurt the caloric argument (brains are high caloric things, but that doesn't mean consciousness requires more calories) but the innate dangers of overthinking remain strong but vague and anecdotal.

Finding ways to make and support this theory without lapsing into it being an automatic (and thus not trigging awareness) response gets more tricky each time :)

Good point. I feel this fact is rarely touched on in discussions of inheritance but we’re seeing more and more the role that such changes play.

Genetic inheritance via epigenetic pathways is extremely rare and basically irrelevant. It explains essentially 0% of the evolved traits that you see in humans and other complex organisms.

And none of our important traits were acquired by conscious processes on the parts of our ancestors, unless you mean by that statement that our ancestors consciously endeavored to further their own interests and as a side effect of this, we evolved the way we did. But if that's what you meant, it's a really disingenuous way to describe basic natural selection.

>Genetic inheritance via epigenetic pathways is extremely rare and basically irrelevant. It explains essentially 0% of the evolved traits that you see in humans and other complex organisms.

I would like a source to read more about this. I don't distrust you. I'm genuinely interested in reading more about this.

>And none of our important traits were acquired by conscious processes on the parts of our ancestors

I think humans sexually select for intelligence, because it's a trait that affects how high up a human can climb across different social hierarchies.

> I would like a source to read more about this. I don't distrust you. I'm genuinely interested in reading more about this.

Sorry, I don't have a source. Epigenetic changes in somatic cells (all the cells in your body except for your sperm or egg cells) are common and necessary for the differentiation that takes place as cells divide and multiply to create a growing organism. But epigenetic inheritance is rare, because epigenetic changes can only be inherited if they somehow change the DNA in germ line cells (sperm or eggs). There just aren't many plausible ways for stuff that happens in the environment to modify the DNA in sperm or eggs. The most plausible way would be for some sort of systemic stress. And, IIRC, one of the only known instances of epigenetic inheritance was a result of starvation.

But, more generally, epigenetic inheritance has to be rare. Evolution is a balancing act. On the one hand you need some mutation, because otherwise there is no variation against which natural selection can act. But on the other hand, you need to limit the amount of mutation so that beneficial genes can persist through time (otherwise they cease to be beneficial), and so that the crazy house of cards that is a developing organism doesn't collapse.

If you know anything about how complex organisms work, it's absolutely insane. There is almost none of the abstraction and encapsulation that we use in engineering to manage complexity. Instead, everything effects everything else. Evolution is like building a computer program by mutating individual bits in a binary program. If you play that out in a massively parallel fashion over billions of iterations, you can get some programs that do really cool stuff.

But they would be incredibly brittle. It would be incredibly easy to crash the whole thing by mutating the wrong bit. And these types of catastrophic mutations seem pretty common in complex organisms. Among humans, the miscarriage rate is 30%-50% (according to Wikipedia; look up the Miscarriage article). A significant number of those are believed to be caused by the female rejecting the fetus because of defects of some kind.

All of this is a long way of saying that it's simply not believable that there is some process which is introducing significant mutation into the reproductive process.

Thanks for the info!