evolution is way more important than most people realize
2 linked references
October 10th, 2022
- evolution is way more important than most people realize & memetic evolution and I guess most specifically evolution includes WAY more than biological evolution
- came across this article that fails to grok evolution includes WAY more than biological evolution
- > The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (1986) used the analogy of a “blind watchmaker” to describe natural selection: “blind” because it is a mechanical process lacking any sort of foresight, and “watchmaker” because nonetheless, it manages to produce structures (living organisms!) that look as though they were deliberately designed.
- this is a terrible analogy, in that the blind watchmaker is nonetheless purposeful, and in that the watch is in fact deliberately designed!
- like if you saw a watch you'd be CORRECT to assume it was designed
- but moreover, design is evolutionary!! —it's just a purposeful evolutionary process
- In Dawkins' defense, he was responding to another guy:
- > A term coined in 1986 by the British ethologist Richard Dawkins (born 1941) to denote natural selection, alluding to the Argument from Design, an argument for the existence of God put forward in 1802 by the theologian William Paley (1743–1805). Paley argued that if he found a watch while crossing a heath he would conclude that it must have had a maker, because it is too intricate and precise to have arisen by accident, and that for the same reason the intricacy and precision of the works of nature forced him to conclude that they too must have had a maker, namely God; but Dawkins argued that natural selection operates like a blind watchmaker in fashioning the complicated structures of nature.
- but also, Dawkins was the guy who invented the "meme" meme. did he not see its implication here? the correct response to Paley isn't "natural selection is a blind watchmaker", it's "design is like nature—evolutionary—except it ALSO has intent"
- though in some sense most of the intelligence is in the evolutionariness, not in the intent
- (would have to unpack it a bit more, but yeah)
- "blind watchmaker" is sort of a homunculus fallacy, actually
- > It was explained further above that, in terms of reproductive fitness, the evolutionary trend is always upwards.
- sure, IF you assume a constant environment, which is a bad assumption almost to the point of being meaningless
- by environment I don't just mean climate, I mean the entire situation, including competition from predators, prey, and conspecifics (members of the same species)
- ah actually, the meaninglessness creeps in when you assume there could ever be a measurement of "fitness"
- Vervaeke points this out in 2012 paper Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science
- okay the author sorta gets this, but there's still a funny frame issue here
- > The only thing that is constantly improving is the adaptedness of individuals to their given environment. Because the environment changes, this “progress” always remains relative – progress relative to the adaptedness to an environment.
- anyway, gonna stop arguing with this guy, as idk who he is and he's a straight-up reductionist so we've got a pretty substantial worldview gap
- oh ew it's by FRI, the people trying to stop atoms from suffering
- oh and multiple authors, so the evolution one wasn't written by the one who wrote up how reductionism is clearly true and good. still.