Category: Evolutionary

Artsy Women

Mark Davis1 Comment

Victoire LemoineA pervasive commitment to ambiguity. That’s the most compelling sentence I can think of to describe the best epistemological stance concerning the modern world. We have, at best, some fairly well-established local systems that are reliable. We have consistency that may, admittedly, only pertain to some local system that is relatively smooth or has a modicum of support for the most general hypotheses that we can generate.

It’s not nihilistic to believe these things. It’s prudent and, when carefully managed, it’s productive.

And with such prudence we can tear down the semantic drapery that commands attention at every turn, from the grotesqueries of the political sphere that seek to command us through emotive hyperbole to the witchdoctors of religious canons who want us to immanentize some silly Middle Eastern eschaton or shoot up a family-planning clinic.

It is all nonsense. We are perpetuating and inventing constructs that cling to our contingent neurologies like mold, impervious to the broadest implications and best thinking we can muster. That’s normal, I suppose, for that is the sub rosa history of our species. But only beneath the firmament, while there is hope above and inventiveness and the creation of a new honor that derives from fairness and not from reactive disgust.

In opposition to the structures that we know and live with—that we tolerate—there is both clarity in this cocksure target and a certainty that, at least, we can deconstruct the self-righteousness and build a new sensibility to (at least) equality if not some more grand vision.

I picked up Laura Marling’s Short Movie last week and propagated it to various cars. It is only OK, but it joins a rather large collection of recent female musicians in my music archive.… Read the rest

A Critique of Pure Randomness

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Random MemeThe notion of randomness brings about many interesting considerations. For statisticians, randomness is a series of events with chances that are governed by a distribution function. In everyday parlance, equally-likely means random, while an even more common semantics is based on both how unlikely and how unmotivated an event might be (“That was soooo random!”) In physics, there are only certain physical phenomena that can be said to be truly random, including the probability of a given nucleus decomposing into other nuclei via fission. The exact position of a quantum thingy is equally random when it’s momentum is nailed down, and vice-versa. Vacuums have a certain chance of spontaneously creating matter, too, and that chance appears to be perfectly random. In algorithmic information theory, a random sequence of bits is a sequence that can’t be represented by a smaller descriptive algorithm–it is incompressible. Strangely enough, we simulate random number generators using a compact algorithm that has a complicated series of steps that lead to an almost impossible to follow trajectory through a deterministic space of possibilities; it’s acceptible to be random enough that the algorithm parameters can’t be easily reverse engineered and the next “random” number guessed.

One area where we often speak of randomness is in biological evolution. Random mutations lead to change and to deleterious effects like dead-end evolutionary experiments. Or so we hypothesized. The exact mechanism of the transmission of inheritance and of mutations were unknown to Darwin, but soon in the evolutionary synthesis notions like random genetic drift and the role of ionizing radiation and other external factors became exciting candidates for the explanation of the variation required for evolution to function. Amusingly, arguing largely from a stance that might be called a fallacy of incredulity, creationists have often seized on a logical disconnect they perceive between the appearance of purpose both in our lives and in the mechanisms of biological existence, and the assumption of underlying randomness and non-directedness as evidence for the paucity of arguments from randomness.… Read the rest

On Killing Kids

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Mark S. Smith’s The Early History of God is a remarkable piece of scholarship. I was recently asked what I read for fun and had to admit that I have been on a trajectory towards reading books that have, on average, more footnotes than text. J.P. Mallory’s In Search of the Indo-Europeans kindly moves the notes to the end of the volume. Smith’s Chapter 5, Yahwistic Cult Practices, and particularly Section 3, The mlk sacrifice, are illuminating on the widespread belief that killing children could propitiate the gods. This practice was likely widespread among the Western Semitic peoples, including the Israelites and Canaanites (Smith’s preference for Western Semitic is to lump the two together ca. 1200 BC because they appear to have been culturally the same, possibly made distinct after the compilation of OT following the Exile).

I recently argued with some young street preachers about violence and horror in Yahweh’s name and by His command while waiting outside a rock shop in Old Sacramento. Human sacrifice came up, too, with the apologetics being that, despite the fact that everyone was bad back then, the Chosen People did not perform human sacrifice and therefore they were marginally better than the other people around them. They passed quickly on the topic of slavery, which was wise for rhetorical purposes, because slavery was widespread and acceptable. I didn’t remember the particulars of the examples of human sacrifice in OT, but recalled them broadly to which they responded that there were translation and interpretation errors with “burnt offering” and “fire offerings of first borns” that, of course, immediately contradicted their assertion of acceptance and perfection of the scriptures.

More interesting, though, is the question of why might human sacrifice be so pervasive, whether among Yahwists and Carthiginians or Aztecs?… Read the rest

Just So Disruptive

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i-don-t-always-meme-generator-i-don-t-always-buy-companies-but-when-i-do-i-do-it-for-no-reason-925b08The “just so” story is a pejorative for cultural or physical traits that drive an evolutionary explanation. Things are “just so” when the explanation is unfalsifiable and theoretically fitted to current observations. Less controversial and pejorative is the essential character of evolutionary process where there is no doubt that genetic alternatives will mostly fail. The ones that survive this crucible are disruptive to the status quo, sure, but these disruptions tend to be geographically or sexually isolated from the main population anyway, so they are more an expansion than a disruption; little competition is tooth-and-claw, mostly species survive versus the environment, not one another.

Jill Lapore of Harvard subjects business theory to a similar crucible in the New Yorker, questioning Clayton Christensen’s classic argument in The Innovator’s Dilemma that businesses are unwilling to adapt to changing markets because they are making rational business decisions to maximize profits. After analyzing core business cases from Christensen’s books, Lapore concludes that the argument holds little water and that its predictions are both poor and inapplicable to other areas like journalism and college education.

Central to her critique is her analysis of the “just so” nature of disruptive innovation:

Christensen has compared the theory of disruptive innovation to a theory of nature: the theory of evolution. But among the many differences between disruption and evolution is that the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn’t disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be because it didn’t disrupt. When a startup fails, that’s a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation. (“Stop being afraid of failure and start embracing it,” the organizers of FailCon, an annual conference, implore, suggesting that, in the era of disruption, innovators face unprecedented challenges.

… Read the rest

Humbly Evolving in a Non-Simulated Universe

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darwin-changeThe New York Times seems to be catching up to me, first with an interview of Alvin Plantinga by Gary Cutting in The Stone on February 9th, and then with notes on Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis in the Sunday Times.

I didn’t see anything new in the Plantinga interview, but reviewed my previous argument that adaptive fidelity combined with adaptive plasticity must raise the probability of rationality at a rate that is much greater than the contributions that would be “deceptive” or even mildly cognitively or perceptually biased. Worth reading is Branden Fitelsen and Eliot Sober’s very detailed analysis of Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), here. Most interesting are the beginning paragraphs of Section 3, which I reproduce here because it is a critical addition that should surprise no one but often does:

Although Plantinga’s arguments don’t work, he has raised a question that needs to be answered by people who believe evolutionary theory and who also believe that this theory says that our cognitive abilities are in various ways imperfect. Evolutionary theory does say that a device that is reliable in the environment in which it evolved may be highly unreliable when used in a novel environment. It is perfectly possible that our mental machinery should work well on simple perceptual tasks, but be much less reliable when applied to theoretical matters. We hasten to add that this is possible, not inevitable. It may be that the cognitive procedures that work well in one domain also work well in another; Modus Ponens may be useful for avoiding tigers and for doing quantum physics.

Anyhow, if evolutionary theory does say that our ability to theorize about the world is apt to be rather unreliable, how are evolutionists to apply this point to their own theoretical beliefs, including their belief in evolution?

… Read the rest

In Like Flynn

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The exceptionally interesting James Flynn explains the cognitive history of the past century and what it means in terms of human intelligence in this TED talk:

What does the future hold? While we might decry the “twitch” generation and their inundation by social media, gaming stimulation, and instant interpersonal engagement, the slowing observed in the Flynn Effect might be getting ready for another ramp-up over the next 100 years.

Perhaps most intriguing is the discussion of the ability to think in terms of hypotheticals as a a core component of ethical reasoning. Ethics is about gaming outcomes and also about empathizing with others. The influence of media as a delivery mechanism for narratives about others emerged just as those changes in cognitive capabilities were beginning to mature in the 20th Century. Widespread media had a compounding effect on the core abstract thinking capacity, and with the expansion of smartphones and informational flow, we may only have a few generations to go before the necessary ingredients for good ethical reasoning are widespread even in hard-to-reach areas of the world.… Read the rest

Contingency and Irreducibility

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JaredTarbell2Thomas Nagel returns to defend his doubt concerning the completeness—if not the efficacy—of materialism in the explanation of mental phenomena in the New York Times. He quickly lays out the possibilities:

  1. Consciousness is an easy product of neurophysiological processes
  2. Consciousness is an illusion
  3. Consciousness is a fluke side-effect of other processes
  4. Consciousness is a divine property supervened on the physical world

Nagel arrives at a conclusion that all four are incorrect and that a naturalistic explanation is possible that isn’t “merely” (1), but that is at least (1), yet something more. I previously commented on the argument, here, but the refinement of the specifications requires a more targeted response.

Let’s call Nagel’s new perspective Theory 1+ for simplicity. What form might 1+ take on? For Nagel, the notion seems to be a combination of Chalmers-style qualia combined with a deep appreciation for the contingencies that factor into the personal evolution of individual consciousness. The latter is certainly redundant in that individuality must be absolutely tied to personal experiences and narratives.

We might be able to get some traction on this concept by looking to biological evolution, though “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” is about as close as we can get to the topic because any kind of evolutionary psychology must be looking for patterns that reinforce the interpretation of basic aspects of cognitive evolution (sex, reproduction, etc.) rather than explore the more numinous aspects of conscious development. So we might instead look for parallel theories that focus on the uniqueness of outcomes, that reify the temporal evolution without reference to controlling biology, and we get to ideas like uncomputability as a backstop. More specifically, we can explore ideas like computational irreducibility to support the development of Nagel’s new theory; insofar as the environment lapses towards weak predictability, a consciousness that self-observes, regulates, and builds many complex models and metamodels is superior to those that do not.… Read the rest

Red Queens of Hearts

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redqueenAn incomplete area of study in philosophy and science is the hows and whys of social cooperation. We can easily assume that social organisms gain benefits in terms of the propagation of genes by speculating about the consequences of social interactions versus individual ones, but translating that speculation into deep insights has remained a continuing research program. The consequences couldn’t be more significant because we immediately gain traction on the Naturalistic Fallacy and build a bridge towards a clearer understanding of human motivation in arguing for a type of Moral Naturalism that embodies much of the best we know and hope for from human history.

So worth tracking are continued efforts to understand how competition can be outdone by cooperation in the most elementary and mathematical sense. The superlatively named Freeman Dyson (who doesn’t want to be a free man?) cast a cloud of doubt on the ability of cooperation to be a working strategy when he and colleague William Press analyzed the payoff matrixes of iterated prisoner’s dilemma games and discovered a class of play strategies called “Zero-Determinant” strategies that always pay-off regardless of the opponent’s strategies. Hence, the concern that there is a large corner in the adaptive topology where strong-arming always wins. And evolutionary search must seek out that corner and winners must accumulate there, thus ruling out cooperation as a prominent feature of evolutionary success.

But that can’t reflect the reality we think we see, where cooperation in primates and other eusocial organisms seems to be the precursor to the kinds of virtues that are reflected in moral, religious, and ethical traditions. So what might be missing in this analysis? Christophe Adami and Arend Hintze at Michigan State may have some of the answers in their paper, Evolutionary instability of zero-determinant strategies demonstrates that winning is not everything.… Read the rest

Novelty in the Age of Criticism

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Gary Cutting from Notre Dame and the New York Times knows how to incite an intellectual riot, as demonstrated by his most recent The Stone piece, Mozart vs. the Beatles. “High art” is superior to “low art” because of its “stunning intellectual and emotional complexity.” He sums up:

My argument is that this distinctively aesthetic value is of great importance in our lives and that works of high art achieve it much more fully than do works of popular art.

But what makes up these notions of complexity and distinctive aesthetic value? One might try to enumerate those values or create a list. Or, alternatively, one might instead claim that time serves as a sieve for the values that Cutting is claiming make one work of art superior to another, thus leaving open the possibility for the enumerated list approach to be incomplete but still a useful retrospective system of valuation.

I previously argued in a 1994 paper (published in 1997), Complexity Formalisms, Order and Disorder in the Structure of Art, that simplicity and random chaos exist in a careful balance in art that reflects our underlying grammatical systems that are used to predict the environment. And Jürgen Schmidhuber took the approach further by applying algorithmic information theory to novelty seeking behavior that leads, in turn, to aesthetically pleasing models. The reflection of this behavioral optimization in our sideline preoccupations emerges as art, with the ultimate causation machine of evolution driving the proximate consequences for men and women.

But let’s get back to the flaw I see in Cutting’s argument that, in turn, fits better with Schmidhuber’s approach: much of what is important in art is cultural novelty. Picasso is not aesthetically superior to the detailed hyper-reality of Dutch Masters, for instance, but is notable for his cultural deconstruction of the role of art as photography and reproduction took hold.… Read the rest

Curiouser and Curiouser

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georgeJürgen Schmidhuber’s work on algorithmic information theory and curiosity is worth a few takes, if not more, for the researcher has done something that is both flawed and rather brilliant at the same time. The flaws emerge when we start to look deeply into the motivations for ideas like beauty (is symmetry and noncomplex encoding enough to explain sexual attraction? Well-understood evolutionary psychology is probably a better bet), but the core of his argument is worth considering.

If induction is an essential component of learning (and we might suppose it is for argument’s sake), then why continue to examine different parameterizations of possible models for induction? Why be creative about how to explain things, like we expect and even idolize of scientists?

So let us assume that induction is explained by the compression of patterns into better and better models using an information theoretic-style approach. Given this, Schmidhuber makes the startling leap that better compression and better models are best achieved by information harvesting behavior that involves finding novelty in the environment. Thus curiosity. Thus the implementation of action in support of ideas.

I proposed a similar model to explain aesthetic preferences for mid-ordered complex systems of notes, brush-strokes, etc. around 1994, but Schmidhuber’s approach has the benefit of not just characterizing the limitations and properties of aesthetic systems, but also justifying them. We find interest because we are programmed to find novelty, and we are programmed to find novelty because we want to optimize our predictive apparatus. The best optimization is actively seeking along the contours of the perceivable (and quantifiable) universe, and isolating the unknown patterns to improve our current model.… Read the rest