Yes, but I hear an unspoken: “individual” somewhere. Part of my point - and there are many parts to my point) is that our way of looking at the unit of evolution is, probably for practical reasons, too small. We look at genes, and at individuals, and maybe sometimes, but more conversationally then scientifically, at “cultures”. We don’t look at interactions . We don’t look at our own way of looking at such interactions as a way that shapes reality. We need to think that we are “objective”.
While we know that the same trait or behavior can mean evolutionary success in one system, and defeat in another.
Think of cockroaches. The wonderful book I just read by a professor of Applied Ecology, Rob Dunn, posts that there is a genotype of cockroaches that hats the taste of sweet glucose. That makes them bad at the cockroaches mating game of exchanging sweet tasting mating gifts, and thusly limits their evolutionary succes. This genetic trait led an hidden life before that. ( for practical purposes: it didn’t exist) However, when humans began baiting cockroaches with poisoned glucose, only these cockroaches survived, and the why was discovered and this traid studied.
So, can we say this cockroaces hate for sugar is a succesful, or an unsuccesful adaptation? Of course we can’t: we can only say that the adaptation is good in one context, and bad in another. Nevertheless, our human habit to want to say that a trait is good or bad, obscures this fact. And why do we want to say a trait is good or bad? Because our minds work that way, and more importantly, what we say and write and get socially rewarded for works that way.
The anthropic principle disagrees with you there, and even Hawking said that there is a way in which the anthorpic principle makes sense in physics.
Your answer to the falling tree koan is the classic counterargument. You say that perceiving is different then being. I think that is only true in a very limited way. Recent discoveries like bacteria biomes and dark matter/dark space discovered things that did not exist before. “Yes, they existed, we did just not discover them before” you say. Well, economists thougth they had discovered the trickle down effect. Psychologists thought the Oedipus complex existed. Or the A-personality that caused ulcers, before discovering the bacteria H. Pylori. Yes, that is just science progressing, I hear you say. Okay, so science progresses. That must mean that some things, some concepts you now believe in, don’t exist, right?
By now, I suspect that when something is likely when looking at the facts, but awkward and uncomfortable to state, socially and psychologically not lucrative to state, it is more likely to be true.
I noticed this with the seven-year old son of aqaintances of mine. He had been in and out psychologists offices, diagnosing him, in turn, as autistic, adhd or “we don’t know”. When I looked at him, I thought: this is a textbook case of child psychopathy, CCD as it is now known.
But I also felt clearly that saying so was unpleasant for all involved. It took another year for there to be a good way to mention it and by that time I heard from they boys mom that she had thought so for years but had also not felt she could admit that to anyone, or even herself.
So, this is a diagnosis that doesn’t exist for social, not factual reasons.
And yes, I know that the word for this is “under diagnosed”. The problem with that word is that it limits such partial blindness to the small part of reality that concerns itself with psychological diagnoses.
I postulate, probably, that large parts of reality are under- and over- and ineffectively diagnosed, because of how human thinking works.
Okay smartass. It is easy to find words like this, once someone else has explained it and you are motivated to find words for it.
Now try to find words for something that you’ve suspected for a long time to exist, but felt slightly uneasy talking about because people might look funny at you.
That we are likely, in both science and conversation and other social behavior, to be subjective, even distorted. ( Duh) In predicable ways ( less Duh)
That it is worth studying in what ways that subjectiveness has in the past, or in related subjects, turned our to distort our view of reality as we now understand it. .
And that part of this distortion is to look at things as individual events, acts, and intentions. When it is more likely they were caused by things that went before, and operated in systems more complex then we care to account for.
And that, finally, we humans have a huge bias in only seeing, and passing on, socially amplifying, information that is socially lucrative.
And that amplifying that selected information is, in a way, comparable to the way evolution works, and, obviously, with the way things go viral in social media.
Which brings us full circle to my belief that wat goes viral, or what is evolutionary succesful, is again perceived by humans talking or thinking about it, and therefore subject to the same biases.
Which promises that a fascinating world of facts and things exist for us to perceive if we would be able to lessen our biases.
Thankyou thankyou! Cultural evolution theory. Might be the concept I needed. I’ll look into it.
I also found the concept of Identity Economy. Wikipedia has a rather narrow definition of it. … A framework for incorporating into standard economics models, expanding the standard to include both pecuniary payoffs and identity utility.
The authors demonstrate the importance of identity in economics by showing how predictions of the classic [principal-agent problem] change when the identity of the agent is considered.
I have felt for the longest time that about 90 to 50% of what we say is social behavior, disguised as an exchange of ideas and information. The trouble is, if we hear ourselves talking, we tend to believe ourselves. Thus limiting our own thoughts.
What I try to convey also has links to the science of how memes and tropes live, die and travel through the meme-o-sphere in much the same way genes do in the biosphere. Window of Overton, another such idea.
Agreed, and I conclude from this that we would benefit more by applying the methods of evolutionary development to resolving human affairs than the opposite.
Jasmine said: I think the object of life, simply put, is to live. Life does that by adapting to its environment and successfully reproducing. If its environment changes and it cannot adapt, it dies out, which is why (it is postulated) over 95% of all life that has ever existed on this planet has become extinct. Intelligent life is more complicated because the brain seeks a higher purpose. It wants to learn, master, and control its environment, and it seeks immortality because it knows its life is going to end before it happens.
Now see, for the longest time I thought like this. I thought “life” existed outside of my definition of it. It was a bit fuzzy what life was, for instance, if you had to look at the gene, the body, or the conglomerate body. Or the smaller or larger ecosystem around the animal. Or the non-living parts of that ecosystem. Or the time-scales involved.
Then I started listening to Alan Watts, a guy who made mony explaining Eastern philosophy to Westerners. He describes life as a process, arising from circumstances that went before, and/or inherent traits, and changing gradually in circumstances after. Life is life because it is repeatable. Life is life because it is not only repeatable, but because it has to repeat itself as long as the circumstances are right. Life is a viral process.
(As is the universe, by the way. The big bang produced, starting with a minute beginning, a chain-reaction where something-nothingness is split into matter, energy and space, with the byproduct time. Is a chain reaction a sort of viral thing? _
So, life is a viral process, and happens if circumstances are right. And part of those circumstances, is a human observer. The human observer is not necessary for it to happen, but he is necessary for it to happen in a way he observes it. (An observing bee could see the UV light of the falling tree- we cannot).
And part of life happening is that we, as human observers, don’t notice it untill we can notice it. And because we are very much social creatures, we can only notice stuff that has gone viral enough for us to be socially allowed to notice it.
I found the OP confused and my only response is “This wasn’t news when Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, what’s new about it now?” But subsequent responses have gotten more metaphysical and less comprehensible, so I’m not even sure that response was correct.
You are right, but even better would be to apply psychology and sociology as applied social engineering sciences. Like sales and marketing do on a grand scale. Like the fledgeling science of nudging tries to do.
Most sciences have an infancy where they are mostly narrative. Only one step above campfire discussions. In that infancy, the narratives are pitted against each other by competing social groups. The narratives become pastimes, justifications, and weapons.
Literature " science" was like that, academic and pointless, before it grew up and started being taught as an art, as the skill of writing a book people want to read.
I feel that psychology and sociology need to follow the example of literature. Rather then offering competing narratives after the fact, they should tell us how we can actually engineer a society to reach its stated goals.
It is easy to find words like this, once someone else has explained it and you are motivated to find words for it.