And the Winner for Most Probable God is... Azathoth?

[Alyrium Denryle]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/

An Alien God
16Eliezer_Yudkowsky02 November 2007 06:57AM

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution," said Jacques Monod, "is that everybody thinks he understands it."

A human being, looking at the natural world, sees a thousand times purpose. A rabbit's legs, built and articulated for running; a fox's jaws, built and articulated for tearing. But what you see is not exactly what is there...

In the days before Darwin, the cause of all this apparent purposefulness was a very great puzzle unto science. The Goddists said "God did it", because you get 50 bonus points each time you use the word "God" in a sentence. Yet perhaps I'm being unfair. In the days before Darwin, it seemed like a much more reasonable hypothesis. Find a watch in the desert, said William Paley, and you can infer the existence of a watchmaker.

But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?

When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines.

The ecosystem would make much more sense if it wasn't designed by a unitary Who, but, rather, created by a horde of deities - say from the Hindu or Shinto religions. This handily explains both the ubiquitous purposefulnesses, and the ubiquitous conflicts: More than one deity acted, often at cross-purposes. The fox and rabbit were both designed, but by distinct competing deities. I wonder if anyone ever remarked on the seemingly excellent evidence thus provided for Hinduism over Christianity. Probably not.

Similarly, the Judeo-Christian God is alleged to be benevolent - well, sort of. And yet much of nature's purposefulness seems downright cruel. Darwin suspected a non-standard Creator for studying Ichneumon wasps, whose paralyzing stings preserve its prey to be eaten alive by its larvae: "I cannot persuade myself," wrote Darwin, "that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice." I wonder if any earlier thinker remarked on the excellent evidence thus provided for Manichaen religions over monotheistic ones.

By now we all know the punchline: You just say "evolution".

I worry that's how some people are absorbing the "scientific" explanation, as a magical purposefulness factory in Nature. I've previously discussed the case of Storm from the movie X-Men, who in one mutation gets the ability to throw lightning bolts. Why? Well, there's this thing called "evolution" that somehow pumps a lot of purposefulness into Nature, and the changes happen through "mutations". So if Storm gets a really large mutation, she can be redesigned to throw lightning bolts. Radioactivity is a popular super origin: radiation causes mutations, so more powerful radiation causes more powerful mutations. That's logic.

But evolution doesn't allow just any kind of purposefulness to leak into Nature. That's what makes evolution a success as an empirical hypothesis. If evolutionary biology could explain a toaster oven, not just a tree, it would be worthless. There's a lot more to evolutionary theory than pointing at Nature and saying, "Now purpose is allowed," or "Evolution did it!" The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

"Many non-biologists," observed George Williams, "think that it is for their benefit that rattles grow on rattlesnake tails." Bzzzt! This kind of purposefulness is not allowed. Evolution doesn't work by letting flashes of purposefulness creep in at random - reshaping one species for the benefit of a random recipient.

Evolution is powered by a systematic correlation between the different ways that different genes construct organisms, and how many copies of those genes make it into the next generation. For rattles to grow on rattlesnake tails, rattle-growing genes must become more and more frequent in each successive generation. (Actually genes for incrementally more complex rattles, but if I start describing all the fillips and caveats to evolutionary biology, we really will be here all day.)

There isn't an Evolution Fairy that looks over the current state of Nature, decides what would be a "good idea", and chooses to increase the frequency of rattle-constructing genes.

I suspect this is where a lot of people get stuck, in evolutionary biology. They understand that "helpful" genes become more common, but "helpful" lets any sort of purpose leak in. They don't think there's an Evolution Fairy, yet they ask which genes will be "helpful" as if a rattlesnake gene could "help" non-rattlesnakes.

The key realization is that there is no Evolution Fairy. There's no outside force deciding which genes ought to be promoted. Whatever happens, happens because of the genes themselves.

Genes for constructing (incrementally better) rattles, must have somehow ended up more frequent in the rattlesnake gene pool, because of the rattle. In this case it's probably because rattlesnakes with better rattles survive more often - rather than mating more successfully, or having brothers that reproduce more successfully, etc.

Maybe predators are wary of rattles and don't step on the snake. Or maybe the rattle diverts attention from the snake's head. (As George Williams suggests, "The outcome of a fight between a dog and a viper would depend very much on whether the dog initially seized the reptile by the head or by the tail.")

But that's just a snake's rattle. There are much more complicated ways that a gene can cause copies of itself to become more frequent in the next generation. Your brother or sister shares half your genes. A gene that sacrifices one unit of resources to bestow three units of resource on a brother, may promote some copies of itself by sacrificing one of its constructed organisms. (If you really want to know all the details and caveats, buy a book on evolutionary biology; there is no royal road.)

The main point is that the gene's effect must cause copies of that gene to become more frequent in the next generation. There's no Evolution Fairy that reaches in from outside. There's nothing which decides that some genes are "helpful" and should, therefore, increase in frequency. It's just cause and effect, starting from the genes themselves.

This explains the strange conflicting purposefulness of Nature, and its frequent cruelty. It explains even better than a horde of Shinto deities.

Why is so much of Nature at war with other parts of Nature? Because there isn't one Evolution directing the whole process. There's as many different "evolutions" as reproducing populations. Rabbit genes are becoming more or less frequent in rabbit populations. Fox genes are becoming more or less frequent in fox populations. Fox genes which construct foxes that catch rabbits, insert more copies of themselves in the next generation. Rabbit genes which construct rabbits that evade foxes are naturally more common in the next generation of rabbits. Hence the phrase "natural selection".

Why is Nature cruel? You, a human, can look at an Ichneumon wasp, and decide that it's cruel to eat your prey alive. You can decide that if you're going to eat your prey alive, you can at least have the decency to stop it from hurting. It would scarcely cost the wasp anything to anesthetize its prey as well as paralyze it. Or what about old elephants, who die of starvation when their last set of teeth fall out? These elephants aren't going to reproduce anyway. What would it cost evolution - the evolution of elephants, rather - to ensure that the elephant dies right away, instead of slowly and in agony? What would it cost evolution to anesthetize the elephant, or give it pleasant dreams before it dies? Nothing; that elephant won't reproduce more or less either way.

If you were talking to a fellow human, trying to resolve a conflict of interest, you would be in a good negotiating position - would have an easy job of persuasion. It would cost so little to anesthetize the prey, to let the elephant die without agony! Oh please, won't you do it, kindly... um...

There's no one to argue with.

Human beings fake their justifications, figure out what they want using one method, and then justify it using another method. There's no Evolution of Elephants Fairy that's trying to (a) figure out what's best for elephants, and then (b) figure out how to justify it to the Evolutionary Overseer, who (c) doesn't want to see reproductive fitness decreased, but is (d) willing to go along with the painless-death idea, so long as it doesn't actually harm any genes.

There's no advocate for the elephants anywhere in the system.

Humans, who are often deeply concerned for the well-being of animals, can be very persuasive in arguing how various kindnesses wouldn't harm reproductive fitness at all. Sadly, the evolution of elephants doesn't use a similar algorithm; it doesn't select nice genes that can plausibly be argued to help reproductive fitness. Simply: genes that replicate more often become more frequent in the next generation. Like water flowing downhill, and equally benevolent.

A human, looking over Nature, starts thinking of all the ways we would design organisms. And then we tend to start rationalizing reasons why our design improvements would increase reproductive fitness - a political instinct, trying to sell your own preferred option as matching the boss's favored justification.

And so, amateur evolutionary biologists end up making all sorts of wonderful and completely mistaken predictions. Because the amateur biologists are drawing their bottom line - and more importantly, locating their prediction in hypothesis-space - using a different algorithm than evolutions use to draw their bottom lines.

A human engineer would have designed human taste buds to measure how much of each nutrient we had, and how much we needed. When fat was scarce, almonds or cheeseburgers would taste delicious. But if you started to become obese, or if vitamins were lacking, lettuce would taste delicious. But there is no Evolution of Humans Fairy, which intelligently planned ahead and designed a general system for every contingency. It was a reliable invariant of humans' ancestral environment that calories were scarce. So genes whose organisms loved calories, became more frequent. Like water flowing downhill.

We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced.

The human retina is constructed backward: The light-sensitive cells are at the back, and the nerves emerge from the front and go back through the retina into the brain. Hence the blind spot. To a human engineer, this looks simply stupid - and other organisms have independently evolved retinas the right way around. Why not redesign the retina?

The problem is that no single mutation will reroute the whole retina simultaneously. A human engineer can redesign multiple parts simultaneously, or plan ahead for future changes. But if a single mutation breaks some vital part of the organism, it doesn't matter what wonderful things a Fairy could build on top of it - the organism dies and the genes decreases in frequency.

If you turn around the retina's cells without also reprogramming the nerves and optic cable, the system as a whole won't work. It doesn't matter that, to a Fairy or a human engineer, this is one step forward in redesigning the retina. The organism is blind. Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce. Evolution is as blind as a halfway-redesigned retina.

Find a watch in a desert, said William Paley, and you can infer the watchmaker. There were once those who denied this, who thought that life "just happened" without need of an optimization process, mice being spontaneously generated from straw and dirty shirts.

If we ask who was more correct - the theologians who argued for a Creator-God, or the intellectually unfulfilled atheists who argued that mice spontaneously generated - then the theologians must be declared the victors: evolution is not God, but it is closer to God than it is to pure random entropy. Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. It's not a god, but it's more closely akin to a god than it is to snow on a television screen.

In a lot of ways, evolution is like unto theology. "Gods are ontologically distinct from creatures," said Damien Broderick, "or they're not worth the paper they're written on." And indeed, the Shaper of Life is not itself a creature. Evolution is bodiless, like the Judeo-Christian deity. Omnipresent in Nature, immanent in the fall of every leaf. Vast as a planet's surface. Billions of years old. Itself unmade, arising naturally from the structure of physics. Doesn't that all sound like something that might have been said about God?

And yet the Maker has no mind, as well as no body. In some ways, its handiwork is incredibly poor design by human standards. It is internally divided. Most of all, it isn't nice.

In a way, Darwin discovered God - a God that failed to match the preconceptions of theology, and so passed unheralded. If Darwin had discovered that life was created by an intelligent agent - a bodiless mind that loves us, and will smite us with lightning if we dare say otherwise - people would have said "My gosh! That's God!"

But instead Darwin discovered a strange alien God - not comfortably "ineffable", but really genuinely different from us. Evolution is not a God, but if it were, it wouldn't be Jehovah. It would be H. P. Lovecraft's Azathoth, the blind idiot God burbling chaotically at the center of everything, surrounded by the thin monotonous piping of flutes.

Which you might have predicted, if you had really looked at Nature.

So much for the claim some religionists make, that they believe in a vague deity with a correspondingly high probability. Anyone who really believed in a vague deity, would have recognized their strange inhuman creator when Darwin said "Aha!"

So much for the claim some religionists make, that they are waiting innocently curious for Science to discover God. Science has already discovered the sort-of-godlike maker of humans - but it wasn't what the religionists wanted to hear. They were waiting for the discovery of their God, the highly specific God they want to be there. They shall wait forever, for the great discovery has already taken place, and the winner is Azathoth.

Well, more power to us humans. I like having a Creator I can outwit. Beats being a pet. I'm glad it was Azathoth and not Odin.

I will wait and see what sort of talk this spawns, then chime in.

[Channel72]

I suppose the Hellenic concept of the "Demiourgos" might be a close contender with Azathoth in the category of "obscure deities which somewhat resemble evolution personified". Overall, it's an interesting essay; there's not much to disagree with here. However, it does certainly highlight how counter-intuitive evolution is to most people. Even those who accept evolution tend to view it as a teleological force which "designs" things for some purpose.

[Temujin]

Interesting article, and a reminder that nature can be both wonderful and cruel.

I would like to think that we humans could take responsibility and become caretakers of the world, and ultimately be able to do something like ensure that those old elephants don't have to suffer in death. However, for every one of us that may feel that way, there are thousands who are either apathetic towards nature or down right hostile and want to use it for their own gain until it is gone.

[Molyneux]

If we ask who was more correct - the theologians who argued for a Creator-God, or the intellectually unfulfilled atheists who argued that mice spontaneously generated - then the theologians must be declared the victors: evolution is not God, but it is closer to God than it is to pure random entropy. Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. It's not a god, but it's more closely akin to a god than it is to snow on a television screen.

No. No, no, no, no, NO, no, no. Just no. Bolded for emphasis.
The only way to say that something like this is a "god" is to dilute the concept of a god past all reason.

Find me an atheist who believes that spontaneous generation is the entirety of evolution, and I will show you an idiot. Hell, Dawkins has written entire books devoted to the task of explaining that natural selection is not random!

Yes, evolution tends to be counter-intuitive given how self-centered we are, but looking at it and saying that evolution is driven by some kind of Lovecraftian conceptual god only confuses the subject further.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Find me an atheist who believes that spontaneous generation is the entirety of evolution, and I will show you an idiot. Hell, Dawkins has written entire books devoted to the task of explaining that natural selection is not random!

I believe the author is speaking about pre-evolution atheism or semi-atheism, for which this was a serious problem. If your choice was between random chance and "Goddidit", God looked like a much better option than it does now even for people who realized how stupid the whole God concept is. I can't recall the name, but I recall Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea quoting a philosopher who had a long list of reasons why belief in God was stupid; and then came out in favor of believing in God anyway because that was the most plausible explanation around for where the complexity of life came from. Which is a major reason why evolution was such a body blow to religion; they lost what was pretty much their only unanswerable argument. Suddenly, complexity no longer needed a designer to explain it.

[Simon_Jester]

If we ask who was more correct - the theologians who argued for a Creator-God, or the intellectually unfulfilled atheists who argued that mice spontaneously generated - then the theologians must be declared the victors: evolution is not God, but it is closer to God than it is to pure random entropy. Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. It's not a god, but it's more closely akin to a god than it is to snow on a television screen.

No. No, no, no, no, NO, no, no. Just no. Bolded for emphasis.
The only way to say that something like this is a "god" is to dilute the concept of a god past all reason.

Note the use of the phrase "more closely akin to a god." When Yudkowsky says "more like X," as a general rule, he does not mean to say "is X." This is not an exception.

The argument here is that evolution is a non-random process, one that can produce recognizable, rational order without relying on intelligence of any kind. That is "more godlike" than blind chance would be, but (as Yudkowsky was quite clear on in other parts of the essay) not a god. It's like saying that a slime mold is more humanlike than a rock: technically true (both the slime mold and the human are multicelled living organisms, while the rock is neither multicelled nor living) but not meant to imply that there is no difference between a slime mold and a human, that the two are identical.

Yes, evolution tends to be counter-intuitive given how self-centered we are, but looking at it and saying that evolution is driven by some kind of Lovecraftian conceptual god only confuses the subject further.

The comparison to Azathoth is best taken as a sort of humorous analogy: here we have an immensely powerful force (evolution has about as much effect on biology as electromagnetism does in physics). This immensely powerful force is causally responsible (not ethically because it's not a person, and not in any volitional sense, just causally) for the nature of life as we know it, warts and all.

That's the kind of description that pre-moderns would attach to a god: "A powerful force responsible for the nature of life as we know it." But in this case (and Yudkowsky makes this fairly clear), the powerful force is nothing like our concept of a god. If we were absolutely married to the notion of calling it a god then the only god it would resemble would be Azathoth or some such, because while it is an immensely powerful force it has zero ability to plan, to avoid compromising one thing in the quest to optimize another, or to do any of the other things we'd routinely expect humans (or humanlike gods) to do.

Which is an immense irony from a certain point of view. It's also a useful illustration to those of us familiar with the concept of Azathoth: the idea that the supreme force in the universe is something alien and nonintelligent, something that subverts most expectations ordinary people have about religion.

[Molyneux]

Lord of the Abyss and Simon_Jester - thank you for the thorough schooling, I misunderstood the thrust of his argument on first reading.

[Junghalli]

I found that essay a while back. Love it.

[Channel72]

This essay is really a definitive argument against the theological/biological synthesis we find in poorly thought out belief systems like Theistic Evolution. Whatever "God" may be directing evolution is certainly not anything like Yahweh, who meticulously designs tabernacles and temples down to the cubit. Furthermore, evolution is not exactly the most pleasant way to bring about biological diversity; extinction and death are critical components of evolution. This doesn't sit well with the whole Judeo-Christian idea of a death-free paradise in Eden prior to the Fall.

In fact, Christian fundamentalists make some of the best arguments against Theistic Evolution - they point out how totally irreconcilable biological evolution really is with the Creator God of Christianity. This is why "Theistic Evolutionists" are so awkward for non-theists. On the one hand, they're better than nut-job YECs because they at least have some respect for science; on the other hand, their belief system is so utterly fragile and ridiculous. Unfortunately, arguing with one of these people seems just as likely to push them into crazy YEC-land rather than causing them to abandon theism altogether.

[Ellindsey]

When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils.

Obviously this person has never actually designed a toaster oven. Toaster ovens have both parts designed to get electricity to the coils when you want it and parts designed to prevent electricity from getting to the coils when you don't want it. A toaster oven that doesn't have the ability to shut off power to the coils reliably and decisively if a short occurs or the temperature is too high won't pass UL inspection.

[Junghalli]

Obviously this person has never actually designed a toaster oven. Toaster ovens have both parts designed to get electricity to the coils when you want it and parts designed to prevent electricity from getting to the coils when you don't want it. A toaster oven that doesn't have the ability to shut off power to the coils reliably and decisively if a short occurs or the temperature is too high won't pass UL inspection.

Yes, but the guy designing the delivery mechanism and the guy designing the breaker mechanism (forgive me if I've abused any terminology) are working cooperatively rather than adversarially. If it was like predator-prey interactions the guy designing the delivery mechanisms would be trying to design them in such a way that electricity would keep getting to the mechanism after the breaker mechanisms were engaged, and eventually you'd end up with highly elaborate delivery mechanisms to get around the breaker mechanisms, and highly elaborate breaker mechanisms as a countermeasure. The basic point, I think, still stands; pretty much no human designer would work that way, and for good reason.

[Coalition]

When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils.

Obviously this person has never actually designed a toaster oven. Toaster ovens have both parts designed to get electricity to the coils when you want it and parts designed to prevent electricity from getting to the coils when you don't want it. A toaster oven that doesn't have the ability to shut off power to the coils reliably and decisively if a short occurs or the temperature is too high won't pass UL inspection.

So a toaster oven would have both abilities, just not working at the same time?

For example, in a designed ecosystem, you'd have plants that grow like crazy, trying to reproduce themselves. When a rabbit comes along, it moves quickly (to get there before the other vegetarians), and eats the plants. The plants shut down growth in that area, to avoid wasting nutrients. When a fox comes along, the rabbit stops eating (no need to waste plant matter), and lets itself get eaten in turn. So you have plants that are growing, then being eaten. While the plants are being eaten, they are not wasting energy. A rabbit moves quickly to eat, but when it is time, it simply waits its turn to die?

The fox might have additional 'instructions' to crush the skull ASAP, to make sure the rabbit doesn't suffer.

The whole thing works together to move materials up the food chain. You'd have to make sure there is some limit so the foxes don't overrun the landscape (and the rabbits when the foxes grow few), but if you are already designing the critters like that, I'm sure you can engineer a density/food supply gene to prevent overpopulation of the rabbits and foxes.

[Simon_Jester]

Sort of.

The average person who thinks of evolution as an intelligent designer (one that creates things for purposes) might not go that far, with plants being well designed to be eaten. But there are also examples within a species. For instance, Yudkowsky cites early (post-Darwin) biologists who posited that predators would naturally evolve to restrain their population growth when prey was scarce. That's a good example, because when we step back and consider how evolution actually works, that's a foolish idea. A gene that codes for fewer offspring being promoted by evolution? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

But that's the logical conclusion if you imagine genes evolving for "the good of the species," as if the effects of evolution on foxes were to create the "best" possible fox.

In the same vein you got people imagining that humans would "evolve" into giant brains because that would maximize our intelligence. Again, it's a foolish idea, but only when you stop and realize that evolution isn't a teleological force. It doesn't go "humans are intelligent and their strength is intelligence, so I will make them more intelligent so that they become stronger." It just weeds out stuff that doesn't breed efficiently.

And this is true within other organisms as well. For instance, human social groups operate in a constant dynamic balance between aggression and cooperation- sometimes we hate other people in our group and oppose them, sometimes we like them and work with them. And these feelings are often irrational or unjustified- indeed, I would argue that they are arational; if they make sense it's purely a matter of coincidence, because they're really determined by random factors like what you ate for breakfast that day and whether you find their accent annoying. So we constantly find ourselves wanting to be liked (to be part of the group) and disliking other individuals (creating conflicts that undermine the group). We're pro-social and anti-social at the same time.

From the point of view of a rational design, why not just "program" us so that we automatically act like good little rational agents, instead of having two mutually contradictory sets of arational impulses and forcing us to strike a balance?

[Alyrium Denryle]

And this is true within other organisms as well. For instance, human social groups operate in a constant dynamic balance between aggression and cooperation- sometimes we hate other people in our group and oppose them, sometimes we like them and work with them. And these feelings are often irrational or unjustified- indeed, I would argue that they are arational; if they make sense it's purely a matter of coincidence, because they're really determined by random factors like what you ate for breakfast that day and whether you find their accent annoying. So we constantly find ourselves wanting to be liked (to be part of the group) and disliking other individuals (creating conflicts that undermine the group). We're pro-social and anti-social at the same time.

Those factors are just how that dynamic gets rationalized/serves as a proxy for something else.

Take accent for example. Tribalistic thinking, regardless of whether we find it desirable is hardwired into our brains. Why? because in our evolutionary past, cooperating with someone who did not look and talk like you wasted your resources which could be better spent helping people who are A) More likely to be related to you and B) more likely to be around in order to return the favor later.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

If you think about it, the process of evolution shares a lot in common with the decisions of many companies that led to the current recession: Everything that happens during the process of evolution leads to the maximization of short term benefits with no thought towards long-term consequences... because evolution does not think. A species of pig has a series of adaptations (good sense of smell, omnivorous tendencies, rooting around, etc.) which allow it to find more food and outbreed competing life? It will stick. What about the scarcity of food that will inevitably result from the population explosion of pigs as an invasive species, resulting in massive famine? Doesn't matter, it's not happening right the fuck now so it's not of any interest to evolution. When it does happen, natural selection will ensure that the adaptations with the most immediate short-term benefits are those that survive, repeating the process.

So like the paper posits: God has the mindset of blind, stupid Azathoth... or the CEO of a major company.

[Simon_Jester]

If you think about it, the process of evolution shares a lot in common with the decisions of many companies that led to the current recession: Everything that happens during the process of evolution leads to the maximization of short term benefits with no thought towards long-term consequences... because evolution does not think. A species of pig has a series of adaptations (good sense of smell, omnivorous tendencies, rooting around, etc.) which allow it to find more food and outbreed competing life? It will stick. What about the scarcity of food that will inevitably result from the population explosion of pigs as an invasive species, resulting in massive famine? Doesn't matter, it's not happening right the fuck now so it's not of any interest to evolution. When it does happen, natural selection will ensure that the adaptations with the most immediate short-term benefits are those that survive, repeating the process.

So like the paper posits: God has the mindset of blind, stupid Azathoth... or the CEO of a major company.

If evolution is God (or indicative of how God thinks), it's worse than CEOs; CEOs are at least capable of balancing off priorities, or of reconsidering their basic approach to a problem and starting over from scratch. Evolution can't do that.

Sure, CEOs may ruthlessly optimize their company for short term profitability at the expense of long term survival, but they're at least able to take large steps that have predicted gains, even if they aren't producing gains at this very instant.

An evolution-like CEO would do things at random, then do the things that work again, but do them harder. Normal CEOs are nonrandom.

And this is true within other organisms as well. For instance, human social groups operate in a constant dynamic balance between aggression and cooperation- sometimes we hate other people in our group and oppose them, sometimes we like them and work with them. And these feelings are often irrational or unjustified- indeed, I would argue that they are arational; if they make sense it's purely a matter of coincidence, because they're really determined by random factors like what you ate for breakfast that day and whether you find their accent annoying. So we constantly find ourselves wanting to be liked (to be part of the group) and disliking other individuals (creating conflicts that undermine the group). We're pro-social and anti-social at the same time.

Those factors are just how that dynamic gets rationalized/serves as a proxy for something else.

Take accent for example. Tribalistic thinking, regardless of whether we find it desirable is hardwired into our brains. Why? because in our evolutionary past, cooperating with someone who did not look and talk like you wasted your resources which could be better spent helping people who are A) More likely to be related to you and B) more likely to be around in order to return the favor later.

...Umm, could you expand a bit on how this is a response to what I was saying?

What I'm getting at is that our current fitness (as in, our ability to not devastate our own species by accident) is impaired by the conflict between social and antisocial instincts. I suspect that some of those instincts weren't really optimal for the ancestral environment either, they just got interlocked to the point where selection pressure wasn't going to untangle them.

[Alyrium Denryle]

If you think about it, the process of evolution shares a lot in common with the decisions of many companies that led to the current recession: Everything that happens during the process of evolution leads to the maximization of short term benefits with no thought towards long-term consequences... because evolution does not think. A species of pig has a series of adaptations (good sense of smell, omnivorous tendencies, rooting around, etc.) which allow it to find more food and outbreed competing life? It will stick. What about the scarcity of food that will inevitably result from the population explosion of pigs as an invasive species, resulting in massive famine? Doesn't matter, it's not happening right the fuck now so it's not of any interest to evolution. When it does happen, natural selection will ensure that the adaptations with the most immediate short-term benefits are those that survive, repeating the process.

So like the paper posits: God has the mindset of blind, stupid Azathoth... or the CEO of a major company.

If evolution is God (or indicative of how God thinks), it's worse than CEOs; CEOs are at least capable of balancing off priorities, or of reconsidering their basic approach to a problem and starting over from scratch. Evolution can't do that.

Sure, CEOs may ruthlessly optimize their company for short term profitability at the expense of long term survival, but they're at least able to take large steps that have predicted gains, even if they aren't producing gains at this very instant.

An evolution-like CEO would do things at random, then do the things that work again, but do them harder. Normal CEOs are nonrandom.

And this is true within other organisms as well. For instance, human social groups operate in a constant dynamic balance between aggression and cooperation- sometimes we hate other people in our group and oppose them, sometimes we like them and work with them. And these feelings are often irrational or unjustified- indeed, I would argue that they are arational; if they make sense it's purely a matter of coincidence, because they're really determined by random factors like what you ate for breakfast that day and whether you find their accent annoying. So we constantly find ourselves wanting to be liked (to be part of the group) and disliking other individuals (creating conflicts that undermine the group). We're pro-social and anti-social at the same time.

Those factors are just how that dynamic gets rationalized/serves as a proxy for something else.

Take accent for example. Tribalistic thinking, regardless of whether we find it desirable is hardwired into our brains. Why? because in our evolutionary past, cooperating with someone who did not look and talk like you wasted your resources which could be better spent helping people who are A) More likely to be related to you and B) more likely to be around in order to return the favor later.

...Umm, could you expand a bit on how this is a response to what I was saying?

What I'm getting at is that our current fitness (as in, our ability to not devastate our own species by accident) is impaired by the conflict between social and antisocial instincts. I suspect that some of those instincts weren't really optimal for the ancestral environment either, they just got interlocked to the point where selection pressure wasn't going to untangle them.

More of an expansion. But yeah, stuff like religion. Evolution cant really optimize. It jury rigs. So you end up with something like religion. A by-product of other cognitive processes that gets co-opted into facilitating social behavior, but itself carries with it a shit load of baggage that did not matter much at the time...

[Formless]

And this is true within other organisms as well. For instance, human social groups operate in a constant dynamic balance between aggression and cooperation- sometimes we hate other people in our group and oppose them, sometimes we like them and work with them. And these feelings are often irrational or unjustified- indeed, I would argue that they are arational; if they make sense it's purely a matter of coincidence, because they're really determined by random factors like what you ate for breakfast that day and whether you find their accent annoying. So we constantly find ourselves wanting to be liked (to be part of the group) and disliking other individuals (creating conflicts that undermine the group). We're pro-social and anti-social at the same time.

Those factors are just how that dynamic gets rationalized/serves as a proxy for something else.

Take accent for example. Tribalistic thinking, regardless of whether we find it desirable is hardwired into our brains. Why? because in our evolutionary past, cooperating with someone who did not look and talk like you wasted your resources which could be better spent helping people who are A) More likely to be related to you and B) more likely to be around in order to return the favor later.

Show me the part of the brain that codes for tribalism, please. Note: in-group bias =! tribalism.

Sorry, but the more I learn about neuropsych the more I'm convinced certain people misunderstand evo-psych. For starters, you're making exactly the same mistake that the essay you posted warns against; specifically thinking that just because something may have been advantagious means evolution must have hard coded us for it rather than considering an alternative explanation for our behavior. For example, tribalism as we know it could be a cultural artifact, a meme, just like religion.

Also, we know that thinking about steriotypes alters the way you think, but its not just triggered when you think about racial or national steriotypes. Steriotypes about a profession, literary archetypes, age group stereotypes, animal steriotypes, or even mere personality cues like politeness all trigger the same mental shortcut. Did evolution select for people who think all dentists are sadists? No. Evolution just selects for lazy thinking in general, because it works-- most of the time. Until it doesn't.

Good thing the brain is neuroplastic. I like to think that there is no "homo-sapien" steriotype that I must live down to. Because that would suck.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Sorry, but the more I learn about neuropsych the more I'm convinced certain people misunderstand evo-psych. For starters, you're making exactly the same mistake that the essay you posted warns against; specifically thinking that just because something may have been advantagious means evolution must have hard coded us for it rather than considering an alternative explanation for our behavior. For example, tribalism as we know it could be a cultural artifact, a meme, just like religion.

It could be. On the other hand there also needs to be a substrate for those things to operate. The scale at which it operates is one thing, meme driven, that it operates at all is another thing. Them vs Us is a human universal, it has existed forever. How Them and Us are defined is a cultural matter. I was using the specific example of an accent as just that. An example.

Also, we know that thinking about steriotypes alters the way you think, but its not just triggered when you think about racial or national steriotypes. Steriotypes about a profession, literary archetypes, age group stereotypes, animal steriotypes, or even mere personality cues like politeness all trigger the same mental shortcut. Did evolution select for people who think all dentists are sadists? No. Evolution just selects for lazy thinking in general, because it works-- most of the time. Until it doesn't.

No. But it did select for the formation of stereotypes in general. Whether you like it or not, stereotypes can be very useful. There is an opportunity cost associated (like with any overgeneralization), but they make certain judgments a hell of a lot easier.

For example: Thog has a bad experience with people from the Walking River Tribe. A stereotype is formed in his mind regarding those people in order to avoid a second bad experience. If the stakes are high enough, the opportunity cost of a prejudice can be lower than the negative result of being to trusting. The opposite is true of positive stereotypes.

The modern problem is of course that the stakes are not usually high, and the population size is large and as a result there is more error associated with stereotype formation and thus the opportunity cost/benefit ratio is higher.

[Formless]

Sorry, but the more I learn about neuropsych the more I'm convinced certain people misunderstand evo-psych. For starters, you're making exactly the same mistake that the essay you posted warns against; specifically thinking that just because something may have been advantagious means evolution must have hard coded us for it rather than considering an alternative explanation for our behavior. For example, tribalism as we know it could be a cultural artifact, a meme, just like religion.

It could be. On the other hand there also needs to be a substrate for those things to operate. The scale at which it operates is one thing, meme driven, that it operates at all is another thing. Them vs Us is a human universal, it has existed forever. How Them and Us are defined is a cultural matter. I was using the specific example of an accent as just that. An example.

But like I said, US vs Them is distinct from Tribalism. "Them" could just as easily refer to a pack of wolves as another "tribe" of humans, but we wouldn't consider that tribalism. Your initial claim indicated that we're prejudiced towards helping people that are genetically related to us, but in the modern day Us Vs Them seems hardly related to genetic relationship at all. Homophobia, nationalism, and religious bigotry are all excellent examples of what I mean.

No. But it did select for the formation of stereotypes in general. Whether you like it or not, stereotypes can be very useful. There is an opportunity cost associated (like with any overgeneralization), but they make certain judgments a hell of a lot easier.

For example: Thog has a bad experience with people from the Walking River Tribe. A stereotype is formed in his mind regarding those people in order to avoid a second bad experience. If the stakes are high enough, the opportunity cost of a prejudice can be lower than the negative result of being to trusting. The opposite is true of positive stereotypes.

The modern problem is of course that the stakes are not usually high, and the population size is large and as a result there is more error associated with stereotype formation and thus the opportunity cost/benefit ratio is higher.

Agreed, but now you are getting into a more nuanced veiw than your initial claims about humans being hardcoded for tribalism. The irony is that your initial claim was itself an overgeneralization of the type we're talking about-- an overgeneralization about humanity itself. The danger is that thinking about a steriotype makes you act like a steriotype. And what more pervasive and perverse a steriotype to spread than one that pertains to the entire human species?

Its not that I hate evo-psych, note, its just that evolution is supposed to comment on the origins of life, not its specific nature. You can't understand the evolution of animal anatomy if you've never studied animal anatomy, and in the same vein you can't study the evolution of human behavior and psychology if you've never studied human behavior and psychology. That would be completely backward.

[Channel72]

Its not that I hate evo-psych, note, its just that evolution is supposed to comment on the origins of life, not its specific nature.

Why do you say evolution isn't "supposed" to comment on the specific nature of life? Biological evolution has profound implications for the nature (i.e. the behavior) of biological life forms. A lot of human behavioral patterns can be traced back to the evolutionary selection process, although admittedly much of this is still speculative. The fact that humans exhibit altruistic behavior, for example, is most likely traceable to selection pressure. Also, the fact that humans exhibit some kind of "us versus them" mentality, or at least often exhibit a tendency to gravitate towards some kind of group, is almost certainly traceable back to evolutionary selection pressure. It's just that today, with ~7 billion humans walking around and various groups, sub-groups, and sub-sub-groups all interacting in unpredictable and dynamic ways, stereotypes tend to be a lot less useful.

[Formless]

Its not that I hate evo-psych, note, its just that evolution is supposed to comment on the origins of life, not its specific nature.

Why do you say evolution isn't "supposed" to comment on the specific nature of life? Biological evolution has profound implications for the nature (i.e. the behavior) of biological life forms. A lot of human behavioral patterns can be traced back to the evolutionary selection process, although admittedly much of this is still speculative. The fact that humans exhibit altruistic behavior, for example, is most likely traceable to selection pressure. Also, the fact that humans exhibit some kind of "us versus them" mentality, or at least often exhibit a tendency to gravitate towards some kind of group, is almost certainly traceable back to evolutionary selection pressure. It's just that today, with ~7 billion humans walking around and various groups, sub-groups, and sub-sub-groups all interacting in unpredictable and dynamic ways, stereotypes tend to be a lot less useful.

Because it inevitably leads back to the mistake of assuming that evolution designs with a purpose, and that the purpose is "increase fitness." Or "survive". or "Pass on genes."

But evolution has no mind. You could only know that humans are altruistic and are biased towards the ingroup from observing humans in the oresent. We didn't have to evolve that way. Similarly, that we were to become bipeds could only have been known after the fact, but you could not have predicted that before hand.

[Alyrium Denryle]

But like I said, US vs Them is distinct from Tribalism. "Them" could just as easily refer to a pack of wolves as another "tribe" of humans, but we wouldn't consider that tribalism. Your initial claim indicated that we're prejudiced towards helping people that are genetically related to us, but in the modern day Us Vs Them seems hardly related to genetic relationship at all. Homophobia, nationalism, and religious bigotry are all excellent examples of what I mean.

That is because we are genetically predisposed to helping those who are related to us Or who we have consistent interactions with. The problem is that we lack accurate kin recognition. Other organisms can literally smell who is related to them. We cannot, at least not consciously (mate choice is partially determined by smelling variation in the major histocompatability complex. That is why some people smell better than others without any form of deodorant or perfume.). As a result, we use proxies. Social group identification. Ingroup vs Outgroup thinking. I used the term Tribalism because it is commonly used on the board, as far as I am aware it has no formal definition in the sciences. If you belong to a strong tightly knit group, be it religious or national, you are likely to be at least apathetic to those outside that group. Same thing with homophobia. Gays are a recognizable different group. If they are not in your social group, you are likely to be prejudiced against them.

The irony is that your initial claim was itself an overgeneralization of the type we're talking about-- an overgeneralization about humanity itself.

I happen to like irony.

Its not that I hate evo-psych, note, its just that evolution is supposed to comment on the origins of life, not its specific nature.

It does both. It not only explains the generation of biodiversity, but also why life as it is now, is as it is. Unless you mean something by "specific nature" that is different than what I think. Obviously if you want to study the evolution of anatomy or behavior, you need to have a knowledge of both. Most evolutionary psychologists do indeed have a knowledge of both.

But evolution has no mind. You could only know that humans are altruistic and are biased towards the ingroup from observing humans in the oresent. We didn't have to evolve that way.

Yes. We did. If we did not, we could not display those behaviors. The question is not whether we evolved these things. The question is how. The human mind is not a blank slate. It is shaped and constrained by its evolutionary history, just like every other animal on the planet.

Take altruism. It can only evolve under certain ecological conditions. These rules are not deleted for humans. We developed our intellect and cognitive capacity slowly over time in response to ecological pressure. If during this time period genes cropped up that allowed for altruism without it being beneficial to the fitness of the individual doing the altruism (by definition, altruism reduces fitness unless it is directed toward kin, or the consequences for individual fitness of not being altruistic are worse), those genes would be purged by selection.

[Simon_Jester]

Take altruism. It can only evolve under certain ecological conditions. These rules are not deleted for humans. We developed our intellect and cognitive capacity slowly over time in response to ecological pressure. If during this time period genes cropped up that allowed for altruism without it being beneficial to the fitness of the individual doing the altruism (by definition, altruism reduces fitness unless it is directed toward kin, or the consequences for individual fitness of not being altruistic are worse), those genes would be purged by selection.

We could still act altruistically; it would just be a cold, reasoned decision to act in ways that profit others rather than a reflex. Just as many people in the developed world make cold, reasoned decisions to use contraceptives; there's damned sure no gene for "is predisposed to use contraceptives" in our gene pool, not at any noticeable frequency level.

Empirically, of course, plenty of people act altruistically because of warm fuzzy feelings, which is all your argument needs (to demonstrate that we did evolve altruism).

[Formless]

That is because we are genetically predisposed to helping those who are related to us Or who we have consistent interactions with. The problem is that we lack accurate kin recognition. Other organisms can literally smell who is related to them.

Except that people who define the ingroup along national or religious borders are aligning themselves with people they are not likely to even meet, let alone have consistent interactions with. The only explanation is that they are aligning themselves with a steriotype in their minds. And indeed, when we look at such groups we can see that this is the case. The Nazis had an idealized Aryan race, communists identified as the Proliteriat, Americans identify as True Patriots, homophobes and mysogenists identify as Real Men, Christians are quick to commit No true Scotsman fallacies whenever you bring up the Crusades or the Inquisition, and so on and so forth. To say that all this can be accounted for by our inability to smell our blood relatives is nothing but an ad hock justification for something you've yet to sufficiently show as true.

We cannot, at least not consciously (mate choice is partially determined by smelling variation in the major histocompatability complex. That is why some people smell better than others without any form of deodorant or perfume.). As a result, we use proxies. Social group identification. Ingroup vs Outgroup thinking. I used the term Tribalism because it is commonly used on the board, as far as I am aware it has no formal definition in the sciences. If you belong to a strong tightly knit group, be it religious or national, you are likely to be at least apathetic to those outside that group. Same thing with homophobia. Gays are a recognizable different group. If they are not in your social group, you are likely to be prejudiced against them.

What about those of us who are more attracted to people of different races or genotypes? For example, I think that asian chicks are hot in part because they are so different from the norm around here. In fact, this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view as well-- genetic diversity ensures that our children will have advantages that we did not, such as resistances to certain diseases.

I know that the board tends to dilute the meaning of words like tribalism, but in the context of evo-psych it has a much more specific connotation than that. Like I said, you wouldn't call in group/out group biases against animals tribalism. And yet, the bias appears to have the same root cause.

It does both. It not only explains the generation of biodiversity, but also why life as it is now, is as it is. Unless you mean something by "specific nature" that is different than what I think. Obviously if you want to study the evolution of anatomy or behavior, you need to have a knowledge of both. Most evolutionary psychologists do indeed have a knowledge of both.

When I say "specific nature" I mean in the same sense as the phrase "human nature". How we behave, how the cellular machinary in our bodies work, how the neurons in our brains fire, how we digest food, how we see, etc.. You said that evolution explains why life is at it is, but that is what I mean by "origins". Our understanding of evolutionary processes does not supercede our observations about how cellular processes actually do work, it only informs us of how they came to be.

And yet you still see people say that animals behave the way they do in order to "maximize fitness"... even though evolution does not plan that far ahead. As Yudkowsky notes, our taste buds do not magically start finding lettuce and other greens to be tasty when we've become obese. In fact, we actually can get addicted to fatty foods, thus making us even more obese than before.

Yes. We did. If we did not, we could not display those behaviors. The question is not whether we evolved these things. The question is how. The human mind is not a blank slate. It is shaped and constrained by its evolutionary history, just like every other animal on the planet.

Look, obviously we evolved those behaviors. But you could not have predicted that we would have evolved those particular behaviors and not a different set of behaviors because the driving force that creates changes to the gene pool is random mutation. There are any number of traits that could have evolved... but they didn't. Evolution does not plan ahead.

Now do you understand what I mean when I say that trying to infer things about our nature from our origins means trying to shoehorn purpose into evolutionary theory?