Extralogical Reasoning on Evolution and its Common Misconceptions
Nature is governed by complexity theory; biospheres follow the laws of Nature; and evolution is their self-organized change. Thus, a comprehensive study of Complexity and general evolution is almost one in the same (Complexity and complex systems will be explained). The articles on Complexity and especially popular environmentalism are effectively treatments on evolution, but they’re presented differently and focus less on specific traits.
All novelties have origins in lesser things, and rarely do they emerge from their roots without bringing something from whence they came. When the human thinking organ rose from the ruthless chaos of the Evolutionary Experiment, it remained bound by the same chains that held back its prototypes.
Human beings might be an evolutionary novelty, but they are not aliens from Earth; they hail from the same taxonomic tree as Earth’s other lifeforms, the same tree that has propagated upwards and outwards by nothing more and nothing less than billions of years of self-organization and the laws of Chance. Few understand and appreciate the powers, limitations, and imperfections of the Self-organizational and Evolutionary Experiments. Just as the laws of Nature account for the wonders of the Evolutionary Experiment, so, too, can they explain the flaws of those very same things.
Understanding evolutionary flaws is not only central to understanding evolution and ecology, but also the need for the reengineering advocated by ER. To this end, many common misconceptions must be reconciled.
Nature and Ecosystems are Complex, not “Complicated" Systems
Complexity theory is the study of complex systems. A complex system is a system with many known, unknown, and unidentifiable variables that undergo complex interactions. It can have many subsystems, such as a population of a species. Many complex systems have chaotic and “complicated” components or subsystems but are a different class of system. Sophisticated watch and automotive systems are examples of complicated systems. They are very complicated, but they generally deal with known variables undergoing quantifiable interactions. If they’re governed by nonlinear differential equations and are, therefore, sensitive to initial conditions, they become chaotic systems.
In addition to having unidentifiable variables, a key difference between complex systems and its cousins is that complex systems can only be accurately analyzed by holistic analysis, analysis of the WHOLE. Holistic analysis looks at how the parts, or individual variables, fit in with each other. Although an UNDERSTANDING of complicated and chaotic systems requires understanding how the parts fit together, like anything else, they can be ANALYZED by reductionistic analysis, or analysis of individual variables in isolation from the whole.
Though complex systems are generally less quantifiable than other systems, important quantifications can be made. A prime example is power laws: exponential equations that show the relationship between the frequency of an occurrence to its magnitude. If one exists, you can expect nonlinear behavior, the most common form of change in Nature. For instance, an event of certain magnitude might happen a quarter as frequently. Examples include Pareto’s 80/20 law and economic rises and falls. Extinctions follow power laws, as well, and this and other elements of ecological Complexity make evolution a nonlinear phenomenon.
Nonlinearity and power laws arise in complex systems due to the commonality of multiplicative, as opposed to additive, change. Success begetting success is a common cause. If a specimen survives, for instance, they might have more than one additional offspring, who then may, in turn, have multiple offspring--and on. If the specimen dies, the difference in descendants will be equal and opposite.
Owing to evolving in a simpler environment and the need for cognition that simplifies reality, nonlinear change and holistic thinking aren’t entirely natural to people, and resultantly, they treat complex systems more like complicated ones. They overestimate the predictability of biospheres, which, like other complex systems, are merely guessable. This is dangerous because it’s much easier to harm a complex system than help it, and these misconceptions and resultant interferences have wreaked havoc on biospheres and other complex systems. Complex systems do best with only minimal, generally passive interference.
Evolution Doesn’t Aim for “Improvement”; It Follows the Path of Least Resistance, Only Reliably Building Traits that are “Just Good Enough”
The path of least resistance is the most natural path in all of Nature. Some might say it’s the only.
Human beings tend to follow the path of least resistance because evolution and Nature do so, as well. Humans are competitive for the same reason. One of the most common misconceptions about evolution is that it’s directed toward “improvement,” that it endeavors to make “better” specimen. Laymen often think that if something “helps,” it will be selected for.
Random variation is exactly that, and natural selection only (reliably) selects for what’s “just good enough.” It doesn’t aim for quality of life, merely its perpetuation (however, what a specimen PERCEIVES as survival could be based largely on quality of life, such as how humans now perceive their survival to be PROFESSIONAL survival, or making a good living). Evolution is like the Irish: If it’s not forced to change, it can deal with something being wrong for the rest of its life (see the movie The Departed). This explains the commonality of illusory traits that make animals appear larger to better attract mates and intimidate conspecific rivals, giving less fit individuals an edge. Sometimes males acquire skin, feather, or exoskeletal colors that resemble a food source to attract a female's attention and/or "appeal to her taste of the beautiful."
Devolution is largely an anthropomorphic concept. If random variation “degrades” a species’ traits and it doesn’t threaten its perpetuation—or even aids it--its degradation will likely continue. In fact, becoming “less” is often seen by evolution as absolutely necessary. A smarter animal, for example, is not necessarily a fitter one. A big brain, for example, can/did come with costs: greater protein and energy, increased blood flow to the brain, a more dangerous birthing process, a longer maturation, top-heaviness that could inhibit flight. Brain shrinking or degradation could become advantageous. There are countless environments that bacteria are infinitely better adjusted to than humans.
Path of least resistance processes produce limited general adaptability. Rarely, if ever, do they build fail-safes, leaving ecosystems and its constituents with weak-links that lead to runaway effects. As I’ve said in other posts, the idea of quickly figuring out what works, then proceeding to way over-rely on it at the expense of mediocrity and/or vulnerability is such a common theme of the path of least resistance you could almost call it the path of least resistance itself.
Millions of years ago, oxygen poisoned the atmosphere, wiping out countless species. Eventually, however, many species became so dependent on it they couldn’t survive more than minutes without it. Plants use sunlight to power prolific nutritional factories, but if a competitor plant grows taller and puts it in shade, it dies off. This is ER’s principle of over-reliance: With limited selectivity for general adaptability and failsafes, the greater the utility of the trait, the greater the dependency.
This involves both a species’ traits, and all the many things it relies on in its environment, which far exceed what most imagine. This is not limited to climate and major food sources. Many flora and fauna, perhaps even a competitor and/or prey species, provide trace but no less essential nutrients. Sometimes predator species keep other predators and/or competitor species at bay more than they deplete the prey’s population. This phenomenon has been demonstrated when predators are removed from an environment to save a dwindling prey population—only to backfire.
And this, in turn, becomes a threat to other animals if the prey species are a resource to them.
Naturally, ecosystems don’t have failsafes, either. Earth's biosphere, like most complex systems, is what Nassim Taleb calls “antifragile”: robust and adaptable. It’s practically immortal. But for the WHOLE to be antifragile, it must have fragile PARTS, and despite the biosphere’s near-immortality, it’s not immune to ill-health. As a network where species are connected by an average of ten degrees of separation, it’s vulnerable because it’s laden with “hubs”: species with an unusual number of connections. If a hub is eliminated, extinctions quickly follow. If the system were engineered, it would be less-hub oriented—but it’s not.
In sum, the health of ecosystems and their constituents hinge on their naturally-selected physical, chemical, and biological compositions, and ecosystems can only adapt so quickly. This is why humankind is such a treat to the Earth and themselves.
But note that hypothetical ecosystems and their respective climates that have never evolved aren’t inherently “bad”; they’re merely not what current species are designed for. Projected atmospheric co2 could easily support life so long as species were given sufficient time to adapt. The current environment would be hostile to most species that have existed over the past four billion years. It would be far more hostile to an alien species, including any with a nucleic acid-based genome. Even their ships and belongings might burn up or degrade within hours or minutes.
Invertibility, Simulative Traits, and Perception-Dependancy
Sometimes people assume that if a trait evolved, it had to be specifically selected. Many are byproducts or symptoms of others. Bishko called necessary byproducts “necessary accessories”; others are just accessories. The ability to imagine possible futures required the ability to imagine impossible ones. It’s doubtful that mathematical intelligence was specifically selected for, but language, social, tool-making, and hunting strategizing were, making mathematical intelligence a probable byproduct. Another example is music.
As has been mentioned in different words in other posts, an interesting necessary accessory of self-awareness is self-delusion. The ability to ask more questions and be more aware of oneself and their environment have obvious advantages, but if a specimen has an overpowering desire to make futile inquiries, ask unanswerable questions, or search their thoughts for questions not easily identified—or animal equivalents--this easily leads to confusion, inhibition, and distractions.
To avoid this, reality is simplified by twisting correlated events into causational relationships, turning reality into a more “harmonious narrative.” ER calls this artificial Resonance. Though Resonance existed long before the rise of sentience, it’s responsible for the human thinking organ’s fixation on causation and most fallacious reasoning, including correlational and statistical fallacies. Resonance gives humans an artificial sense of causality, self-rationality, and human rationality generally (see part three of ER intro or summary intro for a more thorough explanation).
Smarter “understanding machinery” (cognition used for understanding things) is presumably accompanied by an increase in “delusionary machinery” (cognition used for delusion). All else being close to equal, a smarter specimen is better at apprehending truths, but, all else being close to equal, they’re also better at protecting themselves from truths they’d rather not be aware of.
Many traits are “imitative” or “simulative.” For example, people don’t have a true system for proving right answers; they have a “convincing system”—that is, convincing themselves something is true. Pity is an imitation or simulation of empathy.
Often, behavior-determining internal characteristics, as Bishko called them, persist even when there isn’t a technical need for it. Survival in humans is “perception-dependent.” Today, what people perceive as survival is making a good living, biasing professionals toward beliefs that motivate them to financially prosper well beyond what’s necessary to survive. Sociality and concomitant traits persist despite minimal survival advantage to social alliances.
A means to an end can become an end in itself. Bishko’s LE called this an Inversion, such as sociality. Save for byproducts of other adaptions, traits can’t evolve without a corresponding inclination to act upon them. If they aren’t acted upon, they can’t grant an advantage. Altruistic behavior is often strategic in pack animals, but an animal has limited, if any, ability to comprehend its non-immediate advantages; so a natural impulse to be altruistic may have evolved. Even WITH sentient intelligence, a natural predilection for certain behavior is a great benefit to its execution. Another Inversion is the need for people to feel like they’re good at surviving. Naturally, if a specimen is selected to survive, it helps to want to be good at it. Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski called this “The Power Process.” Many pursue The Power Process through “surrogate activities” that fulfill the need to demonstrates competence. Examples include sports, intellectual endeavors, and other hobbies.
Interim Viability and the Assimilative Nature of Evolution
Because evolution is piecewise, follows the path of least resistance, and is subject to various physical, chemical, and biological constraints—and can’t predict the future--a trait must be useful today to persist until tomorrow; it can’t be acquired today and saved for tomorrow. In other words: Traits must have interterm viability, and evolution is limited to ASSIMILATION and can’t INTERGRATE. Traits will only be selected for if they complement or enhance what’s already there. As humans’ ancestral line developed intelligence, the burden of adjustment was on it, not the primitive traits that preceded it. Resultantly, intelligence is meant to work with the emotions, not too much and not too little, and finding the right balance is next to impossible. Many who lack certain emotions, such as sociopaths and psychopaths, struggle with judgment for this very reason.
Evolution isn’t Based on Survival, but the Propagation of Genes
If animals make sacrifices, including their lives, pack members with similar genes have more offspring, helping them propagate their own. Some have contended that menopause isn’t the result of humans and killer whales merely outlasting their life expectancy, but that it was actually selected for. If females tend to become more related to pack members as they grow older, proponents argue, they may propagate their genes more effectively by avoiding the costs of gestating at an advanced age and focusing on helping their kin.
This is true on the biochemical level, as well. The entire Evolutionary Experiment is driven by replicating machines known as nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and their unrelating desire to propagate. This explains the commonalities of viruses and cancer.
Complex Causation of Extinctions
Everyone suffers from the causation bias: the tendency to be too quick to assume the relationship between cause and effect will be ascertainable and satisfying. But system-wide events in complex systems aren’t always explained by simple and satisfying causes. This includes extinctions, which need not necessarily be the result of asteroid collisions, super volcanos, or ice-ages. In computer simulations, runaway extinctions arise by the natural birth and death of species and follow the same power laws as actual extinctions, and most asteroid collisions don’t correlate with mass extinctions.
In fact, given how much goes on within these systems, how easy it is to come up with POSSIBLE explanations, and how causation-fixated the human thinking organ is, satisfying explanations for large-scale extinctions might be the exception.
Conclusion: The wiser way to Look at Evolution is not that Species Evolve within Biospheres: Rather, Biospheres Evolve, and Species/Populations of Species are Subsystems within them.
This is the collective or holistic view, the view of Complexity. Holistic analysis is the analysis of the WHOLE. As you can see from the foregoing analyses, you can’t understand evolution just by looking at the parts--only by seeing how they fit in with each other.
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