Darwin’s wastebasket: Time perception, evolutionary psychology, and Donald Trump

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 4, 2017

Intelligent Design}

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No, look, we are just passing this on, on our way out to do chores.* From Angela Chen at The Verge:

Donald Trump has only been president for two weeks, but if you’re not happy about the new administration, those 14 days might feel more like 14 years. That’s normal: our brains really do distort time based on how we’re feeling. It’s an evolutionary trick that was helpful when large predators lurked around every corner, but less helpful now as the days seem to drag by.More.

Why do probable urbanites feel they intimately know what it would take to survive in the Old Stone Age?

Skinny: It was never helpful not to have a good sense of time, just like it was never helpful to be half-blind or half-deaf. But we have what we have and we do what we can. And Donald Trump does not get rent-free space in the head of everyone on the planet just because he’s US Prez, either. That, Angela, is a choice.

By the way, we ran into this kind of stuff couple days back about the alleged evolution of unreliable memory. As biophysicist Kirk Durston pointed out, primitive man didn’t get any slack cut by nature for making mistakes due to fuzziness.

Actual information about how the mind/brain works must be sought by doing real work elsewhere.

*Regular news coverage begins later this afternoon. It’s Saturday here. Be realistic. – O’Leary for News

See also: Wall Street Journal cranks up the Universal Darwinator

and

“The evolutionary psychologist knows why you vote — and shop, and tip at restaurants”

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Comments

Evolution, being a process rather than an intelligence, couldn’t care less one way or the other.
Problem is that "organisms" also don't care one way or the other. Under naturalistic premises, there is no will to survive. There are two reasons why this is so: 1) Organisms have no top-down power over what constitutes them (fermions and bosons), because they are nothing over and beyond fermions and bosons. 2) Organisms don't have a concept of death, so they are incapable of fearing death. IOWs there is nothing that wants organisms to exist and/or continue to exist. Not fermions, not bosons, not physical laws, not organisms and not mutations.Origenes_{February 5, 2017
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Silver Asiatic @ 5
Sev
by co-operating with each other, by looking out for each other, they all stood a better chance of survival than the every man for himself
If only Darwin and his mutations worked that way. Unfortunately, when one member of the species receives a lucky mutation that enables it to survive better, then he competes with all his friends to drive them into extinction and make sure his own family dominates.
Not quite. We know mutations happen for various reasons but, as far as we can tell, they are random with respect to the fitness of the individual concerned. They just happen. Mutations are not good or bad in any ultimate sense, they are just changes. Whether they turn out to be beneficial or detrimental depends entirely on the environmental context in which they occur. A mutation which causes a brown bear to grow a white coat may be mildly unhelpful in a temperate climate where the environment is predominantly green or brown. But it might be a lot more useful if the bear finds itself hunting in a snow-covered landscape. On the principle that there are more ways for something to go wrong than to go right, we would expect most mutations to be unhelpful. Current thinking is that, for most mutations, the detrimental effect is so weak that it has no observable effect on survival. For a smaller number, the effect is detrimental enough that the unlucky recipients do indeed eventually go extinct. For a much smaller number still, their advantageous mutations give them enough of an edge that their progeny eventually come to supplant those of their competitors. There's no obvious purpose in it. It's just the luck of the draw.
Now we could say that the lucky mutations caused the species to co-operate with themselves and they survived. So, why don’t all species do that? Why did humans evolve to have the every-man-for-himself mutations within the same species that has the co-operate with each other mutations?
Like I said, mutations are random with respect to the survival of the individual. They just happen. There's nothing to prevent a gene for cooperation and another for competition popping up in the same human population. Only time and the environment in which they occur will decide which is the better strategy for the species in the long-term.
And finally, what about co-operation with other species? Why don’t lions have a lucky mutation that causes them to get along with zebras?
If the lion's primary food source was the zebra then a mutation that made lions get along with zebras, such that they could no longer eat them, might be lucky for the zebra but not so much for the lion. Like I said, whether a mutation is lucky or unlucky is entirely context-dependent.
Without death and war among species, we won’t have the wonders of evolution – thus hath Darwin the Wise proclaimeth
You must be thinking of a different Darwin. Death seems to be just a fact of life. Wars are a cultural phenomenon which happens when we can't find other ways to resolve our differences. They are our own damned fault although they seem to have Biblical endorsement, at least, when they are carried out to further the interests of Christianity or its progenitor.
And in the end, everybody wins because evolution cares so much about us!
No, most mutations, being disadvantageous, go extinct eventually. Unless some change in the environment makes them advantageous, in which case they survive. Evolution, being a process rather than an intelligence, couldn't care less one way or the other. Which, of course, why it can never replace religious belief with those who need a divine father-figure to give them a sense of security and worth and purpose.Seversky_{February 5, 2017
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Seversky @6 Thank you for your response.
You still don’t seemed to have grasped the basic principles of evolution or the fallacy of the single cause.

The basic things everything is made up of are fermions and bosons. That’s it. … elementary particles come in only one of two kinds. Some of them are fermions; the rest are bosons. There is no third kind of subatomic particle. And everything is made up of these two kinds of things. Roughly speaking, fermions are what matter is composed of, while bosons are what fields of force are made of. [Rosenberg, ‘The Atheist’s Guide To Reality’, ch. 2]

Yes, at one level you and I can be described as just fermions and bosons. But that would be wrong. We are not “just” or “nothing but” fermions and bosons.
According to materialism there is no other stuff involved.
We are immensely complex arrangements of fermions and bosons …
So what? Lego blocks can be arranged into an immensely complex conglomerate, but that doesn’t change the assessment that the conglomerate is just Lego blocks. However complex there is nobody home. However complex there is no will to survive.
… that have properties not deducible from just what we know about them.
Now that would be a very very serious problem for materialism. Very serious indeed.
The origin of the rules or laws and information (for want of a better word) that cause them to form these complex structures is a profound mystery.
By “them” I take it you are referring to fermions and bosons. Anyway you are being non-materialistic here. The existence of information points to intelligence. Rosenberg did not say: everything is made up of fermions, bosons and profoundly mysterious stuff called information.
The possibility that some vast extra-cosmic intelligence or God is behind it all cannot be ruled out. But neither are we in a position yet to rule out materialistic or naturalistic explanations either. We just don’t know.
Well, wrt ruling out materialistic explanations, we seem to agree that the functional coherence on the level of an organism as a whole cannot be explained bottom-up from fermions and bosons. Also fermions and bosons fail to explain freedom, responsibility and rationality.Origenes_{February 5, 2017
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Origenes @ 4
Please stop with the worn out 19th century narratives. Naturalistic evolution is, or should be, the evolution of fermions and bosons. The ‘social animals’ you are talking about are nothing but conglomerates of fermions and bosons. There is no causal power stemming from the level of the organism as a whole. Everything is supposedly explainable from the level of fermions and bosons. There is no organism with the will to survive.
You still don't seemed to have grasped the basic principles of evolution or the fallacy of the single cause. Yes, at one level you and I can be described as just fermions and bosons. But that would be wrong. We are not "just" or "nothing but" fermions and bosons. We are immensely complex arrangements of fermions and bosons that have properties not deducible from just what we know about them. The origin of the rules or laws and information (for want of a better word) that cause them to form these complex structures is a profound mystery. The possibility that some vast extra-cosmic intelligence or God is behind it all cannot be ruled out. But neither are we in a position yet to rule out materialistic or naturalistic explanations either. We just don't know. As for evolution, you need imperfect replicators for it to occur. As far as we know, fermions and bosons don't replicate in that sense but they can form structures that do. How they get to that point is another of those pesky mysteries which seem to bug some people here but are meat and drink to scientists. They don't just stop at "God did it".Seversky_{February 5, 2017
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Sev
by co-operating with each other, by looking out for each other, they all stood a better chance of survival than the every man for himself
If only Darwin and his mutations worked that way. Unfortunately, when one member of the species receives a lucky mutation that enables it to survive better, then he competes with all his friends to drive them into extinction and make sure his own family dominates. Now we could say that the lucky mutations caused the species to co-operate with themselves and they survived. So, why don't all species do that? Why did humans evolve to have the every-man-for-himself mutations within the same species that has the co-operate with each other mutations? And finally, what about co-operation with other species? Why don't lions have a lucky mutation that causes them to get along with zebras? Well, we're back to ad hoc-ism and tautologies. Without death and war among species, we won't have the wonders of evolution - thus hath Darwin the Wise proclaimeth. So, the species that win wars, survive better. And the species that co-operate survive better. And in the end, everybody wins because evolution cares so much about us!Silver Asiatic_{February 5, 2017
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Not smart or purposeful, but maybe social animals like our ancestors found that by co-operating with each other, by looking out for each other ...
Please stop with the worn out 19th century narratives. Naturalistic evolution is, or should be, the evolution of fermions and bosons. The 'social animals' you are talking about are nothing but conglomerates of fermions and bosons. There is no causal power stemming from the level of the organism as a whole. Everything is supposedly explainable from the level of fermions and bosons. There is no organism with the will to survive. So, whatever those social animals found out about co-operation, they lack any power to build on this knowledge. Only blind luck — random mutations — can steer them in the "right direction"; whatever that means.Origenes_{February 5, 2017
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J-Mac @ 1
Evolution is so smart! It act as if it cared about us, protected us and looked ahead to make sure we survive… One only can wonder what other good qualities are gonna be ascribed to random processes… How about love?
Not smart or purposeful, but maybe social animals like our ancestors found that by co-operating with each other, by looking out for each other, they all stood a better chance of survival than the every man for himself, "I'm alright, Jack, **** you!" approach.Seversky_{February 4, 2017
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By the way, we ran into this kind of stuff couple days back about the alleged evolution of unreliable memory. As biophysicist Kirk Durston pointed out, primitive man didn’t get any slack cut by nature for making mistakes due to fuzziness.
So, in other words, Durston agrees that truth-tracking is also fitness-tracking, that the more accurate or truthful our understanding of the world, the more advantageous it is in terms of fitness?Seversky_{February 4, 2017
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Evolution is so smart! It act as if it cared about us, protected us and looked ahead to make sure we survive... One only can wonder what other good qualities are gonna be ascribed to random processes... How about love?J-Mac_{February 4, 2017
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