We are accustomed to thinking of evolution in a biological context, but modern evolutionary theory views evolution as something much more general. Evolution is an algorithm; it is an all-purpose formula for innovation, a formula that, through its special brand of trial and error, creates new designs and solves difficult problems. Evolution can perform its tricks not just in the “substrate” of DNA, but in any system that has the right information processing and information-storage characteristics. In short, evolution s simple recipe of “differentiate, select, and amplify” is a type of computer program—a program for creating novelty, knowledge, and growth. Because evolution is a form of information processing, it can do its order-creating work in realms ranging from computer software to the mind, to human culture, and to the economy.
This piques my curiosity on a certain point of interest: Has the argument “It’s just an algorithm” ever been used as a counter to the claim that Evolution as a biological phenomenon should not be conflated with “Technological Evolution”, “Corporate Evolution”, “Personal Evolution”, etc.?
More importantly, would there be an efficient way of defusing this potentially mind-killer-route argument without misleading the other party into thinking their assumption is correct when the inferential distance is too large for a technical explanation of the misuse of categories and labels (AKA They’re not even aware of Lesswrong’s existence and are not trained in scientific thought or rationality)?
Can you be more clear about what types of conflation you find problematic?
If I do a better job representing my clients, then when new lawyer hiring decisions are made, I expect to receive additional clients. Do you feel it is unclear to call that natural selection, or evolution?
I agree that using “evolution” as a synonym for change (i.e. Personal Evolution vs. Personal Self-Improvement) is problematic, but I’m not sure that the quote under discussion helps that issue.
Well, I do find problematic any types of conflation that lead to incorrect assumptions and unreasonable predictions, but that’s a little unclear too. In general day-to-day interactions, the most common problematic is where someone with whom I’m discussing will know of “darwinian evolution” and, of course, the phrase “Survival of the fittest!”, but will have no technical understanding of the actual algorithm.
Thus, what they see is that when a species lives where there are a lot of large, tough, and highly nutricious hard-shelled nuts, that species will gradually get longer beaks or stronger claws to pierce through the shell and get at the tasty bits. They don’t see how all kinds of other possible variations also get tried, and get rejected because they die and the ones more adapted keep reproducing. Thus, in their model, it’s as if the entire membership of the species suddenly started growing longer beaks. The approximate generalization is fairly accurate on evolutionary timescales, but misrepresents the cause of the change, which is where things start going wrong.
They then translate it to being the same in, say, better lawyers, to steal your example. The misunderstanding often mixes with hindsight bias, in my experience, to produce beliefs that lawyers who fail to survive in a fictive environment where clients like cookie-bribes are incompetent by property of being unable to evolve and adapt. Those lawyers were clearly incompetent. It’s simple Evolution theory that you should be more adapted and provide cookie-bribes to your clients if the environment is like that. That was obvious.
Beyond this, however, I now notice that something is wrong because I’m unable to clarify the exact issue further, which suggests that I may mentally be myself wrongly unifying or inferencing several things in my mental model and in my memory of related events. Perhaps if I re-read (once I find it) the article by Eliezer that talked about something similar, I might clarify my thoughts. I’ve had no luck finding it so far, however.
EDIT: With a bit of self-reviewing, I’ve noticed that that last paragraph above somewhat feels like an applause light. It was an obvious statement where the opposite is clearly not what we want here. I’m also gradually updating towards the idea that the initial spark to my question was in fact either a cached idea or an error in belief propagation; I felt like I knew that there were cases where “such conflations” were problematic, and so I skipped over that part to go directly to asking the question. I knew that I knew, so I didn’t bother to verify the low-level knowledge, but the low-level knowledge may not have been there and I might have failed to update the meta-knowledge. I shall allocate more brainwork on this after I’ve eaten and made myself more apt to think clearly.
Eric Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth
This piques my curiosity on a certain point of interest: Has the argument “It’s just an algorithm” ever been used as a counter to the claim that Evolution as a biological phenomenon should not be conflated with “Technological Evolution”, “Corporate Evolution”, “Personal Evolution”, etc.?
More importantly, would there be an efficient way of defusing this potentially mind-killer-route argument without misleading the other party into thinking their assumption is correct when the inferential distance is too large for a technical explanation of the misuse of categories and labels (AKA They’re not even aware of Lesswrong’s existence and are not trained in scientific thought or rationality)?
Can you be more clear about what types of conflation you find problematic?
If I do a better job representing my clients, then when new lawyer hiring decisions are made, I expect to receive additional clients. Do you feel it is unclear to call that natural selection, or evolution?
I agree that using “evolution” as a synonym for change (i.e. Personal Evolution vs. Personal Self-Improvement) is problematic, but I’m not sure that the quote under discussion helps that issue.
I can certainly try to!
Well, I do find problematic any types of conflation that lead to incorrect assumptions and unreasonable predictions, but that’s a little unclear too. In general day-to-day interactions, the most common problematic is where someone with whom I’m discussing will know of “darwinian evolution” and, of course, the phrase “Survival of the fittest!”, but will have no technical understanding of the actual algorithm.
Thus, what they see is that when a species lives where there are a lot of large, tough, and highly nutricious hard-shelled nuts, that species will gradually get longer beaks or stronger claws to pierce through the shell and get at the tasty bits. They don’t see how all kinds of other possible variations also get tried, and get rejected because they die and the ones more adapted keep reproducing. Thus, in their model, it’s as if the entire membership of the species suddenly started growing longer beaks. The approximate generalization is fairly accurate on evolutionary timescales, but misrepresents the cause of the change, which is where things start going wrong.
They then translate it to being the same in, say, better lawyers, to steal your example. The misunderstanding often mixes with hindsight bias, in my experience, to produce beliefs that lawyers who fail to survive in a fictive environment where clients like cookie-bribes are incompetent by property of being unable to evolve and adapt. Those lawyers were clearly incompetent. It’s simple Evolution theory that you should be more adapted and provide cookie-bribes to your clients if the environment is like that. That was obvious.
Beyond this, however, I now notice that something is wrong because I’m unable to clarify the exact issue further, which suggests that I may mentally be myself wrongly unifying or inferencing several things in my mental model and in my memory of related events. Perhaps if I re-read (once I find it) the article by Eliezer that talked about something similar, I might clarify my thoughts. I’ve had no luck finding it so far, however.
EDIT: With a bit of self-reviewing, I’ve noticed that that last paragraph above somewhat feels like an applause light. It was an obvious statement where the opposite is clearly not what we want here. I’m also gradually updating towards the idea that the initial spark to my question was in fact either a cached idea or an error in belief propagation; I felt like I knew that there were cases where “such conflations” were problematic, and so I skipped over that part to go directly to asking the question. I knew that I knew, so I didn’t bother to verify the low-level knowledge, but the low-level knowledge may not have been there and I might have failed to update the meta-knowledge. I shall allocate more brainwork on this after I’ve eaten and made myself more apt to think clearly.