I’m not sure exactly what the claim is, but some things you might mean would be “generally correct, but far from necessary”. I’m not totally clear what “bits” means here, but I think there can be very strong selection pressure fast. The question is how disparate can be reproductive success. E.g. if only 1/2^n organisms reach sexual maturity, that’s n bits / generation right there. If you include gametes being selected (e.g. which sperm swim the fastest), that could be a bunch more bits. Then there’s how many offspring an organism has. If every man is either a loser or Genghis Khan, that’s another 10-ish bits. In artificial breeding, there can be even more bits / generation.
E.g. if only 1/2^n organisms reach sexual maturity, that’s n bits / generation right there.
I think the child mortality rate used to be something like 50%, which is 1 bit/generation.
If you include gametes being selected (e.g. which sperm swim the fastest), that could be a bunch more bits.
I think an ejaculation involves 100000000 sperm, which corresponds to 26.5 bits, assuming the very “best” sperm is selected (which itself seems unlikely, I feel like surely there’s a ton of noise).
If every man is either a loser or Genghis Khan, that’s another 10-ish bits.
I would be curious to know how you calculated this, but sure.
This gives us 37.5 bits so far. Presumably there’s also a bunch of other bits due to e.g. not all pregnancies making it, etc.. Let’s be conservative and say that we’ve only got half the bits in this count, so the total would be 75 bits.
That’s… not very much? Like I think I can easily write 1000 lines of code in a day, where each LOC would probably contain more than 75 bits worth of information. So I could easily 1000x exceed the selection power of evolution, in a single day worth of programming.
In artificial breeding, there can be even more bits / generation.
Somewhat more, but not hugely more I think? And regardless, humanity doesn’t originate from artificial breeding.
I would be curious to know how you calculated this, but sure.
I just meant that if Genghis has 2^10 offspring, and likewise 1/2^10 men, while other men have 0 offspring, that’s 9 or 10 bits. Of course that’s not what actually happens, but what happens is some intermediate version that’s like 1-3 bits or something.
the total would be 75 bits. That’s… not very much?
I think it’s surely less than that. I think when people say evolution is slow, they mean something much stronger, like that evolution is only 1-5 bits / generation.
I think you might also be discounting what’s being selected on. You wrote:
Whereas I think I could easily do orders of magnitude more in a day.
You can do orders of magnitude more opimization power to something on some criterion. But evolution’s evaluation function is much higher quality than yours. It evaluates the success of a complex organism in a complex environment, which is very complex to evaluate and is relevant to deep things (such as discovering intelligence). In a day, you are not able to do 75 bits of selection on cognitive architectures being good for producing intelligence.
I think you might also be discounting what’s being selected on. You wrote:
Whereas I think I could easily do orders of magnitude more in a day.
You can do orders of magnitude more opimization power to something on some criterion. But evolution’s evaluation function is much higher quality than yours. It evaluates the success of a complex organism in a complex environment, which is very complex to evaluate and is relevant to deep things (such as discovering intelligence). In a day, you are not able to do 75 bits of selection on cognitive architectures being good for producing intelligence.
I agree that this is an important distinction and didn’t mean to imply that my selection is on criteria that are as difficult as evolution’s.
I’m not sure exactly what the claim is, but some things you might mean would be “generally correct, but far from necessary”. I’m not totally clear what “bits” means here, but I think there can be very strong selection pressure fast. The question is how disparate can be reproductive success. E.g. if only 1/2^n organisms reach sexual maturity, that’s n bits / generation right there. If you include gametes being selected (e.g. which sperm swim the fastest), that could be a bunch more bits. Then there’s how many offspring an organism has. If every man is either a loser or Genghis Khan, that’s another 10-ish bits. In artificial breeding, there can be even more bits / generation.
I think the child mortality rate used to be something like 50%, which is 1 bit/generation.
I think an ejaculation involves 100000000 sperm, which corresponds to 26.5 bits, assuming the very “best” sperm is selected (which itself seems unlikely, I feel like surely there’s a ton of noise).
I would be curious to know how you calculated this, but sure.
This gives us 37.5 bits so far. Presumably there’s also a bunch of other bits due to e.g. not all pregnancies making it, etc.. Let’s be conservative and say that we’ve only got half the bits in this count, so the total would be 75 bits.
That’s… not very much? Like I think I can easily write 1000 lines of code in a day, where each LOC would probably contain more than 75 bits worth of information. So I could easily 1000x exceed the selection power of evolution, in a single day worth of programming.
Somewhat more, but not hugely more I think? And regardless, humanity doesn’t originate from artificial breeding.
I just meant that if Genghis has 2^10 offspring, and likewise 1/2^10 men, while other men have 0 offspring, that’s 9 or 10 bits. Of course that’s not what actually happens, but what happens is some intermediate version that’s like 1-3 bits or something.
I think it’s surely less than that. I think when people say evolution is slow, they mean something much stronger, like that evolution is only 1-5 bits / generation.
I think you might also be discounting what’s being selected on. You wrote:
You can do orders of magnitude more opimization power to something on some criterion. But evolution’s evaluation function is much higher quality than yours. It evaluates the success of a complex organism in a complex environment, which is very complex to evaluate and is relevant to deep things (such as discovering intelligence). In a day, you are not able to do 75 bits of selection on cognitive architectures being good for producing intelligence.
I agree that this is an important distinction and didn’t mean to imply that my selection is on criteria that are as difficult as evolution’s.