Re: Living things, on the other hand, are far from explicit fitness maximizers
Thus the point about organisms maximising their expected fitness. Organisms really do maximise their expected fitness—just like all other expected fitness maximisers. It’s just that their expectations may not be a good match for reality.
That is true even of Deep Blue. Its chess simulation is not the same as the real world of chess. It is living in the environment it was “designed” for—but it is resource-limited, and its program is sub-optimal. So its expectations too may be wrong. It can still lose.
As far as I can tell, the idea that organisms maximising their actual fitnesses is a ridiculous straw man erected by Tooby and Cosmides for nefarious rhetorical purposes of their own. Nobody ever actually thought that.
What about the idea that organisms are maximising something different—say expected happiness—rather than expected fitness, and these days the two can be divorced—e.g. by drugs? Again, much the same is equally true of Deep Blue—all expected fitness maximisers represent their expected fitness internally by some representation of it, and then maximise that representation.
Organisms really are well thought of as maximising their expected fitness—under the limited resource constraints. They are, after all the product of a gigantic optimisation process whose utility function favours effective expected fitness maximisers. It’s just that sometimes the expectations of the organisms are not a good match for reality.
Re: condoms—barrier contraceptives do not necessarily reduce inclusive fitness. They allow people to have sex who would not normally risk doing so. They allow families to compete better in more K-selected environments, by helping them to devote their resouces to a smaller number of higher quality offspring. Of course they can also be used to sabotage your genetic program, but that is not their only use.
Re: Living things, on the other hand, are far from explicit fitness maximizers
Thus the point about organisms maximising their expected fitness. Organisms really do maximise their expected fitness—just like all other expected fitness maximisers. It’s just that their expectations may not be a good match for reality.
That is true even of Deep Blue. Its chess simulation is not the same as the real world of chess. It is living in the environment it was “designed” for—but it is resource-limited, and its program is sub-optimal. So its expectations too may be wrong. It can still lose.
As far as I can tell, the idea that organisms maximising their actual fitnesses is a ridiculous straw man erected by Tooby and Cosmides for nefarious rhetorical purposes of their own. Nobody ever actually thought that.
What about the idea that organisms are maximising something different—say expected happiness—rather than expected fitness, and these days the two can be divorced—e.g. by drugs? Again, much the same is equally true of Deep Blue—all expected fitness maximisers represent their expected fitness internally by some representation of it, and then maximise that representation.
Organisms really are well thought of as maximising their expected fitness—under the limited resource constraints. They are, after all the product of a gigantic optimisation process whose utility function favours effective expected fitness maximisers. It’s just that sometimes the expectations of the organisms are not a good match for reality.
Re: condoms—barrier contraceptives do not necessarily reduce inclusive fitness. They allow people to have sex who would not normally risk doing so. They allow families to compete better in more K-selected environments, by helping them to devote their resouces to a smaller number of higher quality offspring. Of course they can also be used to sabotage your genetic program, but that is not their only use.