The last two points are different though: Intelligence can engage in direct, systematic experimentation. Evolution in contrast only experiments in so far as it happens to stumble across things.
So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning—which is hundreds of millions of years old. The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection. Would you claim that that is not part of “evolution”?
Similarly, while you are correct about symbiosis to a limited extent (and there are also examples of horizontal gene transfer), intelligence can look at another solution and without happening to pick up genes or forming a symbiotic relationship can go simply steal a functional strategy.
Right—so I agree that differences in evolution are developing a result of the development of engineers—but observing and incorporating the “solutions of other optimizing agents” doesn’t really capture the difference in question. Imitating the strategies of others is hardly a new development either—animals have been imitating each other since around our LCA with songbirds - that too is an ordinary part of evolution.
So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning
Very few animals engage in anything that can be described as experimentation in any systematic fashion nor do they actually learn from the results in any fashion other than simple operant conditioning. Thus for example, if cats are placed in a box with a trick latch where they are given food after they get out, they gradually learn to hit the latch to the point where they can do so routinely. But, if one graphs the time it takes them on average to do so, they have a slow decline rather than a steep decline as one would expect if they were actually learning. If by experiment you mean “try lots of random things and not even understand which one actually helped” then yes they experiment. If one means experiment in a more useful fashion then very few species (great apes, corvids, keas, possibly elephants, possibly dolphins) do so.
Right—so I agree that differences in evolution are developing a result of the development of engineers—but observing and incorporating the “solutions of other optimizing agents” doesn’t really capture the difference in question. Imitating the strategies of others is hardly a new development either—animals have been imitating each other since around our LCA with songbirds—that too is an ordinary part of evolution.
This is a much more limited form of imitation, where evolution has simply given them an instinct to imitate sounds around them. In some cases this can be quite impressive (e.g. the lyrebird can imitate other birds, as well as camera clicks, car alarms and chainsaws) but they are essentially just imitating noises around them. The set of species that can look at another entity solve a problem and then learn from that to solve the problem is much tinier (humans, some other great apes, corvids, keas, African Grey Parrots, dolphins, and not much else). There’s a real difference in the type of imitation going on here.
So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning
Very few animals engage in anything that can be described as experimentation in any systematic fashion nor do they actually learn from the results in any fashion other than simple operant conditioning. Thus for example, if cats are placed in a box with a trick latch where they are given food after they get out, they gradually learn to hit the latch to the point where they can do so routinely. But, if one graphs the time it takes them on average to do so, they have a slow decline rather than a steep decline as one would expect if they were actually learning. If by experiment you mean “try lots of random things and not even understand which one actually helped” then yes they experiment. If one means experiment in a more useful fashion then very few species (great apes, corvids, keas, possibly elephants, possibly dolphins) do so.
Not one of the replies I expected—denying that animal trial-and-error learning is methodical enough to count as being “experimentation”. That is probably true of some trial-and-error learning, but—as you seem to agree—some animal learning can be more methodical. I am still inclined to count experimentation as a “millions-of-years-old” phenomenon and part of conventional evolution—and not something to do with more recent developments involving engineering.
Imitating the strategies of others is hardly a new development either—animals have been imitating each other since around our LCA with songbirds—that too is an ordinary part of evolution.
This is a much more limited form of imitation, where evolution has simply given them an instinct to imitate sounds around them. In some cases this can be quite impressive (e.g. the lyrebird can imitate other birds, as well as camera clicks, car alarms and chainsaws) but they are essentially just imitating noises around them. The set of species that can look at another entity solve a problem and then learn from that to solve the problem is much tinier (humans, some other great apes, corvids, keas, African Grey Parrots dolphins, and not much else). There’s a real difference in the type of imitation going on here.
I’d argue that even “local enhancement”—a very undemanding form of social learning—can result in incorporating the “solutions of other optimizing agents”. Anyhow, again you seem to agree that animals have been doing such things for millions of years. So, this is still the domain of pretty conventional evolution.
So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning—which is hundreds of millions of years old. The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection. Would you claim that that is not part of “evolution”?
Pinning it down a little, the part I object to is:
The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection.
It is trivially true that any change will have an influence, chaos theory and all. It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
We do know a fair bit about that. The idea is that it influences the germ line via selection.
If you perform experiments and the result is that you die—or fail to mate—the selective mechanism of information-transfer into the germ line is obvious. Milder outcomes have less dramatic effects—but still result in information transfer. The phenomenon has been studied under these names:
That learned information and genetic information were aspects of a more general underlying phenomenon was observed by Semon (1904) and later there were pioneering contributions by B.F.Skinner—for example in Selection by Consequences. Skinner explicitly based his theory of learning on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The idea was refined further in Dennet’s Tower of Generate-and-Test.
So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning—which is hundreds of millions of years old. The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection. Would you claim that that is not part of “evolution”?
Right—so I agree that differences in evolution are developing a result of the development of engineers—but observing and incorporating the “solutions of other optimizing agents” doesn’t really capture the difference in question. Imitating the strategies of others is hardly a new development either—animals have been imitating each other since around our LCA with songbirds - that too is an ordinary part of evolution.
Very few animals engage in anything that can be described as experimentation in any systematic fashion nor do they actually learn from the results in any fashion other than simple operant conditioning. Thus for example, if cats are placed in a box with a trick latch where they are given food after they get out, they gradually learn to hit the latch to the point where they can do so routinely. But, if one graphs the time it takes them on average to do so, they have a slow decline rather than a steep decline as one would expect if they were actually learning. If by experiment you mean “try lots of random things and not even understand which one actually helped” then yes they experiment. If one means experiment in a more useful fashion then very few species (great apes, corvids, keas, possibly elephants, possibly dolphins) do so.
This is a much more limited form of imitation, where evolution has simply given them an instinct to imitate sounds around them. In some cases this can be quite impressive (e.g. the lyrebird can imitate other birds, as well as camera clicks, car alarms and chainsaws) but they are essentially just imitating noises around them. The set of species that can look at another entity solve a problem and then learn from that to solve the problem is much tinier (humans, some other great apes, corvids, keas, African Grey Parrots, dolphins, and not much else). There’s a real difference in the type of imitation going on here.
Not one of the replies I expected—denying that animal trial-and-error learning is methodical enough to count as being “experimentation”. That is probably true of some trial-and-error learning, but—as you seem to agree—some animal learning can be more methodical. I am still inclined to count experimentation as a “millions-of-years-old” phenomenon and part of conventional evolution—and not something to do with more recent developments involving engineering.
I’d argue that even “local enhancement”—a very undemanding form of social learning—can result in incorporating the “solutions of other optimizing agents”. Anyhow, again you seem to agree that animals have been doing such things for millions of years. So, this is still the domain of pretty conventional evolution.
This smells funny.
Sure: it conflicts with the popular misunderstanding of evolution being “blind”—and without foresight.
Pinning it down a little, the part I object to is:
It is trivially true that any change will have an influence, chaos theory and all. It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
We do know a fair bit about that. The idea is that it influences the germ line via selection.
If you perform experiments and the result is that you die—or fail to mate—the selective mechanism of information-transfer into the germ line is obvious. Milder outcomes have less dramatic effects—but still result in information transfer. The phenomenon has been studied under these names:
Genetic_assimilation
The Baldwin effect
The assimilate-stretch principle
If we go as far as humans there are also things like: Biocultural evolution.
That learned information and genetic information were aspects of a more general underlying phenomenon was observed by Semon (1904) and later there were pioneering contributions by B.F.Skinner—for example in Selection by Consequences. Skinner explicitly based his theory of learning on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The idea was refined further in Dennet’s Tower of Generate-and-Test.