Benquo,
You are right. I misread it. The first case is one of irrationality.
Barkley_Rosser
Karma: 38
Eliezer is correct that lots of people are very bad at calculating probabilities, and there are all kinds of well known biases in calculating when affect gets involved, especially small sample biases when one is personally aware of an outlier example, especially a bad one.
However, the opening example is perfectly fine. Eliezer even has it: the higher insurance is to cover the real emotional pain of losing the more personally valued grandfather clock. How much we subjectively value something most certainly depends on the circumstances of how we obtained it. There is nothing irrational about this whatsoever. Rationality above all involves following that old advice of Polonius: know thyself.
OTOH, if they are creationists who have been reading too much Stephen Jay Gould, who knows what sorts of trouble they might get into. They might even tragically start selecting partners on multi-levels, while disobeying the correct equations, :-).
Oh, tsk tsk. But women with “creationist” brains just don’t have the sort of one night stands implied by your story, at least not as often as the ones with “evolutionary” brains, :-).
Ah, finally got some real action out of you guys. Not bad.
Eliezer,
Pretty decent list. Of course, no way we are going to resolve this, especially if we are going to rule out such “objective” measures as citations, where indeed I suspect p.e. will beat most of those. Also, there is the complication that several of those are really extensions of each other, such as Price’s equation providing conditions for multi-level evolution, which is also partly connected to reciprocal altruism, not to mention that the since the gene’s-eye view tends to imply gradualism, which is hardly dead, p.e. challenges it.
J Thomas,
I would agree that it is of the greatest importance to palenotologists. One importance of p.e., ironically, is that although creationists sometimes tried to use Gould’s arguments against evolution, p.e. provides an answer to the old creationist gibe about “where are all the missing links?” (although somehow those folks conveniently ignore good old Archeopteryx somehow).
J Thomas,
So, we are running in circles. Adaptive radiation is just a special case of the more general phenomenon, although it might not be if the rate of change/speciation continues rapidly without convergence to some equilibrium. Adaptive radiation was described in Darwin, without the term, and in some later editions he did note the variabilty of rates of evolution, although he did not exress the idea that much speciation would occur very rapidly followed by long periods of substantial stasis. This idea is never stated anywhere in Origin of the Species, nor does it appear in any writings prior to Eldredge and Gould.
One could say that what is involved here is the stating of a hypothesis, that is then given a label. It is a much broader idea than just adaptive radiation arising from genetic drift, which is indeed something that had been described earlier, but I repeat is only a special case and does not include the crucial addendum regarding long periods of stasis. Indeed, as I noted earlier, it is this latter point that is really the new part of E and G’s idea of p.e. Certainly that speciation might occur rapidly under various circumstances, especially when the general environment is changing rapidly, as for example during a Cuvierian “catastrophe” such as wiped out the dinosaurs, was noted previously. But such catastrophes are also essentially special cases, just as is adaptive radiation. It is the adding of the long periods of stasis that distinguishes the idea/hypothesis, or whatever you want to call it. But let us be clear “adaptive radiatiom” does not equal “punctuated equilibrium.”
BTW, you will not find my most extensive discussions of evolutionary theory on my website. The most extended discussion appears in my 1991 book, From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities, Kluwer, especially in Chap. 12.
Again, probably for the last time, I await from anybody an idea appearing in the last 50 years, besides coevolution, that has been more important, or perhaps more influential, than punctuated equilibrium. Without such an offering, I would say my case rests, and very solidly.
Douglas,
I am perfectly willing to buy that Gould’s scientific writings are more defensible than his popular writings.
J Thomas,
In my later comment I did not repeat my earlier comment. There I had specified, “one of the top ten ideas in the last half century,” not of all time. So, Weber’s Law dates from the 19th century, and those of Gause and Fisher from the 1930s. Not relevant. Still waiting for someone to come up with something other than coevolutions, which, as I have already pointed out, is definitely in Darwin, if not the term, neologized by Ehrlich just as Gould and Eldredge neologized punctuated equilibrium, whereas the latter is only ephemerally in Darwin, at best, and only then in later editions of Origin of the Species.
A definition? That a substantial amount of speciation occurred during (geologically) relatively short periods of time, between which were long periods of relative stasis without actual speciation, although gradual changes were always occurring. Gould himself in TSOET emphasizes that p.e is not in contradiction with the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. And I know from talking to some of the developers of that theory that they do not disagree with that statement of his. Rather the issue is seeing this particular outcome as widespread and important rather than as some weird sideshow not even openly discussed, much less labeled. Sorry, but Gould and Eldredge did in fact make a theoretical breakthrough of great importance. Heck, Einstein himself argued that relativity was already implicit in the work of Galileo.
windy,
You are correct about reciprocal altruism. But that does not undo the more general argument. Apologies for getting sloppy, but indeed plenty of people are taking multi-level evolution seriously. And, more to the point, it remains the case the Eliezer is simply dead wrong about the consensus of evolutionary theorists regarding the status of Gould. Again, one might as well make claims about the historical significance of Milton Friedman based on the opinions of Marxist economists. That is effectively the equivalent of what Eliezer attempted here in this post.
BTW, creationists did use Gould at a certain point based on his rhetoric criticizing “fundamentalist Darwinism” to dump on Darwinism and evolutionary theory in general. This probably did feed into the extreme annoyance by some evolutionary theorists with Gould at one point.
Caledonian,
Your distinction between altruism and the more general “group-friendly” is useful and relevant.
TGGP,
Regarding artificial selection it is worth remembering that this was one of the major examples that Darwin himself emphasized in Origin of the Species, the efficacy and effect of efforts at artificial breeding and selection by humans of both plants and animals.
I suggest reading the special issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, January 2004, where the matter of multi-level evolution is dealt with at length, with some of the commentators evolutionary geneticists, mathematical ones at that, and at the highest level. The conditions for higher level selection are laid out there. Wynne-Edwards did not know these and was accurately put down by Williams in 1966. They are the Crow-Hamilton-Price equations. I suggest you read it, Eliezer, and, yes, I am the editor of the journal, the leading one in the world on evolutionary economics.
Eliezer,
Gould makes his own mea culpas near the end of the chapter, so you can focus on that zone. Tooby is not an unreasonable guy, and it may well be that Gould’s criticism of him was off-base. I have not read that particular exchange.
Let me put Gould in a slightly different frame. He was not the JK Galbraith of evolutionary theory, as Krugman bought into. He was probably closer to being the Milton Friedman, if on the opposite side of the political fence.
Friedman (like Dawkins also) was a great popularizer and author of best-selling books, like Gould and Galbraith. However, unlike Galbraith, he did win a Nobel Prize in economics, which most accept was deserved, even those who do not like Friedman’s politics. He is also in all the intro texts, just like Gould, but unlike Galbraith. Even so, there are some, his worst critics, who have always been extremely critical of him, often in very hyperbolic terms and language. Also, he has been proven wrong about some things which he was closely associated with, notably hard core monetarism (he agreed last summer that central banks should not focus on money supply anymore, an ultimately reasonable guy, like Gould).
Nobels are not given out for evolutionary theory, although geneticists get them sometimes (Crick, Watson). So, Mayr, Simpson, Williams, Maynard Smith (he might have gotten an econ one), and other giants did not get one. If they were given, Gould would have gotten one. It is very simple. Whatever his many faults, and they were many, he came up with what has been the single biggest new idea (yes, one can find hints of it in Darwin and some others) in evolutionary theory of the last half century, punctuated equilibrium, now in all the textbooks, just like the most important ideas of Milton Friedman (and unlike Galbraith’s major ideas). There are some who say it is wrong, but most say that it is at least partly right. So, Gould was very big and very important, even if he pissed a lot of people off.
Eliezer,
Well, let me see. Where shall I start?
Tooby is not an evolutionary biologist or population geneticist. He is an evolutionary psychologist. This screed from 1997 is about half a whine about Gould’s treatment of some of his work. Perhaps the whine is justified, but it is a whine, and most of the rest of it is off-base. The argument about inverted panadaptationism is simply wrong, as a perusal of Gould’s 1400 page plus magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, will tell. BTW, Tooby does not make it into the 43 page bibliography of that book, although Williams is discussed at great length and with great respect in it. I would note also that Williams altered his views somewhat between 1966 and his 1992 book. (Just for the record, I like the main book by Cosmides and Tooby.)
Krugman? Excuse me. He admits himself that he does not know much about evolutionary theory. He spends most of his talk noting the similarities between neoclassical economics and the Dawkins view of evolution, praising it. Except of course at the end he notes that it does not always work, and the messier, non-Dawkins stories are sometimes better. Duh.
Sure, there are some people who really dislike Gould (Dawkins, Dennett, and some others) who will make these statements about Gould not being respected by other evolutionary theorists. But his main idea, punctuated equilibrium, has entered the textbooks and is more studied and discussed than ever. Sorry, this is just whinging by the jealous or those who deeply disagree with him (Dawkins especially).
Oh, and as for me being taken in by bluffs, well, I have written on this stuff and have cited Williams, Hamilton, Maynard Smith, and numerous others, beyond those that Krugman claims are not cited by evolutionary economists, as well as Eldredge and Gould.
Finally, I have actually spoken with some of the most senior and distinguished evolutionary theorists, including some now dead. While Gould is often treated with some bemusement for his celebrity and eccentricities and the peculiar evolution of his views, I have not found these people viewing him as worthless or as having a rep worth mud. This is just silly bilge and drivel.
Finally, I would recommend you read Chapter 9 (I know, it is almost 300 pages long) of Gould’s magnum opus. He does an excellent job of covering most of these controversies, with a fair amount of mea culpas for some of his own misstatements over the years. A lot more fair-minded than the junk in your post or in your links, frankly.
Well, this is partly a matter of what discipline one is dealing with. So, sure, for AI or computer science more generally, Kolmogorov or Chaitin or Rissanen measures are more useful and reasonably well defined. For other disciplines, other definitions may be more suitable. Thus for economics, I have (following Richard Day) defined complexity in a dynamic way based on erratic dynamics appearing endogenously out of the system (with “erratic” defined more specifically). I laid this out in a paper in 1999 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and have a more recent paper up on my website (“Computational and Dynamic Perspectives on Economic Complexity”) comparing the two approaches, at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb.
Hmmm, well there is an endogeneity problem in that the believability of the police commissioner’s statement depends on the degree to which it constitutes legal evidence. To the extent it constitutes legal evidence, it may be less believable precisely because this give police commissioners power that they may be exercising in corrupt and power-hungry ways. A statement that cannot be seen to potentially provide some personal gain to the person making it presumably has greater credibility.
Although it is almost always the case, I can imagine legal evidence that is not necessarily scientific. The problem in my mind is precisely this bad memory of witnesses problem. I guess we have to say that an eye witness account, under oath, is “scientific.” It certain is legal evidence, although potentially challangeable by countervailing testimony or evidence. However, a scientist might be more willing to be skeptical, e.g. all those alien encounter accounts that are being discussed in other postings.
BTW, in regard to an earlier thread by Eliezer, of course “norm” does have various mathematical meanings, including the length of a vector (or multi-dimensional equivalent of “absolute value”), and there is the process of “renormalization” in algebra, which has some importance in several theories of physics. However, I remain unconvinced that any of these play an important role in establishing the earlier argument.
Eliezer and Peter, I think the problem is statics versus dynamics. Your set of equations are correct only at a specific point in time, which makes them irrelevant to saying anything about what happens later when new information arrives. That would entail subscripting H by time. For any given t, sure. But, that says nothing about what happens when new information arrives. P(H) might change.
The obvious example is indeed the black swan story, which we all know is what is lying behind this discussion. So, at a point in time before black swans are observed, let H be “all swans are white.” Perhaps there were a few folks who thought this might not be true, so say P(H) was 95%. Sure, your equations hold at a point in time, but so what? The minute the word comes in about the observation of a black swan (assuming it is accepted), P(H) just went to zero, or not much above zero, perhaps after having gradually drifted over time to 95%. Remember, your story was one about new information coming in and changes over time. But that is not what your equations are about.
This is the fatal flaw in your nice new law, Eliezer.
Eliezer,
Fair enough. You get credit, then, for coining the term. However, the problem remains, why should that equals sign be there? Sure, if you put it there, the logic holds up, my niggles about Bayes’ Theorem and time to convergence and all that aside. But, it is not clear at all that the equals sign should be there, or is there in any meaningfully regular way. Your defense has been to cite an essentially empirical argument by Robin. But that empirical argument is much contested in many arenas. Sure, Burton Malkiel posed that financial markets are a random walk, but that argument has undergone a lot of modifications since he first posed it in a best-selling paperback. In that regard, your proof essentially amounts to one of these “proofs” of the existence of God, wherein the proof arises from another assumption that gets snuck in the backdoor that gets one the result, but that is itself as questionable or unprovable, much like the old complaint by Joan Robinson about the magician making a big deal about pulling the rabbit out of the hat after having put it into the hat in full view of the audience.
Eliezer,
I just googled “law of conservation of expected evidence.” This blog came up. Nothing else like it. Frankly, I don’t think you are selling a law here. You are asserting one that nobody else is aware of.
Stuart,
Argentina recently defaulted and all but got away with it. Yes, there were demonstrations in the streets, but there are also on a regular basis in the US. What is your definition of “civil disorder” then? Elections were held, there was no revolution or coup.
In fact, the Argentine example might yet come to mind in the next decade if not-so friendly foreign creditors start to give the US a hard time. I think it was Keynes who argued that if you owe somebody a million dollars you have a problem, but if you owe him a trillion dollars, he has a problem (have changed the numbers to account for inflation). We could default and view it as “screw them” act.
Stuart Armstrong,
I think you are way overstating things. Did you read earlier comments? Are you aware how close we came to defaulting in the 1990s when Congress and the president gridlocked over a budget? We have a systemic setup in contrast with all those countries with parliamentary systems that could let it happen much more easily with nothing near some kind of horrendous catastrophe. And if we began to experience some kind of serious pressure from a foreign creditor, China anyone? on top of some internal deep conflict and economic problems (and US politics is not all polarized, now is it?), it could happen.
Regarding this business of the foreign creditors, there is an important reason why most Americans simply pay no attention to our mounting foreign indebtedness: up until now the that humongoug foreign net indebtedness has not resulted in a noticeable net deficit on the investment income part of the current account part of the US international balance of payments. However, as that foreign net indebtedness increases, this will inevitably change. When we start to see several hundred billions of dollars flowing on net overseas as interest on that debt, and the accompanying upward pressure on US interest rates start to negatively impact the US economy, there might even be an outright move to do what Argentina did to our bankers, and what New York state did to British bankers back in the nineteenth century regarding the debts for financing the Erie Canal construction: consciously default.
The bottom line on why we even fuss about the “risk-free rate” is that it is a necessary input to the standard formuli for pricing all kinds of options and derivatives via Black=Scholes and its variations. Something has to go in there, even if the wise really do understand that the underlying asset on which that rate is based is not really so risk free after all.
Hopefully Anonymous,
That is according to US based bond raters. A lot of people think there is politics in that. Do you really think the US government is more reliable about paying back its bonds than the Japanese one? Really?
Ah, but A is still A, no matter what any of you may say… :-).