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Understanding Evolution And Its Implications

Note: This file mostly has miscellaneous thoughts about evolution and biology that I wanted to write about, but didn’t have enough to say to make them separate posts in their own right.

1. Philosophical Topics To Know

Evolution has innumerous implications for modern philosophy.

  1. Why Life Exists
  2. What Evolution Is and Why It Happens
  3. Understanding Evolutionary Explanations for the Characteristics of All Living Things
  4. The Egoism and the Intrinsic Selfishness of Life (Corollary)
  5. The Validity of the Senses (Corollary)
  6. The Validity of Reason (Corollary)
  7. The Relationship Between Emotions and Reproduction (Corollary): Emotions drive people to do things that cause them to reproduce. Emotions exist on a spectrum, and people’s behaviors are prioritized in accordance to the different relative strengths of their emotions.
  8. The Moral Accounting System (Corollary): Emotions keep track of what we owe and are owed within our personal relationships.
  9. The Flow of Energy (Corollary): Energy is Transferred from Father to Mother to Children.
  10. Understanding Why Humans Rule the World (Corollary): High Reasoning and Intelligence, Volition, Sophisticated Methods of Communication, Emotions, Optimal Limbs, Sufficiently Long Lifespan
  11. The Origins of All Value: Value is generated by sentient beings.

As humans, we are biological organisms, and highly intelligent ones at that, who evolved from the first living organism on Earth over the past 4+ billion years. A complete theory of epistemology must relate the implications of Evolutionary Theory to how the human brain works, and how humans work more generally if we are to have an unabridged philosophy.

Additionally, evolutionary biology is the least arbitrary starting point for forming a societal framework(s), since sociology, psychology, economics, etc are all essentially applied biology. In a sense, biology is more “pure” than starting from a sociological, psychological, etc point of view. And it’s not biased with morality either, the world’s greatest delusion.

2. Evolutionary Reasoning

It’s difficult to predict the evolution of the Future because a single, unpredictable mutation has the potential to completely change all the outcomes within an ecosystem. The best approach for gaining predictive power about an unpredictable system is to come up with a theory of stability and instability where there are stable states and unstable states. That will have predictive power because systems will be in a stable state most of the time by definition, whereas the system will not be in unstable states for long periods of time. This method of reasoning can be more generally applied to:

  • Biology when there are evolutionarily unstable states and evolutionarily stable states
  • Game Theory when there are Nash Equilibriums
  • Economics when there are economically stable states and economically unstable states
  • Geopolitics when there are stable geopolitical maps and unstable geopolitical maps
  • Chaos Theory and Differential Equations with equilibrium solutions (e.g. asymptotically stable, unstable, and semi-stable)
  • Historical and Social Change

3. Affirmation Of The Senses And Empiricism

The goal of this section is to affirm empiricism using evolutionary reasoning. The more ways we have to prove anything, the better.

  1. The senses deliver valid information about reality when they are not impaired (Corollary of Evolution).
  2. All the concepts we know are derived from sensual experiences.
  3. Thus, sensory input is the first step of the reasoning process (the input sub-process).
  4. Evolution designed how the senses work.
    1. Although they give us information about reality, the available information and how it’s presented are first and foremost designed to reach the next stage of evolution.
    2. Thus, senses aren’t necessarily designed to be infallible unless it’s necessary for evolutionary fitness.
    3. Likewise, the senses are only designed to give us sufficient information about how reality works so that we can survive long enough to produce and foster offspring.

4. The Historical Origins Of Consciousness And Intelligence

The first developments of consciousness on Earth were aimed towards enabling organisms to understand their environment, in an effort to gather more food. This should be indicative that intelligence is first and foremost, the ability of one to understand reality.

  • First, sensory input developed, then memory/concepts, then logic. This order of development is consistent with the theory of reason.
  • Further evolution of intelligence required the ability to reason.
  • Today, intelligence is aimed towards solving problems. Of course, reason has always been used to solve problems (that’s why it developed in the first place), but today it is used to solve significantly more abstract ones.

5. Adaptive Coherence

In 2014, Blithering Genius wrote an essay about what he calls “adaptive coherence”. I believe that we can expand on this topic. It is useful to distinguish between intergenetic adaptive coherence, genetic-memetic adaptive coherence (the focus of BG’s essay), and intermemetic adaptive coherence.

The key thing to understand about these types of adaptive coherence is that they should each be understood as bundles of genes and memes that are only adaptive if an organism(s) has all or most of the traits of the bundle. If an organism fails to have one or more of the traits in the bundle, then the other traits in the adaptive bundle cease to be adaptive for that particular organism(s). The most optimal adaptive bundles for any organism depend on the organism itself, the organism’s environment, and the available genes in a genepool. The available genes in a genepool restrict what the most theoretically optimal adaptive bundles are.

The concept of adaptive bundles may overlap with the theory of Adaptationism. I didn’t heard about Adaptationism until after I wrote all this, and I don’t know how much of it I would agree with, but I figured that it would be worth mentioning here.

Acronyms:

AC
Adaptive Coherence
IGAC
Inter-Genetic Adaptive Coherence
GMAC
Genetic-Memetic Adaptive Coherence
IMAC
Inter-Memetic Adaptive Coherence
AB
Adaptive Bundle
GAB
Genetic Adaptive Bundle
GMAB
Genetic-Memetic Adaptive Bundle
MAB
Memetic Adaptive Bundle, another word for memeplex
Memeplex
A set of memes which interact to reinforce each other.

5.1. Inter-Genetic Adaptive Coherence

Genes and their phenotypes are akin to ingredients in a recipe. Most genes and mutations cannot be adaptive for an organism unless they work together with other genes and mutations. Most mutations are maladaptive and biologically harmful to most organisms, since they tend to disrupt a highly ordered morphology. However, a mutation that is maladaptive in one organism may be adaptive in a different organism(s) with a (vastly) different morphology and/or environment. There are thus probably millions of known and unknown examples of how genes may work together or work against each other as genetic combinations, or genotypes.

Perhaps the most well-known and easily explainable examples of intergenetic adaptive coherence are examples of heterozygote advantage. For example, a human must have both the alpha and beta alleles of the hemoglobin gene in order to achieve heterozygote advantage and protect against malaria. If a human is homozygous for the beta allele, then he/she will have sickle cell anemia, which is maladaptive in all environments. If a human is homozygous for the alpha allele, then he/she will no genetic protection against malaria, which will be maladaptive in an environment where malaria is a common disease. The most optimal adaptive bundle for a human in a malaria-prone environment is thus the heterozygous genotype/phenotype. Heterozygote Advantage could be described as a subcase of adaptive coherence.

Intergenetic adaptive coherence can also extend beyond heterozygote advantage. For example, modern humans evolved have lower tracheae and epiglottises. They also evolved mental faculties for enabling human language. All of these adaptions work together to create adaptive, complex communication between humans. However, none of these traits would be adaptive by themselves. A lower trachea that is connected to the esophagus makes it easier for humans to choke on their food, compared to other animals (where the esophagus and trachea may be disconnected). A brain designed to process complex communication consumes more energy.

Some humans can use sign language to make do without the ability to speak or hear. That would give them the benefits of complex communication, but they would be unable to gain the benefits of spoken communication. Those humans would probably also have the disadvantages of spoken communication, i.e. a respiratory system that makes the body more vulnerable to choking. Such humans are less adapted than speaking humans, but they are more adapted than humans who cannot communicate at all. This is a good example of how losing or not having one of the traits of an adaptive bundle may not necessarily cause the entire rest of the bundle to become maladaptive.

Alternatively, some humans may have suitable respiratory and vocal tracts for producing audible speech sounds, while they also lack the mental faculties for (effective) communication. The neural structures inside the human brain that are responsible for communication are necessary for communication. So, if humans don’t have those necessary neural structures, then many (or most?) of the genes and traits that are required for communication will be maladaptive.

Some more examples:

  • It’s adaptive for a primate to have both a tail and lower limbs that are shaped like human hands for climbing trees. For humans, it’s adaptive to have lower limbs designed for bipedal running and no tail at all.
  • Multiple important genes/traits were necessary for creating modern human feet, which are adapted towards bipedal motion, rather than climbing trees.
    • The thumbs point the same direction at the other phalanges.
    • The phalanges became shorter.
    • Arches developed in the feet to support more weight.
    • The feet bones, tendons, and ligaments strengthened to ease bipedal walking.
  • Smaller guts, larger brains, muscles optimized for bipedalism, stronger legs, and human feet were all adaptive in human evolution. (These traits were also coupled with cooking and eating higher-energy-rich diets, but that’s an example of genetic-memetic adaptive coherence.)
  • Having no limbs would be maladaptive for most animals. But for snakes, the genes for having no limbs proved to be adaptive.
  • Birds have feathers, wings, and only two legs. Together, these are all conducive for flying (or swimming).
  • The aerodynamic head structure of a cheetah works with its muscle design for creating a faster animal.
  • Longer snouts and longer tongues are both adaptive for insectivores, especially when an insectivore has both traits.
  • Et Cetera

5.2. Genetic-Memetic Adaptive Coherence

Blithering Genius has described genetic-memetic adaptive coherence: Adaptive Coherence.

As a hypothesized example, the memetic tradition where Sub-Saharan Africans carrying heavy/bulky objects on top of their heads may be somewhat facilitated by how they have denser bones and skulls compared to other human races, and how they tend to have smaller brains (both in terms of intelligence and size). Thus, if they carry heavy stuff on their heads and denser/thicker skulls, their brains suffer less damage and less micro-concussions compared to if Europeans or East Asians carried stuff on top of their heads and their less dense bones. The implication is that while East Asians or Europeans could carry heavy/bulky objects on top of their heads, they wouldn’t be as well-suited to do so as Sub-Saharan Africans.

5.3. Inter-Memetic Adaptive Coherence

Intermemetic adaptive coherence is all about memeplexes: sets of memes that reinforce each other. A lot of intermemetic adaptive coherence is all about how life can accomplish goals more efficiently. For example, limited (yet pragmatic) government enable free markets by solving problems of cooperation, while free markets can efficiently allocate and produce commodities and much of the government’s capital. Georgism and efficient urban planning also compliment each other well. Higher intelligence and higher rationality is important for achieving maximal intermemetic adaptive coherence for individuals and societies.

Most memetic traditions exist in the first place because they were/are adaptive. While I am recognizing intermemetic adaptive coherence as a concept, I’d say that most adaptive coherence involving memes would be genetic-memetic in practice.

Someday, I hope to publish a webpage talking about all my ideas about ideal memetics for a rational humanist / pragmatopian society, which would integrate many phenomena that would enable both genetic-memetic adaptive coherence and intermemetic adaptive coherence.

5.4. Conclusions

The concept of genetic adaptive bundles helps demonstrate why it makes more sense to view Competition in Nature as competition between organisms, rather than competition between genes. If we only think about biological competition in terms of genes, then we’ll fail to recognize the importance of phenotypes, and how different phenotypes affect the ability of organisms to compete against each other. The genes in phenotypes are akin to the ingredients in recipes. Changing an ingredient (gene) can change the recipe (phenotype). But the analogy isn’t perfect because organisms are designed to reproduce, and sexual reproduction enables different combinations of genes to arise in different organisms. Genes can be mixed and separated in the offspring of organisms. And ultimately, the most successful organisms are the ones with the best genotypes/phenotypes, i.e. the ones with most of the best adaptive bundles for some particular environment. Competition between organisms is thus the more holistic and explanatory way to describe competition in Nature, rather than thinking about metaphorical “competition” between genes.

See: Debunking the Selfish Gene: The Phenocentric Theory of Biological Purpose by T. K. Van Allen.

In many cases, some adaptive bundles may be more important than others for creating the most adaptive organisms in a particular environment. In such scenarios, the genes and alleles that are necessary for achieving those adaptive bundles will be selected before the less important adaptive bundles. Organisms that reproduce via sexual reproduction have the greatest potential to produce offspring that have the greatest number of different genetic combinations genotypes/phenotypes possible.

Different environments have different (theoretically) optimal adaptive bundles. Adaptive bundles are clusters of genes and traits. Different races and different species are defined by having different genetic clusters / correlations of genes and traits. The concept of adaptive bundles is thus important for describing why human races and many species/subspecies of organisms are different for each other.

6. Why do some maladaptive memes persist in populations?

In God is a Telomeme, Blithering Genius outlined a framework for memetic theory that revolves around “traditions” and “fashions”. Under this theory, traditions tend to be adaptive, not maladaptive. However, there are notably many traditions that have persisted in populations, despite being maladaptive. Some examples include:

  • The Kayan people of Myanmar and South Ndebele people of Africa wear neck rings, even though they tend to deform the clavicles and ribs.
  • Foot binding occurred in China and gradually rose in popularity during the Qing dynasty until it was outlawed in the early 20th century.
  • Some ethnic groups traditionally do a lot of body piercings, even if they don’t confer any health or adaptive benefits.
  • Female genital mutilation is common in some parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, even though it doesn’t confer any health benefits for women at all.
  • Et Cetera

It’s counter-intuitive but not impossible that these traditions persisted for so long without disappearing. This section aims to brainstorm reasons why maladaptive traditions may continue to persist:

  1. The most obvious reason why maladaptive traditions haven’t died out is that there simply hasn’t passed enough time to cause sufficient death or memetic selection for eliminating them.1 Of course, foot binding eventually became outlawed and unpopular, so that’s an example of a maladaptive tradition that eventually died off, as we would normally expect.
  2. Some maladaptive traditions are practiced because they’re used to bestow aesthetics, individuality, and ethnic identity. For example, one reason why the Han Chinese practiced foot binding was to distinguish themselves from non-Han ethnic groups. The Kayan women wear neck rings to distinguish themselves from women of other ethnic groups. Many people pierce their bodies in order to distinguish themselves from other people. It’s adaptive for people to establish a personal or collective identity that distinguishes themselves from others, in part because it justifies selfishness.
  3. If a population is destined to explode and collapse due to overpopulation, then it will have high birth rates and low death rates before the population starts declining. So, even if maladaptive traditions cause health problems or increase the probability of death, it may not matter if the population is bound to find other ways to decline anyway. This is especially true if everybody or nearly everybody in the population practices the maladaptive traditions.
  4. Above all, the main reason why maladaptive traditions persist is probably because they don’t negatively affect fertility rates enough to cause the traditions to die out. If a group of people practice maladaptive memes, the memes may persist and get transferred to the next generation(s) if the population has high fertility regardless. For example, female genital mutilation tends to be most common among Muslims. However, the Islamic memeplex contains enough adaptive behaviors to the point where their collective adaptivity cancels out the maladaptivity of female genital mutilation.

The same reasoning also explains why people who are genetically predisposed to do risky behaviors may continue to have more offspring than the rest of the population. Risky behaviors may lower their fertility levels since they have the potential to cause accidental deaths or injuries (e.g. drug overdoses, alcohol-related accidents, stunts, etc). However, less responsible and lower-IQ people are also more likely to have unprotected sex and more children than the rest of the population (in current modern times anyway). Even if risky behaviors cause more accidental deaths, the higher fertility rates outweigh these maladaptive behaviors, thus causing more genes associated with risk-taking and impulse-seeking to proliferate.

7. Why Humans Are The Dominant Species

7.1. Global Human Dominance

Reason and knowledge are not the only reason why humans rule the world. If we examine other mammals like orangutans, elephants, and cetaceans, we will find that they are surprisingly intelligent. They have demonstrated exceptional capabilities to memorize concepts, do arithmetic, communicate with humans on a limited level, demonstrate self-awareness, have emotions, organize advanced social structures, and have advanced communication. Since advanced knowledge and reasoning skills are not limited to just only humans, it must be concluded that there are therefore other reasons why humans rule the world.

7.2. Why Humans Are More Dominant Than The Runner Ups

The reason why humans have risen above orangutans, elephants, cetaceans, giant pacific octopi, and other mammals/animals is that we are able to combine reason, communication/interaction, and our capable bodies/appendages better than any other organism in our world.

  • Humans clearly have the best reasoning and knowledge skills in the world, which is pretty self-explanatory.
  • Humans have the most complex communication system and societies of any life known to mankind. Human language can express infinite quantities of ideas and information.
  • Humans have the most capable appendages and anatomies in the world. Human hands can grasp tools and build many things with relative ease. By comparison, cetaceans and elephants don’t have the same appendages or anatomies to enable them to build the same things that a human can, such as fires, wheels, shelters, compasses, aqueducts, medicine, modern computers, and all the other things humans have invented.

Humans also have long lifespans compared to other relatively intelligent species. The giant pacific octopus is possibly the smartest of all invertebrates, but since its lifespan only lasts 3-5 years at max, it doesn’t have much time to do the same productive work that humans can do before they die.

Nevertheless, intelligence is definitely the most important out of the four skills / qualities, but the other skills would both be rendered useless without the ability to reason.

7.3. Characteristics Necessary for Rivaling Modern Humans

With all of this in mind, we can conclude that intelligent life that is on par with human life is most likely to at least have the following six characteristics:

  • High Capacity to Reason (Intelligence)
  • Volition (the ability to reason implies volition)
  • Sophisticated Methods of Communication
  • Emotion
  • Limbs that are optimal for building tools and such
  • Sufficiently long lifespan

Social Cognition - Wireless Philosophy.

7.4. Human Life Is The Powerful Form Of Life

Human life has the most agency, the ability to do as it wants.

  • Humans can create cooperative civilizations that have the potential to avoid significant violence (even if it doesn’t completely prevent all violence).
  • Humans have the cognitive ability and freedom to choose their own meanings of life, whereas other life can only do what it is biologically programmed to do.
  • Human life is the most intelligent life that is known to exist.
  • Humans have the best form of entertainment: music, internet, intellectual pursuits, videogames, movies, sports, etc
  • Human life has the most expressive form of communication known to mankind: human languages.
  • Humans can abort fetuses if they know that the fetuses won’t develop correctly.
  • Humans are very able to end their lives if they determine that their lives aren’t worth living and won’t get any better.
  • Hypothetically, humans could use eugenics/genetic engineering to remove at least some of the unintelligent design that is present in human life.

8. Biological Realism FAQs

Footnotes:

1

It can take an extremely long time for maladaptive traditions to die out. By way of analogy, smallpox maintained a TFR of 30% after millennia of infecting humans.

Last Modified: 2024 July 23, 06:20

Author: Zero Contradictions