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more bowerbirds and spandrels
Jul. 16th, 2012 09:54 amI know that given the law of large numbers and such like, in a big enough population sample with a sufficiently large time span, anything that is physically possible will occur. (Some events and types are possible, but so improbable that the lifespan of this particular universe isn't sufficient to allow them to emerge.) Repeated mutations don't require reproductive success; I'm thinking of the variety of minor genetic errors that create the hideous neurological condition described in the 2007 New Yorker story "An Error in the Code," http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_preston. Whether these unfortunate individuals have offspring or not is irrelevant to the continuance of the condition over successive generations.
My previous post was asserting that our inbuilt tendency to seek simplicity means that we always privilege the examples that buttress our particular preferred form of reductionism and that we not only devalue contrary examples, we go to great lengths to prove that they must be pseudo-evidence or erroneously perceived sets of events. Envy and emulation of the methods of mathematics reinforce this already existing biological predilection: if the simplest equation is the best expression of the solution, the explanation in which variables are subsumed into a single more primordial source must be the preferable one. Right?
Wrong. Unfortunately, as has been noted more than once, Occam's razor is a trait that may be selected for biologically and psychologically, but is not very good for producing useful information. The more complicated explanation is usually the correct one, and sometimes the least plausible one is the correct one. (Plausibility is socially constructed; the set of interacting known and unknown factors we call reality is not, even if it includes the set called "social constructions.")
This is why we need more than one technique to approach analysis of complex systems, so that one set of operational rules will correct for the unnoticed overemphases and outright errors of another set.
And though we can predict just by common-sense observation how many people will like this or that aspect of a book or a movie (including how many will take pleasure in a book or movie that makes fun of mass-audience expectations), the various "why" explanations always seem to skid off into mutually exclusive simplicities.
The "bowerbirds and spandrels" subject heading refers to the fact that one subspecies of bowerbirds' requirement for use of the color blue in bowers—females won't even look at a male who doesn't use blue in bower-building—looks like one of those things that doesn't arise from increased survival value or any other obvious adaptationist model of evolution; it seems like one of those fascinating distinguishing factors that came into being just because it could. Unless, of course, there is some causal factor in the correlation between color of feathers and color of decorative touches, or something else in bowerbird behavioral patterns we haven't yet happened to observe sufficiently to figure out what we are seeing....
My previous post was asserting that our inbuilt tendency to seek simplicity means that we always privilege the examples that buttress our particular preferred form of reductionism and that we not only devalue contrary examples, we go to great lengths to prove that they must be pseudo-evidence or erroneously perceived sets of events. Envy and emulation of the methods of mathematics reinforce this already existing biological predilection: if the simplest equation is the best expression of the solution, the explanation in which variables are subsumed into a single more primordial source must be the preferable one. Right?
Wrong. Unfortunately, as has been noted more than once, Occam's razor is a trait that may be selected for biologically and psychologically, but is not very good for producing useful information. The more complicated explanation is usually the correct one, and sometimes the least plausible one is the correct one. (Plausibility is socially constructed; the set of interacting known and unknown factors we call reality is not, even if it includes the set called "social constructions.")
This is why we need more than one technique to approach analysis of complex systems, so that one set of operational rules will correct for the unnoticed overemphases and outright errors of another set.
And though we can predict just by common-sense observation how many people will like this or that aspect of a book or a movie (including how many will take pleasure in a book or movie that makes fun of mass-audience expectations), the various "why" explanations always seem to skid off into mutually exclusive simplicities.
The "bowerbirds and spandrels" subject heading refers to the fact that one subspecies of bowerbirds' requirement for use of the color blue in bowers—females won't even look at a male who doesn't use blue in bower-building—looks like one of those things that doesn't arise from increased survival value or any other obvious adaptationist model of evolution; it seems like one of those fascinating distinguishing factors that came into being just because it could. Unless, of course, there is some causal factor in the correlation between color of feathers and color of decorative touches, or something else in bowerbird behavioral patterns we haven't yet happened to observe sufficiently to figure out what we are seeing....
