Thinking about Evolution & Economics and Some Notes on the Evolution of IdeasThinking about Evolution & Economics and Some Notes on the Evolution of Ideas
Part 7 - Intelligent Design - The strange tale of the bottomless wine glass and the arrogance of intelligent design
The plausible human design process is a mirage - we learn from outcomes but we can't design them - 'the evolutionary watchmaker is blind'
Complex economic systems - Statute 192384a - Public Health Act 2005 section 2(c) para 167 footnote 2 -
Avoidance of foul accumulation of toxic crud in Red Wine 1
commencing Tuesday 8th instant all licensees are instructed thus -
* serve all wines and spirits and other liquors in bottomless glasses 2
* pay additional license fees of £1,000 per protected customer to cover the additional required inspection and control costs 3
Addendum this action does not affect the tax increase on red wine (and all other foul drugs) introduced last year to discourage the unsociable habit of immoral imbibing. This stays at 21.3% (the percentage increased each year in line with inflation) after the VAT charge at 19.25% paid in advance.
Notwithstanding to protect the red wine industry and encourage investment in cutting edge technology and the enterprise culture it has been decided to delay the introduction of the profits tax outlined in the next budget for a full 8½ months.
Perchance this legislation does not apply to medicinal red wine nor wine consumed by different religious groups who are protected under anti-discrimination legislation. Such groups will be required to provide proof of authenticity by completing forms 3285 and 79a which will be available next year from all Post Offices. In the unlikely event of the privatisation of Post Offices alternative forms can be collected by bone fide applicants, calling in person, with proof of authenticity at 12a Westgotcha Street.
Aftermath - Pursuant, your sub committee is fully informed about cunning responses and ulterior consequences of this Statute, and in accordance, hereby and forthwith intend to ban all evasion and avoidance and the imbibing of liquors by swigging directly from the bottle. Further legislation will follow as soon as the necessary sub sub committees have been agreed by your sub committee, funded by a deficit from the contingency fund and suitable bureaucrats recruited for the complex drafting process which will then be scrutinised by the necessary Government advisers before submission to the under secretary so as to guarantee valuable Parliamentary time is used to best effect.
( 1 the scientific discovery of the therapeutic anti-coagulant blood thinning properties of red wine residues by Nobel laureate Joe Sixpack has been acknowledged elsewhere. However the Bureau of Bureaux set up last year under section 4a of the Public Health Act 1873 has noted the deleterious effects of injecting 3.85 Kg of this material into small mammals (delicate white mice and furry guinea pigs) - note that further work on these risks has been abandoned following the Green Act introduced last year to guarantee the enforcement of the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1967. This was in response to our manifesto commitment to listen to the public pressure for the common good and it follows directly from to the 'Voice of Society' initiative set up by our Scunthorpe Focus Group)
( 2 in an attempt to simplify overcomplicated statutes and avoid burdensome red tape in line with the recommendations of the anti bureaucracy sub committee 13a, these requirements apply to all liquors including white wines and spirits, accepting the toxic crude is present only in red wine of specific origin. To assist the Technology Foresight Programme, chaired by Mr Horace Batchelor, has agreed in principle a grant of £4 towards the costs of all research into bottomless receptacles. It is expected this will be paid within ten years following the recovery of the set up costs of the new committee and agreement on members expenses)
( 3 all new red wine receptacles will be subsidised by the taxpayer (0.03 p per unit) to alleviate regulatory costs and the competitive threats from French imports)
Intelligent Design? - What's going on here?
Let's take it very slowly … a simple process gets all difficult and complicated ...The bottomless wineglass may seem to be a result of 'intelligent design' … and for certain it is 'as if' rationally purposefully intentionally planned … but what mental processes do these words describe? ... and what has it got to do with economics?
Perhaps a more meaningful explanation of how the brain works is by a Darwinian process of adaptation ... in a strange inversion of reason, maybe some neural networks and circuits act 'as if' making economic decisions which create more survival value for the cost incurred than competing alternatives ...
Here are some empirically substantiated statements about human behaviour ** -
1. Science - Science is a spectacular method for better understanding the evidence we observe. Not because it uncovers the truth but because it speeds up the discovery and accumulation of survival 'know how'. Successful practical economic policy is underpinned by 'normal' science -
* observation
* mathematical theory
* with testable hypotheses
* validated by repeatable experiments
* and reviewed by peers not by elites.
Science with its robust empirical investigations and built in checks and balances contains elements that are absent in alternative a priori reasoning. Diverse experimental evidence is immediately available for validation and analysis whereas individual a priori beliefs are more difficult to discredit and change ... scientific method speeds things up ...
The brain, intelligence and consciousness are now legitimate subjects for scientific investigation. The science of neural networks and circuits is difficult but new tools are available -
* molecular chemistry of DNA - the mapping of the human genome is sharpening understanding of iterative reactions of chemicals from different parts of the body, brain and immune system
* brain scanning and imaging -
* PET - positron emission tomography is used but it needs tracers and anaesthetic
* MRI - magnetic resonance imaging monitors oxygen release in areas of brain activity
* ETI - electrical impedance tomography senses changes in conductivity between electrodes on skull with sub second resolution
* cheap powerful computer simulations enable the study of emergence in complex systems from iterated non-linear equations.
The research work of Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman is uncovering evidence of -
* adaptation of neural networks and circuits
* emergence in complex systems
* and nothing supernatural !
NB the squeamish should skip this complex and tentative summary of Edelman's work, or better still read his books!! -
* Neural networks and circuits - biological genetic chemistry constructs general, but not exact, networks and circuits of neural cells. A vast diversity of degenerate cells which grow, die and migrate in great numbers. A diminutive few of these networks differentially and unpredictably survive. The fine details of the circuitry in each individual will be quite different. Such variability would be catastrophic in any mechanical computational system, where exactness and reproducibility are of the essence. But in an evolving system variation and diversity is not unexplained noise, degeneracy is not a waste of time and energy, both are essential for adaptation.
* Basic value networks - inevitably evolution has produced a hierarchy of emergent networks, the earliest of which act as 'constraints' for subsequent development. The earliest networks are hardwired 'value' networks, proven survival aids, which are basic to the emerging hierarchy. The brain is not a 'blank slate', deep down in the skull it is 'pre-programmed' with 'instinctive' networks which mediate behaviour.
* Pattern recognition - at birth a new form of selection based on experience starts. The real environment is sensed, we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Self-organisation is a property of some complex systems and neurones that wire together fire together and interconnected interactions organise sense inputs into patterns. A unique pattern of connections is created and experience continuously acts upon this pattern, modifying it by selectively strengthening or weakening connections between neuronal groups, or creating entirely new connections. Perceptual categorisation of the environment occurs when neural networks and circuits ‘match’ sensed reality, but they are 'associations' not 'representations' of the environment. Survival is not random, meaningful networks and circuits are guaranteed, a self consistent 'world' is constructed. The brain ‘categorizes its own categorizations’ and does so by a process that can ascend indefinitely to yield more generalisation. The capacity for generalization made possible by this hierarchy of re-entrant signalling, is the beginning of neural development and far precedes consciousness. Trial and error perceptual categorization is the first step and it is crucial for learning, and the continual re-categorization, strengthening of connections, is required for memory.
* Memory - the real environment is recognised, useful patterns are remembered. Some associations can be useful survival tricks and such networks and circuits will tend to be used again, bio-chemically 'strengthened' by use. Maybe 'if you don't use it you lose it'! Sequences of patterns become important as tricks become more complex. Thus survival of new networks is 'mediated' by older 'value' networks and circuits which themselves survived because they helped survival, a self consistency is guaranteed. Some patterns of neural cells survive if they help survival that's why they survive!
* Motor activity - muscles respond to input patterns from body functions and from the environment, we itch, breathe, blink, run, kick and thread. Input/output neural networks and circuits 'control' universal body functions and movement by sensing and motor response. Rules of thumb emerge of the type - 'if' (sense) 'then' (wiggle). We are not passive in a static environment!
* Pattern generation - motor responses result in real changes in real patterns in the body and the environment. As we wiggle and disturb the environment new patterns are created which can be sensed anew and on and on and on and on … by remembering what was useful and worked in the past and trying similar behaviours in the future, more and more and more complex recognisable patterns and motor responses are built. A hierarchy of rules of thumb emerges with 'credit assignments' from reinforcement but with 'probabilities' not certainties, as flexibility from constant innovative testing avoids blind alleys from accidents or coincidences and eventually learning copes with the separation in time of wiggle and the new pattern. The hierarchy with basic default options enables generalisations when confronted with novelty. Slowly step by step we build a repertoire of useful self consistent survival tricks, new possibilities are continually ‘tested’ in new environments making every individual different as possibilities compete for reinforcement. Novelty and creativity become a hum drum routine. At these higher levels flexibility and individuality are important and new powers and new functions emerge that can construct, not just control and correct.
* Consciousness & pattern generation in the imagination - this iterative blind generate and test process builds layer upon layer of increasingly sophisticated survival tricks as re-entrant circuits in the dynamic core of the brain exhibit the non-linearity of complex systems and the associated property of emergence. Some emerging outputs are coherent, useful, survival enhancing, discriminations or 'qualia' associated with the real world and eventually ... using the same neural networks and circuits a 'scene' emerges, a remembered present.
Read that again! The same neural networks and circuits that control behaviour fire when we imagine. The imagination is an 'late in the day' emergent property of brain circuitry! Consciousness emerges after behaviour controlling activity. Oh my ... and I thought I was in control!
Consciousness brings together the many categorizations involved in perception into a scene, events that may have had value or meaning in the pas. The ‘scene’ is not an image, not a picture, but is a correlation, an association, between different kinds of categorization. It is not accompanied by any sense of being a person with a past and a future. The meaning established will not be causal, not necessarily related to anything in the outside world, it will be an individual subjective meaning.
Once we are able to 'see' in the 'mind's eye' we can imagine motor responses before risky commitment! Behaviours can be tested in the imagination and generalisations enable thinking in terms of analogy and metaphor and thus pruning and sifting of actions becomes possible, a potentially faster process than experimenting in reality ... a very useful survival trick!
* Self-consciousness & belief systems - the constant interplay between what is remembered, what is imagined and what is actually sensed results in a conscious 'model' of reality in the brain. Constant iteration enables improvements to the model whenever there is a mismatch between the model and reality, and eventually we become aware of the personal, a past as well as a remembered present and we can imagine the future - we become conscious of being conscious. A self consciousness 'self' emerges and the model becomes a belief system.
Complex systems evolve and self conscious folk can use symbols and representations of reality, leading to a 'semantic capacity' and an ability to link discriminations usefully, leading to a 'syntactic capacity' - language, culture, law, science and economics emerge - an unprecedented power of detachment, reflection and introspection ... and crucially ... it becomes possible to communicate beliefs across the generations.
Simple diverse and competing rules of thumb emerge from sensing and wiggling. With feedback from the environment and reinforcement a pattern recognition and generation system can emerge which learns over generations and becomes a creative belief system which copes with novelty.
Needless to say belief systems about reality are very useful survival tricks … and evolving belief systems about evolving reality as better still !!
First, the linking of memorised primary emotional values with current sense perceptions creates consciousness (perceptual bootstrapping).
Second, the linking of memorised symbols with conceptual centres creates self consciousness (semantic bootstrapping).
Learning occurs when repetition overwhelms old memories, when the continual inflow of experience provides evidence of a better way to predict and control future events.
Phew! ... I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
Daniel Dennett - 'Brains had to evolve like every other marvel of nature, and our minds are just what our brains non-miraculously do'.
Prof. Bruce Hood, Developmental Psychology, Bristol University - 'Our brains have evolved wiring which organises sensory information and motor responses and establishes cause and effect'.
2. Evolutionary Design - The only design process going on throughout the universe is evolution, a blind copy/vary/select algorithm, as replication processes generate vast diversities of variants but only a diminutive few differentially survive -
* the laws of physics determine that the process of evolution must happen
* evolution is powerful enough to explain everything experience including Dixieland Jazz, the price of beer and grandchildren
* the selection process is natural, undoubtedly the laws of physics are the ultimate cause of evolution but the meaningful explanation of the process is that long necked giraffes were not purposefully designed but rather short necked giraffes died out.
This encapsulates Darwin's 'strange inversion of reason'. Perhaps it is reasonable to imagine a process of intelligent design as humans rationally purposefully intentionally plan improvements to their circumstances. But this in an anthropomorphic myth. It is adaptation of neural networks and circuits that enable brains to -
* remember what worked in the past and imitate that success and at the same time
* generate and test a vast diversity of innovative random variants, a diminutive few of which, in the future, proved to be useful and survive.
This is how instinctive behaviour emerges, and it is also how imagination speeds up the process and eventually how cultural institutions emerge. The process requires no knowledge of the unknowable future. 'Intelligent design' exists but it is not what folk tend to think it is ...
Understanding evolutionary design in this way is counterintuitive because -
* consciousness and human purpose feels 'as if' it is an imperative top down process
* the bottom up process eliminates failures it does not design successes
* how do you cope with failure ... ?
* how do you imagine non-existence ... ?
A moral dilemma also emerges as there has to be many more ways of being dead than alive and there must be many many more failures than successes. It is real real hard hard to 'rejoice' when a hospital is closed or a business liquidates ... but slowly some folk learn to rejoice because they see hopeless failures replaced by expanding successes, it is not a zero sum game!
I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
Charles Darwin - 'It's an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock's tail was thus formed but ... most people just don't get it ... I must be a very bad explainer'.
Arthur Peacocke - 'Life is continuously created but progress is a package dependent on death and failure'.
Joseph Schumpeter - 'Creative destruction'.
Gerald Edelman - 'Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process'.
3. Universal Darwinism - Evolution is relentless over deep time constructing a hierarchical 'shebang' of survival tricks, from the same simple process of copy/vary/ select emerges an unbroken continuity of more and more complexity. The whole 'shebang' evolves, a hierarchy of interconnecting systems, a nested set of sets, layer upon layer -
* physical energy & matter, elements & molecules, cosmic order (physical tricks)
* chemistry & biology, DNA & genetic inheritance, plants & animals (chemical tricks)
* subconscious brain activity (instinctive tricks)
* conscious behaviour (imaginative tricks)
* self conscious behaviour (cultural tricks)
At each stage the process logic is the same, variants that do not display survival traits tend to die out leaving an increasing frequency of survivors in the population which do display such traits.
It is in the brain that things get really really difficult, the ongoing discovery and accumulation of survival 'know how' is first and foremost sub-conscious but eventually consciousness and then self-consciousness emerge -
* Subconscious behaviour is instinctive and learning is hardwired
* Conscious behaviour is learned by the experience of sense perceptions and motor responses to a scene
* Self conscious behaviour is cultural and is learned imaginatively from others.
All three states are an evolved continuity, and although there seems to be a learning hierarchy -
* Direct imitation - individual experience from interacting with others and copying their successful sense and motor response experiments - through inherited DNA and instinctive 'imitate Mum' - what better place to start!
* Direct experience - individual sense and motor response experiments - how did you learn to catch a cricket ball!
* Cultural imitation - once neural networks and circuits for the symbolic representations of reality are in place folk can copy the experiences of others (often long dead) which are preserved and accumulated in tales, writings, rituals and institutions ...
the same ubiquitous Darwinian process is involved, the 'know how' must be individually 'learned' in individual brains by -
* Trial & error - neural networks and circuits develop by real or imagined sense and motor response experiments, the learning process involves the rejection of networks and circuits that don't work, and the reinforcement of a few that help, these are remembered and differentially survive to be used again ...
* Not by a physical transfer of knowledge to an 'homunculus' in the brain - we learn as surviving networks and circuits accumulate individually, every individual is different, different genes, different experience, the 'teacher' can only demonstrate and communicate, it is individual neural networks and circuits that must physically change.
There is no physical mechanism whereby a teacher can implant neural networks in pupils heads, the pupil must 'work it out' for himself as neural networks and circuits that don't work are rejected. There is no 'homunculus' supernaturally designing our neural networks and circuits ... a quaint and erroneous idea that has been with us for a long time ...
NB Self consciousness is a formidable survival aid but it is -
* just the tip of the iceberg - appearing late in the evolutionary day - an add-on not a control centre
* the only and very limited bit of information we possess to think about and to symbolically communicate to others
* a collection of emergent discriminations about the environment - selected value systems for survival
* real, subjective, unitary, qualitative and intentioned - but chemistry is the cause of behaviour and consciousness is an emergent feature of the same chemistry - consciousness may cause your finger to point but there is no 3rd party controller, it's all your chemistry ...
Chemistry? Give me a break! ... I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
Daniel Dennett - 'Darwin's ideas are powerful enough to have done all the design work that is manifest in the world'.
Susan Greenfield - 'There is no qualitative transformation in the anatomy nor physiology of the brain of human and non-human animals, no phylogenetic Rubicon in the animal kingdom. Similarly there is no ontogenetic line that is crossed as the brain grows in the womb. A scientific view of consciousness might be that it is not a different property of the brain but a consequence of a quantitative increase in complexity'.
4. Instinctive Behaviour - Biological chemistry works 'as if' building behavioural 'rules of thumb' by generating and testing principles for ever more complex discriminations in the environment. Genes act 'as if' calculating an economic cost/benefit because plants and animals that don't behave that way die out.
Chemical reactions control simple and complex behaviour - here are some rules of thumb -
* plant roots behave 'as if' moving towards water and plant leaves behave 'as if' turning towards sunlight
* e-coli bacteria behaves 'as if' moving in a straight line towards food, and when there is no food present the bacterium tumbles randomly 'as if' searching
* immune systems behave 'as if' searching out novel foreign pathogens and killing them and then retaining immunity 'as if' remembering
* eyes sense movement 'as if' part of a behavioural rule - 'if it moves run if not eat it'
* birds build nests 'as if' protecting their eggs and their young
* babies cry 'as if' asking for food, Mum mirrors the behaviour 'as if' providing food when hearing the cry.
Biological chemistry in Mums and babies, sparrows and bugs, that did not trigger this behaviour died out ... quite quickly!
And the process continues ... we ourselves are part of the environment and we adapt to that same environment, instincts co-evolve.
There is survival value associated with living in social domesticated groups, and life in a group is enhanced by evolved instincts explored recently by Marc Hauser -
* cooperative synergies - deep down in the skull chemistry builds survival circuits 'empathising' with the suffering of others producing a painful response and a 'do unto others' behaviour emerges - to enhance survival, we feel 'compelled' to switch the trolley to save lives?
* forgiving accidents - genetic altruism, tribal trust and the same empathy leads us to not 'deliberately' push the fat man to stop the trolley - but a foreseeable accident is forgivable?
* punishing cheats - automatic proportionate retaliation - folk 'instinctively' put 'fairs shares' before individual gain in the 'ultimatum game'?
* risk aversion - losses looming larger than gains - framing and prospect theory suggest we are 'irrationally' risk averse, we refuse to bet on heads you lose £1,000 tails you win £1,500?
Moral philosophers like Aquinas, Kant and Hume tried to 'rationalise' these instincts. Actions can produce a 'Double Effect', good and bad, and losses and harmful side effects can be tolerated from moral actions if -
* positive benefits exist
* unavoidable accidents trump a foreseen harm
* good intentions trump ulterior motives
But remember cooperative universals are instincts they cannot be 'rationalised' by analysing 'intentions'. The behavioural decision precedes the consciousness so the explanation of morality as a post rationalisation or as consciously driven must be a misunderstanding … some folk at the sharp end working in the trenches for their families see the Double Effect distinctions as meaningless. Post rationalisations cause no end of mental torture, as we see in the endless debates on euthanasia, abortion, just wars and war crimes …
There are important implications - moral instincts are immune from manipulation by explicit instructions from Bishops, Princes, Generals or majorities. No one can get at these moral circuits so we must understand the nature of these biases when we experiment to try and make a better world.
And we do experiment to try and make a better world ... all the time ... I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
5. Imaginative Behaviour - Brain function is the result of adaptation of neural networks and circuits over deep time by the generation and testing of variants, some of which differentially survive and from which order and consciousness emerge in individuals.
Instincts are hard wired universals but with an emerging imagination the past can be investigated and the future can be brought into play by testing out decisions in the imagination before survival actions are taken.
The moral philosophers can't do anything about instincts but they can imagine innovative behaviours which might override hardwired instincts and make a better world in the future. So some individuals do try pushing the fat man, some do try taking the risky bets and those that do may secure the associated economic survival advantages and will tend to prosper.
Here we get to the heart of economics. Economics is the science of choice so how do folk decide -
* decide here and now - at the fork in the path do I go left or right?
* remember successful out comes from the past - it's a good place to start but extrapolation of the past will always eventually fail? History never repeats itself but it does rhyme, life is not random there are patterns
* imagine possible future options and try to prune adverse possibilities - try to imagine the unintended consequences and unknown responses of others?
The evidence suggests individuals must have a 'bounded rationality', the future is unknowable. The design process in our brains is best described by Herbert Simon's evolutionary economic approach of 'satisficing' - a process of experimenting our way out of trouble by speeding up evolution by cashing in on inherited successes from the past and using our imagination to test the future -
* building on proven inherited success, imitate success, there is no better place to start, don't reinvent the wheel
* freely choosing between options available at the time and the place, unhindered by 'rent seeking' Bishops, Princes, Generals or majorities
* experimenting to generate diversity and increase the chances of discovering new tricks
* co-operating with others to discover better tricks from synergies which are not available to individuals
* retaliating against the inevitable parasites and predators to defend and accumulate benefits
* learning from the successful outcomes of differential survival and starting again
This is how individual brains behave ... but there is more! The importance of economic interactions exploiting cooperation, specialisation and scale (see above) is the key to another jump forward ... individuals can take advantage of the learning of others ...
NB. Testing in the imagination is risky we simply don't know the unintended consequences and the unknown responses of others, eventually everything must be tested against the rigors of reality. And furthermore, it is clear that at this imaginative stage we can also believe in 'supernatural forces' as the cause of effects … we have 'vivid imaginations' … I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
Prof. Hood again, 'This same wiring system, however, leaves us liable to accept less than scientific explanations for the unexplainable, whether it is magic, the notion of a sixth sense or a belief in luck'!
Herbert Simon - 'We encounter many branches in the maze of life’s path, we follow now the left fork, now the right. The metaphor of the garden of forking paths is irresistible to anyone who has devoted their scientific career to understanding human choice'!
6. Cultural Behaviour - Once language and writing are established for symbolic communication, neural networks and circuits associated with trust and curiosity open up the possibility of learning about the environment from others and domesticated groups can secure benefits from the experience of others by imitation of past success long gone or far away.
Biology is slow, pruning in the imagination speeds up the discovery and accumulation of 'know how' but is risky but cultural learning from the experience of others ups the speed another notch - it is by far the best bet ... so far!
There is an emerging hierarchy - instincts - imagination - culture - but remember the same process is at work - 'as if' generating and testing principles for co-operative survival behaviour as ever more complex discriminations are required to survive in an ever more complex environment - an arms race is played out -
* instincts compel and imaginations suggest what we ought to do but what we actually do is different because cultural behaviour is evolving fastest
* instinctive biases can be overcome and silly suggestions discarded - biases which underpin short term loss aversion tend to inhibit longer term risk taking ... but some cultures do encourage risks for longer term survival gains …
* the Usury Act 1624 overturned the 1571 Act outlawing usury …
* legal killing can be acceptable - in self defence, in war, in capital punishment, in abortions, in euthanasia
* cooperative cultures can evolve
* over time cultural experiments to discover and accumulate new survival tricks result in widespread cultural variation and environmental variation but right or wrong is not known in advance and there are always a variety of different positions being tested ...
Michael Wood has written about the historical evidence for the evolution of cultures -
Deep survival instincts for cooperation drives the evolution of civilisation as man becomes a social animal seeking continuous intensive economic interactions in cities from risky specialisation and scale where diversity, competition, pluralism and tolerance lead to survival benefits which must be defended.
How do you persuade your citizens to act as moral human beings, encouraging technological and organisational innovation and protecting the benefits from predators and parasites?
Around 500 BC Axis Age philosophers (Elijah, Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Mahariva, Zoroaster) wrestled with their consciences and similar ideas emerged which attempted to secure the 2 + 2 = 5 benefits of co-operation -
Mesopotamia - cradle of civilisation - pessimism was widespread as cycles of diminishing returns and competitive violence from internal parasites and external predators eroded tolerance and trust
India - empire of the spirit - faith in the cleansing of the soul by metaphysical introspective meditation revealing the illusion of alleviating poverty by material acquisitions
China - mandate of heaven - faith in the perfect moral order from hierarchical domination by an educated meritocracy and the rejection of pluralism
Egypt - habit of civilisation - optimism resulted from the easy riches of the predictable Nile as the ritual magic of the divine kings compounded ignorance
Central America - burden of time - appeasing the Gods with human sacrifice, preoccupation with fear and the mathematics of eternity
Barbaric West - late development enabled waves of learning from Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment led to more intensive economic interactions in cities. More individual freedom to generate and test, discover and accumulate survival tricks. A continuously evolving reformed Christianity and the empirical reason of common law and science encouraged pluralism and tolerance, diversity and competition eventually leading to sophisticated cultural institutions which alleviated the ancient problems of pessimism, poverty, domination, ignorance and fear - The Constitution of the USA and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ...
Here we have a history of survival tricks ... but all behaviours - subconscious, conscious and self-conscious - have meaning as evolutionary functions, 'as if' survival tricks.
Survival is secured by discovering and accumulating 'know how' synergies from co-operation through a blind 'tit for tat' algorithm. 'Tit for tat’ is an evolutionarily stable strategy, a moral intent grows the benefits of co-operation over time and protects such benefits from predators and parasites -
* co-operate - be nice, don’t try to win at the expense of others, avoid unnecessary conflict
* defend - retaliate if attacked to protect the benefits and discourage parasites and predators
* communicate - responses must be clear, simple and emphatic to avoid misunderstandings – co-operation is the rule but there will be a proportionate defensive response to all attacks
* recruit - forgive to maximise the opportunity for co-operative benefits next time round
* learn from outcomes - co-operate with co-operators
The key is that it is not a one off zero sum game. There are no expensive prerequisites, the strategy is applied ‘blindly’, everybody can participate, long term co-operation becomes understandable. Tit for tat is an iterative search for synergies, it is a post rationalisation that always works whatever the outcomes or the response of others - think about it! The twin problems about the future - unintended consequences and the unknown responses of others are solved - what a strategy !!
I told you it was all difficult and complicated!
Robert Axelrod - ‘The key to doing well lies not in overcoming others but in eliciting their co-operation. Individuals don’t have to be rational; the evolutionary process alone allows successful strategy to thrive, even if the players do not know why or how. No central authority is needed, co-operation is self policing’.
Douglass North - 'Economics is a theory of choice - the way we perceive the world and construct our explanations about that world requires that we delve into how the mind and brain work'.
soooooo ... what is Intelligent Design?
Intelligent design - a consequence of self consciousness is that we behave 'as if' calculating and reasoning things out, 'as if' intelligently designing. Folk 'rationally purposefully intentionally plan' to imitate and 'rationally purposefully intentionally plan' to experiment and 'rationally purposefully intentionally plan' to learn, that is exactly what brain chemistry does but the imitation, experiment and learning is a trial and error process, generating neural variants and motor testing them in the imagination and in reality over generations. Remembering what works and forgetting what is useless ... test it! kill the errors! and remember!
Neural adaptation - it is difficult to grasp the evolutionary process of design but it is not a 'computer like' logical design but a Darwinian process. An ability to discriminate sense perceptions and remember those input patterns and associated motor responses that survive if they help survival that's why they survive! It is the only known scientific explanation of design, there is no evidence of any supernatural designer -
* it is not cause and effect - the ultimate cause is chemistry but the meaningful process is adaptation where effects are causes, non-linear and uncertain ...
* it is not logical calculation - but rather a heuristic pattern recognition and generation process ...
* it is not planning success - but rather avoiding repetition of failed experiments by remembering
* it is not supernatural intelligent design - it is responsiveness … adaptation.
John Searle - 'Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism'.
Gerald Edelman - 'I decide to raise my arm and up it goes ... that damn arm'!!
Soooo ... why the bottomless wineglass?
Like all 'rationally purposefully intentionally planed' intelligent design the bottomless wineglass describes an experiment in the imagination, one of the vast number of innovation failures that somehow escaped immediate pruning. Successful science from the past did identify a toxic problem in the wine sediment that does accumulate at the bottom of glasses ... and doing nothing is always risky ... !
Silly ideas are usually rejected in the imagination long before testing in reality but some like Copernicus and Galileo and Einstein did test 'silly' ideas which proved successful ... and rain dances are still acceptable in some cultures today ... and Mary Hicks the last witch to be executed in England was as recent as 1716 ... maybe silly ideas are a problem and an opportunity ...
There are three routes to uneconomic wineglasses, take your pick -
1 - the 'adaptation' brain model must always involve a myriad of failed experiments, the pruning process can never be foolproof - is this just one of the failed experiments?
2 - an 'intelligent design' brain model, with meticulous 'rational purposeful intentional planning' and thorough analysis, will always eventually fail as unintended consequences, unknown responses and unexpected events disrupt outputs - is this an arrogant attempt to 'design' the drinking habits of other folk and protect them from poison?
3 - the 'adaptation' model in the brain can choose to be parasitic and play a zero sum game - is this another cynical attempt to raise taxation for personal ego trips?
You've gotta work it out for yourself ... I tell folk not to listen to me but they won't listen ... I told you it was all difficult and complicated ...
** Apologies to Charles Darwin - Gregor Mendel - Watson and Crick - John Maynard Smith - Richard Dawkins - Robert Axelrod - Daniel Dennett - Herbert Simon - Gary Cziko - Marc Hauser - Daniel Kahneman - Gerald M Edelman - John Searle - Benjamin Libet - Susan Greenfield - Arthur Peacocke - Douglass North - Michael Wood - Jorge Luis Borges - for this interpretation of their work.
'Models of My Life' - Herbert Simon.
'Wider than the Sky' - Gerald M Edelman.
'Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness ' - Benjamin Libet.
'Freedom and Neurobiology' - John Searle.
'Freedom Evolves' - Daniel Dennett.
'Without Miracles' - Gary Cziko.
'Evolution: the Disguised Friend of Faith?' - Arthur Peacocke.
'Moral Minds: How Nature Designed a Universal Sense of Right and Wrong' - Marc Hauser.
'Understanding the Process of Economic Change' - Douglass North.
'The Evolution of Cooperation' - Robert Axelrod.
'In Search of the First Civilisations' - Michael Wood.
'The Garden of Forking Paths' - Jorge Luis Borges.
john p birchall
back to some fun