[FRIAM] Spandrel

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

All==

 

I want to call attention to Dave’s quandary at the end of his last message to me.   If genes are not “for” traits but for processes, how does natural selection manage to “pick out” traits.   How do you take a vastly interacting causal web and get additivity of variance out of it.  It seems to me that Steve’s pathway talk might lead to an answer to that question.  Of what process is natural selection the PRODUCT?  Who or what selects the selector?  

 

Nick 

 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

Steve, 

Yes exactly! Humans were not selected "for noses." Humans were (the argument goes) selected for shorter jaws. The "protruding" nose is what you end up with after selection shrinks the jaw. So, if you notice that humans have noses, and you jump straight to asking "Why did protruding noses evolve? What adaptive function do they serve?" you are barking up the wrong tree. Ditto impacted wisdom teeth. It would be pretty silly to assert that impacted wisdom teeth were adaptive, even though they likely resulted from natural selection through the same pressures that led to noses.

 

Now, the problem with the "nose" example is that, given the variation in noses around the world, it is actually quite plausible that nose size and shape IS adaptive. But that's a different issue ;- ) 

 

 

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 12:50 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com> > wrote:

Nick -

Not to beat a dead Spandrel, but the nose example doesn't wash with me.  

In many familiar animals, the nose is perched on the end of a snout, and
it was the snout that was deprecated in us to the point that the
nostril-holes with various adaptive properties (downward facing to keep
rain out, hair-lined and snotty to trap dust and pollen, (mildly)
turbinated to support humidity/temperature regulation, sensitive to
support "feeling" things with one's proboscis before we smash the whole
face into it,  loaded with chemically sensitive cells for "smell", etc)
are highly diminished compared to various creatures like a daschund or
an elephant or an anteater.   Our nose still has significant affordances
similar/familiar to those listed above (serviceable smeller, filter,
heat/humidity exchanger, etc ) even if it is not at all prehensile or
particularly discriminating and if humans have a snout at all, it is a
highly diminished one.  

I suspect references to "being nosy" and "sticking our noses in other's
business" is borrowed from watching our snoutful familiars like horses
or camels or racoons or dogs "nosing around".  The proboscis of our nose
*points* where our eyes are looking (somewhat) so that conflation may be
mildly meaningful?

Does "butting out" connote backing out butt-first when one recognizes
their nosing around isn't welcome?

<beep><beep><beep>

 - Sneeze



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