[FRIAM] Spandrel

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

All, 

Please allow me to get even sloppier in my language to capture, I hope, a
different kind of clarity.  Yes, I am "working" a metaphor here.: 

Darwinists have often noted that natural selection is a great tinkerer.
This amounts to the observation that every adaptation has both intended and
unintended consequences. Among the unintended consequences, are those that
provide benefits and those that provide harms.  Natural selection can work
subsequently to sharpen the benefits and mitigate the harms.   Now it would
be GUH-RATE if we could work this metaphor in a straightforward way.  The
problem is that we don't really understand the source-domain of the metaphor
all that well.  What do we mean an intended consequence and one that is not
intended, even in our day to day lives.  

N

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021 10:53 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

EricC, What again is the connection between goal orientation and function in
the evolutionary theory literature? All I can remember, from this summer
when we were discussing it, is that it was a way to distinguish those things
selected-for from the spandrels.

Not to muddy the waters, but nose *decoration* today is selected for, at
least to some extent, secondary adaptation? The same can clearly be said of
consciousness. Some of us select our mates out of an appreciation for their
perspectives, insights into their subjective experience. The "nose"
then becomes a *thing*. I mention this relative to Nick's question:

"""
...or has the fact of consciousness been seized upon by subsequent selection
to give it causal properties?
"""

I never did grok Glen's idea of *algorithmic depth*, and now I am wondering
if selecting at the level of goal versus selecting at the level of function
is an example? One may try to argue that my preference for a sense of humor
or compassion is a short-hand or substitution for
*deeper* underlying causes, but it seems a stretch. I somehow doubt the
computational ability of my person to do such a thing.

"""
Is the shape of the armpit been selected for dispersing hormones?
"""

To add to the confusion here, I do wonder if the shape is selected for, but
not in the sense that pheromones cause armpits. Instead, assuming the
inevitability of glands, I can imagine mutation driving their migration and
armpits becoming a basin of attraction.

As far as I can imagine, the locality question is possibly related. Should
it be the case that one type of selection giving rise to the shape of my
nose[d] also gives rise to a not so easily detectable change to my ass,
while another gives rise to the "same" nose[d] together with a not so easily
detectable change to my leg?

For whatever reason, I really enjoyed thinking about this problem from the
perspective of sorting algorithms and tuples. Extensionally, the colors
become sorted regardless of the final configuration of the balls within any
given level. That is, the goal-directed "algorithm" is free two vary while
holding the function invariant. Another variation I found interesting was to
imagine, instead of color, that the smallest balls are labeled with numbers
divisible by 2, the next smallest have labels divisible by 3, and so forth.
Now when I sort, some balls divisible by
2 will be at the top, but the majority of them will sort to the bottom.
In general, we see striation up to some probability. IDK, maybe there is
some nice way to think about the connection this schema may have to the
locality problem and the additivity of variance problem?

Anyway, just entering the conversation, so please pardon any pedantry and
staggering ignorance.

[d] Up to "a quality easily detected by humans".




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