[FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism

Mon Oct 21 11:44:09 EDT 2024

Thanks to both Jochen and Glen ...

I appreciate the calling out of Atavism in this context/light as well as 
Glen's delineation between teleology and teleonomy and the relationship 
to *absolute*/*idealized* authoritarianism, heirarchies and pecking orders.

I'm on my third flock of chickens over 20 years, restarted fresh each 
time from chicks and watching learning them as individuals as a flock 
and as a pecking-order hierarchy.  The first group were a dozen who 
stayed 11 for the duration when I gifted them forward to someone when I 
moved to Berkeley in 05 for a year, the second were a dozen who also 
dropped quickly to 11 and then 8 when we gifted 3 forward to keep our 
egg obligations down to something reasonable and to support a young 
friend who thought they might like the experience (including fresh 
eggs)... the current are 6 we adopted (very young) to thin someone 
else's flock to manageable.   They are about 3/4 mature now and 
developing their pecking order...

They are definitely a holarchy which can present their hierarchy 
(actually multiple, overlapping contextual versions) when such ordering 
is important.  The first flock (05) were the ultimate free rangers who 
never chose to use their coop for anything but laying and brooding 
(because we never locked them into it).  They roosted on our garden 
fence even in the cold!   But they had almost no evident "pecking 
order"... they shared the property (with not fowl-resistant border) with 
4 geese who were also very egalitarian until one morning when one of the 
2 females went missing (a whole other tangent) when the two males 
determined their relative dominance immediately one over the other and 
both over the remaining female.   They also heightened their attempts to 
dominate me (which mostly involved me working on or cleaning *their* 
pond) and visitors (guard geese extra-ordinaire) and our 100lb lab who 
they quit allowing to chase them a while back and at that point turned 
the tables and began to chase her (at least pro-forma to demonstrate her 
place on the pecking order). They ignored the chickens but the chickens 
avoided them, recognizing how it might turn out.

My limited experience with real-time control systems (circa 1980) did 
involve both acutely centralized/hierarchical organization of control of 
distributed parts within high-energy physics experiments but a move to 
highly distributed systems with very specialized deferential and 
synthesizing heuristics.   The latter was known/demonstraed to be more 
efficient and error-tolerant and complexity-managing than the former but 
many oldSkool Physicists/Engineers hated the idea that they couldn't 
possibly anticipate every error condition and pre-define the response.

I can't imagine any organization of humans being truly effectively 
hierarchical (authoritarian?) in the extreme.

Both Yuval Harari and Timothy Snyder in the recent History-perspectived 
books on information theory harp on the early-mid Soviet Union era and 
how tragic their attempts (Stalin mostly) were in trying to build the 
ultimate centralized control system of people, their processes, material 
consequences, etc.

- Steve

On 10/20/24 3:31 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> I agree that the hype in conservative news sources about great CEOs is 
> an example of the Great Man theory. The hype about AI godfathers is an 
> example too. Nevertheless I still believe that authoritarian 
> organization is the rule in social systems. In almost all companies 
> and corporations the CEO has the last word, in armies the general at 
> the top, in families traditionally the father.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
>
>
> In hierarchies there are two ends of a spectrum: at the one end we 
> have an authoritarian system and a top-down hierarchy where people at 
> the bottom are doing what the leader at the top wants. At the other 
> end we have a democratic system and a bottom-up hierarchy where 
> elected people at the top are doing what the people at the bottom 
> want. In between are authoritarian systems that pretend to democratic, 
> and democratic system that have authoritarian tendencies.
>
>
> An example of the spectrum would be a Navy vessel vs a pirate ship in 
> the 18th century. Mutiny is one form of transition between the two types.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_in_18th-century_piracy
>
>
> Another example is the Catholic church vs protestantism. In the 
> Catholic church officials are appointed from the top, in protestant 
> culture they are elected.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism
>
>
> The question why people are shifting from one form of organization to 
> another is intriguing. I am not sure if we have clear answers to this 
> interesting question. Nick argued that "groups capable of shifting to 
> an authoritarian organization in response to a perceived existential 
> threat survived in greater numbers than those that didn't" but this 
> argument alone is not fully convincing, or is it?
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
> Date: 10/18/24 9:47 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
>
> I can't help but feel that the sentiment that authoritarian 
> organization is the rule is an example of (or sibling to) the Great 
> Man theory. Ultimately, it's something akin to a psychological 
> investment in teleology - which I'm using to mean when the appearance 
> of purposeful behavior is often treated as an indicator that processes 
> do have purpose (as opposed to teleonomy - where processes merely seem 
> to have purpose, behave as if they have purpose, or perhaps purpose is 
> emergent). But it's not merely the attribution of purpose, but also 
> the attribution of unity or fusion into a bounded whole.
>
> I'd challenge anyone to present an organized system that is *actually* 
> unified in this way. Even political systems we name and accept as 
> authoritarian, are not completely fused, atomic, centralized. The 
> extent to which the nominal leader is actually the leader is a graded 
> extent, never perfect. Each particular authoritarian system will be 
> more or less authoritarian than another. And, worse, each particular 
> system will be more authoritarian in some dimensions and less in others.
>
> So if I read this generously, what I hear is that we're very used to 
> ... comfortable with ... the attribution of leader-controlled 
> organization, as in corporations with chief executives, etc. And we're 
> less used to ... facile with ... comfortable with ... distributed 
> organization and quantifying the extent to which organization is 
> centralized or distributed.
>
> If I read it less generously, it sounds like reification - pretending 
> like some illusory property is actual.
>
> On 10/17/24 10:21, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > Interesting thoughts. The use of "atavism" in the context of social 
> systems is interesting, but it is not new. Joseph Schumpeter has used 
> the term atavism to explain the outbreak of World War I
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
> >
> >
> > I believe authoritarian organization is not the exception, it is the 
> rule. A pecking order or "dominance hierarchy" is the most common 
> order in social groups and almost all organizations, corporations and 
> companies. Even among chickens in farms or apes in zoos.
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
> >
> >
> > The opposite of authoritarian organization is an egalitarian society 
> where everybody is equal. In his book "Warlike and Peaceful 
> Societies", Agner Fogar agues that people tend to prefer one of these 
> two types depending on the situation. His regality theory says "people 
> will show a psychological preference for a strong leader and strict 
> discipline if they live in a society full of conflict and danger, 
> while people in a peaceful and safe environment will prefer an 
> egalitarian and tolerant culture"
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regality_theory
> >
> >
> > -J.
> >
> >
> >
> > Inters-------- Original message --------
> > From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com
> > Date: 10/17/24 12:08 AM (GMT+01:00)
> > To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> > Subject: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
> >
> > On Evolutionary Atavism
> >
> > My so-called mind is still churning from our conversation about 
> evolutionary atavism,  the idea that current behavioral systems may be 
> ill-suited to contemporary circumstances.   As an evolutionary 
> psychologist I should be for it; however, as a survivor of the 
> instinct wars of the 1950’s, I should be against it.  Where am I?
> >
> >    The problem with evolutionary atavism arises when people start 
> attributing any necessity to it.  Natural selection would not be 
> possible if organisms did not offer up structures and behaviors that 
> are maladapted.  Evolution could not have occurred if organisms did 
> not respond to these maladaptations with adaptive changes.  Evolution 
> is a dynamic between change and stability and the interesting question 
> is why some things change while others don’t, and why some changes 
> occur more rapidly than others. Asserting that some things are the 
> same as they were a million years ago because they didn’t happen to 
> change is just silly.
> >
> > Still, evolutionary atavism does play a role in my thinking. Let’s 
> work an example together and see what that role is and whether it is 
> justified.  I listened with guilty pleasure to Obama’s address 
> ridiculing MAGA thinking.  My pleasure was guilty because I thought 
> his speech would make Trump more likely to win the election.    This 
> conclusion arose from an evolutionary hypothesis about the origins of 
> charisma.  The logic, such as it is, goes like this.
> >
> >  1. *The modern human species arose 160kyrs ago from a very small 
> number of small groups. *That the human species passed through a 
> severe bottleneck at it inception is probably true; that it was 
> composed of small group at that time is a plausible surmise.**
> >  2. *Those groups were engaged in intense competition at the 
> bottleneck. *This statement is reasonable but not supported by any 
> data I can think of. **
> >  3. *Therefore, they survived or failed as groups. *Again, merely 
> plausible.**
> >  4. *Those /groups/ survived that were capable of rapid concerted 
> action. *This is based on the idea that in emergencies it is most 
> important for every to do some thing, rather than for them to wait and 
> work out the best thing to do.**Barely plausible. Not even clear how 
> one would go about researching it. **
> >  5. *Groups capable of shifting to an authoritarian organization in 
> response to a perceived existential threat survived in greater numbers 
> than those that didn’t.*
> >  6. *Humans, therefore, are inclined to put their faith in a single 
> person when they perceive an existential threat. *Let’s call this the 
> “Charismer Response”**
> >  7. *The person most likely to be selected for this role is 
> apparently single-minded and decisive. *This gives us the 
> characteristics of a *Charismer*, **
> >  8. *Charismees relinquish their capacity for independent rational 
> thought in favor of the Charismer’s decision-making. *
> >  9. *Charismees receive benefits from the group in proportion to 
> their demonstrations of surrender of rationality.*
> > 10. *Charismees demostrate their surrender by the repetition of o  
> or more flagrantly irrational beliefs. (virgi birth, stole election ,  
> etc.)*
> > 11. *Challenges to these beliefs only increase charismees allegiance 
> to the group*
> > 12. *Therefore, Obama should have kept his smarty-pants mouth shut. *
> >
> > You all ca*n* evaluate the heuristic, rationality, a*n*d probability 
> of this argument.  I am going to stop *n*ow because my keyboard has 
> stopped reliably producing “*n’s” * ad is drivig me uts.  At best, I 
> think evolutionary atavism is a source of plausible hypotheses about 
> why organisms are not adapted to their current circumstances.  See 
> some of you tomorrow.
> >
> > Sicerely,
> >
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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