Jame5

It has long been the criticism of Darwinian evolution that it lacks something that religions are viewed as being superior in: spiritual depth. Well – I happen to disagree. Let me tell you why.

Evolution works by chance mutation and non chance retention by natural selection thus moving towards ever higher levels of fitness. At the end of that process are you and me looking out of our skulls at our environment trying to make sense of it all. But evolution did not give us a large book with things that we should or should not do. However, evolution nevertheless kept close tabs on what has happened to our ancestors. Or rather what caused them to increase or decrease the chances of their gene’s survival and these chances are today encoded in our genes and it is our ancestors that are indirectly guiding our every action.

No – I do not mean that figuratively speaking. Think about it: imagine you cutting your finger. The pain experienced by you as a result is equivalent to the decrease in your ancestors likelihood of ensuring the survival of their genes. The pain is the averaged out equivalent of all your forebearers sharing their individual stories with you in that moment of pain. Think of distant relative Ungh who through your pain is whispering his story to you from the beyond how after having cut his finger contracted an infection, lost his finger and due to his reduced dexterity wasn’t an as effective hunter anymore. Or the sad story of the nameless rodent who after happening to cut its finger died not long after the incident from blood poisoning.

The same is true of cause with positive sensations. Imagine how many of your ancestors must have survived the winter because they happened to eat that sugary piece of fruit the previous autumn. Or how, held together by the loving closeness of a tenderly caressing partner, caused them to master the difficulties of life.

Next time you feel hurt or happy spend a minute reflecting on this causal link to your past. For you will be sharing the moment with thousands of your well wishing ancestors.

Evolution – meaning the process of chance mutation and non-chance retention by natural selection – is a slow, tedious and complexity bound process on the genetic level as pointed out brilliantly by Eliezer on the overcomming biases blog. Genetic evolution as an optimization process is full of flaws, drawbacks and dead ends. Genetic evolution is blind and if genetic evolution has a goal it can only be seen in the implicit goal of increasing fitness.

Human cognition is a far better optimization process, yet by far not as well understood as genetic evolution. The crucial point of genetic evolution however is, that it is the only naturally occurring optimization process. Having taken 3.5 billion years to evolve the superior optimization process of human cognition one might argue that genetic evolution has done its duty and can retire and leave increasing fitness further to its successor: human cognition.

George Price was a theoretical biologist who committed suicide after haven given all his possessions to the poor. Why you ask? Because he could not deal with the fact that:

One wonders what might have been so terrible about this formula that the man who through his work provided a general way in which to measure the direction and speed of any selection process would felt compelled to kill himself.

Examining the background one uncovers a truly tragic story. For the reason Price started dabbling in the field of theoretical biology in the first place lies in the circumstance that after stumbling over a set of equations that were discovered ten years earlier by William Hamilton he was so disturbed by them that he attempted to disprove them. Yet instead of disproving them he ended up reworking them into a more elegant form and for wider application.

Price had reformulated a set of mathematical equations that show that altruism can prosper in a world where it seems that only selfishness is rewarded. While he showed that true self sacrificing behavior can exist among animals and humans he also proved that there was nothing noble about it – altruism merely is an evolutionary stable strategy. When his work was completed he went mad.

I can empathize with the longing for goodness in the absence of a reason for doing good. How selfless is it to give something only to expect something in return? Are we not touched by stories of self sacrifice and bravery – gallantry and noblesse? Sure we are – exactly because of said equation we evolved to feel that way.

We have evolved to feel warm and fuzzy when we give something without expecting something in return because it increased our fitness. We are fitter because of it. Proving that mathematically would have filled me with great joy. Knowing that one has to do good to others in order to avoid going extinct. By knowing and understanding the altruism equation one can free oneself from having to belief in a fuzzy difficult to grasp concept of goodness without justification and can embrace the mathematical inevitability.

People are not punished for their sins but by their sins in the absence of everything except the mathematical proof. How great is that? It is not only good to do good but it is advantageous – don’t do it and go extinct. Who wants to argue with that?

Follow up 2007/11/12: Having reflected more on Price’s equations it turns out that the implications of the Price equation are further reaching then I initially understood them.  For not only is it beneficial to cooperate and be what is conventionally called ‘altruistic’ but egoism is just as viable a strategy and depending on the pay-offs will result in an evolutionary equilibrium of altruists as well as egoists. More here.

I learned a new word today ‘Evidentialism’

Evidentialism in epistemology is defined by the following thesis about epistemic justification: Person S is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if S’s evidence for p at t supports believing p.

Sounds pretty plausible – no? That in the end is the core argument of the atheist movement: You can not prove the existence of God – therefore you must reject the existence of God.

Technically one would actually have to be an agnostic based on the logic that the existance of a God is unprovable, not an atheist – but that is of course a minor point. Now I have to admit that I am not believing in any religious sense. However, I do believe that carrying particular forms of beliefs can increase an individual’s as well as said individual’s group’s fitness – even if from a purely evidentialist point of view there would be no justification to hold said believe – yes – even when there is clear cut evidence contradicting said belief.

Now that I have learned this new word I shall use it to respond to sentences such as:

“You should not believe in XYZ – you lack the evidence!”

“That is evidentialist thinking. Have you considered that there might be other reasons believing XYZ beside evidence alone?”

Looking at it this way it makes sense that evolution has allowed for humans to hold beliefs not only in the absence of evidence but in the presence of contradicting evidence. Being ignorant of an existing term for this capability I shall call it: irrationalst’s edge.

Irrationalist’s edge is the ability to hold a fitness increasing belief in the presence of contradicting evidence.

I submitted Jame5 to Futurismic.com and they were so kind as to include my submission in their Friday free Fiction section.

Welcome Futurismics! You can find the book  right here.

Would love to hear from you guys 😉