Spandrel

[thompnickson2]

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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021 10:53 AM
To: [hidden email]
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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[Eric Charles-2]

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.

Great connection! 

The evolutionary function of a behavior or body structure is the reason it has been selected for. (<Gould kicks in the door> "If it has been selected for!" <me> "Yes, yes, we are covering that on the other thread just fine.") So, for example, it may be that getting access to protein and calcium is important for being a successful Irish Elk, and evolution favors both males who get lots of protein and female who select males who get lots of protein. 

But what do female Irish Elk know about protein consumption? Answer: Nothing. Despite millions of years of evolutionary pressure, neither gender of Irish Elk has even a rudimentary grasp of amino-acid chemistry. So, evolution needs something else to latch onto. Something detectable. It turns out that antlers are made of mostly excess protein. So if you are good at making big antlers, you are de facto good at getting excess protein. 

As a result of that, you have female Irish Elk walking around with the goal of nabbing the male Irish Elk with the biggest antlers. And "goal" is used there in the psychological sense - the female will seek out the male with the largest Antlers around, varying behavior as necessary to achieve that end. That the female's behavior is directed at getting to the male with the largest antlers is an experimentally verifiable (or refutable) aspect of her behavioral design. No dualism here, just an objective description of how the female's behavior varies across circumstances to keep her headed towards a particular end point.  

We can do experiments where we artificially enhance the antlers of males who are (apparently) sub par at protein collection, and thereby show that females are responding to antler size, not protein collection ability itself. And, by deduction, any male that evolved a way to grow huge antlers on less protein would be able to exploit that goal, without fulfilling the function. 

Many perennial confusions in efforts at creating an evolutionary psychology come from not distinguishing those two concepts cleanly. It would be a significant mischaracterization of the situation to say "The female is trying to get the male who is best at getting protein." The female is trying to get the male with the biggest antlers. We have females who are currently trying to do that, because in the past, such a preference has functioned to produce young elk who were, on average, better at getting protein than the competition. You can't talk coherently about evolution or about psychology without keeping those things separate. 

P.S. Those of you who are fans of recently-extinct mega fauna know I shouldn't be talking about Irish Elk in the present tense, and that none of the experiments above have been done in that species... though similar experiments have been performed in countless others. I'm not sure why Irish Elk popped into my mind, but that's what I had to work with. That species went extinct a few thousand years ago, and had the largest antlers of any deer species ever, coming in at around 90 pounds (40 kg). There is much speculation that the ridiculous antler size was due to sexual selection run amuck, and that overgrown antlers contributed to the species extinction by making it hard to avoid predators (including humans).

 

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[thompnickson2]

Nifty, eric.  Nifty. 

 

n

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021 8:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Goal and Function (in the context of Evolution)

 

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.

 

Great connection! 

 

The evolutionary function of a behavior or body structure is the reason it has been selected for. (<Gould kicks in the door> "If it has been selected for!" <me> "Yes, yes, we are covering that on the other thread just fine.") So, for example, it may be that getting access to protein and calcium is important for being a successful Irish Elk, and evolution favors both males who get lots of protein and female who select males who get lots of protein. 

 

But what do female Irish Elk know about protein consumption? Answer: Nothing. Despite millions of years of evolutionary pressure, neither gender of Irish Elk has even a rudimentary grasp of amino-acid chemistry. So, evolution needs something else to latch onto. Something detectable. It turns out that antlers are made of mostly excess protein. So if you are good at making big antlers, you are de facto good at getting excess protein. 

 

As a result of that, you have female Irish Elk walking around with the goal of nabbing the male Irish Elk with the biggest antlers. And "goal" is used there in the psychological sense - the female will seek out the male with the largest Antlers around, varying behavior as necessary to achieve that end. That the female's behavior is directed at getting to the male with the largest antlers is an experimentally verifiable (or refutable) aspect of her behavioral design. No dualism here, just an objective description of how the female's behavior varies across circumstances to keep her headed towards a particular end point.  

 

We can do experiments where we artificially enhance the antlers of males who are (apparently) sub par at protein collection, and thereby show that females are responding to antler size, not protein collection ability itself. And, by deduction, any male that evolved a way to grow huge antlers on less protein would be able to exploit that goal, without fulfilling the function. 

 

Many perennial confusions in efforts at creating an evolutionary psychology come from not distinguishing those two concepts cleanly. It would be a significant mischaracterization of the situation to say "The female is trying to get the male who is best at getting protein." The female is trying to get the male with the biggest antlers. We have females who are currently trying to do that, because in the past, such a preference has functioned to produce young elk who were, on average, better at getting protein than the competition. You can't talk coherently about evolution or about psychology without keeping those things separate. 

 

P.S. Those of you who are fans of recently-extinct mega fauna know I shouldn't be talking about Irish Elk in the present tense, and that none of the experiments above have been done in that species... though similar experiments have been performed in countless others. I'm not sure why Irish Elk popped into my mind, but that's what I had to work with. That species went extinct a few thousand years ago, and had the largest antlers of any deer species ever, coming in at around 90 pounds (40 kg). There is much speculation that the ridiculous antler size was due to sexual selection run amuck, and that overgrown antlers contributed to the species extinction by making it hard to avoid predators (including humans).

 

 

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[Prof David West]

your 'steelman' is pretty close.

The process of mutation-selection seems to be working on a whole — a face, just as an architect is working on a whole room or building. While doing so, a side effect, a proto-spandrel, emerges. Now the architect notices this proto-spandrel and decides it would look better if it was decorated; and she then focuses her attention on the proto-spandrel and does her thing.

What is the equivalent to the architect-with-focused-attention in Nature and why did it arise? Is it a kind of "epicycle?"

Or is it the case that multiple mutations - brain-forehead, chin, and nose occur simultaneously but purely coincidentally and it is always the whole - the face that is evolving albeit, under the covers, through a coordinated set of quasi-independet mutation-selections?

If the latter, then it would seem that the organism, as a whole, is the only thing that evolves. In every iteration, a host of random mutations occur, throughout the organism, and they work, in concert, to generate the next iteration of the whole organism.

What we see as independently evolving features — beaks, nesting behavior, eyeballs, noses, spandrels — do not exist in any real sense except as projections of our limited ability to conceptualize and deal with the complexity of the whole, as a whole?

Bonner's discussion of randomness, coupled with Wegner's demonstration that results of random change in the genome are highly likely to be both viable and consistent with the state from which they evolved.

Of course, I am merely confirming my ignorance with this.

davew

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, at 11:11 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Did I understand you correctly?  Is your quandary accurately expressed below.  If genes modulate the growth of skull, and jaws differentially, how can  “face” become a thing for the purposes of natural selection.  I think this question IS the basic challenge of evolutionary theory.  It is the question of the evolution of modularity.   I have always imagined that the answer lay in some attractor in developmental systems … blah blah.  But SteveG persistently reminds me that it might be scaffolded by physical systems, in exactly the same way that life’s origins was scaffolded by the molecular structure of white smoker vents in the sea bottom.  How could physical systems scaffold natural selection?

 

Nick   

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:57 PM

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

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

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:01 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

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 <[hidden email]> 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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[jon zingale]

Well, I will validate your ignorance with my own. That the organism is
evolving as a whole is where I am as well. I am not sure if you read my
variation on the sober-sorter with divisibility above, but I think it could
offer insight into why there is enough stability that we can afford to
perceive noses as noses, etc...



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[thompnickson2]

Thanks for getting back to me.  I think the face, as such, is like the armpit.  What is the Wegner source.  It should like it’s time for me to feel guilty about not reading it.

 

n

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 10:34 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

your 'steelman' is pretty close.

 

The process of mutation-selection seems to be working on a whole — a face, just as an architect is working on a whole room or building. While doing so, a side effect, a proto-spandrel, emerges. Now the architect notices this proto-spandrel and decides it would look better if it was decorated; and she then focuses her attention on the proto-spandrel and does her thing.

 

What is the equivalent to the architect-with-focused-attention in Nature and why did it arise? Is it a kind of "epicycle?"

 

Or is it the case that multiple mutations - brain-forehead, chin, and nose occur simultaneously but purely coincidentally and it is always the whole - the face that is evolving albeit, under the covers, through a coordinated set of quasi-independet mutation-selections?

 

If the latter, then it would seem that the organism, as a whole, is the only thing that evolves. In every iteration, a host of random mutations occur, throughout the organism, and they work, in concert, to generate the next iteration of the whole organism.

 

What we see as independently evolving features — beaks, nesting behavior, eyeballs, noses, spandrels — do not exist in any real sense except as projections of our limited ability to conceptualize and deal with the complexity of the whole, as a whole?

 

Bonner's discussion of randomness, coupled with Wegner's demonstration that results of random change in the genome are highly likely to be both viable and consistent with the state from which they evolved.

 

Of course, I am merely confirming my ignorance with this.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, at 11:11 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Did I understand you correctly?  Is your quandary accurately expressed below.  If genes modulate the growth of skull, and jaws differentially, how can  “face” become a thing for the purposes of natural selection.  I think this question IS the basic challenge of evolutionary theory.  It is the question of the evolution of modularity.   I have always imagined that the answer lay in some attractor in developmental systems … blah blah.  But SteveG persistently reminds me that it might be scaffolded by physical systems, in exactly the same way that life’s origins was scaffolded by the molecular structure of white smoker vents in the sea bottom.  How could physical systems scaffold natural selection?

 

Nick   

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:57 PM

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

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

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:01 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

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 <[hidden email]> 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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[Prof David West]

Arrival of The Fittest is the book. Jenny and I have read it and agree that there is something important there, but not necessarily for you biologists, but as a metaphor/foundation for some things we want to say in other areas.

davew

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021, at 1:54 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Thanks for getting back to me.  I think the face, as such, is like the armpit.  What is the Wegner source.  It should like it’s time for me to feel guilty about not reading it.

 

n

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 10:34 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

your 'steelman' is pretty close.

 

The process of mutation-selection seems to be working on a whole — a face, just as an architect is working on a whole room or building. While doing so, a side effect, a proto-spandrel, emerges. Now the architect notices this proto-spandrel and decides it would look better if it was decorated; and she then focuses her attention on the proto-spandrel and does her thing.

 

What is the equivalent to the architect-with-focused-attention in Nature and why did it arise? Is it a kind of "epicycle?"

 

Or is it the case that multiple mutations - brain-forehead, chin, and nose occur simultaneously but purely coincidentally and it is always the whole - the face that is evolving albeit, under the covers, through a coordinated set of quasi-independet mutation-selections?

 

If the latter, then it would seem that the organism, as a whole, is the only thing that evolves. In every iteration, a host of random mutations occur, throughout the organism, and they work, in concert, to generate the next iteration of the whole organism.

 

What we see as independently evolving features — beaks, nesting behavior, eyeballs, noses, spandrels — do not exist in any real sense except as projections of our limited ability to conceptualize and deal with the complexity of the whole, as a whole?

 

Bonner's discussion of randomness, coupled with Wegner's demonstration that results of random change in the genome are highly likely to be both viable and consistent with the state from which they evolved.

 

Of course, I am merely confirming my ignorance with this.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, at 11:11 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Did I understand you correctly?  Is your quandary accurately expressed below.  If genes modulate the growth of skull, and jaws differentially, how can  “face” become a thing for the purposes of natural selection.  I think this question IS the basic challenge of evolutionary theory.  It is the question of the evolution of modularity.   I have always imagined that the answer lay in some attractor in developmental systems … blah blah.  But SteveG persistently reminds me that it might be scaffolded by physical systems, in exactly the same way that life’s origins was scaffolded by the molecular structure of white smoker vents in the sea bottom.  How could physical systems scaffold natural selection?

 

Nick   

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:57 PM

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

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

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:01 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

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 <[hidden email]> 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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[thompnickson2]

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 2:46 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

Arrival of The Fittest is the book. Jenny and I have read it and agree that there is something important there, but not necessarily for you biologists, but as a metaphor/foundation for some things we want to say in other areas.

 

davew

 

 

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021, at 1:54 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Thanks for getting back to me.  I think the face, as such, is like the armpit.  What is the Wegner source.  It should like it’s time for me to feel guilty about not reading it.

 

n

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 10:34 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

your 'steelman' is pretty close.

 

The process of mutation-selection seems to be working on a whole — a face, just as an architect is working on a whole room or building. While doing so, a side effect, a proto-spandrel, emerges. Now the architect notices this proto-spandrel and decides it would look better if it was decorated; and she then focuses her attention on the proto-spandrel and does her thing.

 

What is the equivalent to the architect-with-focused-attention in Nature and why did it arise? Is it a kind of "epicycle?"

 

Or is it the case that multiple mutations - brain-forehead, chin, and nose occur simultaneously but purely coincidentally and it is always the whole - the face that is evolving albeit, under the covers, through a coordinated set of quasi-independet mutation-selections?

 

If the latter, then it would seem that the organism, as a whole, is the only thing that evolves. In every iteration, a host of random mutations occur, throughout the organism, and they work, in concert, to generate the next iteration of the whole organism.

 

What we see as independently evolving features — beaks, nesting behavior, eyeballs, noses, spandrels — do not exist in any real sense except as projections of our limited ability to conceptualize and deal with the complexity of the whole, as a whole?

 

Bonner's discussion of randomness, coupled with Wegner's demonstration that results of random change in the genome are highly likely to be both viable and consistent with the state from which they evolved.

 

Of course, I am merely confirming my ignorance with this.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, at 11:11 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Did I understand you correctly?  Is your quandary accurately expressed below.  If genes modulate the growth of skull, and jaws differentially, how can  “face” become a thing for the purposes of natural selection.  I think this question IS the basic challenge of evolutionary theory.  It is the question of the evolution of modularity.   I have always imagined that the answer lay in some attractor in developmental systems … blah blah.  But SteveG persistently reminds me that it might be scaffolded by physical systems, in exactly the same way that life’s origins was scaffolded by the molecular structure of white smoker vents in the sea bottom.  How could physical systems scaffold natural selection?

 

Nick   

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:57 PM

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Spandrel

 

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

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 11:01 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

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 <[hidden email]> 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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