Natural Selection Can Act on Human Culture

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that the process of natural selection can act on human cultures as well as on genes. The team studied reports of canoe designs from 11 Oceanic island cultures, evaluating 96 functional features that could contribute to the seaworthiness of the vessels. Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs. Authors of the study said their results speak directly to urgent social and environmental problems. 'People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term,' said Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford."

Comments

Memetics?

[nickovs]

Isn't this just memetics in action?

Re:Memetics?

[kripkenstein]

Isn't this just memetics in action? Memetics is a fun term. As a qualitative notion, it makes some intuitive sense. But what the article mentions is work that was quantitative (it compared functional vs. decorative features and their rate of change), and hence actually scientific. If you must talk using terms like 'memetics', then you might say that this research is important in that it finally brings some quantitative investigation into memetics instead of the usual 'just-so' stories.

That said, whether the researchers' results can support their wild speculation at the end of TFA (connecting their research to global warming, religious fundamentalism, and what have you) is another thing. Such speculation is silly.

Re:Memetics?

[Niten]

Memetics is a fun term. As a qualitative notion, it makes some intuitive sense. But what the article mentions is work that was quantitative (it compared functional vs. decorative features and their rate of change), and hence actually scientific.

With all respect, what in the hell are you talking about? To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, Memetics is an approach to creating models for cultural information transfer. You know, just like natural selection is an approach to creating models for evolution. Of course it's not "quantitative"; it's a model for understanding the quantitative data.

Re:Memetics?

[TapeCutter]

Kind of an ironic post since nobody is claiming proof.

Re:Memetics?

[kripkenstein]

Memetics is a fun term. As a qualitative notion, it makes some intuitive sense. But what the article mentions is work that was quantitative (it compared functional vs. decorative features and their rate of change), and hence actually scientific.

With all respect, what in the hell are you talking about? To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, Memetics is an approach to creating models for cultural information transfer. You know, just like natural selection is an approach to creating models for evolution. Of course it's not "quantitative"; it's a model for understanding the quantitative data.

The point is that memetics is not amenable to quantitative analysis. In other words, you can't derive hypotheses that you can test, unlike genetic evolution, which has been proven many times over. By studying cultural/mental content, memetics has a far more elusive target.

But it's not impossible. The research we are told about in TFA in fact does that, it (finally) does a serious quantitative study of cultural evolution, a field that until now has been almost entirely about qualitative claims, e.g., "religion is a virus". That might be true, but it isn't testable, hence it isn't scientific in the way that genetic evolution is. (If you believe I am wrong, please supply a reference to a rigorous scientific investigation of memetics, i.e., a quantitative one; thanks in advance.)

I hope this helps.

Re:Memetics?

[It'sYerMam]

You do you realise you can make qualitative predictions, don't you? If I burn calcium, I can predict it will burn red, even if I don't know what wavelength it will be. More relevant, Tiktaalik was a qualitative prediction, as was the appearance of human chromosome 2 - two qualitative predictions very important in the field of evolution.

Re:Memetics?

[Niten]

Here's the problem: You were lambasting memetics as fundamentally unscientific because it can't be used to make "quantitiative" predictions about reality, but here we have what is essentially a study in memetics doing just that... which you yourself admit is the case. Your objection seems to fall along the lines of (1) memetics has little empirical research behind it so far, but (2) this research is scientific, therefore (3) this research must not be memetics. It's an absolute non sequitur.

The point is that memetics is not amenable to quantitative analysis. [...] But it's not impossible. The research we are told about in TFA in fact does that

Well, which is it? The second of the two contradictory positions you take here corroborates my original point that memetics is, in fact, a useful type of scientific model.

The research we are told about in TFA in fact does that, it (finally) does a serious quantitative study of cultural evolution, a field that until now has been almost entirely about qualitative claims, e.g., "religion is a virus". That might be true, but it isn't testable, hence it isn't scientific in the way that genetic evolution is. (If you believe I am wrong, please supply a reference to a rigorous scientific investigation of memetics, i.e., a quantitative one; thanks in advance.)

There hasn't been much research in this area, and it's a shame. But from the dearth of research it does not follow that this field cannot be researched. I recommend you read Daniel Dennett's "Breaking The Spell", in which he both outlines the case for why this field can (and should) be researched scientifically, and encourages scientists to start doing such work.

Re:Memetics?

[kripkenstein]

You do you realise you can make qualitative predictions, don't you? If I burn calcium, I can predict it will burn red, even if I don't know what wavelength it will be. More relevant, Tiktaalik was a qualitative prediction, as was the appearance of human chromosome 2 - two qualitative predictions very important in the field of evolution. Of course. I was focusing on qualitative vs. quantitative because it seemed most relevant. But if you want to be more accurate, then the issue is that memetics is hard to subject to empirical testing, unlike genetics. And that TFA does manage to empirically test a hypothesis about cultural evolution.

Fair enough?

Re:Memetics?

[kripkenstein]

Perhaps I wasn't clear.

What I was saying is this. The simple fact is that cultural evolution has not been empirically tested, so far. This is, among other reasons, because it is hard to quantify. Now, very nicely, TFA shows how this can in fact be done and we can get nice results.

I hope that is better.

Re:Memetics?

[ultranova]

Japan has a law forbidding showing of genitals in art; consequently, the local porn is usually censored. However, Japan also has a thriwing industry for drawn (cartoon) porn; this combined with a pre-existing disposal towards octopuses and the tentacled horror from beyond -concept of Lovecraft and formed the modern-day Japanse tentacle porn scene.

Anyone care to make a doctorate thesis about memetics using this as an example ?-)

Re:Memetics?

[HanzoSpam]

That said, whether the researchers' results can support their wild speculation at the end of TFA (connecting their research to global warming, religious fundamentalism, and what have you) is another thing. Such speculation is silly.

Oh, maybe not entirely silly - but so far the data seem to show that cultural evolution isn't favoring the population the researchers think it should...

Re:Memetics?

[mapkinase]

I would call this disease grantophilia.

Hmmm

[dreamchaser]

This almost reads more like a political agenda than a scientific study. "We must return to nature or we are doomed," to grossly paraphrase.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that civilization was a product of no longer being able to sustent ourselves the easy way (i.e. fishing/hunting until area deployment, then move onto another area), and that underdeveloped countries are the ones cutting down their forests and killing their endangered species for ridiculously low cash, I can't explain why on Earth a bright naturalist could advocate for returning to our roots.
 
...that's why hence I concluded that there are no bright naturalists on this planet.

Re:Hmmm

[jellomizer]

returning to your roots is in the step in the wrong direction. We need to dedicate resources to finding better energy solutions and toanahe our human resources better. If we had the population today and everyone has horses it would be even more of an enviromemtal nightmare. The car when invented was considered an enviromemtal inovation.

Re:Hmmm

[vertinox]

"We must return to nature or we are doomed," to grossly paraphrase.

I'll disagree about the returning to nature part, but systems which have some type of natural selection are usually the ones that end up being more efficient in the real world than on paper. Take planned economy versus a free economy. There are just too many variables to economics to simply plan it out and force it to work. But when you have it setup in a way that businesses sink or swim simply but "natural" process then only the strongest or at least well managed businesses survive.

Now the organizations themselves on an individual level might be very centralized, but again it depends on how well your situation scales.

In the Windoze world

[spammeister]

Does that mean because Windows Vista is an inferior design to XP does that mean natural selection could play a role in "weeding out" this particular direction the Windows world is taking? Definitely an "unsustainable approach" as far as I'm concerned.

Or we just put separate M$ design teams on a deserted islands on the Pacific and whoever can build a canoe to get them back to society wins?

Re:In the Windoze world

[mce]

Does that mean because Windows Vista is an inferior design to XP does that mean natural selection could play a role in "weeding out" this particular direction the Windows world is taking? Definitely an "unsustainable approach" as far as I'm concerned.

It could play a role. But that does not imply that it will lead to the desired result.

One thing that I often notice when topics like natural selection (and evolution) are being debated, is that people cite an example in which the "stronger" or "better" animal or system has lost to claim that this proves selection and survival of the fittest are nonsense. But this is a fallacy. Reversing the logic: it is not because natural selection is at work that better designs always win. Selection is a statistical phenomenon in any case and - as noted in the article - it can also be ofset by "external" factors that influence or (radically) change the environment. E.g. Microsoft has so much resources/power that they surely can push Vista to take over even if XP is better. On the long run, doing this might not be best for Microsoft itself, but that's another matter.

Re:In the Windoze world

[Z00L00K]

Natural selection has a great deal of randomness involved. Some features that occurs may be completely irrelevant, which means that they neither improve nor decrease the ability to survive. In other cases a change may be balanced out by another so the survival rate is still the same as before.

This means that it's only over a long time that survivability and evolutionary changes can play a role. OK, in the software world a long time is measured in the scale of minutes to a few years - but in the matter of living things like humans it's best measured in generations. A change that occurred many generations ago induced a gene that causes the disorder Hemochromatosis. This was a useful gene for people when the food was very low in iron, but today we have food with a lot of iron and therefore this gene is a bad thing. However in this case the treatment is very simple compared to many other diseases and disorders.

The same goes for computer programs - a feature that is essential for the usability in one generation can be a really big problem in the upcoming generations. It may also be that a feature may be useful in the short term, like the ability to call out warnings. Unfortunately when humans are involved warnings tends to lose their edge over time, but the computer software will not understand this. So in that perspective all those warnings that Vista bloats us with are useless.

As for the canoe example - the canoes used by the pacific islanders are completely different from canoes for river use. And they have the sibling the Kayak, which is very useful for the environment where it originated, but it's not so useful when it comes to long-distance travel. Differences in material used is also important. The materials used by a Kayak may not survive for long close to the equator (it may draw sharks) while it is the best solution for arctic environments.

So the conclusion is that there is no perfect canoe - it depends very much on where it is used, and sometimes an insignificant difference between two individuals may be irrelevant in any other environment than the precise home environment of the specific canoe where it may prove a very useful feature.

Same goes for humans. In central Africa people tends to have large noses while in arctic regions the nose is small. The reason is that a large nose can allow for more heat to escape while a person is breathing while a small one is useful for conserving the heat.

Long-term

[michaelmalak]

Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term.

Oh, it'll work out very well in the long term, that is, assuming the entire race isn't annihilated. The most sustainable cultures on Earth will survive. I think the quoted researcher meant to say medium term.

Re:Long-term

[AikonMGB]

I think you misunderstood the quoted researcher.

Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term.

(Emphasis mine). The researcher is saying that European/North-American/etc. culture is currently operating in an unsustainable way, and that this works in the short-term (i.e. we are "developing" and "improving" our lives), but that in the long-haul, any culture that hopes to survive must operate in a sustainable way. If they don't, they will consume all available resources until their way-of-life disintegrates around them.

Aikon-

Re:Long-term

[Lumpy]

You know, I watched the comedy Idiocracy a long time ago and Initially thought that it was not possible. As time goes on, I think it was more of a omen than comedy. They have one good point in that movie. the Stupid have lots of children, the smart tend to have very few or no children. This rapidly depletes the Gene Pool of the smarter people. Creating a society of idiots.

Honestly it feels like that is where we are heading. I know historically we have always been there, but it just seems worse because we live it today.

The number of children born with genetic defects (not major, bot minor that will propagate further in the populace over time) is higher than children born without them. Sure a lot of that is environment as well, but that goes back to my original point, the poor are usually not the smart and they are forced to live in older homes with lead paint and asbestos in industrial areas with higher air pollution. The smart typically can find a way to make enough money to afford the non lead home away from the oil refineries and steel mills. This is not racist it's a economic fact that affects the life of the smart and not smart. Yes I know LOTS of not smart that have college education and are CEO's CFO's and upper managers but those are the anomaly today. Big business used to make sure the men at the top got there by being the best of the best instead of buddies or frat brothers or being known.

Natural selection and evolution is going bad in the human race because of the past 50 years of making sure everything is "safe" and building for the lowest common denominator instead of what should be done. Watch, in 500 years we will be a planet with a very high concentration of morons, watering the fields with electrolyte enhanced sports drink and watching the getting kicked in the groin show.

Re:Long-term

[Attila Dimedici]

Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term.

(Emphasis mine). The researcher is saying that European/North-American/etc. culture is currently operating in an unsustainable way, and that this works in the short-term (i.e. we are "developing" and "improving" our lives), but that in the long-haul, any culture that hopes to survive must operate in a sustainable way. If they don't, they will consume all available resources until their way-of-life disintegrates around them.

Aikon-

That very quote calls into question the researcher in question as a scientist. There is no evidence that Western Civilization is unsustainable. Intuitively, it seems like it must be. However, Julian Simon made a bet with Paul Ehrlich that resources were becoming less expensive. Paul Ehrlich and several colleagues selected five metals in 1980 that they felt would rise in price over the next decoade. Julian Simon bet them that they would fall or stay the same. Julian SImon won the bet, all five metals fell in price. THis bet does not prove the sustainability of Western Civilization, but it does suggest that the intuitive feeling that it is unsustainable is flawed.

Re:Long-term

[AikonMGB]

Have you taken a look at Western Civilization's fossil-fuel consumption? These are resources that by their very definition are not replenishable. And, quite frankly, all the metals in the world won't do you squat if you don't have the energy to drive them around or build anything with them. Beyond fossil fuels, there are other important resources, such a food. Notice how the deserts (in North America, sure, but in China in particular) are growing? They are losing arable soil at an alarming rate, and yet their population is increasing all the same. Food doesn't grow on trees, you know ;) In all seriousness, what happens when you go to the market to buy food for your family and find that vegetables have gone up in price 10-fold because China has started importing en masse?

These are just two particular examples, but there are many more.. do some research on the renewable water table levels in Asia; you might be surprised how dry some of their mega-aquifers are. There's no point in trying to defend the "sustainability" of a fossil-fuel based society/economy. Even if the space program takes off and we fly to Titan to rape her resources, we're just prolonging the same situation: a dependence on a resource that is fundamentally limited in quantity.

----- Note that the above is the end of my point, and what follows is just additional ranting; do not make reference to it when defending the discussion at hand, as I am well aware that I am now talking about time-scales on the thousands or tens-of-thousands of years. -----

When you get down to it, nuclear power; there is a finite amount of suitable radioactive material in this world that, assuming our use of nuclear power continues to rise, will one day run out (of course this is much longer-span than fossil-fuels, but the time it takes is the only difference).

North-America (which I can speak to directly since I live there) lives in a wasteful, consumerist society. We are wasteful of our environment, we are wasteful of our resources, of our energy, of our food... In the "long term", unless we leave this planet, our energy consumption must be limited to a "solar quota", i.e. the amount of sunlight the Earth receives, as that is the only "input" energy this world has. Everything else is simply consuming solar energy that was stored a long time ago.

----- And now for some wild hyperbole, simply because its fun. -----

Actually, if you really get down to it, there's no point in anything since anything we do contributes to the eventual heat death of the Universe, and there is only a finite amount of energy (assuming a finite Universe) that we can consume even if we had ideal means of obtaining it.

Re:Long-term

[michaelmalak]

Uh, yeah, that was my joke. The researcher used the word "work" in reference to the narrow definition of Western culture, whereas I broadened it up to include the whole human race.

Re:Long-term

[TheLink]

So what will happen is the Stupid will vote, but a few of the Smart will still control everything...

Maybe the species might split eventually, but I don't think the Smart are that smart are they?

Re:Long-term

[rrohbeck]

>Oh, it'll work out very well in the long term, that is, assuming the entire race isn't annihilated.

Reminds me of a quote from BBC's "Planet Earth" series (I'm paraphrasing): "Why are all species part of natural cycles? The ones that fouled their nest didn't make it for long."

People are used to thinking in decades or centuries. Obviously our path is not sustainable over millennia. So the question is, are we going to invent our way out of that natural resource crunch or not, and what will the collateral damage be?

Re:Long-term

[Attila Dimedici]

You are arrogant. The facts and available resources we know today are all we will ever know. No one will ever come up with solutions we could not imagine today.
Coal is a non replenishable, yet me have centuries more of coal supply today than we had in 1950, even though we haven't found a significant increase in the amount of known coal reserves. Why? because we don't use as much coal today as we did then. How do you know that the same won't happen with oil?

Re:Long-term

[PMBjornerud]

These are just two particular examples, but there are many more.. do some research on the renewable water table levels in Asia; you might be surprised how dry some of their mega-aquifers are. There's no point in trying to defend the "sustainability" of a fossil-fuel based society/economy. Even if the space program takes off and we fly to Titan to rape her resources, we're just prolonging the same situation: a dependence on a resource that is fundamentally limited in quantity. Actually, this is my definition of intelligent life: "Exploit limited resources to gain an advantage"

So, yeah. It's not just western civilization. As you write yourself, everything we are and everything we could be, the meaning of life itself. It all hinges on exploiting limited resources, until the heat death of the universe.

Now that we got that part out of the way, let's discuss at what RATE we should be consuming those resources. This, my friends, is the path to enlightenment.

Re:Long-term

[Spy Hunter]

there is a finite amount of suitable radioactive material in this world

Yeah, and the sun's going to run out too. As Keynes said: "In the long run, we're all dead." But that's not really useful when debating practical economic issues...

what happens when you go to the market to buy food for your family and find that vegetables have gone up in price 10-fold because China has started importing en masse?

Go to work for a farmer. America runs the best farms in the world, and if China was to import more from us it would be *great* for our economy. Of course, if the price of vegetables went up 10-fold overnight it would cause economic upheaval, but that's not likely to happen (the Chinese can't afford to pay that for vegetables any more than we can). A more reasonable increase moderated over a relatively long period of time, to allow the economy to adjust, would not necessarily be terrible. Farmers could go back to employing Americans, instead of illegal aliens.

"Natural" Selection

[syousef]

Natural selection, vs Intelligent boat design: The new debate

But seriously, this approach on first glance says to me that these scientists don't understand the word natural in the term Natural Selection, and probably don't understand scientific method very well either. I mean for fuck sake, human beings have time and time again built bigger and better designs over time in many areas. Anything that can be engineered. Boats, Bridges, Buildings. You name it. That's nothing new. Misapplying statistical analysis, based on fitness criteria with 20/20 hindsight sounds like junk science. to me.

(Note: I do not have time to read the article right now and I'm having to assume the summary is accurate...which in itself ain't very scientific. Perhaps I'll take a look at the actual article tomorrow).

Re:"Natural" Selection

[talljosh]

But seriously, this approach on first glance says to me that these scientists don't understand the word natural in the term Natural Selection, and probably don't understand scientific method very well either.
Based on my understanding of the biological process of natural selection, natural selection would roughly translate in this instance to the boats which are most well-suited for thir environment surviving long enough to reproduce while those less well-suited dying off before they can breed.
I agree: the observations would seem to be better explained by good design practices than by some form of natural selection.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[Anonymous Coward]

When scientists begin to say that boat designs are the product of natural selection, the creationists win.

I'm sure you've all heard the example of the submarine evolving from the boat. The creationists know there was an intelligent designer overseeing that process. If scientists shift ID into engineering and call that natural selection, then there's absolutely no reason to remove the Designer from human origins either.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[26199]

The "natural selection" they are talking about is exactly the same for cultural traits as for genetic traits. Good traits => higher chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. Bad traits => lower chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. This clearly applies to canoe design, regardless of whether other factors are involved because of actual engineering work. It's inescapable that if you do something that kills you then you won't be around to teach others to do it.

The important part is that they compare variation over time of functional and non-functional aspects of canoe design, and show that functional aspects have changed more slowly. They make the analogy to biological evolution where slower change is an indicator that the traits are being selected for, i.e. are subject to evolutionary pressure.

At this point I don't know enough about either field to comment, and apparently it's a controversial idea, but it certainly seems to me to be an argument worthy of attention.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[einhverfr]

Or maybe:

Joe here makes better canoes than Jim so I will buy them from Joe.

Next year:

Jim has copied Joe's designs and charges less so now I will buy then from Jim.

Next year:

My friends tell me that Joe's new canoes are just a little better than Jim's because he has made some tiny improvements. I guess I will go back to buying them from Joe.

The fact of the matter is that it is generally harder to improve on a good design than a bad one. Yet people want something that is functional and often people learn from their mistakes.

I think the term "natural selection" is misapplied in this case because it is looking at technical developments moreso than cultural developments. Ultimately, however, culture is extremely complex and it is next to impossible to evaluate functional aspects of culture in a statistically valid way.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[mysticgoat]

natural selection would roughly translate in this instance to the plans for boats which are well-suited for their environment surviving long enough to be taught to younger planners while those less well-suited are forgotten before they are taught to anyone.

Fixed that for you.

I happen to agree with the corrected version. Especially in this instance, since an aspiring apprentice boat builder would seek training from the guy whose boats survived the really bad storms, and shun the builder whose boats sink if they go outside the lagoon.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[oldhack]

Yep, these "scientists" must be from their marketing dept.

To NSF: Don't fund these einsteins.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[jnana]

It seems to me that the gist of this study is that those characteristics of canoes which you can change however you like without destroying the function of the canoe and possibly killing people are changed much more than those that can't be changed without impairing the function of the canoe and possibly killing people. In short, fundamental characteristics change less so than periphery characteristics.

This does not seem newsworthy to me.

If we change to modern commercial airplanes for a moment, would anybody actually expect seat cover color and toilet paper braid patterns of the planes to change less than the basic winged structure?

Additionally, they do not seem to consider that the non-functional characteristics may be matters of aesthetics or subject to fads, while you just can't fundamentally change the design of a complex structure as frequently as you can objects of aesthetics that have no functional consequences. And you have little desire to do so either.

It's an interesting idea, but the article spends no time justifying the use of 'natural selection' as a framework for understanding the changes. It just assumes it is applicable because there is change. If that's the case, then anything with multiple characteristics, some of which change at different rates than the others, can be understood in this same way. But that makes 'natural selection' so vague as to be meaningless.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[CmdrGravy]

I read the article and I think all they proved was that aspects of the boat design which didn't impact it's operation changed more frequently than design elements which did impact the boats operation. E.g. drawings on the boats change quite frequently whereas hull design remains pretty much the same.

The reason for this is obviously that when people build boats which don't work because perhaps they stupidly left a large hole in the bottom of it not many other boat builders copy this new design, they don't make another boat in that way again and decide in future to limit their own artistic licence with the boat they're building to parts which don't cause it to sink.

Perhaps that is something like natural selection but the above is the actual reason for this observation.

Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford, said their findings demonstrate that "some cultural choices work while others clearly do not

I think what she probably meant to say was that some engineering choices physically work whilst others don't.

I have no clue how the second part of the article relates to the first part, on the one hand we learn about this study of boats and then without warning it appears to launch into a rant about living close to nature and modern civilisation being doomed if we don't learn how to 'ethically' change societies to submit to their masters will.

Examples of cultural approaches that are putting humans at risk include "everything from the economic incentives, industrial technologies and growth mentality that cause climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, to the religious polarization and political ideologies that generate devastating conflict around the globe,"

Surely everything humans do put us and themselves at risk, there is no such thing as a risk free course of action and Rogers doesn't really say why these things are any riskier than anything else we might decide to do. Since society has obviously taken several hundred thousand years to reach the point its at now and Rogers previously said that things which work tend to remain central parts of human cultures then surely what we're doing now we're doing because it works best.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[KnightTristan]

Nonsense!

For natural selection you need to following ingredients:

1. inheritance: skills to build boats and their designs are passed from father to son.
2. mutation: not everyone is as good in boat building, some sons didn't listen very well, and some get creative
3. differential replication: methods and designs to build GOOD boats will have more change to be replicated than designs of boats that sink to the bottom. Here, we probalby leave the path of father to son inheritance, and ideas also start to spread horizontally.

Once these ingredients are in place, natural selection automatically kicks in and starts doing its almost magical work. Now BEAR IN MIND that not the boats are replicating here! BUT THE METHODS TO BUILD A BOAT! Building the boat itself and using it to travel across water is just a happy side effect. The method of building the boat, the very knowledge and skills itself are here the "living thing" that tries to survive and convince us to pass our knowledge to other hosts.

To us, that indeed _seems_ to be just good design practice, but that's just because we're part of the equation. A design practice that is good is more likely to be passed than one that is bad. We're both the breeders and the selectors! But it still is natural selection.

What is the most successful recipe for a cake? One that is the most delicious of the entire world but is kept as a secret a dies when its creator is sent to the grave, or a less delicious one but is freely passed from one man to another?

The keyword here is "memes", and you should read the article "The New Replicators" by Daniel Dennet before you make any further comments.

Re:"Natural" Selection

[26199]

Well -- I would hope that they address that in the paper. Simply going off what's in the article, I agree, there's not much there ... but, then, it's a popular science article. It's best not to expect too much :)

Re:"Natural" Selection

[jnana]

Yeah, I would hope so, too. I was just venting because the article is so poorly written, and there is no non-paywalled version of the paper available.

Re:Evolution/design

[Cairnarvon]

That's a beautifully convoluted straw man you have there.

Nobody's saying evolution necessarily implies a lack of a designer.
In the case of the evolution of life, we're saying a designer is not necessary at all to explain what we're seeing, and in fact introducing a designer creates a whole host of new problems that need answering without adding any value.

If you want to imply a designer, the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence. Until someone can point to something that couldn't have arisen without intervention from a designer (irreducible complexity in a real sense, I suppose; the examples the ID movement has brought on have all been debunked, though), invoking one is just bad science.

So Obvious It Hurts

[Zygamorph]

Well duh!

This reminds me of the study that determined:

1. Women walk differently from men; and
2. The reason is that they are built different.

Aside from bowing to the creative gods of proposal write ups that got paid to watch women walk by I wondered if research money could have been spent more wisely. This appears to be another example.

Maybe its just my godlike point of view :-), but I thought Darwinism ( a.k.a. selection of the fittest) applied to everything. If you have some system, biologic, economic, social, whatever, that is better adapted to the environment then it has an advantage and will tend tobe more successful than a competitor that doesn't. Where the discussion comes in is what is "an advantage" and "what is success". Darwinism tends to define "success" as "continues to have descendants", that doesn't even mean same species. Short term gain versus long term pain means that in the short term the thing "succeeds" but in the long term it doesn't. Its an on going process that will never end can not be stopped.

The idea that mankind is the "winner" on planet earth should be qualified with "at the moment". Dinosaurs were "the winners" longer than we have been and they eventually failed. seems kind of obvious that the jury is still out on us.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[Eternauta3k]

The idea that mankind is the "winner" on planet earth should be qualified with "at the moment"

Winner? We are smarter, but we aren't nearly as many as, say, the ants.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[maxume]

I would gladly take the resources of man-kind over the resources of ant-kind in a war(not that I actually want to, ants are mostly either beneficial or benign).

This is leaving aside the semantic question of what constitutes an individual for ants.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[TheLink]

How sure are you that humans would win against ants? As in totally wipe out every single ant colony (otherwise they'll just come back :) ).

I don't think it's so easy. The humans can't even wipe out blood sucking mosquitoes (if we are not careful with what we throw at them, we might not survive either).

How can people say that humans are a winner at this point? We've only been around for a very short time.

Stuff like bacteria can survive extended periods in space (I suspect some fungi might too). Anywhere we go, they will go. And they can go places that we might never get to - they could survive a long time in/on an asteroid.

They have been around before, during, and after the dinosaurs.

High intelligence could just be a "peacocks tail" or a negative mutation.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[maxume]

It depends a great deal upon what the rules are. I probably would have better expressed what I was thinking had I said battle instead of war.

In terms of long term survival, perhaps the ants and germs do have the advantage. Thinking about it sure is fun though.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[TheLink]

Well try think of ways of killing those blood sucking mosquitoes.

I'm fine with ants or even roaches. But those mosquitoes? As long as they suck blood, I think they should die. They should evolve and suck plant sap like aphids.

When one takes a full blood drink from me, I wonder if the mosquito's content ratio of my cells to mosquito cells is more than 50%.

BTW humans contain more bacteria than human cells :).

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[Zarf]

The idea that mankind is the "winner" on planet earth should be qualified with "at the moment". Dinosaurs were "the winners" longer than we have been and they eventually failed. seems kind of obvious that the jury is still out on us. There are no winners, at least not in that sense, just survivors. The survivors live and breed and that's it. There is no great prize or contest other than continued existence. If your genes continue to exist or not. The jury is always out, every day, it never ends. The dinosaur's genes are alive and well to day in chickens. Our genes might also be alive and well in 80 million years in some kind of devolved primate-rabbit thingy that is fed upon by giant centipedes*. Or, perhaps the technological singularity that Kurzweil talks about will render all this meat-world natural selection business obsolete.

Point is there are no winners but there are definitely losers in natural selection.

Note: (* that was an H. G. Wells reference from the censored text from "The Time Machine" some copies do not include it as it was too shocking)

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[maxume]

Yeah, I've seen the cell ratio stuff before. Who is winning that battle though? Is it even a battle?

I don't really mind mosquitoes; I've been bitten enough(hundreds, thousands of times) that I don't scratch the bites anymore, so the irritation goes away quickly(I don't live in an area where I have to worry about them carrying disease).

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[greyhueofdoubt]

In fairness, the OP should have used one species of dinosaur compared to humans; I can't think of a (single species of) dinosaur that was around for the entire era that the OP was probably referring to (mesozoic).

A fairer analogy would be dinosaurs vs mammals (mammals win) or reptiles vs mammals (reptiles win).

-b

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[Zarf]

A fairer analogy would be dinosaurs vs mammals (mammals win) or reptiles vs mammals (reptiles win). Both still exist. The ones that don't exist lose. Groups dominate (or not) by natural selection and chance. It is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one. So no real "winners" as that would imply some kind of intrinsic merit where there is none.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[greyhueofdoubt]

I guess I wasn't trying to actually imply merit based on longevity. I was just correcting the OP's argument. The OP was equating that longevity=merit but he based it on incorrect data; I simply corrected his assumptions. I'm not saying that I agree with the OP or not.

On the other hand, I think it's fairly obvious that mammals will outlive reptiles. Sorry to any reptiles here at /.

-b

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[Zarf]

On the other hand, I think it's fairly obvious that mammals will outlive reptiles. Sorry to any reptiles here at /.

Actually, that's a fairly interesting assumption. What if the world gets a whole lot warmer and that whole "internal body heat" thing becomes more of a burden than a benefit? So a big extinction also crops back the number of species and it turns out that not wasting energy maintaining body heat means you are more efficient. If there isn't much to eat being super efficient might be a bigger benefit than having quick reflexes by wasting calories to keep your muscles warm and ready all the time... in other words global warming is a friend to the exotherm.

Just a thought.

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[greyhueofdoubt]

That is interesting; I had not thought of that.

On the other hand, mammals seem much more readily adaptable to changing conditions- Many of the most successful reptiles have not changed their morphology or habitats in millions of years, leaving them at the whim of drastic changes in climate. OTOH, those same reptiles have weathered ice ages in the past. So have warm-blooded creatures. However, you are right, in my opinion. Reptiles seem to thrive in climates that are largely uninhabited by any warm-blooded animals larger than mice.

Climate change (which is really what I ought to call global warming) may have much broader effects than just temperature. Changing weather patterns may raise the mean UV index of an area, decimating frogs. Migratory species may change their routes rapidly, leaving indigenous reptiles without their expected food, food that they may depend on to keep them alive through the sparse seasons. These affects would affect indigenous mammals as well, making reptiles more palatable in the absence of migrating flamingos etc.

Other regions that were previously arid and inhospitable to mammals may become wet again, placing those reptiles much closer to the bottom of the food chain. One fox could make a huge dent in the reptile life within a certain region that previously never had the competition or predators. New reptiles might eventually move into the area, I guess. The biosphere strives to maintain its balance.

I am not an ecologist, of course.

I'm glad you brought that up,
-b

Re:So Obvious It Hurts

[Zarf]

Climate change (which is really what I ought to call global warming)

I call it global pwning

And, maybe there's something after mammal... like... nammal. Or a reptile-mammal thingy ... like a remmal... in other words mammals aren't the end-all of evolution. Perhaps the gigantic land-squid is.

this "research" is just a circular argument

[petes_PoV]

People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term

So they start off looking at canoes and then make the seemingly unconnected statement that "unsustainable approaches ... won't work in the long term" and are therefore (wait for it, this is good) unsustainable!

I don't know anything about canoe design, nor about sociology - if that's what this is, but from the quality of their conclusions I can;t see any worth to this study, except possibly that they all got a nice holiday in the pacific islands all paid for from a grant.

Re:this "research" is just a circular argument

[thogard]

It doesn't matter what you don't know about either sociology nor canoe building. It turns out that when the 1st Europeans ran into the Polynesians they insisted in teaching them the new way to navigate which worked very well for local navigation but wasn't very good for long voyages but the older ways quickly seemed to have been forgotten and now the navigation of the ancient Polynesians trade routes is completely mystery to nearly everyone.

Maybe I need to research this. I need a good sail boat, a bit of cash, sat modem and some dive gear and I'll let you know how it goes in a few years....

Re:this "research" is just a circular argument

[MillionthMonkey]

Basically it seems they've discovered that islanders who make boats with holes in the bottom don't show up at surrounding islands to tell everyone how great their boats are.

This has implications for today's modern global culture too. Aliens on other planets won't be greeted by humans arriving in spaceships to tell them about their own dandy ideas.

Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[Hope Thelps]

People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption.

Nonsense. People haven't "learned to avoid natural selection", they've been subject to it. In the short term natural selection has favoured these "unsustainable approaches" which have helped in providing decent life expectancy and thus breeding opportunities for billions of people, in the long term natural selection may not favour this approach (by definition, it won't if they are in fact unsustainable). That's natural selection at work. There is no avoiding it.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, and the notion that "inequlity" is not sustainable is laughable. If equality was the norm, nothing would have a competitive advantage, be it an organism or an idea. The easily observable evolution of organisms and ideas over time indicates that inequlity has been sustained for a long, long time. Temporarry means of making things "equal" such as the unatural redistribution of wealth through culturally imposed schemes such as communism or socialism are unsustainable.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[dargaud]

When I hear people claim that natural selection doesn't work on people and that evolution doesn't apply anymore to the human species, I bring forth some examples like the drunk teenagers crashing their cars (main cause of teenage mortality). Those won't breed. Repeat for enough generations and drunk driving will be mostly solved through evolution: those remaining won't be as stupid.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[crashfrog]

When I hear people claim that natural selection doesn't work on people and that evolution doesn't apply anymore to the human species, I bring forth some examples like the drunk teenagers crashing their cars (main cause of teenage mortality).

There's a much, much better example of natural selection operating on human beings - people tend to have sex with people they're attracted to, not at random. And they certainly don't have children with random people; there's always a selection involved, whether that's selection for resources, good genetics/immunotype (assessed instinctively by appearance, smell, or cognitively by genetic examination), or some other criteria.

So long as mate choice is being exercised, human beings are subject to natural selection. For some reason people always overlook that, but evolution doesn't care if your genes don't get passed on because you were killed, or because you couldn't get laid ever. Either way you've been selected against.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[NotZed]

Or perhaps just those with less tolerance to alcohol will perish?

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[CrimsonAvenger]

There's a much, much better example of natural selection operating on human beings - people tend to have sex with people they're attracted to, not at random. And they certainly don't have children with random people; there's always a selection involved, whether that's selection for resources, good genetics/immunotype (assessed instinctively by appearance, smell, or cognitively by genetic examination), or some other criteria.

While this is reasonably true for women, it's much less so for men. Men, in general, will screw anything that gives them half a chance. Which is, of course, a survival characteristic for men - spread your seed widely, hope some survives. It's a perfectly viable technique, after all - most animals and plants use it.

Being selective in choice of mates is important when your maximum number of offspring is severely limited. Which is mostly true of women - they invest a lot of time and energy into having a kid, much less raising the little monster. Not true at all for men, who can produce a new kid every day, and twice on Sunday, if they can find enough willing partners. Or unwilling ones, for that matter....

All that aside, do you actually know someone who picked a wife/husband by "genetic examination"? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[crashfrog]

While this is reasonably true for women, it's much less so for men.

I think you'll find that even men exhibit mate choice. "Gentlemen prefer blondes", etc. Men aren't in general any less discriminate than women, even though the opportunity cost per mating is so much lower.

Which is, of course, a survival characteristic for men - spread your seed widely, hope some survives.

Sure, but its still not as random as you portray. While men nominally don't commit the same resources to reproduction as a female might - 9 months of pregnancy vs 20 minutes of effort - they have to commit time and resources to being accepted as mates, because female mate choice constitutes a limiting factor.

Or unwilling ones, for that matter....

Rape isn't a winning reproductive strategy in our species, thanks to various female countermeasures (like cryptic ovulation.)

All that aside, do you actually know someone who picked a wife/husband by "genetic examination"?

They're called "sperm banks". (I think maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.)

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[CrimsonAvenger]

I think you'll find that even men exhibit mate choice. "Gentlemen prefer blondes", etc. Men aren't in general any less discriminate than women, even though the opportunity cost per mating is so much lower.

Never gotten drunk enough to wonder who the woman you woke up with was, have you? ;)

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[crashfrog]

Never gotten drunk enough to wonder who the woman you woke up with was, have you? ;)

But isn't that kind of the point? If you have to be drunk to do it, is it really normal behavior? Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial ethyl alcohol, after all.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[CrimsonAvenger]

But isn't that kind of the point? If you have to be drunk to do it, is it really normal behavior? Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial ethyl alcohol, after all.

Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial amounts of electricity either, but we hardly consider electric lights abnormal today, do we?

We've been making beer for at least 7000 years, and probably rather longer than that. Which means that guys have been waking up and wondering who the girl next to them was for at least that long.

While it's true that guys are discriminating, in at least a broad sense of the term, it's not especially true that that discrimination applies to one night stands. Yah, you want your wife to be like your mother, in general. The girl you pick up Saturday night after a great deal of partying just has to be willing (and not always terribly willing - I'm betting guys have been screwing drunk girls for as long as guys have been screwing drunk).

And finally, note that my previous post was a joke. You need to have a sense of humor implanted one of these days.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[crashfrog]

Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial amounts of electricity either, but we hardly consider electric lights abnormal today, do we?

In the context of human evolution, they certainly are. It would make zero sense to try to understand human behavior under electric illumination via evolutionary mechanisms, because we simply haven't had lights that long. Similarly, human behavior while intoxicated is irrelevant to the evolution of human behavior because intoxicants haven't been a part of the human environment for long enough.

We've been making beer for at least 7000 years

Not long enough.

The girl you pick up Saturday night after a great deal of partying just has to be willing

And, to some degree, "hot." That's where the mate choice comes in - the choice is who you find hot enough to sleep with.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[CrimsonAvenger]

We've been making beer for at least 7000 years

Not long enough.

350 generations isn't long enough? I think you need to re-evaluate what you know about evolution, if you think that. There have been instances observed in nature where evolutionary adaptations occurred in far fewer than 350 generations.

Re:Natural selection avoidance? Nice trick

[crashfrog]

350 generations isn't long enough?

For primates? No way.

Of course

[drooling-dog]

Since culture is heritable and mutable, and affects survival and reproductive prospects at the levels of individuals as well as populations, it would be surprising if it weren't a target of natural selection.

Not quite

[mangu]

what the article mentions is work that was quantitative (it compared functional vs. decorative features and their rate of change), and hence actually scientific

It's scientific from that point of view, yes, but it still falls short of other criteria for defining what's scientific or not.

In the first paragraph they make the somewhat tautologic affirmation that "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes". Oh, sure, people are more careful in adopting new ideas when survival is at stake, right?

No, not always. For instance, why was the concept of socialism so widely adopted in the economic sciences? The twentieth century provided us several examples of massive death rates in countries with socialized economies. So, there you have at least one counter argument to the thesis in the article.

Unless the scientists can show a clearly defined trend everywhere, all they have shown us is an example, not scientific proof.

Re:Not quite

[kamatsu]

Unless the scientists can show a clearly defined trend everywhere, all they have shown us is an example, not scientific proof. While I am aware that I am, to a certain extent, quoting you out of context, I take issue with this statement on a few levels.

1) It is entirely impossible to determine any universal pattern. It is impossible to observe all the universe - Hence the only "proof" that Science can produce is a tentative proof by induction. That is, to say that the statement holds true for a specific data set, hence it can be extrapolated to other data sets and we can hope that the theory will hold. What you are trying to say is that their data sample is too small to yield valid results from which one can induce a theory. Whether this statement is true or not I don't know, it is up to the reviewing scientist to RTFA and determine how large a sample size would need to be to yield accurate results. Seeing as science is inductive, there is no way to produce a universal proof for all cases without experimentally validating ALL cases (rather difficult :P).

2) There is never such thing as a definitive "Scientific Proof", only scientific theory. Some (stupid) philosophers derived the idea that the entire universe is a figment of a consciousness. If this is the case (which it may or may not be - it is an unprovable statement) then everything science has "proven" is false - seeing as this example statement may or may not be true and cannot be proven either way, this means that scientists can never prove anything about our universe with absolute certainty. When rational, scientifically-minded people such as yourself use the term "proof" in Science, it leads people to think that "Theory" is the step below, a hypothesis - one of the major semantic exploits used by ID advocates. The quicker people stop calling Scientific theories "proofs" or "laws" the quicker people will realise that a theory that has stood for a significant amount of time and has the widespread support of the scientific community can be held to be true, tried and tested - and NOT a hypothesis - at least for all cases in which it has been observed - but every time they are extrapolated beyond these cases, their use is technically an experiment to see if the hypothesis for the theory holds true for other cases. Part of the problem that has allowed creationists to masquerade biblical stories as scientific theory is a widespread misunderstanding of scientific method, and this problem is, at heart, a problem of lazily applied terminology. end rant for today :)

Re:Not quite

[TapeCutter]

Please define 'scientific proof', from what I understand 'proof' is a term that only makes sense in axionomic systems.

You also don't have to look far to see people are cautious about change when lives are at stake, just ask any bridge builder.

Your political argument is OT and even if were relevant it falls flat when you compare modern China with Mao's cultural revolution.

Finally I don't think tautologic means what you think it does.

BTW: Your criticisim that 'it's just an example' is valid but it does not mean the study is not scientific, it simply means the theory is not as robust as one that has been tested many times in many ways. First 'examples' of this kind are known as 'scientific breakthroughs' no matter how inconsequential the subject may seem to be to outsiders.

Re:Not quite

[mangu]

from what I understand 'proof' is a term that only makes sense in axionomic systems

In a sense yes, but in common speech it is often used in a more extensive manner. We aren't writing a doctoral thesis here in /.

Your political argument is OT and even if were relevant it falls flat when you compare modern China with Mao's cultural revolution.

What do you mean OT? The discussion is about how cultural ideas are selected, right? What is politics but a set of cultural ideas? And your argument is corroborating what I said, the current Chinese government has abandoned the meme of public property of the means of production.

The case of China is interesting here, because it goes against what was mentioned in the article. China changed twice their methods of production in the twentieth century, first from private property to state property and then back again to private property. Yet they still maintain very old cultural traditions that are less important to their survival.

I don't think tautologic means what you think it does.

Yes, it does. That word has two different meanings. I used it in the sense that I learned it in college, the only sense in which I have ever seen it used. The affirmation that "people are careful about changing X and X is important for people's survival" should be valid for any value of X, therefore it is tautologic.

Re:Not quite

[sumdumass]

Well, to sort of back up your argument on the value of political connection, we must remember stupid top down decisions that could directly effect the topic at hand. A recent example would be when some government body in Indiana attempted to change the value of pi by legislature.

It is quite possible that better designs where known and could have been implemented but weren't because if civil ruling like that. And with smaller population sizes and more localized governance, this could have effected the entire processes in the article as much as anything. It isn't like modern societies do some things solely from a historically ritual aspect either. So yea, your political topic is very much on topic.

Re:Not quite

[aproposofwhat]

Please define 'scientific proof', from what I understand 'proof' is a term that only makes sense in axionomic systems.

I think you meant axiomatic systems.

Axionomic is a contrived term used in 'political science' (note the quotes) that means (or sort of means, so far as it has any meaning) 'acting towards a preferred outcome'.

I'd agree that the GP's political point is OTT and irrelevant - the observation that people's choices tend to be conservative when dealing with life and death decisions in a natural environment is not affected by some observation that choices are less conservative when dealing with a social environment.

Re:In other words

[Divebus]

True natural selection for humans (overcoming the elements and savage beasts) quit working right around the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Now all we have are Darwin Awards nominees. Let's just don't wipe out the planet, eh?

why we invented religion, monogamy...

[airdrummer]

is religion not a collection of survival lessons, wrapped in mnemonic stories to preserve the knowledge across generations? doesn't the bible have helpful hints like "get your drinking water _upstream_ from the latrine"? in a pre-industrial pre-scientific world the only reliable way to avoid STDs is monogamy.

and what better way to ensure compliance than to tap into the natural human spirituality circuits, invoking the authority of the deit[y|ies] spinning tales of eternal damnation for transgressors...hey, whatever works;-}

and handling waste & dead animals isn't really healthy, but a dirty job's gotta get done, so a society could relegate it to a wretched underclass isolated from the larger society...oh, let's just call 'em 'untouchables'...hey, can't argue w/ success;-}

Obviously he's not familiar with the Darwin Awards

[edwardpickman]

Technology has been a boon to nature selection. The less survival worthy seem to find testing the limits of technology irresistable. Their valiant attempts to test those limits is helping to insure the security of the gene pool. If we really want to improve the gene pool we need to go wide with a TV show, "American Darwin". The contestants compete to come up with the most extreme way to commit suicide on national TV. No takers? Obviously you haven't seen Jackass.

culture intelligent design is....

[arpad1]

So the problem is evolution in human cultures and the solution is intelligent design?

Isn't intelligent design in a culture more accurately referred too as authoritarianism? I'm sure somewhere Joe Stalin is smiling.

What a waste of research effort

[alex_vegas]

Okay, canoes have gotten better over time, and we can fit a mathematical model to it. How is that knowledge at all novel or useful? Is there really any doubt that technology improves over time in 2008? Is it really at all surprising that a mathematical model designed to fit things which improve over time can be fit to the data about technology improving? Next thing, people will be talking about how the historical rates of improvements in jet engine speed and cpu speed mean that we'll soon be transcending humanity....

Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

So if I get this right... the outcome of their research is that over time, pacific islanders tried to make better and better boats?
By not changing features that worked well and changing features that failed?
Doesn't natural selection have to be done by nature for it to be natural?
Isn't this just selection?

For what it's worth, I suspect that the original paper had to do with the applicability of the mathematical models for predicting the rate of change, or something. To imply that divergence was shaped by a winnowing process during migration from island to island, they would have demonstrate that the alterations under consideration actually had improved seaworthiness. Otherwise, the divergence is just random drift, and it's just a demonstration that the pacific islanders knew what the critical elements of outrigger design were, and didn't mess with them too much. Saying that "natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs" is just saying "shucks, we didn't disprove our hypothesis."

[previously on the 'firehose' thingy by accident, whatever that is]

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[crashfrog]

Doesn't natural selection have to be done by nature for it to be natural?

What do you think "nature" is, precisely?

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but, you see, to the really over-the-top environmentalists, when it's a pile of branches, mud, and other materials brought in by beavers to dam up a river to alter their environment to suit them better, it's nature at work, but when it's a pile of reinforced concrete and steel brought in by humans to dam up a river to alter their environment to suit them better, it's all artificial and inherently unnatural. Anything mankind touches that does not mesh imperceptibly with Nature is inherently bad and should be eliminated. I wonder what the answer would be if you asked these people whether they took any sort of medication when they got sick, or bathed, or brushed their teeth, or whether they respected the right of bacteria, viri, and fungi to exist without interference from humans...

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

What do you think "nature" is, precisely? Well, it's more a question of what is meant by 'natural selection'; ask Darwin what he meant by 'Nature', not me.
The way I figure it, if an antelope chooses to run away from a lion, that's selection.
If the lion can run faster, that's natural selection.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[crashfrog]

Well, it's more a question of what is meant by 'natural selection'; ask Darwin what he meant by 'Nature', not me.

It's not rigidly defined, because it really doesn't have to be. Everybody's familiar with the idea of a breeder selecting and breeding pigeons; Darwin's critical realization was that the same thing happens to all species without human breeders. Humans, too, and it really doesn't matter whether or not we're doing it on purpose or it's just happening to us. It's selection. Whether it's "natural" or not is immaterial. Selection is selection.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

Well, except that breeding pigeons is really categorically (as you point out) pretty much the same sort of thing as the 'natural selection' of pigeons gene lines by their environment in the wild. It's just a question of what environment the pigeons find themselves in. The title of the article that we're discussing, on the other hand, is "Human Culture Subject To Natural Selection, Study Shows"; in which there is a leap from a study of differences in the rates of change of critical and non-critical 'cultural traits' to the conclusion that this difference is due to the influence of "natural selection", whatever that may be.

Turns out, the 'cultural traits' under consideration have to do with structural versus decorative 'design traits' of Polynesian canoes. This seems hugely problematic to me. I will hazard a guess (and one would think this would be evidence worthy of note, were I wrong) that these canoes are all pretty much made out of similar materials, and all pretty much sail in the same conditions. Starting with the same basic design, the same resources, and the same problem, one must consider the possibility that there's really not a lot of room for drift in the basic parameters of Polynesian canoe making; that in a finite amount of time one reaches a local maximum in design optimization, and learns not to wander too far from it. They seem to have used a notion of sequential island colonization as a rough time guideline, but this is really irrelevant unless all cultural evolution was frozen in time as soon as people left for the next island over; otherwise, you have people working in parallel with the same knowledge, tools, resources, and conditions, and (quite possibly) simply finding that there's not a wide variety of solutions. (In the aesthetic design, on the other hand, one could see strong pressure for diversification, if one wanted to be able to tell canoes apart at a distance. Just saying.)

I think that, upon closer investigation, the researchers will find that the standard Polynesian fish-gathering and/or travel platform is now made of metal, and has an engine; furthermore, they will be unable to find a 'missing link' - half canoe, half trawler - that demonstrates that the former evolved into the latter. This is an extreme demonstration of the fundamental problem with the argument. They have not established that the 'species' of outrigger canoes changed in response to environmental pressures, at a limited rate, as each copy of a prior design was 'improved' more and more in a certain direction. In fact, they haven't established that the construction of each type of outrigger canoe involved the deterministic (but imperfect) replication of a distinct prior design, that they may be 'species' to begin with.

No mention is made of whether any degrees of variation between outrigger canoes on the same island, and the researchers did not even examine the canoes themselves - they relied on reports of the canoe design of eleven different cultures, which almost guarantees that (a) they started with the features of a 'typical' or 'quintessential' (take your pick) outrigger canoe from that culture, and (b) they started with these features as described by a person who had been thinking about the differential aspects of these designs.

There is no evidence that there is any sort of constraint placed by the construction process on the rate of change between one iteration of the design and the next. If, in one generation, the Polynesians had canoes, and a certain fellow experimented with strapping two canoes together, and then settled on the concept of an outrigger, it would not take very many different prototypes (and note another difference here; a 'prototype' is often something that doesn't work, rather than something that works better than what it's replacing) or generations before the outrigger was firmly established as a feature of all future Polynesian canoes... and any future ocean-going canoe built by anyone who saw such a canoe.

F

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[crashfrog]

You've written an incredibly long post, but I don't see where you've actually said anything.

And that is why the question is, in my mind, material.

That what? Did you intend to be abstruse, or was it by accident?

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

My apologies, crashfrog, I'll know to ignore your comments in the future.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[snowwrestler]

You've written a very long post, but I just want to point out some mistakes and bad assumptions.

Turns out, the 'cultural traits' under consideration have to do with structural versus decorative 'design traits' of Polynesian canoes. Yes. That this duality can now be imposed with our superior hindsight, is the basis for the study. Such distinctions were far less clear to the ancient Polynesians than they are to you and me. At some point in the past, someone had to make that distinction for the very first time. In early societies it was most certainly NOT clear whether the braid pattern of rope or the carvings of the gods were more important to long-term survival. It was only over time that such distinctions could be made--and that is the process to which this study refers.

Starting with the same basic design, the same resources, and the same problem, one must consider the possibility that there's really not a lot of room for drift in the basic parameters of Polynesian canoe making; that in a finite amount of time one reaches a local maximum in design optimization, and learns not to wander too far from it. Stating that a local maximum is reached in finite time does not shed illumination on the process of actually reaching that maximum. Again--that's the focus of the study.

I think that, upon closer investigation, the researchers will find that the standard Polynesian fish-gathering and/or travel platform is now made of metal, and has an engine; furthermore, they will be unable to find a 'missing link' - half canoe, half trawler - that demonstrates that the former evolved into the latter. And if you study the natural history of New Zealand, you will today find stoats, but find no fossil precursors to them. The problem is one of connecting previously isolated ecosystems. Do not make the mistake of conflating physical boats with the cultural concept of "boat."

Furthermore, there does not seem to be any analysis demonstrating that the 'critical' design differences were actually responses to the environments in which the canoes found themselves, rather than just the (highly constrained) random walk of generation after generation of personal preference. This seems to betray a lack of understanding of evolutionary theory--speciation does not occur as a response to environmental differences; it occurs independently--as a kind of (semi-)random walk. The environment is one factor in determining the success of a change, but it does not itself drive or initiate change. Put another way--in a completely unchanging environment, evolution still occurs so long as any biological change can result in a competitive advantage.

There is no evidence that there is any sort of constraint placed by the construction process on the rate of change between one iteration of the design and the next. None needed--this was a comparative study. Even if you imagine very fast rates of change in structural design, the aesthetics changed even faster. And as the article notes, this particular type of statistical study is fairly common in studying genetic evolution.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

This seems to betray a lack of understanding of evolutionary theory--speciation does not occur as a response to environmental differences ... -in a completely unchanging environment, evolution still occurs so long as any biological change can result in a competitive advantage. You're misunderstanding this, I think, probably because of other remarks I made about adaptations to changes in the environment being more sufficient evidence of evolution. What I'm saying is that:

1) There's no evidence presented that the small changes in critical design observed are under any sort of selective pressure. That is, there is an apparently randomized drift, as one would expect, but there is no evidence that this drift results in a competitive advantage for one design over another, or is of any significance save as a habitual manner of making boats, or that the making of boats 'evolves' in any sense. It does mean you could make some good predictions about what the crucial features of outrigger design might be by looking at this sort of drift, probably a notion of some use to archeologists, but this isn't the claim that the study seems to be making.

2) There is every reason to believe that, faced with any significant selective pressure, it would be impossible to model the changes in outrigger design as a type of genetic drift.

• the rate of change would accelerate in direct response to the pressure, until that pressure ceased.

• the change would not be random, but directed, according to the cultural preconceptions of the people attempting to solve the problem.

• the first successful solution would be instantaneously [compared to the time scale] imitated.

• this solution would be incorporated, insofar as possible, into pre-existing boat designs; only the necessary changes would have 'evolutionary success'. It would manifest itself as a universal aspect of design.

You sound like you might be familiar with this sort of research. Is there an aspect to the study that was buried in or distorted by the article, that would make it seem more sensible? Because right now, the key phrase claim seems to be:

Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080216175953.htm

Which proves absolutely nothing, especially as the study was not set up in any way that could prove that natural selection was not 'weeding out inferior new designs'.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[crashfrog]

That is, there is an apparently randomized drift, as one would expect, but there is no evidence that this drift results in a competitive advantage for one design over another, or is of any significance save as a habitual manner of making boats, or that the making of boats 'evolves' in any sense.

The conservation of traits is the evidence. We guess that the traits are conserved because they represent functional aspects of boats, and that's probably true, but it's really not important. The fact that the rate of variation in traits is not constant at all loci is the evidence for selection.

the change would not be random, but directed, according to the cultural preconceptions of the people attempting to solve the problem.

Only if you assume that human beings never design by trial and error. Surely we can dismiss that assertion by inspection. (Or perhaps you need to be told how many different materials Edison experimented on for his light bulbs.)

Which proves absolutely nothing, especially as the study was not set up in any way that could prove that natural selection was not 'weeding out inferior new designs'.

A finding that all traits varied at equal rates and never became fixed or conserved would have proved that natural selection was not weeding out inferior new designs.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

Only if you assume that human beings never design by trial and error. Surely we can dismiss that assertion by inspection. (Or perhaps you need to be told how many different materials Edison experimented on for his light bulbs.) Designing 'by trial and error' would fall well within the range of what I mean by directed change. It involves thinking and planning, using concepts, which will undoubtedly influence the direction of the next trial. Large-scale batch testing consumes times and resources, and we both know the anecdote about Edison precisely because his filament tests were unusual in this regard. They were not, however, random, nor lacking in direction. Having had some experimental success with carbonized filaments, after giving up on metallic ones, Edison was searching for a type of carbonized filament that lasted long enough for commercial purposes, and found (through mass testing) that a bamboo splint was the most suitable filament, of those tested.

Sit down for a couple of hours and watch one of those 'artificial life' simulations where a four-legged 'creature' learns to walk through randomized trial and error and positive feedback. That's what undirected change stemming from a random walk of parameters looks like.

The conservation of traits is the evidence. We guess that the traits are conserved because they represent functional aspects of boats, and that's probably true, but it's really not important. The fact that the rate of variation in traits is not constant at all loci is the evidence for selection ... [a] finding that all traits varied at equal rates and never became fixed or conserved would have proved that natural selection was not weeding out inferior new designs.

I'll go back on what I've said, after thinking about it, and agree that that's something that the study would have strongly suggested if you'll agree that the study (or at least the article, and the supporting back-of-the-book-blurb givers) had absolutely no business suggesting that they had demonstrated anything at all like "natural selection can [or even might] act on human culture." It verges on a breach of ethics for scientists to purport that such reasoning has any scientific legitimacy, and I find it rather sordid.

I'll eventually have to concede the technical argument, as I don't have a sufficient grounding in that sort of analysis to make insistent statements in good faith. However, there's several points I've made that haven't been addressed (don't feel obliged), and the problem that I have with what you've said can be easily referred back to one of them.

With genetic drift, it is perhaps a plausible assumption that all quantifiable 'traits' will be subject to the same underlying mechanism of drift; that, consequentially, unchecked by selection, they'll all tend to diverge at the same rate. I do not believe that it has been established that we can safely make this assumption when it comes to the observed differences in the 'traits' of the outrigger canoes. There is no reason we could assume that all traits are replicated by similar mechanisms, or subject to the same inherent rate of drift; there's not even any way to be sure that the mechanisms themselves are, like cell division, continuous or predictable over time, or that the 'inherent rate of drift' (by which I mean, to be clear, the rate of divergence without the influence of the hypothetical selection) is itself constant over time.

Thus, we cannot be sure that any significant clustering in the observed drift of the outrigger 'traits' represents anything exterior to the replication of the design itself, let alone resembling - on a more philosophical level - 'natural selection.'

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[crashfrog]

If you're proposing a model of drift that results in fixation or conservation of advantageous traits, variable rates of change, and preservation of adaptive changes over maladaptive ones, I don't understand how you're not simply proposing "selection" under another name.

Re:Bad Science or Bad Reporting?

[europa universalis]

My problems with the original study were the following:

1. It sought (or at least, seemed, from the subsequent claims that were made about what had been proven) to imply that the development of polynesian outrigger canoe designs was the result of the conservation of advantageous traits, arising from a context of continual unguided, random changes that subsequently proved to be either adaptive or maladaptive.
2. It wished to describe this process using a model that seemed to have some major flaws, and failed to address (in the article) to establish that these could be disregarded, [and]
3. It made grandiose, attention-grabbing claims as a result.

It's called "The Market", dummies.

[argent]

It's amazing how smart people can be so daft. Of course the same forces apply in many fields. In biology it's called "natural selection", in economics it's called "the market", in engineering it's the trend towards a design monoculture (whether it's the internal combustion engine or Windows). Hell, even Rush Limbaugh knows about economic Darwinism.

The study itself is an interesting confirmation that market forces would lead to the same results over a long enough time period even when the available communication channels are biologically slow. But the conclusion that this is some kind of new revelation indicates to me that the communication channels between Stanford and the real world may also be biologically slow.

humbug

[ph0rk]

I am beginning to grow less and less fond of the application of terms from evolutionary biology to the study of culture.

In 99% of instances, cultural schemas do not need to be 'fit' in a darwinian sense to spread through diffusion or other processes - they can be spread due to power imbalance or just because whatever new widgets one makes once they follow the ways of whatever look cool.

I suppose that "cultural evolution" is somewhat shorter than "culture change over time", but that does not mean that when using the former term we should try and treat it like biological evolution - it just doesn't follow. Assuming that getting to the island they can't see over the horizon but know are there is an urgent crisis, then yes, they will probably have a somewhat linear progression of canoe design, keeping the innovations that worked around longer. To assume otherwise is to assume the early Polynesians were idiots. Why this becomes a problem is it is difficult if not impossible to determine what the urgent issues are for past cultures, and you'll need a few more examples to make a stronger case.

Even then, you may have an interesting theory about efficiency of design when under long-term pressure, but how the heck do you apply it to more ephemeral cultural components like religion or etiquette?

Re:humbug

[maxume]

I sort of hope that the paper is more about a demonstrated increase in biological success that is correlated with the possession of superior technology, and that the important point is the demonstration of the effect(rather than the elucidation). So it isn't so much "hey, obvious idea!" as it is "hey, decent statistical support for obvious idea!", and the canoe designs happen to change slowly enough to make the observation of the effect easier.

Re:humbug

[mysticgoat]

Even then, you may have an interesting theory about efficiency of design when under long-term pressure, but how the heck do you apply it to more ephemeral cultural components like religion or etiquette?

I won't touch the "religion" stuff since it would quickly get into 6 million dead in the Holocaust or 4 million to 9 million dead during the Burning Times, and this is without even going outside European history of civilized behavior. Netiquette: Godwin rules— this area is out of bounds.

With regard to "etiquette", in Western America there is a very strong correlation between the decrease in courtesy shown to strangers and the decrease in carrying pistols. On the East Coast of America, the decrease in courtesy occurred earlier, and correlates with an increase in local laws that prohibited dueling.

So there is a body of evidence that suggests that etiquette is related to the use of technology. Etiquette is a set of traits whose expression depends on design factors that are influenced by cultural Darwinism (but not necessarily in a direct way; there seems to be a "left hand path" that is frequently followed).

Humbug yourself.

[argent]

In 99% of instances, cultural schemas do not need to be 'fit' in a darwinian sense to spread through diffusion or other processes - they can be spread due to power imbalance or just because whatever new widgets one makes once they follow the ways of whatever look cool.

That's all "fit" in the Darwinian sense means: the idea that Darwinian "fitness" means anything but "this is what propogates". A peacock's tail is all about looking cool. Looking cool happened to be evolutionarily selected for in peacocks.

Turn it around, you can just as easily study biology in economic terms and talk about the effect of market forces on genes. They're the same forces.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[ph0rk]

What counts as fit for a cultural schema? diffusion or more artifacts? do oppositional uses of the schema count? They can be latent for a generation or two and resurface, flash in the pan like a fad then vanish a few years later, etc. The ev-bio terms just don't fit the phenomena very well. (Though the market forces may fit better, as long as one is primed for a measure of irrationality).

Looking cool does the genes that make the peacock's tail look neat a benefit - it gets more peacock tail and gets to be transmitted to more little peacocks and so on.

Wearing your polo shirt's collar popped up does not (if it gets the wearer more tail) mean the wearer's offspring will have popped collars, because culture doesn't really work in that way. If popped collars are a larger trend and -everyone- wears them, then individual transmission is the wrong place to examine this type of replication of trends anyway.

When there is a problem the researchers can actually identify (a selection pressure, one could call it) this works great. When there isn't, it is a waste of time. With past cultures particularly, there are many examples of diffusion happening in ways that is not easily explained - the terribly slow diffusion of pottery in the Americas for example. Cooking pots were clearly a better design then hide or carved stone, but took far longer than would be expected to spread - there was likely resistance, but what and why?

reframing this issue in the terms of evolutionary biology might get a new publication or two, but doesn't actually contribute anything of note.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[IdleTime]

Look at the Nordic countries. They have evolved as societies beyond for instance what USA has. They all rank high on Human Development Index, low on religion, high on happiness, and if you look at statistics over at nationmaster.com, you'll find them on top of almost every statistics and way above USA except in economy and military, even though some of them surpass USA economically in certain areas..

I think this is a clear indication of cultures evolving.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[argent]

What counts as fit for a cultural schema?

One that succeeds.

Wearing your polo shirt's collar popped up does not (if it gets the wearer more tail) mean the wearer's offspring will have popped collars

What does the wearer have to do with it? It's the polo shirt "species" that's being selected here, not the preppie.

When there is a problem the researchers can actually identify (a selection pressure, one could call it) this works great. When there isn't, it is a waste of time.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Even if you don't know the cause of a phenomenon documenting it provides more information for later researchers who may be able to identify it.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[klovn]

Evolution implies a movement both in time and more importently toward and idea of improvement - and that's what's wrong - the idea of improvement is imagined and culturally dependent/created. Besides that it seems that "evolution" has become the right of the priviledged - Look at the Nordic countries, there are massive problems with racism and ethnic minorities are excluded from society and denied the same rights as the majority.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[IdleTime]

Absolute bullshit based on right wing political propaganda and nowhere near reality. I come from one of these countries and I don't recognize anything in your post.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[kerohazel]

You overlook something - a culture's perception of desirable attributes is usually heavily dependent on the culture itself. And cultures usually tend to value the traits they exhibit as the most desirable.

I'm sure fundamentalist preachers in the USA pat themselves on the back and thank the good lord that they live in this country, instead of one of those "low on religion" Nordic countries.

Also, the Theory of Evolution doesn't imply improvement on some kind of absolute scale of goodness. It's a vehicle for producing the best traits given a particular environment.

Re:Humbug yourself.

[klovn]

My post may be based on political propaganda - but right wing propaganda?! An extreme-right party got almost 20% of the votes in Denmark recently (and I bet they are fans of cultural evolotution too) - that has to prove something...

Re:yeah

[It'sYerMam]

I take it you had already worked this out before anyone else thought of it then. Even then, an important part of science is going out and testing whether what you believe is correct or not.

Re:Evolution/design

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people seem to be confused about what "evolution" is. Evolution is the theory that, in a population with variation in its traits, any of those traits that are advantageous will tend to be reinforced over time. It doesn't say anything about genetics or mutation, and it certainly doesn't say that monkeys can give birth to humans. It doesn't care what the traits are, as long as they can be passed from generation to generation. If tall people can reach and gather more fruit, then tallness will be reinforced. If short people figure out they can climb the tree and gather even more fruit, then climbing will be reinforced. If some group decides that celibacy is good behavior, they're not likely to pass that trait on to their progeny.

Evolution was scary at first because it introduced a process that could lead to specialization, and speciation, without every organism having to have been created from whole cloth. Now, even the creationists and ID people believe that tall parents will have tall children, and the scary part of evolution is the lie that your great grandmother was a rhesus monkey.

Saying that the preservation of "good traits" canoes is evolution of canoes is silly because it's not the canoes that are evolving. Canoes pass no traits on to their progeny because they don't have progeny. The preservation of canoe traits is evidence of evolution in the creator of the canoe. "Evolution" in this sense is a metaphor.

Therefore...

[flyneye]

Therefore upon scrutiny of the worldwide automobile industry,we are in a state of De-evolution.

"Oh daddy,we're all devo"--Mark Mothersbaugh

Re:In other words

[mrxak]

Well, now we have other environmental factors to contend with. Too much junk food, carcinogens, ultraviolet radiation, etc. Eventually we'll probably evolve into really fat people with hearts that don't mind cholesterol and skin that doesn't get cancer.

First time?

[muxecoid]

Working on my thesis on evolutionary models. I have lots of references related to evolution of cultures.

Re:Evolution/design

[Anonymous Coward]

<Sigh> Read The Selfish Gene . Do individual genes have progeny? No. Cells do, whole strands of DNA do. Yet, it is the gene that is the basic unit of natural selection in biology, always competing with other genes, even within the same strand of DNA. Individual genes "make" cells do the replication job for them. Genes that are the most successful are the ones that get themselves replicated the most. Similarly, the canoe designs that are the most successful are the ones that get humans to make the most of them. That is how canoe designs replicate. This is not a metaphor; this is literally natural selection, plain and simple.

That brings me to the next point: you seem to have difficulty differentiating between Natural Selection and Evolution. What you attempted to describe was the former, and it equally describes all manner of competing replicating objects: genes, memes, inventions, ideas, products, &c. The latter, however, deals with the evolution of life, and does imply that your great grandfather was an ape (you are one too, after all). And your great great...great grandfather was an ape that humans and chimpanzees share as an ancestor. It's not scary. It's pretty damn remarkable. Get over yourself.

Re:In other words

[ultranova]

Well, now we have other environmental factors to contend with. Too much junk food, carcinogens, ultraviolet radiation, etc. Eventually we'll probably evolve into really fat people with hearts that don't mind cholesterol and skin that doesn't get cancer.

Um, no. Fat is stored energy. The whole reason we get fat is that our bodies are adapted to make do with as little energy as possible; and the way to do that is to make sure that any extra gets stored for later consumption. Consequently, as we adapt to live in an industrial society, the overweight epidemic should pass as our bodies are fine-tuned for the new energy input/output levels; also, we should adapt to require less excercise to stay in shape.

Re:yeah

[TapeCutter]

What they dicovered is the first scientific evidence for the theory that culture evolves. The term 'scientific proof' is an oxymoron used in earnest by commentators without a clue, but in this case neither TFA or TFS claim to have proven anything.

There are many definitions for irony, I was thinking along the lines of "the difference between how you might expect something to be and how it actually is". The fact that this is a nerd site enhances the irony.

Controversial?

[The Second Horseman]

Yeah, partially because it's kind of a reach - refining design with a goal in mind isn't the same as the random outcome of selective pressures on organisms causing genetic traits to be selected for or against in a population over time. There's no notion of progress in the idea of evolution through natural selection. On the other hand, humans refining canoe design actually IS intelligent design. It's not random. And people are lazy, in a good way. Why change something that works, especially something you need for survival? The only reason stuff changes as much as it does in the west now is that modern consumer culture is driving it.

You can change your behavior, you can't change your genetic makeup. That's why culture, language and the technology that goes along with it gives humans such an advantage.

One reason this sort of thing makes people uncomfortable is that it's hard do this sort of work without reminding people of folks like Herbert Spencer and his (pre-Darwin) attempt to explain how complex systems evolved. TSpencer thought there was a notion of universal progress and a scientific basis for morality, and thought humanitarians merely interfered with the struggle between (or within) societies.

Yes

[hlomas]

It is precisely the concept of memetics as originally proposed by Richard Dawkins in his seminal work, "The Selfish Gene". Nothing is new here.

Re:Evolution/design

[Lumpy]

Considering the people that live around here, The designer is asleep at the wheel, the evolution bus is heading for the ditch.

If this is true...

[PingXao]

If this is true, what manner of natural selection explains Hannah Montana in US "culture"? 5 million little girls can't be wrong. If you want to argue Disney is manufacturing un-natural selection on American children, well.... OK.

Re:If this is true...

[aadvancedGIR]

Children? I think it's even worse. Influent geeks are contaminated too.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/21

Re:In other words

[cytg.net]

Umm,no.
Wow that was annoying wasnt it, anyway, seems to me the gp has a valid case where as you do not. What do you suggest for the 'fine-tuning' protocol? and why in hell should we adapt to require less excercise to stay in shape?(that *could* be translated into what the gp problary ment, but im betting thats not your point.)

The Selfish Gene

[Ninja Engineer]

This is not news. Read "The Selfish Gene", especially the 30th anniversary edition. Then you will realise that OF COURSE Natural Selection (the true meaning of which is much different than what your Grade 5 teacher told you) can act on Human Culture, just like it acts on anything else involving life and living organisms.

I am surprised that thiw has not been brought up by any of the previous posters, or at least none that I noticed.

Re:The Selfish Gene

[rrohbeck]

And if you read "The Mating Mind" by Geoffrey Miller, he goes as far as saying that most of human culture has evolutionary roots - as ornaments of sexual selection. Makes a lot of sense to me if you look at things like music, art and fashion.

The basis of these

[Frozen Void]

natural selections, market forces, memetics is that world doesn't tolerate failure.
A success of a scheme increases it popularity. The marginal but superior technology or meme will dominate long-term while less-adapted or relevant things will fade into obscurity.

not NATURAL selection

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not NATURAL selection -- that denotes outside forces doing the culling. It's human choice driving design changes.

The only natural selection that may be at work here is the drowning of crews that're too stupid to recognize their boat is full of holes.

Re:Evolution/design

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that fat tubs of lard screaming about how life isn't fair wasn't his eventual goal? Of course that would mean that Michael Moore is the most evolved creature on earth!

It's called "Science"

[10101001 10101001]

The study itself is an interesting confirmation ...

Gosh. Who would imagine that a part of science would be to confirm existing theories?

But the conclusion that this is some kind of new revelation ...

Well, it is. No one else had done such a study up to this point. Just because the revelation is "it's exactly what we expected" doesn't mean it wasn't a revelation. Up until the study was actually done, anyone who claimed to "know" what the result would be would invariably be speculating. Now, one could argue about the degree of uncertainty. But, every time another one of these studies are done instead of merely assuming the answer is know, the better capable of reducing the future uncertainty when speculation is invariably done.

But, yea, let's insult the nice scientists because they do studies to confirm things instead of boiling everything down to a system of unchanging beliefs. How's that working out for you?

Re:It's called "Science"

[argent]

I think you're arguing against a different point than the one I made.

I did not say that the study was not valuable. I was referring to the quoted conclusion:

"People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term," said Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford.

The fact that market forces worked for Polynesians, and the fact that market forces and evolution behave similarly, is not a new revelation. The current situation that Deborah Rogers is decrying is the result of the same forces of selection that she was measuring.

Re:It's called "Science"

[10101001 10101001]

Really, I'm not sure *what* your point is, now. At first it sounded like you were mocking those who did the study because they drew a conclusion that was obvious to you (which is invariably the result of what happens when a study meets expected predictions). But, now it sounds like you're arguing that their conclusion is actually counter to what was shown in the study (which wouldn't be so much a "new revelation" to complain about but a simple "logical fallacy" to complain about).

And looking back over the quote (which I really hadn't thought about until now, since the quote hadn't seemed to be the real crux of the study or your complaint), I'd say it's a logical fallacy. Polynesians experienced natural selection. They didn't fight against it. It is natural selection (and market forces) that produce unsustainable situations which eventually lead to ecological/economic disaster. If anything, the point should be raised that one should be fighting *against* natural selection/market forces to counter this. But, then, just saying "don't do X" doesn't really tell one what *should* be done.

But, please do clarify what you meant, since I'm still not entirely sure how to take what you've said.

Re:It's called "Science"

[argent]

It is natural selection (and market forces) that produce unsustainable situations which eventually lead to ecological/economic disaster.

Selection is a feedback mechanism. A feedback mechanism may lead to a collapse, or not, depending on the circumstances. Claiming that a feedback mechanism should be either accepted or fought against because under some circumstances it can lead to a collapse, when it is not clear to me how one would endeavor to do such a thing in the first place, is foolish.

Re:It's called "Science"

[10101001 10101001]

Selection is a feedback mechanism. A feedback mechanism may lead to a collapse, or not, depending on the circumstances.

Ie, selection is chaotic/not predictable enough and dangerous to the survival of the human species.

Claiming that a feedback mechanism should be either accepted or fought against because under some circumstances it can lead to a collapse, when it is not clear to me how one would endeavor to do such a thing in the first place, is foolish.

I'm not sure if you're making two points or one point in this. If this were not a feedback mechanism but something else, and it was not clear how to accept/fight that something else, would you still say it is foolish to endeavor to make such plans? I ask because people have been dreamers for quite some time, making plans to either go with the accepted or fight against it. And, without those dreamers, we wouldn't have things like...well...almost everything technology wise (things that aren't the result of having accepting the status quo or rejecting it are reasonably rare) and probably in every field.

Now, if your argument was "well, we shouldn't fight against X because every alternative to X could be worse", I'd only point out that at least in the specific case, X seems like a very doomsday scenario already. Sure, there could still be circmstances worse caused by an alternative to X, and it's not like I was advocating simply taking any alternative up blindly. Afterall, I did say:

But, then, just saying "don't do X" doesn't really tell one what *should* be done.

No, the conclusion merely advocates that since we know that X has identifyable problems, we should be keenly interested in searching for alternatives to X. It doesn't mean we should blindly abandon X today. It *does* mean we shouldn't blindly follow X under the presumption that it's the best system; we have good evidence that it is a system with several, probably catostrophic, flaws.

Having said all that, my main point wasn't to directly advocate the modified quote. It was mainly to make it a more valid conclusion (probably imperfect, but most conclusions include some bias) instead of a logical fallacy.

Re:It's called "Science"

[argent]

Ie, selection is chaotic/not predictable enough and dangerous to the survival of the human species.

It's a dangerous universe.

Selection and feedback are epiphenoma that occur always, in all circumstances, no matter what you do. You can change the mechanisms (change what features are being selected, add new sources of feedback), to some extent, but you can't opt out of feedback loops and selection mechanisms any more than you can opt out of thermodynamics or probability. The conclusion I'm talking about isn't just a fallacy, it's simply meaningless.

Re:It's called "Science"

[10101001 10101001]

... you can't opt out of feedback loops and selection mechanisms any more than you can opt out of thermodynamics or probability.

Perhaps. I'd even go as far as probably. But natural selection is defined in a very narrow scope (it's an intrinsic property of science to try to not overstate something when there's yet to be evidence to go along with it). So, I think it is more a matter of definition on what is included in natural selection. There is something like natural selection that exists and it applies in both the biological and the economical. But, the two aren't entirely the same. While the former strives to match the data, the latter tends to be based a little bit more on faith, working on a model that's known to fail (monopolies, a lack of perfect information, etc) to entirely explain what will happen.

It is for that reason that I, personally, am not so willing to dismiss the possibility that there is something beyond natural selection as a model that does work even if it doesn't "naturally" exist--naturally in the same way that while gasoline can burn and metals can be molded, you don't see internal combustion engines sprouting from the ground.

Re:It's called "Science"

[argent]

But natural selection is defined in a very narrow scope (it's an intrinsic property of science to try to not overstate something when there's yet to be evidence to go along with it

One key part of this is specifically that kind of expansion of scope. If you don't expend the scope of the term beyond an extremely strict biological definition, the quoted extract is more or less meaningless. After all, the selection that was going on was no more "natural selection" than the selection that derived dingos, pekinese, and german shepherds from a common ancestor.

The only meaningful interpretation is that the article is drawing a parallel between natural selection and market forces (whether the authors consciously realized it or not) and treating them both as subsets of a common feedback/selection mechanism.

Re:It's called "Science"

[10101001 10101001]

The only meaningful interpretation is that the article is drawing a parallel between natural selection and market forces...

Granted.

...and treating them both as subsets of a common feedback/selection mechanism.

Somewhat further granted. The issue at hand, then, is if this "common feedback/selection mechanims" is either (a) the only possible superset that exists for natural selection and market forces and (b) whether there exists a superset of natural selection and market forces that is a subset of a common feedback/selection mechanism (ie, is there room for a feedback system that isn't part of the natural selection/market forces superset?). Further, could that sisterset be conceivably better in some circumstances than the natural selection/market forces superset? Truthfully, I don't know the answer to this. And, making such speculation in a conclusion is obviously reaching well outside the bounds of what evidence was presented. The only real room would be for fanciful speculation (ie, 'if there is something beyond natural selection, then ...')--but, that doesn't belong in a scientific study.

The only thing to really go back to, then, is that natural selection/market forces seem to be the mechanism at work, so the speculation was inverted and a logical fallacy. But, the inverted speculation I don't think is meaningless. It is just inappropriate for the venue.

Re:It's called "Science"

[argent]

I think you're overanalyzing.

Old News

[veritasnoctis]

Have these scientists never heard of the Scottish Enlightenment theories of social evolution? Of Adam Ferguson, for instance? Or the more recent F.A. Hayek? Social evolution is old news. Theories of social evolution preceded theories of biological evolution.

Except

[DynaSoar]

> "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time...

But only if you ignore the fields of evolutionary anthropology, sociocultural evolution and human sociobiology.

Human Culture?

[thewiz]

Since when did we have culture around here?

The only human culture will be when nanites turn us into GreyGoo Yoplait.

Re:In other words

[ultranova]

Umm,no.

Wow that was annoying wasnt it

Um, no :p.

What do you suggest for the 'fine-tuning' protocol?

Natural selection. People who stay in good shape even when eating mainly junk food are more likely to find a mate and pass their genes on than the ones who turn into human balloons while their arteries jam.

and why in hell should we adapt to require less excercise to stay in shape?(that *could* be translated into what the gp problary ment, but im betting thats not your point.)

Because we aren't getting much excercise nowadays, so requiring less of it is an advantageus feature.

The gp suggested that we'd evolve to tolerate the effects of being fat; I suggest it more likely that we evolve to not get fat in the first place, since that would require much less changes to our biochemistry (fine-tuning) than the ones required to support useless (in a post-industrial civilization) fat.

My response to the thesis was

[einhverfr]

So designes which are more optimal change slower than those which are less optimal. Sounds like trial and error to me.

My second thought was:

We know that conservative approaches to design (small incrimental changes) tend to do a better job of creating functional items than innovative approaches because designs tend to be based on what works and subject to successive approximation rather than new ideas. That is true of software engineering, canoe building, swordsmithing etc.

In short, it dosn't sound well thought out. Can one see it as analogous to natural selection? Sure, but in this case it is artificial selection....

Re:My response to the thesis was

[Lemmy Caution]

Shorthand: not only do we not know what works about what we do, we don't even always know what we're doing, even when it works. The engineer's bias toward explicit knowledge over implicit adaptation (something often in evidence here in /.) is starting to filter its way back into the social sciences, unfortunately.

Re:My response to the thesis was

[einhverfr]

Funny-- my first intellectual love is philology which is a combination of comparitive literature and historical linguistics. May not be quite the social sciences you are talking about, but....

However, in this case we are talking about technical design issues which, while they cannot be wholely separated from cultural issues, are addressed at least in part in terms of functionality by the people who build them. We see borrowing of practical issues from another culture which seems to have technological advances way back in Western history and pre-history (look at the spread of pattern-welded steel swords and spears in the early iron age-- this occurred primarily in Northern Europe among conservative cultures and was never adopted by the more innovation-centric Romans. Areas in the Roman Empire had to wait until the Gothic invasions to get access to usable steel-forging techniques).

Again, look at how an extremely conservative culture (the Proto-Indo-Europeans) invented the spoked, bronze-rimmed wheel and how quickly this lead to other functional improvements (chariots, horse-carts, etc). I personally credit this development as the cause of the population pressures which lead to all the Indo-European migrations we know about as well as the cause of one of the most widespread stories in Indo-European mythology (what Dumezil calls "The War of the Functions").

The major conclusion I can draw from this is that traditional craftsmen learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn't, particularly when in a conservative culture which stresses tradition to a large degree (changes are small and the results more obviously tied to a specific change). They may not have scientific understanding of why, but they do observe and make changes accordingly.

More correctly

[einhverfr]

Postulating a designer poses fundamental problems for scientific epistomology without solving any problems.

This means that the existance of a designer or lack thereof doesn't really have to do with the question of evolution. There may be a designer or not, but one cannot scientifically postulate one way or the other.

ID states that an intelligent designer *is necessary* to explain certain things.
Mainstream evolutionary theory states that an intelligent designer *is not necessary* to explain things. It does not postulate the lack of existance of such a designer though.

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

Things like the principle of parsimony deal with the question of a designer quite adequately. Since there's no need whatsoever for one, and the existence of one would raise a fuckton of questions without answering any (and in most incarnations require massive changes to the laws of physics), it's pretty safe to say there almost certainly just isn't one.
So you *can* scientifically postulate one way or the other. You can't prove it beyond *all* doubt (as you can't prove a negative, and if you get into epistemology, you can't really prove a positive either), but you can certainly prove it beyond all *reasonable* doubt.

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

Only within scientific epistomology.

Furthermore parsimony only says that one cannot postulate an intelligent designer without need. It does *not* state that one cannot exist simply because current data doesn't require one to explain. Hence it does not suggest that the matter is closed, just that it is not necessary based on what information we have at present.

Invoking parsimony to attempt to prove the lack of existance of an intelligent designer would be like stating that various quantum particles didn't exist before we had a reason to suggest that they existed. Nothing in scientific epistomology suggests that things we don't have a present need to use to explain things don't exist.

Hence postulating either the existance or lack thereof relating to an intelligent designer is unscientific.

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

No, it'd be like postulating that anyone believing in quantum theory in, say, the 1600s would have been nuts to do so, which is true. There was no reason to believe they existed at the time, so belief in their existence would have been unscientific. It's perfectly scientific to posit the non-existence of a designer, as there is no evidence.
The fact that you can't be absolutely certain that it's true is a reflection of the fact that our scientific knowledge is always an approximation at best.

The fact that something might be wrong does not make it unscientific; in fact, every single scientific hypothesis might be wrong. That's just the nature of things. It's not possible to know anything for sure.
This emphatically does not mean that all hypotheses are equally valid or likely, though.

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

No, it'd be like postulating that anyone believing in quantum theory in, say, the 1600s would have been nuts to do so, which is true. Really? So now we are saying anyone who believes in a creator is nuts to do so? Since when is science the only ontology which matters?

The fact that you can't be absolutely certain that it's true is a reflection of the fact that our scientific knowledge is always an approximation at best. s/approximate/incomplete/

Unless of course you think we will ever understand things to the point where no further discoveries can be made....

The fact that something might be wrong does not make it unscientific; in fact, every single scientific hypothesis might be wrong. That's just the nature of things. It's not possible to know anything for sure.
This emphatically does not mean that all hypotheses are equally valid or likely, though. Since Science requires that all hypotheses must be falsifiable to be valid, doesn't this invalidate your idea that science necessitates a sort of atheism? (my own view is that science is entirely agnostic when it comes to religion.)

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

But then it is as much a matter of faith in your case in the matter of Science than my religious faith is to me...

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

Atoms are a difference case altogether, as there were some plausible hypotheses that seemed to necessitate something like them (that is, there was a genuine scientific controversy there), and they didn't really require overturning significant parts of what was known about the universe in the way a designer does.

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

Since when is science the only ontology which matters?

Since science is the only one with reproducible results, as per the other reply.

s/approximate/incomplete/

No, I did mean approximate in this context. I do believe it's also true that scientific knowledge will always be incomplete, and complete scientific knowledge isn't possible even in principle, but that's a direct result of the fact it's always approximate, as there strictly speaking is no way to prove anything.

Since Science requires that all hypotheses must be falsifiable to be valid, doesn't this invalidate your idea that science necessitates a sort of atheism?

Science also has the concept of the burden of proof and the principle of parsimony, so no, it doesn't.

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

Science also has the concept of the burden of proof and the principle of parsimony, so no, it doesn't. To be perfectly clear, my position is:
1) Postulating the existance of a creator is unscientific.
2) Postuating the lack of existance of a creator is also unscientific.

Both of the above postulates lack testability (you can't test a non-falsifiable idea) which is a key aspect of the scientific method. Hence they are neither scientific theories nor hypotheses. They are, rather, matters of individual interpretation which are currently beyond the scope of scientific inquery.

I wonder what percentage of scientists believe in a higher power. Is your position that they are either nuts or hypocrits? It is my position that their belief is just outside the domain of their work.

BTW, you may find it worth going back to read books like "A brief history of Time" by Stephen Hawking and "Physics and Philosophy" by Werner Heisenberg.

But I suppose they were just nuts right?

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

"Postulating" the lack of existence of a creator isn't a positive claim; it's the default when the reverse position doesn't have any evidence for it. Strictly speaking science may be agnostic about it, but strictly speaking, it's agnostic about everything. It's agnostic about ghosts and unicorns as well, but that doesn't mean it's not reasonable to say, within a scientific context, that they pretty much certainly don't exist.

I wonder what percentage of scientists believe in a higher power.

Me too. I'm not aware of any real studies with regards to scientists specifically, but there have been a number that investigated the correlation between religiosity and education, and pretty much all of them found a negative correlation. I don't remember if any of them dared to offer any hypotheses to explain this.

Is your position that they are either nuts or hypocrits?

My position is that they're very good at partitioning, and keep their religious beliefs carefully shielded from scientific questioning; that those beliefs exist in a blind spot, as it were.
For those that actually are religious, that is. A lot of people will identify as one religion or another without actually believing any of it, and in my experience, highly educated religious people are much more likely to view the whole God thing as purely metaphoric.

And there are always people like Einstein, who confuse people on both sides by using very religious language at times, while also maintaining they don't believe in anything like a personal god.

It is my position that their belief is just outside the domain of their work.

NOMA has been taken apart quite thoroughly by a lot of other people, so I won't even try addressing it here.

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

Postulating" the lack of existence of a creator isn't a positive claim; it's the default when the reverse position doesn't have any evidence for it. Ok, here is where your epistomology breaks down a bit.

Suppose we go back to the earliest days of experiments with static electricity. Suppose someone comes up with a theory that little particles are removed from one of the items and deposited on the other, causing an imbalance which causes the attraction. Suppose this person named these particles after the Greek word for amber, since ths was the substance he thought they came from (), this would be inscientific but that wouldn't prevent it from being a pretty accurate description of what is actually happening.

So unscientific assertions are not necessarily false. They just aren't sceintifically true. They are rather unknowable given the current state of scientific knowledge. Hence "that is unscientific" doesn't mean "that is false," it just means that you cannot scientifically say that it is true.

NOMA has been taken apart quite thoroughly by a lot of other people, so I won't even try addressing it here. The problem with NOMA has to do with the approach people take with religion, and to a lesser extent with science, extending them beyond where they can be solid. Furthermore, the various arrogant views that a singular religious position developed by a few people in one part of the world is somehow the only correct interpretation makes the problem largely unsolvable. However, refuting religion does not necessarily equate with refuting the basis of religion.

My view of religion is that most of the major religions of the world today have taken arrogant positions which lead to fundamental philosophical problems. For example, if accepting Christ is necessary for redemption, and one can only do this by being a Christian, why would God condemn people largely by accident of birth (the vast majority of people follow the religions of their parents).

Instead, I see religion as containing a language of an inner part of the self. In essence there is no true religion anymore than there is a true language-- that the ideas expressed rather than the dogmas are what are important and that these may be similar and yet different as you move from tradition to tradition. Religion thus ideally concerned with metaphores relating to the inner world and human experience and condition rather than the outer world and objectively reproducable events.

I would argue that since we are all individuals, inner (psychological) matters are inherently at least somewhat non-reproduceable. Hence they are at least partially outside the domain of science. Furthermore science may help us make great art but it cannot define great art. Hence there are a number of other areas of human experience which are outside that domain. I would put religion in the same category as art in this case.

I do not think that religion tells us how the natural world physically works-- religion works in metaphores and so can only provide some guidance as to how to get along in life, and how to appriciate the fullness of human experience.

Hence the solutions to the problems of NOMA have to do with appropriately scoping religion and science so that they don't in fact potentially overlap. One of the problems with suggesting that science asserts that there is no God is that this assertion violates Science's own methodological approach in order to purposfully arive in such conflict. As you say strictly speaking, science is agnostic. Since Science's methodological approach limits itself, the key thing is to approach sound reasoning to the question of the limits of religion and come up with reasonable and sound answers.

Re:More correctly

[Cairnarvon]

(...) this would be inscientific but that wouldn't prevent it from being a pretty accurate description of what is actually happening.

Why would it be unscientific? It's a falsifiable hypothesis like any other.

I do not think that religion tells us how the natural world physically works-- religion works in metaphores and so can only provide some guidance as to how to get along in life, and how to appriciate the fullness of human experience.

That's nice. However, that's not what (nearly all of) the rest of the world understands religion to be. If it were, this wouldn't even be an issue.
Your solution to conflicts between science and religion is basically to redefine one of the words. That's not a solution, it's a cop-out.

As you say strictly speaking, science is agnostic.

Strictly speaking, science is agnostic about literally everything. That doesn't put questions of the existence or non-existence of God outside of its scope. Like the existence or non-existence of anything else, it's very clearly a scientific question.
You can redefine ``God'' to be strictly metaphorical if you like, but if you do, you're placing yourself outside of this discussion entirely, since that's not the god either side of this debate is discussing.

Re:More correctly

[einhverfr]

Ok, then:

What does Science have to say about Plato's ideas of Forms? ....

Oh, and I disagree with you regarding the understanding of what religion should be. I suspect that Buddhists, Quakers, and to a lesser extent Hindus* would probably agree with me. Furthermore, my understanding of Bohr's rebuttle to Einstein's "God does not play dice" argument was to suggest that natural language was inadequate to describe God anyway, so it seems that this idea is not too far removed from something top scientists have believed too.

* Hinduism here is a little tricky because they, like the Platonists would suggest that the metaphors are "more real" than the scientific data-- that Varuna even as a metaphor is "more real" than the french fries you had for lunch. To some extent it depends on how you define reality.

If you read my latest journal entry, you will see that I suspect that traditional religions around the world saw religion as I do, and that it is limited number of traditions (including the Abrahamic ones which were born in traditions of literate scripture) have this problem. That still leaves Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. with a problem, but it is hardly the only view of religion out there. Certainly not enough to suggest that my idea is simply just a fringe redefinition of the word.

Summary of a summary

[earlymon]

There isn't an article yet. It's due out on Feb 19 - "in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" - from TFA.

The "article" is really a summary itself - in fact, it's more like a press release of the paper to come. Jared Diamond's in the "article" - a pretty heroic character for those that think - saying a good thing about the paper, so there's a clue.

In fact - a little googling revealed that TFA in question is nothing more than a sophomoric rewording of a Stanford "news release" - http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-ehrlich-021308.html

Wake me on the 19th when there's something to see.

Re:In other words

[hjrnunes]

Huh, well.. You guys are pretty much talking about what you don't know. What you, and I, know is that we'll evolve phenotypes that will make correspondent genes last longer, i.e. get copied more often. That is what we can say for sure. Of course we can try to guess the general direction of our evolution but we would be probably wrong. Do not forget that we started to have fat and cholesterol problems relatively recently. For those factors to have a noticeable effect they would have to last for a long time. And considering the fast mutating rate of life and habits of Homo Sapiens Sapiens they probably won't. So I would say that even if we manage to guess a couple adaptations, the great majority wouldn't be guessable anyway because we can't even see the driving factors.. Besides we didn't even get ridden of the old useless ones yet... (e.g. the fifth toe) Anyway, we'll never know. Unfortunately.

A put-down to Pacific Islanders

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Either TFA author thinks that canoes reproduce and have evolved independent of human forces, or he thinks Pacific Islanders are sub-human and not capable of thinking.

Consciousness is part of nature

[microbox]

As basic organisms evolved, for obvious reasons they developed sensory apparatus, to detect heat and cold and each other. It was a matter of time before such an apparatus detected itself, and consciousness was born. But consciousness is not isolated to each individual. We are programmed to communicate with each other, and that communication is fundamentally about how to deal with life, and pass on our collective genetics. A long time ago, that would have been along the lines of understanding useful plants, making tools, and working together. The heritage of consciousness evolved dependent upon, and parallel to our pure genetic heritage.

The nature of self-awareness means that we can "interfere" with ourselves to make the situation better. For example, we can cultivate useful skills, and contemplate our place in the world and how the world could be improved. It is no accident that consciousness should attempt to address these larger questions, as it has to do with passing along a lineage of thoughts and ideas, and ultimately our genetics - the primeval force that dives all of life.

Our self-awareness has identified a problem, one of many that causes suffering and threatens our heritage. The problem comes from a conflict between a basic instinct to consume and possess, and otherwise engage in hedonism, and our intellectual understanding of the long term implications of that. Consciousness has, and always had, the ability to interfere with natural selection, although ultimately it is beholden to it.

For those calling for sustainable development, it is a matter of ethics. We can use our understanding to best sustain our consciousness and genetic heritage, or we can give into momentary pleasures that are really just chemicals being released in our brains. The call for sustainable development is about manipulating ourselves and the environment to best suit our long term viability - obeying the law of natural selection.

When, in the article, it says the people have "learned to avoid natural selection", it means that we are using our understanding of nature in an attempt to subvert its basic law. The bubble of ignorance we create is so that we can continue the doomed attempt to permanently satiate ourselves.

The longer we attempt to live ignorance, that harder and more dramatic the wake-up call will be. The point is we need to re-learn our place in the world, and start acting accordingly. Otherwise we stand to lose a lot, and the suffering of future generations will be immense.

Re:In other words

[cytg.net]

Alright, we're afraid you were off the intelligentdesign sekt or something, my bad. Very well then. Taking the chance of hitting a cliche, ill bring up the motion picture "Idiocracy", while extremely funny also extremely sad. Reviewing the sad part, cause its true, is quite conclusive; i'll place my bet on the fat-but-resilient camp.

Re:In other words

[JavaRob]

Besides we didn't even get ridden of the old useless ones yet... (e.g. the fifth toe) Ah, that's an important fallacy about evolution. Why would we get rid of "useless" features like the 5th toe? It doesn't cost us anything to keep it (unless you account for some women's shoe fashions over the decades...).

Something that's not selected against or selected for will just get carried along (or not) by the more important mutations.

If some other mutation that actually helps us has the side-effect of fusing in the 5th toe, then it'll happen -- but if not, it's probably not going anywhere for a long time. Hell, we might even get 6 toes to a foot (even if the new toe were also superfluous!), if that change was a side-effect of an important mutation... and genetics are complicated enough that this particular genetic mutation could be a tweak that conveys certain disease resistance, or a special brain change.. that just happens to *also* affect foot development.

Re:yeah

[delong]

What they dicovered is the first scientific evidence for the theory that culture evolves

Poppycock. There's over a century of such evidence. It's a little field called anthropology.

Natual selection isn't always a good thing.

[Chas]

And I can sum it up in five words.

"Welcome to Wal-Mart. I love you."

(One, two three, four, five, uh..five..again)

Brought to you by BRAWNDO! THE THIRST MULTIATOR!

Feedback to Science Daily: No Citations?

[mrosgood]

Interesting article. Wouldn't it be neat if we could find the paper in question?

Here's my feedback to editor@sciencedaily.com

Hi!

ScienceDaily.com is a web site. I know it's a novel idea, but you may want to consider provding a WEB LINK to the research paper you're discussing. Failing that -- I know, HTML is HARD -- maybe mention the names of the researchers/authors, their department, the title of the study, or SOME identifying information. These thoughtful "extra credit" measures would enable us lowly readers to use our initiative to do follow-up reading.

With no intentional irony, the foot at the bottom of your stories explain how to cite Science Daily.

You guys are a class act. Real smooth.

Cheers, Jason Osgood / Seattle WA

Human Culture Subject To Natural Selection, Study Shows
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080216175953.htm

Understanding The Nature of the Game

[NetSettler]

The most sustainable cultures on Earth will survive.

I agree with this statement. What I'm less certain of is whether those cultures will be microbial or human.

If the measure of intelligence is the ability to flexibly overcome life's obstacles, then in the climatic intelligence test that's coming up, pitting us against other organisms, we may be in for a rude awakening ... er, ... a rude being-put-to-sleep.

Evolution = anything getting better

[Empiric]

We really need some tighter definitional usage of "evolution" than, in effect, "anything getting better by any standard by means over any amount of time".

Less popular canoe -> customer feedback -> design -> more popular canoe, simply isn't "natural selection" in any way related to the term's Darwinian usage other than the vaguely metaphorical. What's wrong with simply "things tend to be improved"? That usage at least acknowledges the element of teleology, which, strictly speaking is absent from "natural selection". It's not only vague usage, it's also vaguely self-contradictory, in that sense. Ech.

Re:Evolution = anything getting better

[Empiric]

My sentence spontaneously evolved.

We really need some tighter definitional usage of "evolution" than, in effect, "anything getting better by any standard by any means over any amount of time".

Re:Evolution = anything getting better

[Paltin]

There is a fairly standard definition of evolution, and it's not what you think it is.

Evolution is change over time.

The fact of biological evolution was well known before Darwin, and theories to explain it included Lamarkism as well as many seperate creations by God.

There is nothing in the definition of evolution that implies "getting better". The "getting better" is a consequence of selection.

In common parlance, people say evolution when they actually mean biologic evolution caused by natural selection.

This article, however, descrives memetic evolution caused by selection. Natural selection may or may not be the right term for what is causing the memetic evolution of boat design- but in this case, the basic tenets of natural selection do seem to accurately describe the system.

Thanks,
Paltin

Re:Evolution = anything getting better

[Empiric]

Thanks, but I'm quite aware of most of the permutations of definition. There isn't consensus, and that's more of the problem.

"Memetic evolution", though, I find quite funny. Nothing like a strict materialist basing his model on a purely metaphysical proposed causal mechanism. Perhaps your notion and usage, though, isn't quite as absurd as Dawkins'.

Re:Evolution = anything getting better

[aadvancedGIR]

No, things do not tend to be automatically improved, the key part is feedback and corrective action. When there is no incentive for improvement, it doesn't appear.
Western modern societies might be a "good" example of this trend on many aspects.

Re:In other words

[tubapro12]

Natural selection of metabolism rates. People with high metabolisms won't be as likely to get the diseases related to obesity and thus will live longer and theoretically have more children. That, my friend, is how we as a species adapt to the I/O energy changes. But of course, Skynet forbid we actually need fat after that evolutionary step, because that would probably doom our metabolically empowered overlords.

Darwin said natural selection doesn't apply

[buck19]

Darwin said natural selection/survival of the fittest should not be applied to humans and their society. For one thing there no reason to believe that the best of us will survive. The brightest are often the first killed off by fascist regimes I think with mankind the most aggressive dolts are the most likely to survive. We'd actually be going backward evolutionarily speaking.

I have seen several Stanfordites spout this Darwinian logic applied to humankind. Darwin rejected it utterly. And contrary to the Stanford researcher I do hope to think that because of our minds and souls we will survive ultimately due to advances in clean energy; a realization that we cannot let our governments be run by criminals and oil kingpins;and massive advances in nutritional and medical research.

I always have liked talking to Stanford professors but some of their work product is rather surprisingly less than ideal.

Re:Darwin said natural selection doesn't apply

[CmdrGravy]

The brightest are often the first killed off by fascist regimes

To be fair if you're the one being ground under the jackboot then you're probably not that bright after all from a passing on your genes point of view.

Re:Darwin said natural selection doesn't apply

[Bill Dog]

From TFSummary:

'People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term,'

It sounds to me like what they're saying is that capitalism/freedom goes against the very laws of the universe and won't last much longer and then we'll all live according to leftist principles and finally be on track with the way we were meant to be. Gawd I'm glad I'm out of college and away from these intellectually-inbreeding socialist fucks.

Re:Darwin said natural selection doesn't apply

[spun]

Show me a natural system that is truly as inequitable as our human systems. Show me a species that over consumes and still survives. You may not like the truth, but that doesn't make it false. You can hide your head in the sand and ignore it, but that doesn't make it go away. You can insult people who think differently from you, but that doesn't make them wrong. And it also won't make intelligent people agree with you.

Capitalism isn't freedom, it is a path to slavery, as there are no negative feedback loops to halt the runaway concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands. This will lead to a new type of feudalism, where a small percentage of people own all the means of production, and everyone else will have to do what they say, or starve. Freedom to choose what flavor of soda you drink is not real freedom.

Hope you enjoy your own intellectual-inbreeding. You are obviously so frightened of other points of view that you've put yourself into an echo chamber, where all you hear are confirmations of your own bias. Do you really think our current civilization is sustainable in the long term? What happens when we reach the limits of growth?

Re:Darwin said natural selection doesn't apply

[yndrd1984]

First, your reasonable points:

Show me a natural system that is truly as inequitable as our human systems. Show me a species that over consumes and still survives.

You don't have to look far, just find any natural system that's out of equilibrium. For example, deer overpopulate when predators are removed, but eventually they reach a new equilibrium. They don't choose to slow their growth, or try to balance out their population, it is forced on them by their environment. If it wasn't for those external forces, they would reproduce without limit.

Capitalism isn't freedom, it is a path to slavery, as there are no negative feedback loops to halt the runaway concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands. This will lead to a new type of feudalism, where a small percentage of people own all the means of production, and everyone else will have to do what they say, or starve. Freedom to choose what flavor of soda you drink is not real freedom.

Stating your hypothesis on future economic developments as fact isn't an argument, and the vast majority of the people that study the relevant subjects would disagree with you. That doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong, just that you haven't demonstrated any good reasons for others to agree with you.

Do you really think our current civilization is sustainable in the long term? What happens when we reach the limits of growth?

Within the easily predictable future, I don't see any solid limits to growth - lots of possible limits have been surpassed before and people have adapted. Far into the future, current speculation is kind of pointless - I can't predict, with any certainty, what cars will run on in a hundred years, so how can I predict which resources are going to set our limits?

And now your less reasonable ones:

Hope you enjoy your own intellectual-inbreeding. You are obviously so frightened of other points of view that you've put yourself into an echo chamber, where all you hear are confirmations of your own bias.

One could say the same about you.

You can hide your head in the sand and ignore it, but that doesn't make it go away. You can insult people who think differently from you, but that doesn't make them wrong. And it also won't make intelligent people agree with you.

Ooooh, a bunch of generic insults! That will convince people!

War

[tjstork]

Oh, it'll work out very well in the long term, that is, assuming the entire race isn't annihilated. The most sustainable cultures on Earth will survive. I think the quoted researcher meant to say medium term.

No, they won't. The cultures with the strongest militaries and the willingness to use them will kill off those that don't, and take their stuff.

Re:War

[michaelmalak]

The cultures with the strongest militaries and the willingness to use them will kill off those that don't, and take their stuff.

Define "strongest" with respect to ancient Rome and the barbarians.

Re:War

[oliderid]

It was the strategy of the Huns...They occupied almost the whole Eurasian continent? Do you remember anything from them?
Rome was totally different. Rome used to assimilate other people.

Rome used to be stronger : culturally, economically and even military for hundreds of years. Empires raise and die that's a natural process in human history. Rome was different from most Empires. Their main tool was diplomacy, especially during the gauls conquest or in Greece. They used their alliances with local kings or cities to attack/invade the others...Then after few decades the ally was so dependant on Rome that it was de facto annexed.

After the fall of the Empire, most Barbarians litteraly worshipped the Roman culture. Latin was still used (in a vulgar form) as the "lingua franca" in the whole Europe...Christianity the last Roman official religion was practiced by Barbarians rulers because it was Roman, it was politically extremely positive. Even Charlesmagne (XIth) asked the pope to be crowned as the Western Roman Emperor and protector of the holly Church. This title was still used by Austrian Emperor until very recently. The Bizantine emperor, a branch of the original Roman empire was crushed by Otomans in the XVIth. Most continental European rulers like the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, Charlemagne, Charlesquint, Napolean secretly dreamed to revive the Roman Empire....And even in today Russia the Byzantine empire is still used as propaganda by nationalists, an Orthodox empire weakenned by the decadent west.

Rome is a giant in history because it had the ability to choose its policy carefully. Brutal force wasn't the only tool...What is the best result? A totally annhilated country or millions of surviving citizens happily paying taxes to be part of the free trade routes (from the UK to Jordania)? How can you expect the most sincere allegiance? By the fear of your armies? Or by the fear to lose their wealth and trading partners?

Re:War

[tjstork]

Define "strongest" with respect to ancient Rome and the barbarians

In the latter days, the barbarians were stronger. That is why Rome fell.

Re:In other words

[Nullav]

Well, by that time I certainly hope we have mechanical suits to do any heavy labor, since we'd be absolutely useless for anything but hitting buttons and short sprints. (I'm probably off, but I'm picturing a race of people with shrew-like metabolisms and it's not a pretty thought.)
On another note, I think we have enough problems with people living long and having tons of children. Please, go to India/China/a trailer park for a few weeks and look at what you're asking for. The only way this would look like a good thing is if we colonized Mars some time in the next 10,000 years.

Re:yeah

[TapeCutter]

Ok, I should have said "What the claim to have discovered..."

How is this evolution?

[JesterXXV]

What the fuck has this got to do with evolution? Evolution reveals to us that humans and monkeys and alligators and gadflies and mushrooms are all related, and that they speciated as a result of accidental mutations selected by reproduction and millions of years. This paper reveals to us that... people can construct canoes by trial and error. Just like they build and refine any other tool ever produced.

This is New?

[bareshiyth]

Duh....

I was teaching this about 40 years ago, in my Human Evolution, Anthropology, and Cultural Ecology courses at UC Santa Cruz, among other places. If this the latest at Stanford, I'd recommend some other school! Really.

Yes, natural selection

[snowwrestler]

"Natural" is a word of many meanings, but in the context of the scientific theory of evolution, it implies merely the absence of supernatural influence.

Your attempt to draw a distinction between human intelligence and "natural" reflects a dualistic mode of thinking that is itself unscientific and outdated. From the view of science, human intelligence and culture are as natural as any pack of wolves culling a herd.

Furthermore, the concept of fitness can only be applied in retrospect whether you're talking about genes or ideas, because the fitness can only be measured by subsequent success. A human designing a canoe has no more ability to foretell future events than a strand of DNA expressing a protein. Even now we can design a boat for today, but can we really predict the state of boat design in 100 years? Did the inventor of the transistor predict the Core 2 Duo chip? It seems obvious to me that human ideas undergo a speciation and winnowing process that is similar to genetic evolution. The unpredictability of markets demonstrates that we cannot foretell our paths.

Re:Yes, natural selection

[syousef]

"Natural" is a word of many meanings, but in the context of the scientific theory of evolution, it implies merely the absence of supernatural influence.

No it doesn't. It means there was no design...supernatural or otherwise.

This definition even limits it to reproducing organisms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

You're talking out of your backside and I'm sick and tired of slashdot trolling.

Re:Yes, natural selection

[Half-pint HAL]

"Natural" is a word of many meanings, but in the context of the scientific theory of evolution, it implies merely the absence of supernatural influence.

Your attempt to draw a distinction between human intelligence and "natural" reflects a dualistic mode of thinking that is itself unscientific and outdated. From the view of science, human intelligence and culture are as natural as any pack of wolves culling a herd.

Shenanigans!

While it is all well and good (and perfectly true) to point out that humans are animals and hence natural and indeed agents of natural selection, this is a diversion from the foundations of Darwinian thought.

Darwin was a child of the industrial revolution. The rate of change and refinement in the design of equipment and tools suddenly became very rapid, and he will have experienced first-hand the power of good design to improve efficiency and fitness-for-purpose.

Darwin's innovation came when he realised that the pressures of the environment could perform this same iterative design process without concious direction. The idea is that nature creates variations through an undirected process of random mutation and the failures are naturally removed. However, human design creates variations by a directed process, reasoning on what would be a good change.

Polynesian canoe builders wouldn't have created variations at random. This means that they aren't exploring as wide a developmental space as nature would have, which actually means eventually reaching an inferior solution, because natural selection often reaches a highly-specialised, but not unique, ideal.

Compare the great auk and the penguin, for example. Both evolved in isolation in different hemispheres and the two were genetically very different, but in phenotype they were to all intents and purposes the same. Two flightless birds who had adapted to swim in polar waters and live on land, both of a similar colouring adapted to their similar terrain. Tasmanian wolves and tigers were marsupials, but took on physical characteristics very similar to dogs and cats as they fulfilled the same function in the eco-system.

But Polynesian canoes remain uniquely Polynesian. Outriggers like theirs don't occur in other similar habitats, and the best solution for sea-faring travel -- the sail -- didn't occur there.

This isn't Darwinian unconcious natural selection, it's industrial/technological concious selection.

HAL.

natural who?

[cavebison]

I would suggest there's no such thing as "natural selection".

Except as a term to describe change over time, perhaps, much like there isn't necessarily (at least in my mind) such a thing as "time", except as a term to describe measurable change. If you can imagine that we perceive time due to change, not change due to time, then imagine that natural selection is merely a loaded way of saying "systems compete".

It's a loaded term because it generally means "improvements over time". Given that all species can die quite unexpectedly from outside causes (e.g. dinosaurs vs meteors), what exactly does "improvement" mean, if not a completely relative judgement within a closed ecosystem?

Dinosaurs survived very well until Meteorus Impactus said hello. So within the Earth ecosystem, Dino ruled. Within a wider ecosystem, they fail. So where in that wider picture is "natural selection" exactly?

More pertinently, there's global climate change. If "natural selection" took us from humus to human, only to be wiped out by a change in the weather, then at the very least I'd say "natural selection" doesn't mean what we think it means.

Re:natural who?

[aadvancedGIR]

"Dinosaurs survived very well until Meteorus Impactus said hello. So within the Earth ecosystem, Dino ruled. Within a wider ecosystem, they fail. So where in that wider picture is "natural selection" exactly?"

Dinosaurs ruled for a very long period (over 100 million years) because their strategy of growing as big as possible was a winning one at a time when vegetation was overabundant, at the same time, the small mamals were mostly concerned by not being eated by almost any predator and the ones with the more advanced brain had a clear headstart at that game.
The meteor impact changed the context by throwing a lot of dust in the upper athmosphere, rapidly killing most of the plants by depriving them of the solar energy and indirectly, killing the larger animals (including most of the dinosaurs, but not all of them) that could not fit in a scarce resource environment nor, of course, evolve to face such a fast change.

"More pertinently, there's global climate change. If "natural selection" took us from humus to human, only to be wiped out by a change in the weather, then at the very least I'd say "natural selection" doesn't mean what we think it means."

First, even the worst climate change scenarios do not imply the end of mankind, only that our current population and lifestyle could not be sustained, mostly because of a reduction of available arable lands. Then I don't know what you think "natural selection" means to you, but to scientists, it does not mean existing forever or being able to face any drastic environmental change, only that nature is harsh and tends to kill young the individuals or species that do not fit to the environment in which they try to live.

Re:natural who?

[bareshiyth]

Actually, no one (should) think "natural selection" means what YOU think it means.

You've confused that concept/term with evolution itself. Natural selection was an idea Darwin came to to explain the improbable history of life he believed in. He believed (more or less) that the present-day array of life forms on earth was the result of eons of "general improvements over time". That species were constantly changing (probably "improving", and generally increasing in their compplexity -- not from "humus", which is the end product of the death and decay of those higher life forms we call plants, but from single cell plants and animals to very complexly organized multicellular plants and animals, including humans) in order to better meet the challenges of the physical and intra-species environment. The challenges, that in nature offered no "winning tickets" but plenty of losing tickets, were what he meant by "natural selection". Evolution resulted, Darwin surmised, from species getting past those challenges, as better designs within their population remained and gained predominance.

Darwin actually got the idea from his observation of the human practice of animal husbandry. Throughout history, humans tended to practice "artificial selection". They got rid of (ate, discarded, prohibited from breeding) specimens of their domesticated species that they deemed less desirable, and encourage/aided the development of those which had "better" characteristics (prettier, more milk, more offspring, bigger eggs or drumsticks, etc.) from their point of view. Yep, that was "evolution" by human direction, and Darwin (biased by similar values) decided the remarkable panorama of life in all its splendor and complexity in his day must have been developed not by any similasr intelligent assistance (only God could have done such a thing, and Darwin was not fond of the idea of God or any other intelligent designer) so he settled for "natural selection" and a sort of Adam Smith theory of natural economics as the unseen hand that "evolved" the obviously great web of life now on earth.

Maybe, if you now understand "natural selection" and "evolution" a bit more accurately, you can rethink some of your own ideas and opinions.

By the way, there has always been global warming or cooling going on, sometimes far more drastic/extreme than what we are now noticing. And the theory of a metior/asteroid destroying (or ending) the preeminance of the dinosaurs is still a theory, and is actually being challenged quite rigoursly right now. And one can see, especially if one listens to PETA and so many of the environmentalist groups, that the idea that we are the epitome, or ultimate "improvement" in life forms, that there is indeed quite a set of values and judgements that stand behind the ideas of "evolution"

That is incorrect

[snowwrestler]

Sexual selection is a culling that involves no forces external to the population. Yet it is an important factor in natural selection.

Re:yeah

[TapeCutter]

I wasn't trying to change your 'point', look back and you will find I was disparaging your use of the word 'proof' in a scientific context. However, since you asked...

Do we need this research: One reason why people scientifically investigate common-sense assumptions is that occasionaly those assumptions are wrong (sub-atomic physics is a better example). Nobody has a clue if they 'need' a particular piece of research until it is done, nor can the researcher predict how others will use it in the future (a good example from the world of maths is Maxwell's equations that were more or less ignored for 80yrs).

Are men attracted to breasts: Do native men who's tribe does not use clothes spend all day staring at breasts, do they turn away when they see grandma's nipples dragging in the dirt? - All good questions that probably require further research. ;)

Re:In other words

[karlek76]

See http;//ub.karleklund.net for an explantion too long for a comment

Journal article isn't available to the public yet.

[canoesail]

This is not the "journal article". This is just the Stanford press release about it. The article is released tomorrow. But there are 200 comments here from people who have already decided what they think about it. I'd like to see the author's data. I didn't think such detailed canoe info was available. "canoes of oceania" lacks hull lines drawings for instance. Here's the stanford press release, which is the same as that slashdot post. http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-ehrlich-021308.html and here's the article: http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/pnas/07-11802.htm the article gets released tomorrow. Today I get this error: "You currently do not have access to this embargoed journal page." I assume only "peer reviewers" get access until then, so they don't get confused by multiple comments from people who haven't actually read it. If you have actually read the article or can give me access, please let me know, I've photographed, measured and drawn many pacific outrigger canoes.

Asimov's "The Last Question"

[whyde]

Have you, by chance, read Asimov's The Last Question?

No-brainer

[Dragoness Eclectic]

So they've proved what, exactly? That even stone-age, tool-using cultures understand the concept of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? This paper strikes me as a stunning no-brainer, not the revolutionary research it's being hyped as.

"We've established that people don't randomly change useful tools to useless tools, but they do change the decorations."

That's a real exciting discovery there...

Re:In other words

[tubapro12]

Ah yes, reminiscent of H.G.Wells' Morlocks.

Re:yeah

[TapeCutter]

"Thank you for taking me seriously."

Ditto. :)