trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-07T07:47:05.000Z

Before 1966, it was not unusual to see serious biologists advocating evolutionary hypotheses that we would now regard as magical thinking. These muddled notions played an important historical role in the development of later evolutionary theory, error calling forth correction; like the folly of English kings provoking into existence the Magna Carta and constitutional democracy.

As an example of romance, Vero Wynne-Edwards, Warder Allee, and J. L. Brereton, among others, believed that predators would voluntarily restrain their breeding to avoid overpopulating their habitat and exhausting the prey population.

But evolution does not open the floodgates to arbitrary purposes. You cannot explain a rattlesnake's rattle by saying that it exists to benefit other animals who would otherwise be bitten. No outside Evolution Fairy decides when a gene ought to be promoted; the gene's effect must somehow directly cause the gene to be more prevalent in the next generation. It's clear why our human sense of aesthetics, witnessing a population crash of foxes who've eaten all the rabbits, cries "Something should've been done!" But how would a gene complex for restraining reproduction—of all things!—cause itself to become more frequent in the next generation?

A human being designing a neat little toy ecology—for entertainment purposes, like a model railroad—might be annoyed if their painstakingly constructed fox and rabbit populations self-destructed by the foxes eating all the rabbits and then dying of starvation themselves. So the human would tinker with the toy ecology—a fox-breeding-restrainer is the obvious solution that leaps to our human minds—until the ecology looked nice and neat. Nature has no human, of course, but that needn't stop us—now that we know what we want on aesthetic grounds, we just have to come up with a plausible argument that persuades Nature to want the same thing on evolutionary grounds.

Obviously, selection on the level of the individual won't produce individual restraint in breeding. Individuals who reproduce unrestrainedly will, naturally, produce more offspring than individuals who restrain themselves.

(Addendum: Individual selection will not produce individual sacrifice of breeding opportunities. Individual selection can certainly produce individuals who, after acquiring all available resources, ...
Beware of Stephen J. Gould
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-06T05:22:39.000Z

Followup to: Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound

If you've read anything Stephen J. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Not because he was wrong. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science.

In his 1996 book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Stephen J. Gould explains how modern evolutionary biology is very naive about evolutionary progress. Foolish evolutionary biologists, says Gould, believe that evolution has a preferred tendency toward progress and the accumulation of complexity. But of course - Gould kindly explains - this is simply a statistical illusion, bolstered by the tendency to cite hand-picked sequences like bacteria, fern, dinosaurs, dog, man. You could equally well explain this apparent progress by supposing that evolution is undergoing a random walk, sometimes losing complexity and sometimes gaining it. If so, Gould says, there will be a left bound, a minimum at zero complexity, but no right bound, and the most complex organisms will seem to grow more complex over time. Even though it's really just a random walk with no preference in either direction, the distribution widens and the tail gets longer.

What romantics, ha ha, those silly evolutionary biologists, believing in progress! It's a good thing we had a statistically sophisticated thinker like Stephen J. Gould to keep their misconceptions from infecting the general public. Indeed, Stephen J. Gould was a hero - a martyr - because evolutionary biologists don't like it when you challenge their romantic preconceptions, and they persecuted him. Or so Gould represented himself to the public.

There's just one problem: It's extremely unlikely that any modern evolutionary theorist, however much a romantic, would believe that evolution was accumulating complexity.

There was once a time when many evolutionary biologists had a romantic conception of progress, evolution climbing ever-higher mountains of complexity, dinosaur to dog to man. And there was a hero who challenged that widespread misconception. The hero was George Williams, his challenge was successful, and his ...
Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-04T16:54:24.000Z

Followup to: An Alien God, The Wonder of Evolution, Evolutions Are Stupid

Yesterday, I wrote:

Humans can do things that evolutions probably can't do period over the expected lifetime of the universe. As the eminent biologist Cynthia Kenyon once put it at a dinner I had the honor of attending, "One grad student can do things in an hour that evolution could not do in a billion years." According to biologists' best current knowledge, evolutions have invented a fully rotating wheel on a grand total of three occasions.

But then, natural selection has not been running for a mere million years. It's been running for 3.85 billion years. That's enough to do something natural selection "could not do in a billion years" three times. Surely the cumulative power of natural selection is beyond human intelligence?

Not necessarily. There's a limit on how much complexity an evolution can support against the degenerative pressure of copying errors.

(Warning: A simulation I wrote to verify the following arguments did not return the expected results. See addendum and comments.)

(Addendum 2: This discussion has now been summarized in the Less Wrong Wiki. I recommend reading that instead.)

The vast majority of mutations are either neutral or detrimental; here we are focusing on detrimental mutations. At equilibrium, the rate at which a detrimental mutation is introduced by copying errors, will equal the rate at which it is eliminated by selection.

A copying error introduces a single instantiation of the mutated gene. A death eliminates a single instantiation of the mutated gene. (We'll ignore the possibility that it's a homozygote, etc; a failure to mate also works, etc.) If the mutation is severely detrimental, it will be eliminated very quickly - the embryo might just fail to develop. But if the mutation only leads to a 0.01% probability of dying, it might spread to 10,000 people before one of them died. On average, one detrimental mutation leads to one death; the weaker the selection pressure against it, the more likely it is to spread. Again, at equilibrium, copying errors will introduce mutations at the same rate that selection eliminates them. One mutation, one death.

This means that you need the same amount of selection pressure to keep a gene intact, whether it's a relat...
Corporate ecology
by KatjaGrace — 2007-11-03T22:13:00.000Z

Direct competition is resource intensive. Just to compete, species and companies have to invest heaps of energy in long trunks and roots, extra hunting and massive advertising campaigns for instance, instead of expanding or improving production. To avoid these costs they move into niches. Where there are multiple species or companies with very similar habits, one will eventually get an advantage somewhere and use it to get further ahead and outcompete the others. Consequently those that survive employ slightly different tactics and are spread between different habitats and markets. The fast food diverged from the fancy restaurants way back and nestled into more isolated markets. The fast food members have since emphasised their differences through differentiation of colourful plastic toys, varieties of hamburger and corporate identity, to appeal to different prey.

Companies can even evolve according to the prey’s preferences, their appendages growing beautiful but functionless layers of plastic and coloured cardboard, along with scents precisely attuned to attract passing shoppers.

All right, the mechanisms are half different (companies at least try to steer their behaviour, though I reckon natural selection comes in there to a great extent too). And the structure of the larger system is perhaps different (unless people are the decomposers, the production chain the trophic levels…yeah, whatev).
Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-03T15:45:39.000Z

Yesterday, I wrote:

Science has a very exact idea of the capabilities of evolution. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you're not "fighting on evolution's side" against creationism. You're being scientifically inaccurate, full stop.

In this post I describe some well-known inefficiencies and limitations of evolutions. I say "evolutions", plural, because fox evolution works at cross-purposes to rabbit evolution, and neither can talk to snake evolution to learn how to build venomous fangs.

So I am talking about limitations of evolution here, but this does not mean I am trying to sneak in creationism. This is standard Evolutionary Biology 201. (583 if you must derive the equations.) Evolutions, thus limited, can still explain observed biology; in fact the limitations are necessary to make sense of it. Remember that the wonder of evolutions is not how well they work, but that they work at all.

Human intelligence is so complicated that no one has any good way to calculate how efficient it is. Natural selection, though not simple, is simpler than a human brain; and correspondingly slower and less efficient, as befits the first optimization process ever to exist. In fact, evolutions are simple enough that we can calculate exactly how stupid they are.

Evolutions are slow. How slow? Suppose there's a beneficial mutation which conveys a fitness advantage of 3%: on average, bearers of this gene have 1.03 times as many children as non-bearers. Assuming that the mutation spreads at all, how long will it take to spread through the whole population? That depends on the population size. A gene conveying a 3% fitness advantage, spreading through a population of 100,000, would require an average of 768 generations to reach universality in the gene pool. A population of 500,000 would require 875 generations. The general formula is

Generations to fixation = 2 ln(N) / s

where N is the population size, and (1 + s) is the fitness. (If each bearer of the gene has 1.03 times as many children as a non-bearer, s = 0.03.)

Thus, if the population size were 1,000,000—the estimated population in hunter-gatherer times—then it would require 2763 generations for a gene conveying a 1% advantage to spread through the gene pool.1

This should not be surprising; genes have to do all their own work of spreading. There's no Evolution Fairy who can watch the gene pool and say, "Hm, that ...
Drawing lines and tigers
by KatjaGrace — 2007-11-03T13:08:00.000Z

There is a problem that catches the light occasionally, and is pushed off into political correctitude, but one day will have to be met. Humans are all as good as one another. If they are stupid or disabled or anything this doesn’t detract from their worth as people. This is fine – I’m not disagreeing. Animals are worth less than humans. Dead humans are worth less than humans. This is also fine, and I’m not disagreeing. However there’s an inconsistency.

These views can only work as long as the gaps between these things and humans are not filled. Humanity isn’t binary. There is, at least potentially, a sliding scale between characteristic humanness and, say, characteristic antness, involving variations in many characteristics. Similarly for living and dead. At what point as you travel away from normal human characteristics do you suddenly draw a line and value a creature/person a little less?

In practice as soon as you stop relating to them, but this is hardly the basis for a moral distinction. Wherever you draw a line, it must be admitted that it is arbitrary. So while we might take pride in our fair treatment of all mankind, regardless of their characteristics, we must agree that we could just as legitimately draw the line elsewhere and treat our celebratedly cared for lowest-capability people as animals.

Aside from where to draw the line is the question of why to have one. Why does a characteristic (such as intelligence or ‘level of consciousness’) varying among animals vary their moral worth, while the same characteristic varying among humans doesn’t? Their differences are judged using different rules, but not because of relevant inherent differences.

This problem hasn’t fully emerged with animals yet (perhaps more with dead people, and very little with robots), but that does little to the argument: our ethics are inconsistent.
A way to be more open minded (an experimental thought)
by KatjaGrace — 2007-11-03T09:43:00.000Z

(As in actually open minded, not just comfortably sheltered from one’s narrow mindedness)

A technique I noticed while experimenting with being wrong:
1. If you have an opinion on something, find an opposing one
2. Feel like you believe it (emotionally, not necessarily mentally – pretend you know it’s true and don’t think about whether it is). It doesn’t matter how averse you are to it – if somebody else can believe it, there are reasons to (not necessarily rational ones). Think of that reason and try out the associated emotions. Feel loyal, caring and understanding toward the idea’s followers. The important bit isn’t the belief, but its emotional affects – feel something about it.
3. Stop.

Some justification for this touchy feely emotional garbage? To remove it from the equation.
I think the biggest fog over unbiased judgement is emotion. From a side of any battlefield there are fierce positive emotions radiating from your ideals and negative ones flying in from the other side. The correct side is obvious – the one supporting the good feelings! Open mindedness isn’t even called for. If it is brought out it is only to declare ‘I’m looking at the other side, and they look dangerous!’. But both sides are awash with emotions supporting them and driving them on. If they weren’t, there probably wouldn’t be an argument. Sound reasons devoid of emotional allure don’t pull the crowds. To be open minded it is necessary to neutralise of emotion. But it isn’t enough just to acknowledge it – ‘well the other side clearly cares about X’ – if you actually feel something for the arguments on your side. You have to feel both sides or none. There’ll be plenty of non feeling once you’re dead, and giving up feelings can be hard, so try for feeling both initially, as outlined above. It’ll all fade away quickly and you’ll be more open minded.

Note: do not necessarily think both sides are correct as a result. Just choose unemotionally, or taking all emotion into account.
The Wonder of Evolution
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-02T20:49:30.000Z

The wonder of evolution is that it works at all.

I mean that literally: If you want to marvel at evolution, that's what's marvel-worthy.

How does optimization first arise in the universe? If an intelligent agent designed Nature, who designed the intelligent agent? Where is the first design that has no designer? The puzzle is not how the first stage of the bootstrap can be super-clever and super-efficient; the puzzle is how it can happen at all.

Evolution resolves the infinite regression, not by being super-clever and super-efficient, but by being stupid and inefficient and working anyway. This is the marvel.

For professional reasons, I often have to discuss the slowness, randomness, and blindness of evolution. Afterward someone says: "You just said that evolution can't plan simultaneous changes, and that evolution is very inefficient because mutations are random. Isn't that what the creationists say? That you couldn't assemble a watch by randomly shaking the parts in a box?"

But the reply to creationists is not that you can assemble a watch by shaking the parts in a box. The reply is that this is not how evolution works. If you think that evolution does work by whirlwinds assembling 747s, then the creationists have successfully misrepresented biology to you; they've sold the strawman.

The real answer is that complex machinery evolves either incrementally, or by adapting previous complex machinery used for a new purpose. Squirrels jump from treetop to treetop using just their muscles, but the length they can jump depends to some extent on the aerodynamics of their bodies. So now there are flying squirrels, so aerodynamic they can glide short distances. If birds were wiped out, the descendants of flying squirrels might reoccupy that ecological niche in ten million years, gliding membranes transformed into wings. And the creationists would say, "What good is half a wing? You'd just fall down and splat. How could squirrelbirds possibly have evolved incrementally?"

That's how one complex adaptation can jump-start a new complex adaptation. Complexity can also accrete incrementally, starting from a single mutation.

First comes some gene A which is simple, but at least a little useful on its own, so that A increases to universality in the gene pool. Now along comes gene B, which is only useful in ...
Some half-serious, half-formed thoughts on existing and so on
by KatjaGrace — 2007-11-02T11:20:00.000Z

So I’ve been banging my head against a wall (metaphorically, almost not) for about a week and a half (or years on and off) about the apparent meaninglessness of anything and the difficulty of finding anything to do that is mildly satisfying next to the absurdity of existing. This is what I’ve come to:

On lack of inherant meaning in anything:

– Whether there is value inherent in the universe or not (by the way there’s not) doesn’t matter (nothing does! lol. But that’s not my point). Value that you choose to place on something is as legitimate as that which ‘God’ or anything else does. It would be impossible for a God or anything else to allocate value to things in any more legitimate a way. If they did, and you disagreed with them, why would their values have precedence? To give them precedence would be a value judgement. There is no better possibility than what we’ve got (similar to how there is no better version of free will than determinism).

– Really it’s not that bad. You have the freedom (yay) to value what you think should be valued. If there were some fundamental ones one had to stick by, I’d probably whinge heaps more about that (and anyway, if not comfy with it you can probably find some place to live where some government will be willing to choose values for you – such as Australia it seems)

– It is objectively better to value things, and to value things that other people’s values aren’t mutually exclusive with. ‘Better’ is defined in terms of the value placed on stuff (yours and others’) – if you value things more, there will be more value. So it will be better. If you value killing people etc. you will impinge on their (probably less messed up) experience of value quite considerably, so it will very likely not be better. In the end the goodness of anything is a practical question of whether the values of the individuals involved are fulfilled. Potential for this depends on them having values, and them not being contradictory.

Note: there is a difference between indifference and not valuing things. You can just indifferently value whatever comes along, without caring what it is (though there are still other people’s fixed values to watch out for). This can kind of work.

– You probably get on alright having your own values &...
An Alien God
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2007-11-02T06:57:36.000Z

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution," said Jacques Monod, "is that everybody thinks he understands it."

A human being, looking at the natural world, sees a thousand times purpose. A rabbit's legs, built and articulated for running; a fox's jaws, built and articulated for tearing. But what you see is not exactly what is there...

In the days before Darwin, the cause of all this apparent purposefulness was a very great puzzle unto science. The Goddists said "God did it", because you get 50 bonus points each time you use the word "God" in a sentence. Yet perhaps I'm being unfair. In the days before Darwin, it seemed like a much more reasonable hypothesis. Find a watch in the desert, said William Paley, and you can infer the existence of a watchmaker.

But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?

When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines.

The ecosystem would make much more sense if it wasn't designed by a unitary Who, but, rather, created by a horde of deities—say from the Hindu or Shinto religions. This handily explains both the ubiquitous purposefulnesses, and the ubiquitous conflicts: More than one deity acted, often at cross-purposes. The fox and rabbit were both designed, but by distinct competing deities. I wonder if anyone ever remarked on the seemingly excellent evidence thus provided for Hinduism over Christianity. Probably not.

Similarly, the Judeo-Christian God is alleged to be benevolent—well, sort of. And yet much of nature's purposefulness seems downright cruel. Darwin suspected a non-standard Creator for studying Ichneumon wasps, whose paralyzing stings preserve its prey to be eaten alive b...