This is missing something. Adaptation *to what*? Adaptation is always in service of something - some goal. It's like saying "my core value is optimization." Optimization *of what*? There has to be an objective to start with, before you can adapt or optimize that objective.
You described a person adapting their superficial preferences to gain greater social status. In that case, their "core value" would be greater social status, not "adaptation."
Anyway, the notion of having "core values" is not well defined and not well grounded. If a core value is an unchangeable preference from which all our other preferences follow, we probably don't have those. More meaningful than a core preferences would be a preference that we would *settle on*, in the limit, as we gather data and experience, and consider many different alternatives. A preference of reflective equilibrium.
Your values are memes in your individual brain. Natural selection occurs outside of your brain, across multiple individuals and generations. It's a category error to say that your values are natural selection.
If someone consciously wants their genes to propagate, then that drive, within their brain, would be a value. But it does not follow from natural selection that everyone has this as a core value. Evolution has given us a variety of drives that engage at different times - it hasn't given us a unified drive to reproduce from which our other drives follow.
Additionally, "the tendency to be selected" is inexcusably vague. To be selected for what? For maximum expected children? But then cockroaches win, and whales and worker bees lose. For survival of the species a whole? Then horseshoe crabs win, for now - but every species has a limited lifespan before going extinct or evolving into something else. For survival of your genes? But genes have limited lifespans as well.
Evolution doesn't optimize for any particular goal, and "adaptation" is not a valid optimization objective. The most we might say about what evolution optimizes is that it tends to fill all the ecological niches. Where a niche is empty, evolution tends to cause a species to fill it, if it's feasible for such a species to evolve from existing ones.
Adaptation is a mechanism by which an entity selects, ranks, and propagates its values. Without it, new ideas or values would not spread or persist.
Adaptation itself is not a value; it is a sorting mechanism. What we actually value is the emergence of new ideas or values that are worth adapting to.
I guess this seems like a tautology to me? Or a selection effect maybe. So over the set of values you may have, they have to be adaptive to your environment, but calling adaption itself a value seems an error in terms since typically people at least have ideas about what their own values and preferences are
Adaptation pulls people in multiple directions. Your X chromosome wants you to have daughters. Your gut bacteria want you to go to the bathrom a lot. Culture typically pulls you in a million different directions. Adaptation is not really your "deepest value". Rather, it is something that results a very large number of different, conflicting values.
W. D. Hamilton was one of the first to appreciate this. In his autobiography he says he started out with a picture of himself as a unified whole - but this view was shattered by his findings - that instead pointed towards segregation distorters, green beards, transposons, selfish genes and intragenomic conflict. Symbiology compounded those findings - but that mostly came later. Hamilton claimed that this picture of himself as a fragmented creature with multiple conflicting goals helped him to understand some of the conflict he felt within himself.
This is missing something. Adaptation *to what*? Adaptation is always in service of something - some goal. It's like saying "my core value is optimization." Optimization *of what*? There has to be an objective to start with, before you can adapt or optimize that objective.
You described a person adapting their superficial preferences to gain greater social status. In that case, their "core value" would be greater social status, not "adaptation."
Anyway, the notion of having "core values" is not well defined and not well grounded. If a core value is an unchangeable preference from which all our other preferences follow, we probably don't have those. More meaningful than a core preferences would be a preference that we would *settle on*, in the limit, as we gather data and experience, and consider many different alternatives. A preference of reflective equilibrium.
Adaption is the key concept of natural selection. It is the tendency to be selected.
Your values are memes in your individual brain. Natural selection occurs outside of your brain, across multiple individuals and generations. It's a category error to say that your values are natural selection.
If someone consciously wants their genes to propagate, then that drive, within their brain, would be a value. But it does not follow from natural selection that everyone has this as a core value. Evolution has given us a variety of drives that engage at different times - it hasn't given us a unified drive to reproduce from which our other drives follow.
Additionally, "the tendency to be selected" is inexcusably vague. To be selected for what? For maximum expected children? But then cockroaches win, and whales and worker bees lose. For survival of the species a whole? Then horseshoe crabs win, for now - but every species has a limited lifespan before going extinct or evolving into something else. For survival of your genes? But genes have limited lifespans as well.
Evolution doesn't optimize for any particular goal, and "adaptation" is not a valid optimization objective. The most we might say about what evolution optimizes is that it tends to fill all the ecological niches. Where a niche is empty, evolution tends to cause a species to fill it, if it's feasible for such a species to evolve from existing ones.
So, adaptation = fitness? But casual observation—especially just lately!—shows that *own fitness* is not the deepest value motivating most people.
Adaptation is a mechanism by which an entity selects, ranks, and propagates its values. Without it, new ideas or values would not spread or persist.
Adaptation itself is not a value; it is a sorting mechanism. What we actually value is the emergence of new ideas or values that are worth adapting to.
It seems more obviously true to say our deepest values are to survive and reproduce (which is similar but not identical).
I’m not certain whether adaption per se should be regarded as a value or a mechanism, ie a goal or a means.
I guess this seems like a tautology to me? Or a selection effect maybe. So over the set of values you may have, they have to be adaptive to your environment, but calling adaption itself a value seems an error in terms since typically people at least have ideas about what their own values and preferences are
This very insightful post made me smile. It deals with both the subject of my Substack https://tomguarriello.substack.com and my book https://bit.ly/4khZZW6
Adaptation pulls people in multiple directions. Your X chromosome wants you to have daughters. Your gut bacteria want you to go to the bathrom a lot. Culture typically pulls you in a million different directions. Adaptation is not really your "deepest value". Rather, it is something that results a very large number of different, conflicting values.
W. D. Hamilton was one of the first to appreciate this. In his autobiography he says he started out with a picture of himself as a unified whole - but this view was shattered by his findings - that instead pointed towards segregation distorters, green beards, transposons, selfish genes and intragenomic conflict. Symbiology compounded those findings - but that mostly came later. Hamilton claimed that this picture of himself as a fragmented creature with multiple conflicting goals helped him to understand some of the conflict he felt within himself.
Adaption isn’t a word, is it? How about adaptation?
It is in dictionaries.
Isn't English interesting?
- "Expect" gave rise to "expectation" rather than "expection"
- "Adopt" gave rise to "adoption" rather than "adoptation"
- "Adapt" gave rise to both "adaption" and "adaptation", although the latter is more common