Thursday, May 10, 2012

Interview with James A. Shapiro, author of Evolution:  A View from the 21st Century

“Given the exemplary status of biological evolution, we can anticipate that a paradigm shift in our understanding of that subject will have repercussions far outside the life sciences. . . .  How such an evolutionary paradigm shift will play out in the physical and social sciences remains to be seen. But it is possible to predict that the cognitive (psychological) and social sciences will have an increased influence on biology, especially when it comes to the acquisition and processing of information.” –James A. Shapiro, Evolution:  A View from the 21st Century

Read it at Counterpunch
The Evolution Paradigm Shift
by Suzan Mazur

How cognitive and information science are challenging existing scientific paradigms. The evolutionary paradigm underlies virtually all other paradigms and so a different understanding of evolution will have reverberating effects across the spectrum of knowledge. While this is not about economics, it is not difficult to see the parallels and implications.

6 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"However, if you say to them you’re doing non-Darwinian science, they say, “No, what are you talking about? We’re doing Darwinian science.” Because, in their minds, “Darwinian science” is synonymous with non-supernatural scientific exploration of evolution and genome change in biology.

I don’t think there’s a conscious deception going on. I describe it as a kind of schizophrenia.

Suzan Mazur: You’re saying there’s not a conscious deception going on. That’s interesting.

James Shapiro: Let me just add to that.

Naturally there are very few people who will come out as I have and say: Look the emperor has no clothes. People are not willing to do that. They probably are very wise not to. But somebody has to say it. I’m in a position to do that and so I say it."

Tom, I can see a parallel here for sure.


Resp,

Leverage said...

Matt, there is a difference though.

And it is that science being an essentially empirical endeavour, empiricism always wins ideology and wrong theories get dismissed. Reality is always more stubborn than ideas! However, the old 'one funeral at a time' still is correct.

But in case of economics, where we are dealing mostly with social constructs and how we organise and share power, resources, etc. and including the dilemma of 'how does the observer affect the experiment', which in case of economics is completely empiricism is not the leading force. So we don't need one funeral, by hundreds, and we need power structures become dysfunctional so new ideas can come to fruition.

Emerging social order is what shapes economic though and policy. Here the facts come from that same social order. For example:

"Diminishing quality of life and increasing poverty -> revolving social order -> change of paradigm in politics, and by direct influence, in economics"

Marx was fundamentally right after all, at least on the important stuff.

If capitalism is 'evolving' into a new version of the system, which I think it's doing (and even communistic elements are naturally growing -this without top-down intervention of status quo power structures like governments, financiers or capitalists- from within the system with the digital revolution, which go against the pure profit driven capitalist system), economic though and policies will also evolve with enough time.

Remember, reality always wins, never bet against reality, you will fail. In science or in economics.

Leverage said...

Off course if you are irrational about something, and cognitive biases strongly deceit you, you involuntarily bet against reality. This can have a high cost to you, if your positions turns for the worse in the future. Changing cognitive states of the perception of reality is a very emotionally intensive process, it requires an huge amount of neural activity and shaping (is an energy costly process).

Cognitive biases are the strongest driver of 'wrongness' in this world, we all suffer from them at some point, and they shape our perception of reality. But for unknown reasons, the brain structure of some persons is less leaning to cognitive biases and can self-correct itself with time. There is probably a function of time here too, as neural plasticity is lower the older you are, the flexibility to change one thoughts (there are wonderful exceptions, but the normal is this) is reduced with age. That's why is most probable things change (for the good or for the bad) when young people stops listening to old ideas by old people who is too accommodated to see reality.

As I said the other day: there are very powerful forces at play here which shape our world (in the last days we got several listed already, and all come down to unconscious behaviour & perception). Specially in the case of humans, because we build our environment, there is a positive feedback loop built in the system, where our perception shapes our actions, and our actions shape our (social) reality.

So this is a twisted crazy version of free will, in which we are slaves to our our perception and positions... while we have the possibility to some extend to freely act and change thoughts, but only when reality is stubborn enough.

Matt Franko said...

Lev,

From the empirical side it looks like when genetic engineers I guess more or less switch information out and into the genome, this Shapiro is calling "non-Darwinian" as I believe the Darwinians think that is supposed to happen by random chance; but here we have human beings directly doing the switching in and out.

This looks to me like "the invisible hand" (Darwinian) vs human beings directly implementing just economic policies (non-Darwinian)... extremely interesting stuff in this article.

Resp,

Ralph Musgrave said...

Definition of “paradigm shift”: one of the many phrases used by academic w*nkers to make their publications sound more complex and technical than they really are. “Paradigm shift” is academia-ese for “new idea”.

Tom Hickey said...

Not really, Ralph. A paradigm shift involves a change in the way people think about a field and it is evidenced in what they do and say. So it's not so much just a new idea, but new way of thinking and doing that replaces the old way, i.e., the conception of "normal" changes resulting in a new institutional arrangement. It's new rules more than new ideas. Matters that were previously ruled out are ruled in.