Gopnik and Pinker on Darwin

This discussion is from 2009. I enjoy Gopnik's New Yorker writing, which is usually on cultural topics (he was trained as an art historian). But here he comes across as a high V, low M type -- more fluff than substance. Like other HVLM types, he seems to lack a good intuitive feel for the dynamics of how evolution works (i.e., for how a complex system might evolve in time). His goal seems to be to "rehabilitate" Darwin (as if that were really necessary), to make Darwin's beliefs consistent with modern political correctness. Listen carefully to what Pinker says, though (e.g., discussion starting at @15 min until @23 min or so).

Race and IQ in Nature

I wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole, but Nature did here (sort of), as part of its Darwin 200 celebration. (Via Razib.)

In this, the second of two opposing commentaries, Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams argue that such research is both morally defensible and important for the pursuit of truth. In the first, Steven Rose argues that studies investigating possible links between race, gender and intelligence do no good.

The ensuing online debate is as polarized as you might expect. Read James Flynn's comment, which utterly demolishes Steven Rose.

Flynn: ...In Rose’s original paper [commentary], he asserts that the trait in question (intelligence) leaves aside other desirable traits and argues that the groups in question can be divided into subgroups that are more biologically coherent. He concludes that the hypothesis is not subject to scientific treatment; and therefore, no useful social policy will emerge. In his response to Ceci and Williams, he says something very different, namely, that by about 1975, it had been definitively shown that genes had no place in explaining group differences. So from that date, Jensen and everybody else had no excuse to persist.

To assert both that a hypothesis is not scientifically testable and that it has been conclusively falsified is incoherent. The only way to reconcile them is to assume that Rose does not really mean Jensen had been refuted by 1975, but is saying that by that date, it should have been clear to everyone that the question was indeed unanswerable.

I predict most readers will find about half the remarks in the debate incredibly stupid. But which half? :-)

Incidentally, one of the commentary authors and I were both on the faculty at Yale at the same time and I have known her for many years.

My Darwin 200 post is here, but see also this ;-)

Darwin bicentennial

It's been 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species.

I highly recommend these four segments on BBC's In Our Time, which include some of the most insightful expert commentary (particularly segments 3 and 4) I've heard recently.

My favorite Darwin-related books are The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and Darwin's Dangerous Idea by philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dennett writes

"Here, then, is Darwin's dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for... the diversity of species, and all of the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature. ...No matter how impressive the results of an algorithm, the underlying process always consists of nothing but a set of individually mindless steps succeeding each other without the help of any intelligent supervision." (p.59) ***

Now let me make a controversial remark in light of Dennett's observation. Because the true working of evolution is best understood as an algorithm (requiring, at least, some idea of a fitness landscape in a space of high dimensionality), a deep understanding is impossible without mathematical sophistication. See, Fisher, Hamilton, Haldane, Wright. The mindset of such people is often quite different from that of the typical biologist, who delights in diversity and detail as opposed to unifying principles and mathematical simplicity.

See the Darwin family tree for evidence of hereditary genius (Galton was Darwin's cousin and pioneered statistical ideas like correlation, regression and the normal distribution).

*** I'm quite sure Dennett appreciates that this comment can be applied to intelligence itself (AI) as well as to evolution ;-)

Darwin's savages

Somehow I don't think he and Jared Diamond share the same view of indigenous peoples. From The Descent of Man:

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind - such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs - as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Also, from Charles Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World, in which he describes Fuegians as

‘the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld’ and as existing ‘in a lower state of improvement than in any part of the world.’ … ‘These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy; how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to these barbarians. At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals.’