Evolution is ""change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations"" (Wikipedia). For posts about machine learning look here.

See also: Related: Biology, Evolutionary Psychology,

Why Evolution?be interested in evolution?

Firstly, evolution is a useful case study of humans'humans' ability (or inability) to model the real world. This is because it has a single clear criterion ("("relative reproductive fitness"fitness") which is selected (optimized) for:

"

"If we can'can't see clearly the result of a single monotone optimization criterion—criterion—if we can'can't even train ourselves to hear a single pure note—note—then how will we listen to an orchestra? How will we see that "Always"Always be selfish"selfish" or "Always"Always obey the government"government" are poor guiding principles for human beings to adopt—adopt—if we think that even optimizing genes for inclusive fitness will yield organisms which sacrifice reproductive opportunities in the name of social resource conservation?

To train ourselves to see clearly, we need simple practice cases"

-- cases" -- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Fake Optimisation Criteria

Secondly, much of rationality necessarily revolves around the human brain (for now). An understanding of how it came into being can be very helpful both for understanding 'bugs''bugs' in the system (like superstimuli), and for explaining Complexity of Value, among others.

A candy bar is a superstimulus: it contains more concentrated sugar, salt, and fat than anything that exists in the ancestral environment.      A candy bar matches taste buds that evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment, but it matches those taste buds much more strongly than anything that actually existed in the hunter-gatherer environment.   The signal that once reliably correlated to healthy food has been hijacked, blotted out with a point in tastespace that wasn'wasn't in the training dataset - an impossibly distant outlier on the old ancestral graphs. 

 
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilisation

See also

• Evolution as alien god
• Slowness of evolution
• Stupidity of evolution
• Evolutionary psychology

External links

• Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene (PDF)

Summaries of Sequence's Posts on Evolution

The following are summaries of posts concerning evolution in the Eliezer's sequences:

• An Alien God - Evolution is awesomely powerful, unbelievably stupid, incredibly slow, monomaniacally singleminded, irrevocably splintered in focus, blindly shortsighted, and itself a completely accidental process. If evolution were a god, it would not be Jehovah, but H. P. Lovecraft's Azathoth, the blind idiot God burbling chaotically at the center of everything.
• The Wonder of Evolution - The wonder of the first replicator was not how amazingly well it replicated, but that a first replicator could arise, at all, by pure accident, in the primordial seas of Earth. That first replicator would undoubtedly be devoured in an instant by a sophisticated modern bacterium. Likewise, the wonder of evolution itself is not how well it works, but that a brainless, accidentally occurringoptimization process can work at all. If you praise

See also: Biology, Evolutionary Psychology, Game Theory

1. Many issues pertinentFirstly, evolution is a useful case study of humans' ability (or inability) to model the real world. This is because it has a single clear criterion ("relative reproductive fitness") which is selected (optimized) for:

"If we can't see clearly the result of a single monotone optimization criterion—if we can't even train ourselves to hear a single pure note—then how will we listen to an orchestra? How will we see that "Always be selfish" or "Always obey the government" are poor guiding principles for human beings to adopt—if we think that even optimizing genes for inclusive fitness will yield organisms which sacrifice reproductive opportunities in the name of social resource conservation?

To train ourselves to see clearly, we need simple practice cases"

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Fake Optimisation Criteria

Secondly, much of rationality seem to have their rootsnecessarily revolves around the human brain (fornow). An understanding of how it came into being can be very helpful both for understanding 'bugs' in evolutionary psychology. For example, why do so many people statethe system (like superstimuli), and for explaining Complexity of Value, among others.

A candy bar is a superstimulus: it contains more concentrated sugar, salt, and fat than anything that they wish to alleviate suffering equally among all people, and then donate money to charities supporting people with conditions they have, rather than highly-effective suffering reducers?

As Eliezer would have it, "Politics was a feature ofexists in the ancestral environment. We are descended from   A candy bar matches taste buds that evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment, but it matches those who argued most persuasivelytaste buds much more strongly than anything that actually existed in the good of the tribe meant executing their hated rival Uglak. (We sure ainhunter-gatherer environment.  The signal that once reliably correlated to healthy food has been hijacked, blotted out with a point in tastespace that wasn't descended from Uglak.)"

2. Illustrates many common errors in thinking about complex problems, such as seeing agency in non-agent systemsthe training dataset - an impossibly distant outlier on the old ancestral graphs. 

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilisation

[WIP]

Evolution is "change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations" (Wikipedia). For posts about machine learning look here.

See also: Biology, Evolutionary Psychology, Game Theory

The brainless, mindless optimization process responsible for the production of all biological life on Earth, including human beings. Since the design signature of evolution is alien and counterintuitive, it takes some study to get to know your accidental Creator.

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See also

• Evolution as alien god
• Slowness of evolution
• Stupidity of evolution
• Evolutionary psychology

Blog posts (sequence)

• An Alien God - Evolution is awesomely powerful, unbelievably stupid, incredibly slow, monomaniacally singleminded, irrevocably splintered in focus, blindly shortsighted, and itself a completely accidental process. If evolution were a god, it would not be Jehovah, but H. P. Lovecraft's Azathoth, the blind idiot God burbling chaotically at the center of everything.
• sequence, The WonderSimple Math of Evolution - The wonderprovides a good introduction to LessWrong thinking about evolution.

  Why Evolution?

  1. Many issues pertinent to rationality seem to have their roots in evolutionary psychology. For example, why do so many people state that they wish to alleviate suffering equally among all people, and then donate money to charities supporting people with conditions they have, rather than highly-effective suffering reducers?

  As Eliezer would have it, "Politics was a feature of the first replicator was not how amazingly well it replicated, butancestral environment. We are descended from those who argued most persuasively that a first replicator could arise, at all, by pure accident, in the primordial seas of Earth. That first replicator would undoubtedly be devoured in an instant by a sophisticated modern bacterium. Likewise, the wonder of evolution itself is not how well it works, but that a brainless, accidentally occurringoptimization process can work at all. If you praise evolution for being such a wonderfully intelligent Creator, you're entirely missing the wonderful thing about it.

• Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway) - Modern evolutionary theory gives us a definite picture of evolution's capabilities. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you are not scoring points against creationists, you are just being factually inaccurate. In particular we can calculate the probability and time for advantageous genes to rise to fixation. For example, a mutation conferring a 3% advantage would have only a 6% probability of surviving, and if it did so, would take 875 generations to rise to fixation in a population of 500,000 (on average).
• Speed limit and complexity bound for evolution - It is widely understood that there is a limit on how fast evolution can accumulate information in a gene pool, and an upper bound on how much genetic information can be sustained against the degenerative pressure of copying errors. (But Yudkowsky's attempt to calculate an actual bound failed mathematically, so see the referenced summary

• Beware of Stephen J. Gould - A lot of people have gotten their grasp of evolutionary theory from Stephen J. Gould, a man who committed the moral equivalent of fraud in a way that is difficult to explain. At any rate, he severely misrepresented what evolutionary biologists believe, in the course of pretending to attack certain beliefs. One needs to clear from memory, as much as possible, not just everything that Gould positively stated but everything he seemed to imply the mainstream theory believed.
• Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You - If you take the hens who lay the most eggs in each generation, and breed from them, you should get hens who lay more and more eggs. Sounds logical, right? But this selection may actually favor the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Such breeding programs produce hens that must be housed in individual cages, or they will peck each other to death. Jeff Skilling of Enron fancied himself an evolution-conjurer - summoning the awesome power of evolution to work for him - and so, every year, every Enron employee's performance would be evaluated, and the bottom 10% would get fired, and the top performers would get huge raises and bonuses...

External links

• Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene (PDF)

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The brainless, mindless optimization process responsible for the production of all biological life on Earth, andincluding human beings in particular.beings. Since the design signature of evolution is alien and counterintuitive, it takes some study to get to know your accidental Creator.

The brainless, mindless optimization process, which began on Earth when responsible for the first replicator arose by chance, from which it producedproduction of all biological life on Earth.Earth, and human beings in particular. Since the design signature of evolution is alien and counterintuitive, it takes some study to get to know your accidental Creator.

The brainless, mindless optimization process responsible for, which began on Earth when the production offirst replicator arose by chance, from which it produced all biological life on Earth, and human beings in particular.Earth. Since the design signature of evolution is alien and counterintuitive, it takes some study to get to know your accidental Creator.