To show this, consider two types of asexual individuals exist in the population, differing only in their altruistic (A) vs. selfish (S) traits. The populations are arrayed at lattice intersections of a two-dimensional Cartesian grid, with opposite edges connected to eliminate boundary effects (a torus transformation; see the animation below).

Interactions are local, such that the absolute fitness of an individual depends on its neighborhood of five grid points, which includes its own location plus the four neighboring points occupying adjacent north, east, south and west position on the grid:

W_A = fitness of altruist = 1 – c + N_A b/5,

W_S = fitness of non-altruist = 1 + N_A b/5,

where:

N_A/5 = the average proportion of altruistic neighbors (the plus-shaped neighborhood of five includes the self ),

c = the cost of altruism that contributes linearly to fitness

b = the benefit of altruism that contributes linearly to fitness

the fitness of the average altruist in the global population exceeds that of the average non-altruist as long as:

b/c > 1/V,

where < is a statistical analog of Hamilton’s relatedness variable, r. Specifically, V is the
average of the pair correlation coefficient over the 5 recipients of the altruist’s benefit. One of
these is the self, with correlation 1, and 4 are lattice neighbors, with correlation R: hence

V = (1 + 4R)/5

Center A, with c = 0.2 and b = 0.5. => N_A = 3 => W_A = 1- 0.2 + 3 x ( 0.5/5) = 1 – 0.2 + 0.3 = 1.1

On the other hand, maybe it could be stated that evolution is directed towards order and away from chaos. Because systems which are in status quo (as opposed to evolution), are naturally in decay over time and return to chaos, which follows from the second law of thermodynamics. So evolution can defy chaos and consequently create order. However, order needs energy as implied by the same thermodynamics law so probably we have to add a canalization of energy as an additional feature to give evolution a direction. For the evolution of humanity this seems to be correct, as human societies have been able to bring and redirect energy increasingly into their service throughout history, creating all kinds of orderly structures. Examples of these structures can be found in the material (cities, roads etc) as well as in the immaterial realms (democracy, unions etc).

However, because of  the limited ability of humans to defy the brutal and chaotic  forces of nature, there is no simple, straightforward or consistent recipe for human behavior to indiscriminately gain evolutionary success in every situation. Therefore human behavior is above all opportunistic and adaptive to its surroundings if necessary. Moreover, since energy is scarce, human behavior is ussually accomplished with as few energy as possible. This results in heuristics and short cuts, and low road thinking.

PICTURE OF GRID PREDATOR-PREY MODEL

Economic wealth can usually be inherited through parents, family or other relatives. However, economic wealth can also be more indirectly inherited through the public institutions, technology and knowledge individuals can tap into, without any particular proprietary exchange. For instance, when someone is born in a western economy like for instance Germany, one de facto inherits, the infrastructure like roads and railways which were already present before birth and which someone can enjoy without making any a priori contribution. This would be a marked head start when, for instance, compared to someone who would be born as a native in a poor country in Africa. This indirect heritage is some sort of free riding on the already existing material and immaterial infrastructure of a certain surrounding. This surrounding can be for example a country, a social structure or even the entire world at a certain point in time.

Heritage of wealth has a profound impact on behavior. In almost all societies wealth is strongly correlated to social status, life expectation and general well being [Proof].

Wealth in the past

Long-term assessments of wealth by the measurement of GDP (per capita) have been pioneered by for instance Angus Maddison (1926-2010) and have been continued by the Maddison Project. Their work implies that the amount of wealth accumulated for individuals depends largely on the time and the place of birth. Therefore wealth is largely inherited rather than earned during a life time. Wealth can directly be inherited through parents, family or other relatives. However, economic wealth can also be indirectly inherited through:

• natural capital (nature made);  climate, geography
• public capital (man made); institutions, structures ,
• knowledge; technology, knowledge individuals can tap into, without any particular proprietary exchange.

This indirect heritage is some sort of free riding on the already existing material and immaterial infrastructure of a certain surrounding. This surrounding can be for example a country, a social structure or even the entire world at a certain point in time.

Wealth as a heritage – within country

Affluence in the United States

In September 2012, the Institute for Policy Studies found that over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans had grown up with substantial privilege.

Heritage of wealth has a profound impact on behavior. In almost all societies wealth is strongly correlated to social status, life expectation and general well being [Proof].

Most hunter-gatherers were nomadic or semi-nomadic and were living in temporary settlements. This meant that shelters had to be rebuilt every time after moving. Also natural capital as food was not easy to store and to transfer. Therefore accumulating capital by leveraging on existing structures or stored resources was very limited. Only after the settling down of humans in the neolithic period and the advent of farming, capital accumulation, other than human capital by experience, was able to develop.

When \(a \ne 0\), there are two solutions to \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\) and they are
\[x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}.\]

The phenomenon that historical buildings or structure are not made anymore. Reasons: equalization, no divinity anymore. Human labor is too expensive. 

The transition from the Malthusian era to modern economic growth is a striking example of a regime shift. Until 1800 the economy could be roughly characterized as a zero-sum game for humans: wealth of (groups of) people could only gain or loose at the expense or benefit of other (groups of) people. This equilibrium resulted in a fairly constant GDP per capita level throughout history. With the start of the industrial revolution the zero-sum game mechanism changed into a win-win mechanism for humans in roughly one century of time. Despite massive population increases through the demographic transition (initiated by decreasing mortality rates), prosperity increased significantly for western European countries and western offshoots. This led in turn to a vicious circle of seemingly perpetual increase in productivity gains through an ongoing process of mutually beneficial specialization and broad based investments in human capital.

Punctuated equilibrium in social theory

Punctuated equilibrium in social theory is a method of understanding change in complex social systems. The method studies the evolution of policy change,including the evolution of conflicts.The theory suggests that most social systems exist in an extended period of stasis, which are later punctuated by sudden shifts in radical change. The theory was largely inspired from the biological theory of punctuated equilibrium developed by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould.
The punctuated equilibrium model of policy change was first presented by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones in 1993, and has increasingly received attention in historical institutionalism. The model states that policy generally changes only incrementally due to several restraints, namely the “stickiness” of institutional cultures, vested interests, and the bounded rationality of individual decision-makers. Policy change will thus be punctuated by changes in these conditions, especially in party control of government, or changes in public opinion. Thus policy is characterized by long periods of stability, punctuated by large—though less frequent—changes due to large shifts in society or government. This has been particularly evident in current trends of environmental and energy policy. Gun control and U.S. federal tobacco policy have also been found to follow punctuated changes. A 2017 study demonstrates that these patterns are also found in policy-making by international organizations, such as the United Nations or the African Union. A recent study by Michael Givel found that despite a significant mobilization to change state tobacco policy, U.S. state tobacco policymaking from 1990 to 2003 was not characterized by punctuated policy change, which also favored the pro-tobacco policy agenda.
Connie Gersick’s research on the evolution of organizational systems (1988, 1991) revealed patterns of change mirroring those in biological species. Gersick examined models of change in six domains – developmental patterns of adults, groups and organizations, the history of science, physical science, and biological evolution – and found evidence for punctuated equilibria (as opposed to steady, incremental change) across those disparate systems. Applications of the theory have been in organizational theory, in the study of small work groups, in research on geographic communities and corporate behavior,and in the study of technological change.
As some researchers have noted, the biological applications of punctuated equilibrium have rejuvenated a new “theory about change within entities.” At the same time, social scientific applications of the punctuated equilibrium concept have been criticized for losing sight of a core idea in the original biological theory of punctuated equilibrium: the notion that geographic location plays a significant role in determining which populations are subject to abrupt changes at a given time.

The purpose of this post is to relate the principles of biological evolution to the laws of physics. 

Background

Evolution is often described in biological terms. There are however universal physical laws which also seem apply  to the principles of  evolution.

CONCLUSIONS

The two basic fundamentals of human behavior are:

• Energy = capacity to cause change
• Intentions = targeted attempts to redirect energy

Human societies have increasingly been able to redirect energy for their own purposes. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, this energy is needed to maintain and enforce cooperation.

Since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, utilization of energy is a zero-sum game and yields competition. This principle resembles the first law of thermodynamics.

Still a puzzle is the emergence of order in biological evolution which seem to defy the increasing chaos or entropy in cosmic evolution.  Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability.

FOLLOW UP

• Is evolution towards or away from chaos?
• Are thoughts energy?

REFERENCES

• Causality

The most basic fundamentals of human behavior are energy and intentions. Energy is the capacity to cause chance and intentions are targeted attempts to redirect energy. So in essence human behavior is intentional coordinated energy. Throughout history human societies became increasingly more complex and structured.  Complexity and structure could expand by the successful (inter-generational) transmission of knowledge and experience through language. According to broad ranging estimates, language emerged in humans at probably around 100,000-500,000 years ago. However, even before the likely advent of language hominoids already banded into increasingly larger groups, as is depicted by Dunbar (2003). The greater group size was accompanied by larger complexity and increasingly needed more structure to thrive. Apparently, human societies were increasingly  able to apply more energy for their own purposes since the Second law of thermodynamics dictates that increasing (and maintaining) structure needs energy.

The second law of thermodynamics also implies that the universe is degrading into chaos throughout time with entropy increasing. However (human) evolution seems to defy this process of decay. Big History scientists like David Christian believe, that under the right circumstances (the Goldilock principle) structures can emerge in a chaotic system through self organization in which a system is able to control its environment. Human societies seem to have reached this stage, but it also requires a continuous and probably increasing redirection of energy in order to maintain an enhance this structure. Maybe, energy is increasingly clustering when entropy increases in the universe. In those clusters it is perhaps possible for evolution to thrive. 

In human societies cooperation is necessary to build those structures. It is metaphysically plausible to assume that even simply maintaining cooperation between humans needs a continuous redirected flow of energy. As a matter of speech this is enshrined in the saying that people have to invest in a relationship, even if this relationship already exist. It is for instance also apparent in the way people are socializing to maintain the relationship.

Next to structure, also linked to energy is the principle of cause and effect. Energy is always needed to cause an effect. Moreover, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be conserved and converted from one form to another as is formalized in the first law of thermodynamics. Since energy cannot be created it has to be obtained in someway which can lead to competition between humans over energy, which is in principle a zero-sum game. This resulting scarcity principle is therefore deeply rooted into human behavior and causes competition to trump cooperation. 

Since energy plays a vital role in the human behavior and the road from intention to action, the formation and efficiency of energy utilization is key. This road consists of :

1]  Anticipation of the amount of energy needed to fulfill the intended goal.

2]  Assessment if the estimated gain of the action is worth the effort.

3] Redirect energy: internally, externally: 1) other humans, other organisms,  2) non-living: technology, leverage

4] Translate energy into useful work

5] Align the useful work with your intentions

All 3], 4] and 5] result in energy-waist.

The problems people face with intentions:
1] How attainable are the goals/intentions? (what is the (real) locus of control?)
2] Whats is the unit of intention? Who wants what?

The purpose of  this post is to lay out general features of evolution which are related to human beings. These  features can give valuable insights in how evolution has shaped human behavior. Let’s define evolution as essentially change throughout time and let’s assume that these changes can occur by either physical  processes or by behavior of living creatures.

Physical processes obey to universal physical  laws and are therefore mostly deterministic,  This mean that change by physical processes  has a fundamental origin. In other words: There is a cause-and-effect chain. An important feature in evolution, because it means that a phenomenon can in principle be traced back to its origin. This observed principle of cause-and effect is deeply grounded in human cognition. Humans are extremely prone to ‘how things work’ and ‘where they come from’ because this information can have vital survival and reproduction value. Next to physical processes, behavior of living creatures are the other source of change relevant to human beings. In that respect,  behavior leads to change and change can be attributed to living creatures. The ability to attribute opportunities or threats are important evolutionary characteristics.

this kind are treated as be random events without a pinpointed cause. Behavior of living creatures is determined by intention. However, this intention is not necessarily signaled by its initiator. All in all it can be concluded that changes whether stemming from either living or non-living entities, have a fundamental origination but it is not always easy for humans to figure them out.

Because of limited cognitive abilities, humans however cannot always fully comprehend the workings and origination of change. Therefore, complex or unexplainable change

Principle 1: Cause & effect – Fundamentals of change

• Living creatures=>intention
• Non-living matter or energy=>laws of nature

Although there is no moral direction in evolution it certainly has a fundamental cause-and-effect mechanism.

As far as humans can observe things cannot change instantaneously. Therefore, this time-dimension suggests a cause-and-effect principle: ‘something has to come somehow from somewhere’. This causation leads to the problem of attribution. The question of “whodunnit?”, is more often than not ambiguous. This is because cause and effect are a chronological chains of events, which at the same time can be intertwined and can ignite feedback loops. 

So when evolution changes the world, the question arises in which direction? More specifically, does the world becomes a better or a worse place throughout time? I propose that evolution has no direction, only a survivor ship bias.

If A causes B and B causes C, who causes C? A, B or both? Next to this, even if there is no chronological chain, there can be for example two events A and B which are causing an event C simultaneously. In that cause there is no single unit of causation. Even more complicated are two events which impact each other, also known as the ‘chicken and egg problem’. 

Consequently a single unit of intention is hard to establish in a complex system like evolution. Of course, established short cuts are to take attribution: 1] to an individual human level (as is common in most legal frameworks) or 2] to a genetic level ( as is described in the “Selfish gene”). However both are not able to connect or attribute cause and effect in a unambiguous way.

Cause and effect, can be more or less redefined as interaction. This interaction can have losers and/or winners evolutionary. The interaction can be classified as a mixture of cooperation, competition or coincidence. Cooperation and competition can take many forms. Cooperation can be an equal-level-playing field (ie, investment and return are fully equally split, but even then…). Or cooperation can be submissive or suppressive. Because human behavior can be a additive it is difficult to objectively attribute behavior to a certain effect.

[Of course, natural selection as an engine of evolution does not “care” about attribution. But it is nevertheless important to grasp the concept, in order for humans to understand evolution and make inferences about it.]

To sum up, evolution is basically about:

• Non-random/non-chaotic change
• Defying chaos
• causation & attribution
• cooperation & competition (interaction?)

Test and more

Test test

To be or not to be….