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Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the framework of the evolutionary dogma as I know it, this behavior wouldn't make sense. It comes at the expense of energy and t

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the framework of the evolutionary dogma as I know it, this behavior wouldn't make sense. It comes at the expense of energy and time, yielding no benefit, and thus is a net detriment and should therefore be bred out of the species with the one exception being some sort of higher process like emotional gratification. At least I can't imagine any sort of logical pattern where this improves fitness other than because it is emotionally gratifying, which I would posit necessarily intersects with biology beyond the very simplistic instinctual-automaton model.

scoofy 4y ago
I mean, I'm no expert, but I think this position is more than a bit rigid. We know that evolutionary development probabilistically yields maximized efficiency, but we also know there is plenty of room for drift and it can be a bit random. E.g. anti-fragile behaviors likely yield the best outcomes, even if they are less efficient, because the ultimate evolutionary failure is extinction (not death). Highly regular, efficient behavior are great for the individuals survival, but terrible for the species survival.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  The play could also have benefits evolutionarily. While the behavior take energy, it teaches motor skills (which is more relevant to the younger bees who played more). I’m just using this (admittedly weak) example to show that play isn’t necessarily less than optimal behavior.
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I can recall several instances having arguments in my head when someone totally oversteps the probabilistic nature of evolution - those people were my professors. As to antifragile behaviors, I don't know that I agree completely. For instance there's a pretty considerable difference in strategies we observe with r (antifragile) and K (fragile) selection. But also hyper-specific species, for instance the famed Darwin's Hawkmoth: a moth previously unknown but predicted to exist by Darwin who posited that the pitcher flower with a narrow neck necessarily had some animal evolved to correspond to its adaptive strategies. That to me reads as the precise opposite of antifragility, an exclusive dependence would be fragile, and yet monophagy (very fragile)/oligophagy (fragile) is fairly common, and omnivorism (antifragile) is not. Though I suppose you could point to, in some instance, antifragile outcomes over the long run the sum risk for some of these organisms I intuit, outweigh the benefits of antifragile strategies. There are some interesting and definitively antifragile, some of the niche partitioning strategies are really quite ingenious. I would indicate the most antifragile creature is the human (literally real-time evolution), our wont towards ecosystem engineering may actually be our downfall. I've actually thought for some while a golden mean exists in antifragility, and too much investment in that direction leads to insensitivity to critical structural weaknesses through a couple of different pathways.
throwanem 4y ago
> biology beyond the very simplistic instinctual-automaton model This concept belongs to behaviorism, which is one school of thought in biology. Its massive and unjustifiable dominance in the benighted 20th century notwithstanding, it is far from the only one. My experience has been that the results of ethological research into hymenopteran behavior, at least, yield far more predictive power than much of anything from the behaviorist school. It would not at all surprise me if this were one case in a much broader pattern.

scoofy 4y ago

I mean, I'm no expert, but I think this position is more than a bit rigid. We know that evolutionary development probabilistically yields maximized efficiency, but we also know there is plenty of room for drift and it can be a bit random. E.g. anti-fragile behaviors likely yield the best outcomes, even if they are less efficient, because the ultimate evolutionary failure is extinction (not death). Highly regular, efficient behavior are great for the individuals survival, but terrible for the species survival.

comfypotato 4y ago
The play could also have benefits evolutionarily. While the behavior take energy, it teaches motor skills (which is more relevant to the younger bees who played more). I’m just using this (admittedly weak) example to show that play isn’t necessarily less than optimal behavior.
brnaftr361 4y ago
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I can recall several instances having arguments in my head when someone totally oversteps the probabilistic nature of evolution - those people were my professors. As to antifragile behaviors, I don't know that I agree completely. For instance there's a pretty considerable difference in strategies we observe with r (antifragile) and K (fragile) selection. But also hyper-specific species, for instance the famed Darwin's Hawkmoth: a moth previously unknown but predicted to exist by Darwin who posited that the pitcher flower with a narrow neck necessarily had some animal evolved to correspond to its adaptive strategies. That to me reads as the precise opposite of antifragility, an exclusive dependence would be fragile, and yet monophagy (very fragile)/oligophagy (fragile) is fairly common, and omnivorism (antifragile) is not. Though I suppose you could point to, in some instance, antifragile outcomes over the long run the sum risk for some of these organisms I intuit, outweigh the benefits of antifragile strategies. There are some interesting and definitively antifragile, some of the niche partitioning strategies are really quite ingenious. I would indicate the most antifragile creature is the human (literally real-time evolution), our wont towards ecosystem engineering may actually be our downfall. I've actually thought for some while a golden mean exists in antifragility, and too much investment in that direction leads to insensitivity to critical structural weaknesses through a couple of different pathways.

throwanem 4y ago

> biology beyond the very simplistic instinctual-automaton model This concept belongs to behaviorism, which is one school of thought in biology. Its massive and unjustifiable dominance in the benighted 20th century notwithstanding, it is far from the only one. My experience has been that the results of ethological research into hymenopteran behavior, at least, yield far more predictive power than much of anything from the behaviorist school. It would not at all surprise me if this were one case in a much broader pattern.