3 ms·
I once listened to a scientific presentation that was interesting, but I don't remember the professor's name or whether his hypotheses have panned out long-term
by SubiculumCode 3mo ago
I once listened to a scientific presentation that was interesting, but I don't remember the professor's name or whether his hypotheses have panned out long-term. That said, he flipped the script on the usual take on research trying to understand why some people respond to early adversity by going off the rails while others seem to trek through it relatively unaffected with positive outcomes. Usually the research focus had been on what differed in a person who would withstand the adversity without asking whether there was a tradeoff for the decreased vulnerability to early adversity. He then went on and presented initial evidence that, on the hand, the individuals that can do all right no matter what, they tended to never particularly excel, while on the other hand, individuals sensitive to early adversity tended to either crash hard or soar higher.
The idea was, thinking about species fitness, it made sense for some of the population that can make it through the hard times, and some of the population that can really take advantage of the good times, even if that meant very poor outcomes in the bad times...It's a hedging-like evolutionary strategy to try to make the most, at the population level, with what you are given.
Anyway, I found it provacative to think about.
- klodolph 3mo agoIsn’t species fitness somewhat weak, though? I would want to think about this in terms of gene fitness. Over long periods of time, in different situations, genes that promote one strategy or the other will dominate part of the time and lose part of the time.
- rolph 3mo agoit is manifestation of a physical law at a higher level of organization. it is gene fitness, except the observer is focused on species population level dynamics rather than individual level dynamics. they may look very different however the fundamental mechanism is contribution of a biopolymer to variations of biological fitness
- alex43578 3mo agoThat makes sense from an evolutionary fitness perspective, but also just a social one. Consider the life outcomes of someone willing to gamble on founding a company, going out to settle a new land, or just take a social risk; compared to someone who works a mediocre entry level job for 20 years, never leaves their place of birth, or is a wallflower. The risk-taker can experience far more pronounced success or failures. Higher highs, lower lows.
- c7b 3mo agoAlmost anything can be made sense of from an evolutionary perspective. Often even the opposite of what's being observed. Can be a fun game to play. The corollary is it's not useful for vetting theories for plausibility.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoCertainly. However generating ideas from that perspective then taking it to gather empirical data testing whether that kind of dynamic exists, without relying on evolutionary time, is just fine.
- m3kw9 3mo agosounds like he didn't say much, saying either you overcome adversity or you don't.
- esafak 3mo agoI gather he said you want population diversity. He might have said something about its distribution too.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoYes.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoNo. He was suggesting that resiliency traits/genes have a cost and a benefit: high certainty of adequate mediocrity, while lack of resilience traits/genes leads to more context dependent outcomes with a wider distribution of outcomes (more frequent extremes in ability, etc).