Not a tautology. --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 6:29 AM Santafe <[email protected]> wrote: > Let me summarize my last horrible send in a line: > > "Traits are predictive of reproductive success, and reproductive success > is the amplifier or attenuator of trait frequencies." > > I don’t see any argument that the above sentence is tautological. And I > don’t hear anybody serious making any other claim than the above sentence. > > My apologies to you all for thisAM…. > > Eric > > > > On Mar 30, 2026, at 6:53, Santafe <[email protected]> wrote: > > I was on the point of trying to answer Nick a few days ago, while also > acknowledging that since I haven’t had time to read his paper, I should > keep it short. > > It is helpful that EricC has posted in the meantime, because I often > believe I can understand what he means by something, whereas with Nick I > often read things that seem kinda familiar, but then I find some sentence > that Nick writes following a “therefore”, and I am baffled by what logic he > thinks that follows from, making me realize I probably didn’t understand > what he “actually meant” by the earlier sentences either. > > But I will try a short in-line here, with EricC’s version, which is what I > was guessing Nick might have meant a few days ago when he said: > > This literature you cite often fails to make a distinction between > evolution as a theory and the theory that explains evolution. Evolution as > a theory holds that organisms have descended through the ages they have > become modified to the circumstances of their existence. It is a thesis > about the causes of descent with modification. Natural selection is a > theory offered in explanation of that pattern of descent. The literature > you describe has often fused these two metaphors into one and therefore is > fundamentally unfalsifiable as a theory that explains evolution. > > > Here I was completely mystified what argument Nick understood himself to > be making. Particularly referring to “the literature I cite”, since I sent > him George Price’s The Nature of Selection, which (in the actual print of > the article) says nothing of the kind. > > Put aside that I couldn’t track what the “two” were, or in what sense > either was a “metaphor”, other than that Nick labels them (and all other > words; man with a hammer) as such. > > Anyway, moving on as promised: > > On Mar 30, 2026, at 0:41, Eric Charles <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I think this (EricS's reply) speaks to the "formalism" issue, and the > value of the "flavor text". > > One of the big problems in evolutionary theory over the last century came > from the desire for a very particular type of formalism, in which terms are > all inter-defined, and as such, statements made within the system can't be > "wrong" in an empirical sense. The classic example (so Nick and I assert in > the incipient book) is the equation [image: {\displaystyle s=1-W}] where > s stands for "selection" and W is "fitness". This has been in biology > textbooks of a certain sort for well over half a century, and leads to > Dawkins's "Selfish Gene" talk, among other things. It's hard to criticize > on the surface, but, unfortunately, once you do that, you cannot usefully > study the relationship between fitness and selection, because > that-they-are-related becomes a truism! > > > I _would_ have asked Nick: "What do you mean: is it that the sentence > `adaptedness is an outcome of natural selection' is a tautology, amounting > to nothing more than `fit are the fit'?” I was guessing that might have > been Nick’s meaning, and it sounds like EricC’s meaning here. > > I will take your word for the presence of bad writing and nonsense in > evolutionary textbooks a century ago (probably today, too; the ability of > many scientists to render coherent logic in ordinary English is often not > something to be proud of). And I think I can remember somebody with a > biology degree (so journals are required to publish him), who writes > something like this (was it Pigliucci? If not, I apologize to him for > bringing in his name.) > > But if that is the complaint, it seems to me that that ship had sailed > already with Fisher, though he was so cryptic and imperious in his writing > and his personal style, that it had to wait 40 years for George Price to > explain to the rest of the community what Fisher was saying (and per Glen, > much more importantly, _doing_). Steve Frank has written fairly well on > this; or at least, that is where I got it. (I don’t know which of a > half-dozen papers might be the cleanest source to recommend here.) In any > case, if people didn’t know it had sailed in 1930 or 1958, they certainly > should have known it had sailed by 1972 or 1990 (when Frank found Price’s > 1972 manuscript and published it). de facto, most of the working > literature that has content already makes use of its having sailed, even if > they don’t remark on it, because they use Price Equations as accounting > identifies (among other organizing systems). > > If one is going to assert that there is nothing but tautology in what > population geneticists compute, and therefore they don’t ever predict > anything — a tautology can’t — then I would say that requires ignoring all > the main content of what one is reading in a very large number of papers. > There is an entire causal/predictive structure, and it can very much be > wrong in its imputations. Often, the sources of being wrong can come from > things biologists don’t front as important elements of cause, where I argue > they should, so the things that are wrong can also be interesting. > > What then am I claiming is the non-tautological content, which is there > over and over and over in tons of papers, which Fisher gestured at > unhelpfully in English, but partly did a very important thing with in math, > which Steve Frank acceptably describes, and which Price made didactic? > > 1. First, obviously, we get rid of horoscope-style and Humpty-Dumpty-style > language. We know that “fitness” can’t be doing much work in a causal > account if all it means is “I look at them, and they seem to be happy”, or > if it is meant to be a synonym for the even worse attributive: “design”. > (Remember the important part of the Vampire lore: they have to be invited > in!) We have to actually say _what we mean a predictive theory to be > predicting_. So the attempt to formalize fitness as “reproductive > success, absolute or relative, according to parent type”, is the > declaration of the observable to be the anchor for empiricism. If you > like, the “instrument” that is to be employed. > > 1a. Now, declaring an observable can’t in itself be “wrong” in Popper’s > sense, because it isn’t a logical conclusion. What it can be, however, is > incoherent, and thus a gesture at a definition, which can’t ever be made > into an actual definition. This is the important thing that Fisher did > correctly and explained horribly: making the point that “fitness” must be > formalized as a summary statistic (that’s a technical term, not a > metaphor!) of your high-dimensional observable. The question of when you > are _even saying anything_ turns on when your summary statistic is > coherently definable. Wherever it is coherently defined, it _cannot_ be > “falsifiable”, because now we clearly have a definition that is a > completely different kind of thing than a putative derived conclusion. > > 1b. Next, since heredity plays out in diverse ways in different groups, > summary statistics defined for one won’t generally be defined for others. > Fisher, being a King, in many of the worst senses, and being out to capture > territory (negatively spun) and solve prediction problems (positively > spun), defined a variety of summary statistics from histories that are > sequences of population states connected through reproduction. They aren’t > all the same, and they are not all capable of carrying the same “meanings”. > (I’ll get to what that word means in a moment.) > > 1c. For objects that are suitably described as “replicators” (technical > term, not metaphor!), there is a fitness summary statistic that can also be > assigned as an attribute (just, a marking) of individual organisms. For > organisms that reproduce sexually, or via a variety of complex lifecycles, > the summary statistics that Fisher defined to carry the label “fitness” > _cannot_ be assigned as attributes to any organism, because they are > computed from whole-population counts. So quite apart from what you think > you gain by “marking” an individual organism with an attribute (the > bacterial cells carrying this allele have left 14.32 live daughters per > starting cell in 6 generations in this laboratory instantiation of a > population dynamic), for these sexual-lifecycle summary statistics, you > can’t even do that much. > > 1d, Just btw (a thing nobody has any reason to care about), this is where > it is productive to go after Fisher, and the generations that don’t extend > beyond him in their methods. His summary statistics are well-defined, so > one can’t deny that. But they are not _all_ the summary statistics one > might try, and there are others (also well-defined) that can be > constructed, which do a better job of marking organisms and life-stages > than Fisher’s fitnesses do, and support all the same Price-like > decompositions. That’s the kind of thing I do. > > 2. So at the end of all the “1” points above, we have an actual observable > that we have committed to, and that we intend some “theory” to explain or > predict in some way. The whole content of a predictive theory is the > assertion that organisms have attributes in the here-and-now (variously > termed “traits”), which support prediction of the distributions of our > fitness summary statistics as time unfolds. Again, those attributes aren’t > vague gestures like “seems to be doing well”; they should be things one can > commit to somehow: it is dark or light in color; it has softer or harder > shells or teeth or claws; etc. > > 2a. Geneticists try to capture the idea that traits in the here-and-now > are predictive of fitnesses as realized histories unfold, by defining > sample estimators for those dependencies in the form of regressions. > Again, if a regression is defined, there can’t be anything “true” or > “false” about it; it is just a definition. > > 3. The Evolutionists, for some time, have built up terminology around all > this. Samir Okasha’s book uses it (among other things) as a skeleton. I > don’t enjoy the way they say it, but if one is trying to follow their > arguments, the terms are enough to do that. The summary-statistic > definition of the observable is what they call “realized fitness”, and the > regression model on traits in the here-and-now is what they call the > “propensity interpretation”. Yuck; but don’t shoot the messenger. I > probably wouldn’t have coined those terms. > > 3a. It seems pretty inescapable to me that realized fitness and a > regression model on traits cannot be tautologically related, as one > requires diachronic observation even to assign, while the other is > assignable (for any fixed choice of regression coefficients) from a > population state at a single time. (It treats the population composition > as a Markov state.) > > 3b. Note that EricC’s s = 1-W above never entered any of what I said. If > a selection coefficient is defined in some way as an algebraic function of > offspring numbers, that is just a layer of notation. The existence of both > realized values W (convertible to realized values s), and model-predicted > expectations for W, derived from model-incorporated coefficients s, means > that the algebra isn’t meant to do other than convenience work _within_ > either layer, and the causal argument concerns the fitting of models to > sample data. If textbook writers render this reality badly, then fine: go > after them. But the flu designers who estimate what should go into an > annual vaccine don’t deserve to be tarred with that brush. > > 4. Finally we can get to the point of what they claim to be doing, and in > competent papers, are doing: Are their regression models predictive, and > are they robust against things that the modeler didn’t notice, but that > could have been included? Hashing out that question is the whole content > of the scientific literature and program. > > 5. Where is conflation an actual hazard in the world I live in, > what-exactly is being conflated, and how might it get something wrong? > (So, we have established falsifiable and in that sense meaningful; now I > am talking about false and thus interesting.) Well, people might identify > a trait that they think confers a tendency to leave more offspring. They > might even be right in their identification. All that is on the > “propensity” side. The place they can err is in supposing that, if they > have identified a cause for a tendency, then they can be assured of an > outcome in the same direction (a wrongful binding of the “propensity” term > to the “realized” term), and the only uncertainty will be the scale of the > outcome effect. This is an error I think evolutionary biologists often do > commit in their informal language, even though the math in any paper > wouldn’t let them get away with it, so they don’t do it there. Others, not > even evolutionary biologists, but a kind of groupie of the biologists from > other domains in science, commit this error of supposition and express it > frequently in bar-quality conversation (I have a certain conversation in a > NASA working group in mind as I write this.) The slip between the cup of > propensity, and the lip of realized outcomes, which biologists don’t > account for as fully as I think they should, is illustrated nicely by > magnetism: The “tendency” for spins to align in solid-phase Iron is > identical at all temperatures. However, when the iron is too hot, the > spins don’t macroscopically align “just a little”; rather, they don’t align > macroscopically at all. Then, upon cooling just a little below the > critical temperature, they do macroscopically align, and the alignment > rapidly becomes “a lot” with separation of temperature below the critical > value. All this is the lesson about counting that we learned from > thermodynamics. And while the things being counted in evolution (completed > lifecycles) are different from the things counted in equilibrium thermo > (pairs of aligned spins), the counting argument applies equally well. > > > Anyway…. Sorry for so many words. I hope that I have given enough here to > explain why I am baffled when I hear modern people claim that “adaptation > occurs through natural selection” is “unfalsifiable”. > > The thing about where Dawkins goes wrong is another story, best told by > not quoting his own words, because he is such a rhetorician (even though > his earlier work suggests that he is capable of arguing properly). But it > branches out of the points above, just on the point of mis-representing > summary statistics that cannot be object-attributes, as if they were object > attributes, and then, having set up that strawman, arguing that the only > recourse is to throw the whole thing out above the level of the gene, and > ignore that all the same problems continue to occur for genes, becoming > quite serious in the deeper past. All that can totally be sorted out; > there are no fatal confusions, and metaphor isn’t tripping up anybody who > wants to speak and argue carefully. > > Eric > > > > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
