Stupid autocorrect... Yes, but note that EricS's statement does not indicate *why* a trait would affect reproductive success. We might or might not care about that.
Also, there are several implied generalities: *Some* traits are *sometimes* predictive of reproductive success, and reproductive success is *sometimes* the amplifier or attenuator of trait frequencies. (I plan to write more later... on cell phone now) Best, Eric <[email protected]> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 1:22 PM Frank Wimberly <[email protected]> wrote: > Not a tautology. > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, > <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g> > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g> > > 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/ >
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