Can I ask one last question? after which I promise I really will shut up: The content of EricC’s note below (about the key in a lock), reflecting back on things Nick said in the early posts about selection’s being a tautology, which got me started digging a hole, have bothered me through the night, and made me wonder if I can understand how I have been missing both-of-y’all’s point. Was it something like the following:?
— for me, “fitness” is a name given to (something like) the units (or dimension) in which reproductive success is measured, or quantified. Not sure “units” is quite the right term, but the point is that it’s about defining a quantification program for observed outcomes, or the model variables that we try to fit to them. I had taken the state of modern work to show that this is the only actual meaning the term was ever given. — are you two claiming otherwise; that my supposition is not at all the case? That there are biologists for whom there is some other meaning, instead of or in addition to the one I gave above, about being a measurement unit? Something like: “fitness” is a name for “the cause of reproductive success”. As if to say: Well, there’s this thing with the form of a name, so there must be something it names, that is a kind of causal force responsible for generating what we witness as reproductive success. And since there is one name, there must be some one kind of causal force it names. — to me, an interpretation like that is so bizarre, it would never have occurred to me to that there is anyone making it. It seems very similar to taking an expression like “elan vital”, and saying that, since it has the shape of a name, there must be something it names. To me, those are strings of words that satisfy rules of syntax and that don’t have any semantic referents at all. They may as well be Chomsky’s “colorless green dreams” or something. I would not have imagined that there was anything anyone expected, beyond the working out of the mechanics of lots of cases of how-lifecycles-play-out-in-contexts, which can fill out some vast taxonomy that has no singular “essence” underneath it. That could well be my lack of empathy for how many other people think, like my lack of empathy for their thoughts about God (along with my ignorance about who is in the world). — I guess, since there are people who continue to talk about Strong Emergence, and Philosophical Zombies, and who sound to me much like people who talk about God today, and maybe like people who would have talked about Elan Vital some generations ago, I should have right away imagined this reading of what you were writing. If the above is what you were claiming, it would explain why my long Emily Litella-like replies seemed like a tiresome recital of what population geneticists already do (Nick’s point that “all that would be left is EricS’s 2a and 2b”), which everybody already knows anyway, and which isn’t interesting and wasn’t to your point. So, were you claiming that there are biologists operating that way? And are there really biologists operating that way? As always, I appreciate whatever patience or indulgence, Eric > On Mar 31, 2026, at 15:47, Eric Charles <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I'm a bit confused here... > The initial dog pile on Nick seemed (to me) to have as one of its main points > something like "Look, old man, once you formalize something mathematically we > don't need to care what any of the words might mean or imply in any other > context, it is just math, stop thinking that the words matter!" > > And now there have been several posts by EricS, at least one by Glen, and I > think Marcus and Frank are in there somewhere as well, claiming that the > words are crucially important and we need to take them much more seriously. > > So.... where does that leave us? Is everyone now onboard with the metaphors > mattering quite a bit? > > I'll also note that "function" can't do the work on its own to explain > evolution. We still need to know why some functions are favored by selection > and others are not. EricS seemed to indicate that we assess "fit" by > determining if animals are "happy".... but the metaphor of "fit" is like a > key in a lock. To explain evolution you need the matching of > form-and-function-to-a-particular-environment. That matching *sometimes* > increases reproductive success, and *sometimes* the traits in question are > hereditary. > > Population genetics combined with field research can be very powerful along > those lines, but the math of population genetics on its own, floating out in > the ether, can't do it at all. > > Best, > Eric > > > <mailto:[email protected]> > > On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 6:10 AM Santafe <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> Hi Nick, >> >> Two smaller replies to what have become two sub-threads: >> >> > On Mar 30, 2026, at 15:42, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected] >> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> > >> > DES, EPC, FW >> > >> > So far as I understand, the argument flowing from Fisher makes no claims >> > about the kind of trait that produces reproductive success other than that >> > it is the kind that produces reproductive success. FW, if that's not a >> > tautology, it's a pretty tight circle. >> >> As usual, let’s decamp to more neutral ground in the hope of having an >> ordinary negotiation. >> >> Suppose that, in your overweening pursuit of the study of metaphor, you >> never noticed that there is a once/4-year gathering called The Olympics. >> Also never learned what any of its so-called “events” are, what they are >> about, how they work, and how one differs from another. My hypothetical >> here is meant to define a condition of having “very little prior >> information” about some phenomenon that we can, nonetheless, still >> reasonably unambiguously circumscribe. >> >> But a quick inspection shows that a subset of the participants (who all >> together seem to be called “athletes”) are given metal disks and stand on >> some kind of 3-tiered podium, while other athletes do not. Being a >> statistician — a skill so helpful in the study of metaphor that it was worth >> taking the time out to learn — you immediately recognize that this is a kind >> of marking that can be used to partition the athletes. Taking notice, for >> the first time, of some of the conversation in the society around you, who >> seem not nearly so devoted to metaphor and thus have time to do other >> things, you gather that these marked people seem to be called “winners” (or >> better, “medalists”, this “winning” thing is a finer sub-partition; I’ll >> mis-use “winner” to label the most salient marking for this little parable). >> It’s handy to have such a term, for use in later sentences, so they become >> less tedious than the ones I have been typing so far. >> >> You also note that while there is only one 3-tiered podium and metal-disk >> set per one “event”, there seem to be many such distinct “events”, so some >> kind of event name gives you a second kind of marking you can put on the >> athletes. Moreover, interestingly, the “event” label is again a proper >> partition (or at least seems to be; this one is less cut-and-dried than the >> observation that everyone carrying a metal disk is not someone not-carrying >> a metal disk, so we are wary; the event label seems to be a bit more >> abstract): every athlete is in some “event” set, and it appears that no >> athlete is in more than one of them. As with the “winners” label, you learn >> that there are conventionalized names for the events, and you can find a >> look-up table if you need one or another of them. >> >> Now, I can make a list of statements that seem to be of two different kinds >> (scare quotes here indicate my statisticians’ attribute labels; in my >> condition of very little prior knowledge, I don’t claim I have any more >> semantics for them than I listed above): >> >> 1. Every “winner" is someone marked as having won something. >> >> 2a. Every winner in the “gymnastics” event is shorter than the average over >> all the participants; >> >> 2b. Every winner in the “high jump” event is taller than the average over >> all the participants; >> >> … (we could presumably look for other such summary statistics that seem to >> be unusually regular and to carry different values in different “events”). >> >> I would say sentence 1 is “a tautology”, or close enough to it for the >> purpose of this negotiation. Maybe I should use EricC’s good, and slighly >> more flexible term, “truism”. >> >> Now you may write a protest email: But the sentences 2a, 2b, have not told >> me what constitutes “competition” in these “events”: “gymnastics” and “high >> jump”, and given me the rule book for scoring them. Okay. And they didn’t >> cook your dinner and do the dishes afterward either. Life is hard. And more >> a propos (breaking my little 4th wall here), the path to a fully-adequate >> “causal” theory through statistical inference is like the Road to Heaven: >> narrow, tortuous, and inadequate to many things one can rightly want to >> know. That’s what other sciences are then for. >> >> But if you claim: The sentences 2a and 2b didn’t give me _any information_ >> about these “events”, and couldn’t have, because they are tautologies, I >> would say you made an error. Of course, the real Nick would not say that, >> so we are all safe. >> >> The above parable is, of course, about selection. I didn’t say anything >> about heredity. But if I had happened to note that height is a fairly >> heritable trait, I could have spun out a much longer story, and defined some >> Bayesian-posterior conditional probabilities, which would be shown to have >> properties such as: the posterior probability, under various ceteris paribus >> conditions, for a child of a high-jump winner to turn out another high-jump >> winner is higher than for that child to turn out a gymnastics winner, and so >> forth. The amalgamation of both of those stories would go in the direction >> of Fisher’s fundamental theorem. It would leave out all the stuff that >> Fisher left out of emphasis in his mad pursuit of his covariance term as an >> analog to the thermodynamic 2nd law (a non-valid analogy, as it turns out to >> be easy to show), and that Price included didactically (and here, to EricC’s >> answer): that I didn’t even mention that the tall people might get drafted >> into wars and put into an infantry to fire rifles over tall dijks, while the >> short people might be drafted into Special Forces and sent on missions to >> attack through underground tunnels, and so the number of survivors could >> depend on many factors about which war their country had started, in what >> theater, and against what opposition, etc. These are the world of >> everything-else that Fisher lumped together into “deterioration of the >> environment”, as Steve Frank (and I think also Price) lays out. They are >> probably not well-analogized to “mutation”, but in genetics, mutation also >> goes into the same bin in the Price equation — _outside_ the term of >> Fisher’s fundamental theorem — as the “deterioration” effects. The >> accounting identity is flexible enough that we don’t need analogies to use >> it; we can formulate a version for whatever statistics our >> phenomenon-of-interest supplies. >> >> Anyway; at issue: Seriously, do we have a problem in scientific work, of >> people being unable to gain partial knowledge about phenomena through >> sentences of the kinds 2a, 2b, because they can’t tell the difference >> between those and sentence 1? 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