Sunday, March 25, 2007
EVOLUTION and REPETITION
REPETITION
Repetition in science, in philosophy and in life, in evolution and in evolutionary psychology
Some days are boring, and some other days are extremely fruitful. Today it is such a fruitful day. This morning I have read two things, a book DNA by Watson, and article in New York Times called “Compassionate Commercialism” by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of “Stumbling on Happiness.”
Watson describes how HD gene was found, and the today’s results of knowledge on so called Huntington disease. The result may be shocking for some people, for me, it is the evidence for extra-importance of repetition in evolution. In specific region of DNA called IT15 repeating sequence of CAG was found, in people who acquired HD as adults, this sequence repeats more than 40 times, those with fewer than 35 CAG sequences in this region of DNA will no get the disease.
This might be a good evidence for the role of repetition in evolution in general, if there will be more of such cases where suffering from a disease will be a consequence of a number of repetitions of a certain sequence in our DNA. I suppose this will and must be the case, as repetition is the basis of evolution.
This simple fact can be observed even today with our limited possibilities as far as time is concerned. We do not live ten thousand years to be eye-witnesses of a change in DNA caused by some adaptive change. Today we can see how important repetition is when we learn some foreign language or we practice some sport. The more we get involved in certain activity, i.e. the more we repeat the activity, the better we get, because we get adapted to the challenge. Another example is driving a car. It takes many thousands of kilometers driven to make a good driver. When somebody sits in a car for the first time, his actions will not to good, with kilometers driven the person gets better thanks to repetition of the task.
So this was one thing that stroked me few hours ago, as it is, for me, strong evidence that repetition is the stuff that caused evolution and is still working. The second thing was that exactly on the contrary sometimes it is enough to experience something only once and the change occurs immediately, as described in the article by Daniel Gilbert. How does this go together?
Gilbert says in his article that people are made to help. I believe that the problem is a bit tougher. I suggest that people are originally not good and not helpful. The reason is pretty easy: we lived in dangerous and heavily competitive environment described by only two facts: eat or be eaten. There were always enough predators, and so during all the evolution everybody has learnt this fact. The situation described by “eat or be eaten” has repeated during the eons of evolution really many times. How come then, that we usually help other people? The explanation is just as simple: it is again only repetition. When some ancestors of humans and humans themselves started to live in groups they found out it makes sense to help each other. This again repeated so many times that we have this evolutionary information of helping stored in us, we must only find where and how it is stored. But how is it possible that it took such a long time in evolution to establish a firm evolutionary adaptation, and then it can be broken by a single event as described in Gilbert’s article?
We have stored both types of evolutionary information; it seems to me that under normal life condition, when we experience mostly only cooperation in our human environment, then we are also helpful, because evolution and repetition have programmed us so. But we have also stored the previous evolutionary information about the danger of being eaten up. It is only necessary to “initiate” or to trigger the program stored. Sometimes a certain activity must be repeated very often to show any impact, sometimes only one occurrence is enough to trigger the stored information, when only strong enough.
Exactly the severeness of information is the point. If we have two contradictory pieces of evolutionary information stored, then, one can prevail in certain environment, if the environment changes the second evolutionary information is activated and we respond accordingly. This is the case David Gilbert describes, first he was helpful as most of us, then, when noticed that he was cheated by pretended signals, he learnt his lesson and will behave differently.
As I have experienced this too, my solution is at first check if the signals are proper or pretended. Similarity can be found in the case of marriage swindler. Such a man pretends signals that women expect to get from a man who loves them, and therefore they misinterpret the signals and get caught of guard.
So we can see ho important repetition is in evolution. Actually, evolution is nothing else than getting used to manifold repetition of some environmental signal. And to see such two nice pieces of evidence for my ideas on evolution on one single morning is really inspiring and confirming.
Repetition in science, in philosophy and in life, in evolution and in evolutionary psychology
Some days are boring, and some other days are extremely fruitful. Today it is such a fruitful day. This morning I have read two things, a book DNA by Watson, and article in New York Times called “Compassionate Commercialism” by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of “Stumbling on Happiness.”
Watson describes how HD gene was found, and the today’s results of knowledge on so called Huntington disease. The result may be shocking for some people, for me, it is the evidence for extra-importance of repetition in evolution. In specific region of DNA called IT15 repeating sequence of CAG was found, in people who acquired HD as adults, this sequence repeats more than 40 times, those with fewer than 35 CAG sequences in this region of DNA will no get the disease.
This might be a good evidence for the role of repetition in evolution in general, if there will be more of such cases where suffering from a disease will be a consequence of a number of repetitions of a certain sequence in our DNA. I suppose this will and must be the case, as repetition is the basis of evolution.
This simple fact can be observed even today with our limited possibilities as far as time is concerned. We do not live ten thousand years to be eye-witnesses of a change in DNA caused by some adaptive change. Today we can see how important repetition is when we learn some foreign language or we practice some sport. The more we get involved in certain activity, i.e. the more we repeat the activity, the better we get, because we get adapted to the challenge. Another example is driving a car. It takes many thousands of kilometers driven to make a good driver. When somebody sits in a car for the first time, his actions will not to good, with kilometers driven the person gets better thanks to repetition of the task.
So this was one thing that stroked me few hours ago, as it is, for me, strong evidence that repetition is the stuff that caused evolution and is still working. The second thing was that exactly on the contrary sometimes it is enough to experience something only once and the change occurs immediately, as described in the article by Daniel Gilbert. How does this go together?
Gilbert says in his article that people are made to help. I believe that the problem is a bit tougher. I suggest that people are originally not good and not helpful. The reason is pretty easy: we lived in dangerous and heavily competitive environment described by only two facts: eat or be eaten. There were always enough predators, and so during all the evolution everybody has learnt this fact. The situation described by “eat or be eaten” has repeated during the eons of evolution really many times. How come then, that we usually help other people? The explanation is just as simple: it is again only repetition. When some ancestors of humans and humans themselves started to live in groups they found out it makes sense to help each other. This again repeated so many times that we have this evolutionary information of helping stored in us, we must only find where and how it is stored. But how is it possible that it took such a long time in evolution to establish a firm evolutionary adaptation, and then it can be broken by a single event as described in Gilbert’s article?
We have stored both types of evolutionary information; it seems to me that under normal life condition, when we experience mostly only cooperation in our human environment, then we are also helpful, because evolution and repetition have programmed us so. But we have also stored the previous evolutionary information about the danger of being eaten up. It is only necessary to “initiate” or to trigger the program stored. Sometimes a certain activity must be repeated very often to show any impact, sometimes only one occurrence is enough to trigger the stored information, when only strong enough.
Exactly the severeness of information is the point. If we have two contradictory pieces of evolutionary information stored, then, one can prevail in certain environment, if the environment changes the second evolutionary information is activated and we respond accordingly. This is the case David Gilbert describes, first he was helpful as most of us, then, when noticed that he was cheated by pretended signals, he learnt his lesson and will behave differently.
As I have experienced this too, my solution is at first check if the signals are proper or pretended. Similarity can be found in the case of marriage swindler. Such a man pretends signals that women expect to get from a man who loves them, and therefore they misinterpret the signals and get caught of guard.
So we can see ho important repetition is in evolution. Actually, evolution is nothing else than getting used to manifold repetition of some environmental signal. And to see such two nice pieces of evidence for my ideas on evolution on one single morning is really inspiring and confirming.
# posted by Dalibor @ 3:26 AM 
