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🪵 The Threshold

Demonstrating learning does not disprove genetic natural selection.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, define, xref, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@henrich_secret_2015, loc. 1131

2 min read

Demonstrating learning does not disprove genetic natural selection.

Evidence

One of the debates in this literature involves opposing “innate” and “learned” in explaining our abilities and behaviors. As we’ll see, much behavior is both 100% innate and 100% learned. For example, humans have clearly evolved to walk on two legs, and it’s one of our species’ behavioral signatures. Yet we also clearly learn to walk. From natural selection’s point of view, it only cares that the phenotype it “wants” emerges when it needs it. To get there, it will use learning, attention biases, motivational changes, anatomical adjustments, inferential biases, and pain responses to make sure that the required developmental processes run to completion, on schedule. Thus, showing that something is learned only tells us about the developmental process but not about whether it was favored by natural selection acting on genes. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 1131

Categorization

  • DEFINE: The innate/learned dichotomy is dissolved: behavior can be 100% both because selection canalizes learning via biases and motivations.
  • XREF: This dissolves the false dichotomy framing relevant to coercion-vulnerability work — a developmental trait’s being learned does not rule out a selected, canalized timeline. — connects to: Standard accounts wrongly frame culture as beginning only after genetic evolution finished. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1012; Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness; Humans were evolutionarily selected for learnability, not behavioral fixedness (+5 more)

Broader Connections

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