Vladimir_Nesov comments on "Sex Is Always Well Worth Its Two-Fold Cost" - Less Wrong

4 Post author: cousin_it 15 July 2009 09:52AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 15 July 2009 12:04:47PM * 3 points [-]

And again you are disputing definitions. It doesn't serve the purpose of communication and doesn't relate to my comment above.

Comment author: timtyler comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 15 July 2009 12:15:29PM * 1 point [-]

The actual question is not "what does the word "evolution" really mean?", but "is the paper wrong on that particular point?". Wrong about reality, not about the usage of words. Disputing definitions is utterly useless for resolving the latter question. My comment was trying to resolve the message about reality behind the ambiguous words, by pointing out that the stricter sense of "evolution" was probably used.

Comment author: timtyler 15 July 2009 01:08:00PM -1 points [-]

"Stricter"? You mean the definition that disagrees with the textbooks?

The paper does not concern itself with the definition of evolution. It's a computer modelling paper. The observation of multiparental inheritance in cultural evolution doesn't seem to me to directly contradict the paper - since the modern world doesn't satisfy the authors' supplied definition of stability.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 July 2009 06:00:18PM * 3 points [-]

Your proposition appears to be, "evolution::culture can stably involve more than two parents, therefore evolution::genetic can stably involve more than two parents."

To put it mildly, this conclusion does not follow. "Parent" and "offspring" mean completely different things (if they are even cogent concepts) in evolution::culture than they do in evolution::genetic. The article is quite clearly refering to evolution::genetic, so the fact that evolution has multiple definitions is not relevant.

Comment author: timtyler 15 July 2009 10:26:15PM -1 points [-]

I may have cited multiple definitions of evolution - but it was not to point out the differences between them. It was to pile on evidence from a range of sources.

I don't agree with your statements about the role of parent and offspring in cultural evolution. Nor - as far as I am aware - does anyone else in the field. Parent and offspring share heritable Shannon mutual information. The parent is the source of the information, and the offspring copies from it.

Comment deleted 15 July 2009 05:59:58PM [-]

Vladimir_Nesov comments on "Sex Is Always Well Worth Its Two-Fold Cost" - Less Wrong

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