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TimS comments on [SEQ RERUN] Zut Allais! - Less Wrong
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Another guess is that using numbers to describe probability is new enough that our brains haven't had time to evolve any way of dealing with the difference between 33% and 34%. The concept of certainty has been around for a lot longer.
There's a negative pregnant in your statement that makes me think you believe in very recent human evolution. Is there reason to think humans have undergone any biological evolution since the development of agriculture?
Aside from lactose tolerance (or more accurately, lactase persistence, as the "wild type" is "intolerance"), there are differences in enzyme quantities in saliva due to copy number variations between those populations which have a history of consuming carbohydrates and those which do not. There are also the various resistances to malaria. For multiple reasons, including history (e.g., malaria seems to have become endemic in the Mediterranean over the course of the Roman Empire), we know these are all new, anywhere from 6,000 to 500 years before the present. I can give other examples, but these are the most clear and distinct in the literature.
Let me make sure I'm understanding correctly.
- The ability of adults in certain populations to digest lactose is evidence that biological evolution of humans has occurred (since the domestication of animals?).
- Different populations have different susceptibility to malaria. Am I correct that this is referring to sickle-cell trait and similar things?
If true, that seems moderately strong evidence of biological evolution of humans since the beginning of recorded history (I'm using that interchangeably with the development of agriculture). I'm interested in the evidence for very short-term evolution in humans (<500 years) if you have something that's easy to cite.
My original point was that I'm skeptical that "social pattern" portions of our brain have undergone biological evolution since the development of agriculture. And the OP about changes in the brain allowing greater understanding of statistics seemed like that kind of assertion.
AFAICT I asserted the opposite of that. I said we haven't had recent changes in the brain allowing for greater understanding of statistics, and that's why we're so bad at them.
You're opening up a bigger debate here. I recall that Razib Khan often posts on this subject (there's plenty of evidence, but lots of distinctions to be made) on Gene Expression.
Four reasons: Variation, selection, retention and competition. If you mean biological evolution with definite and noticeable effects in the general population lactose tolerance is an obvious example.