Adaptationism.com

We tend to think we know what is adaptive, as if there was only one way of thinking about what adaptation means in each context. When talking about living things, we may think of adaptation in terms of traits that increase survival and reproduction. In non-biological contexts, such as design, we may consider phrases like “form follows function,” and consider an adaptive product to be one that is both functional, and has a form that does not increase consumer confusion, waste, or cost.

There is no particular problem with these first-approximation approaches to the word. But they don’t go deep enough. They don’t plumb the potential that is in this word to think deeply about our lives in a world that is always shaped by change, within us and outside us, and seeking equilibrium on terms that are continually new.

In Adaptationism as a mode of thought, decision-making, and analysis, which is an ‘-ism’ in the sense that it is considered an identity-shaping intellectual tool for our lives as a whole – an essential, and not just an accessory – we see Adaptation as having 4 fundamental levels of analysis, when determining whether something in human life – a behavior, mental state (pattern we recognize, emotion, desire, idea), or something we add, take away from, or change in the environment around us or within us (a tool, technology, built environment, human-caused change to an ecosystem, etc.) – is adaptive or maladaptive:

1. Does it help the individual survive, pair-bond, reproduce, and nurture their young well enough that their young are also likely to survive, reproduce, and do a good job of nurturing their young as well? (It is notable that Darwinian analysis rarely discusses pair-bonding and nurture as variables in addition to survival and reproduction, even though humans are the most nurture-needing of all creatures, with our prolonged period of physical helplessness and our even longer period of socioemotional maturation and general learning requiring the most dedicated caregivers possible – and devotion is most reliably achieved in a monogamous pair-bond in which the couple is securely attached. The more complex the society, the longer the developmental period of learning how to live within it tends to be, so the need of nurture is not decreasing, as society becomes more sophisticated, but increasing. In other words, abundance isn’t making life developmentally easier, but more developmentally complex. This makes securely attached parental couples who stay together with mutual respect and affection for the entire developmental arc of their children not less important, but more important, than it has ever been before. But you would not think that to be the case, if you read the many odious odes to non-monogamy you can find online and in books. Regardless of how our ancestors may have lived, when attachment structures were more plural and less focused on the mother primarily and father secondarily, the fact remains that we do not live in tribes, plural attachment structures do not develop naturally in modern communities, and this means that secure attachment depends on the parents by default, since it is not developing with a variety of third parties who are likely to remain constant in children’s lives. Plural attachment in tribes worked because everyone moved together; in modern societies, even if plural attachments developed, they would be cut short when people moved apart – which defeats the purpose of attachment in providing a sense of stable continuity over time.)
2. Does it help the group remain coherent and identifiable over time? This always requires both a) Resisting being conquered, destroyed, or collapsing, within any given generation; b) Continuing to perpetuate its identity over time to subsequent generations/members, which always requires a combination of achieving a strong influence over the socializing process in the formative years, or, being so intrinsically desirable to the alternatives that it is preferred over them even when the alternatives are known and have also influenced socialization. The Amish are a unique example of a group that has been prevented from a full monopoly over socializing influences by being required to attend formal schooling, yet remain sufficiently desirable to their members during Rumspringa that most choose to remain Amish despite the opportunity to pursue an alternative life outside the community.
3. Does it help manage the human population and the planet’s resources well enough that future generations – including the descendants of ourselves, or others in our families, or those of others in our communities – will have a similarly good shot at surviving, pair-bonding, reproducing, and nurturing their young? The tension, here, is that both of the first two senses of adaptation can conflict. For instance, if everyone maximizes their chances at reproduction, then the world will be even more overpopulated. If everyone maximizes their investments in nurturing their children with enriching experiences – say, trips around the world – then the world’s ecology will be even more harmed. So, adaptation is not so straightforward as we may like to think. What is adaptive in one sense may be maladaptive in another. And, frustratingly, there is no choice that is trade-off free. Something that decreased survival, pair-bonding, reproduction/fertility, or nurturing might be a “win” for Team Planet and loss for Team Thriving – it may improve ecological health by, in effect, hurting the health of human being. For another example, a group that increased its capacity to defend itself against external groups by vast accumulations of weapons of war might help the group be better adapted to continuing itself over time, free from risk of external conquest or destruction – but may undermine the ecological base on which it rests, and ultimately depends for its existence, in ways that make its collapse more likely.
4. If we are talking about some human-created thing being adaptative or not – an idea, a habit, an attitude, a perspective, a technology – we can ask whether it is narrowly adaptive (does it achieve the function we are trying to achieve with it?), but we can also ask the questions above: how does it help individuals adapt? How does it help groups adapt? How does it balance these goals of immediate function, individual adaptation, and group adaptation with the ecological element that also acts as a potential constrain on the thriving of individuals and groups?

There are no simple answers to major tradeoffs of this kind. But we have been recalcitrant in not asking ourselves, each other, our governments, our corporations, these questions about what is adaptive, and what is not, in our lives, choices, economies. One of the patterns I would like to highlight in this connection is how often the things we see as “progress” are actually bad in almost every way except their a) remarkable functional wins (i.e., they do what they advertise, and they do it well, but with a lot of costs we don’t talk about) b) their gains for the group immediately responsible for them, and, in some cases, for some other group. Let me share a few examples:

*AI can play a role in scientific discoveries, economic competition between firms, and geopolitical competition between nations. There is strong reason to think that, just as in a traditional arms race, neglecting to work on AI could lead to scientific teams, firms, and nations falling behind. At the same time, there are ironies, here. One irony is that the capacity to think for oneself, to maintain a long attention span, to tolerate uncertainty for hours, years, decades, while working on hard problems, is truly crucial to great breakthroughs in science, invention, industry, and perhaps even in geopolitics. But the more we rely on technological tools to get our answers for us, the less tolerance more people have for uncertainty, challenges that require long periods of attentive application, or doing the reading that is so helpful in what Maria Popova refers to as “combinatorial creativity” – bringing disparate elements to bear on a single challenge to produce new solutions. It is also ironic that in an age when we are more aware than ever before of what we are doing to the planet, we are developing search technology that is 9x more energy consumptive per search term, and see this as progress – whereas, before AI, we saw increasing environmental demands of our lifestyle as something to curtail, we now are rapidaly coming to see AI as necessary. Lastly, if the key to effective individual and group-level adaptation is human resources of socioemotional and intellectual development, it would be ironic to create AI in the name of optimizing human potential while undercutting our capacity to interact with each other, because we are more interested in drawing on a universal basic income while using AI chatbots as substitutes for friends, therapists, lovers, and even for the voice of insight inside ourselves – what I think Balthazar Gracian once referred to as the in-house oracle. Is it possible that AI-dependence will usher in a new and more profound distrust in the capacities of ourselves and each other, disinterest in developing them, and thereby a learned helplessness and deepened isolation? Is it possible to develop AI for research, corporate, and government uses without unleashing chatbots on a population that needs nothing less than another way to avoid reading, thinking, talking to each other, and being mindful of the blank spaces between their other activities, that once were there by default, before technology sought to fill every gap with something other than reflection?

*Washing machines save a lot of time. However, they also use a lot of energy. This energy is used in mechanical washing procedures that accelerate the weakening of fibers in clothes compared to the more gentle procedure of hand-washing. Because of plastics in clothes (in elastic bands, as well as fabrics that are plastic-based), the increased breakdown of these fibers doesn’t just require buying more clothes sooner – it also increase environmental contamination of microplastics, faster than hand-washing would. They also take up more space in our homes, which requires homes be larger, and that more energy is invested in heating this additional space. They also add to the complexity and expense of the household – they are another thing that can break – and therefore create another incentive for working hard to make more money to afford the appliance lifestyle. This work, of course, takes time, as does coordinating with appliance repair and delivery persons. So, even if we are saving time overall, it is less than it may seem – and with ecological and financial costs we are not accustomed to counting. So, to sum up, washing machines use more energy, require more clothes be made, increase the rate of microplastic contamination, contribute modestly to large house sizes, which require additional building materials initially and heating/cooling thereafter, and contribute to the expense of our lifestyles that drives us to work and produce more. They do, however, fulfill their intended function, of saving labor on a task, and as expected for a commercial product, they make money for the companies that produce them. My point is not that you shouldn’t use a washer – as someone socialized into a washer-using society, I have always used one myself. My point is that the process of socializing people has blindeded us to the costs.