Evolution Filtering Process
I am having a great time in the discussion with Cathy talking about "natural aptitude" and I need blog some of my arguments down here.
From reading the "expert mind" article and echoing with my old thoughts, I came to the concolusion that our born ability to achieve any paricular society recognized achievement is about the same, thus wether one will become an expert is matter of enviroment and his life path. From an large scale point of view, it is a random effect.
During the discussion with Cathy, I came to reason for above conclusion -- it is the evolution filtering process.
Imagine we start with a gene pool with all variations and thus all different "doomed" ability in achievement. Then we run a filter that throws off those performs really bad. If there is systematic relationship between one's eventual performance and certain genes, those certain genes dooms underperformance will get more filtered off than those good genes. It is similar to pouring a cup of water through a paper filter that large paricles gets left behind. There will be loss of good genes during the process as well, but genes gets spawned after each process so as long as bad genes gets filtered off more than good genes, the ensemble gets more purer in good genes than before.
Now repeat this filtering process millions of times, even give me a very poor filter, I can reach 99.99% purity. Well still have a large gene pool with countless variations, but be asured that all these variations are insensitive to the filter we used.
Evolution is just such process where the suvivalship is the filter.
One species' natural environment usually changes very slowly, and the evolution almost always is at a faster pace. Therefore, for any given species, their born ability is equal, speciwise.
A fun thought experiment: If our look has a role in our survivalship, particulaly let's say one's average possiblity of survival is proportional to the length of one's face, will every one of us born with equal lenghth of face - the lenght of the limit?
From reading the "expert mind" article and echoing with my old thoughts, I came to the concolusion that our born ability to achieve any paricular society recognized achievement is about the same, thus wether one will become an expert is matter of enviroment and his life path. From an large scale point of view, it is a random effect.
During the discussion with Cathy, I came to reason for above conclusion -- it is the evolution filtering process.
Imagine we start with a gene pool with all variations and thus all different "doomed" ability in achievement. Then we run a filter that throws off those performs really bad. If there is systematic relationship between one's eventual performance and certain genes, those certain genes dooms underperformance will get more filtered off than those good genes. It is similar to pouring a cup of water through a paper filter that large paricles gets left behind. There will be loss of good genes during the process as well, but genes gets spawned after each process so as long as bad genes gets filtered off more than good genes, the ensemble gets more purer in good genes than before.
Now repeat this filtering process millions of times, even give me a very poor filter, I can reach 99.99% purity. Well still have a large gene pool with countless variations, but be asured that all these variations are insensitive to the filter we used.
Evolution is just such process where the suvivalship is the filter.
One species' natural environment usually changes very slowly, and the evolution almost always is at a faster pace. Therefore, for any given species, their born ability is equal, speciwise.
A fun thought experiment: If our look has a role in our survivalship, particulaly let's say one's average possiblity of survival is proportional to the length of one's face, will every one of us born with equal lenghth of face - the lenght of the limit?
posted by Hui Zhou at 9:20 AM
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