Cognitive Thrift 35 – Cognitive Economics
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/01
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about cognitive economics. We talked about game theory. We talked a little bit about meta-game theory, which builds on that – via mention. More importantly, we talked about evolution and cognitive economics. What ties these together?
Rick Rosner: Hold on, due to the way we evolved, there are sometimes – we evolved to want things. Nature doesn’t car what happens to us once we’re done reproducing, as long as what happens to us doesn’t disrupt the species.
For species such as ourselves, where it takes 20 years to raise the offspring, there’s, there’s – we have some further use after reproducing. So, there is some – evolution wouldn’t favor our welfare – it would favor the welfare of our species.
The welfare of our species would be threatened by members of our species not actively participating or actively disrupting the activity or raising offspring, and so to that extent there might be some evolved conformity to the business of raising kids and providing a stable culture, say.
That’ll need to be revised, but beyond the business of raising kids and not disrupting that business. Nature doesn’t care about what happens to us. Or there’s no pressure for there to be positive outcomes or any kind of – we have kids, we raise kids, and we enjoy a few more decades of aging and then we’re gone.
There’s – because there’s no – we can talk about a thing. There’s probably an official name for it.
I’m calling it evolutionary sufficiency, which is that the pressures of evolution create individuals and individual characteristics that are only good enough to do the job they do plus a little more, just as a margin of error. And that evolution sufficiency takes various.
Evolutionary sufficiency creates beings and characteristics of varying durability depending on the life cycles of the various species. Our bodies wear out in 70-110 years because we have to live until 40 or 50 just to do the business of raising kids.
And then we have some excess durability because things keep – the evolved. Our evolved durability allows for a few extra decades of life beyond the decades necessary to get the next generation going. And that probably holds across most species depending on how long it takes those species to get the next generation going.
Dogs can live up to 20 years, possums up to 4 or 5 year, rats and mice – 3, 4, 5 years if they’re lucky, enough time to spit out another couple generations and then they’re done. There is little
evolutionary pressure to have longevity beyond reproduction except accidental longevity due to systems that need to go a certain or need us to go a certain amount of time that need us to go a little extra time.
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