I thought fitness was a measure of the likelihood of survival in a given environment. Hence fitness together with the capacity and drive to reproduce would determine the continuation of a species. But I'm no biologist.
Frank --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Wed, Apr 1, 2026, 5:15 AM Santafe <[email protected]> wrote: > Can I ask one last question? after which I promise I really will shut up: > > The content of EricC’s note below (about the key in a lock), reflecting > back on things Nick said in the early posts about selection’s being a > tautology, which got me started digging a hole, have bothered me through > the night, and made me wonder if I can understand how I have been missing > both-of-y’all’s point. Was it something like the following:? > > — for me, “fitness” is a name given to (something like) the units (or > dimension) in which reproductive success is measured, or quantified. Not > sure “units” is quite the right term, but the point is that it’s about > defining a quantification program for observed outcomes, or the model > variables that we try to fit to them. I had taken the state of modern work > to show that this is the only actual meaning the term was ever given. > > — are you two claiming otherwise; that my supposition is not at all the > case? That there are biologists for whom there is some other meaning, > instead of or in addition to the one I gave above, about being a > measurement unit? Something like: “fitness” is a name for “the cause of > reproductive success”. As if to say: Well, there’s this thing with the > form of a name, so there must be something it names, that is a kind of > causal force responsible for generating what we witness as reproductive > success. And since there is one name, there must be some one kind of > causal force it names. > > — to me, an interpretation like that is so bizarre, it would never have > occurred to me to that there is anyone making it. It seems very similar to > taking an expression like “elan vital”, and saying that, since it has the > shape of a name, there must be something it names. To me, those are > strings of words that satisfy rules of syntax and that don’t have any > semantic referents at all. They may as well be Chomsky’s “colorless green > dreams” or something. I would not have imagined that there was anything > anyone expected, beyond the working out of the mechanics of lots of cases > of how-lifecycles-play-out-in-contexts, which can fill out some vast > taxonomy that has no singular “essence” underneath it. That could well be > my lack of empathy for how many other people think, like my lack of empathy > for their thoughts about God (along with my ignorance about who is in the > world). > > — I guess, since there are people who continue to talk about Strong > Emergence, and Philosophical Zombies, and who sound to me much like people > who talk about God today, and maybe like people who would have talked about > Elan Vital some generations ago, I should have right away imagined this > reading of what you were writing. > > If the above is what you were claiming, it would explain why my long Emily > Litella-like replies seemed like a tiresome recital of what population > geneticists already do (Nick’s point that “all that would be left is > EricS’s 2a and 2b”), which everybody already knows anyway, and which isn’t > interesting and wasn’t to your point. > > So, were you claiming that there are biologists operating that way? > > And are there really biologists operating that way? > > As always, I appreciate whatever patience or indulgence, > > Eric > > > > > On Mar 31, 2026, at 15:47, Eric Charles <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I'm a bit confused here... > The initial dog pile on Nick seemed (to me) to have as one of its main > points something like "Look, old man, once you formalize something > mathematically we don't need to care what any of the words might mean or > imply in any other context, it is just math, stop thinking that the words > matter!" > > And now there have been several posts by EricS, at least one by Glen, and > I think Marcus and Frank are in there somewhere as well, claiming that the > words are crucially important and we need to take them much more seriously. > > So.... where does that leave us? Is everyone now onboard with > the metaphors mattering quite a bit? > > I'll also note that "function" can't do the work on its own to explain > evolution. We still need to know why some functions are favored by > selection and others are not. EricS seemed to indicate that we assess "fit" > by determining if animals are "happy".... but the metaphor of "fit" is like > a key in a lock. To explain evolution you need the matching of > form-and-function-to-a-particular-environment. That matching *sometimes* > increases reproductive success, and *sometimes* the traits in question are > hereditary. > > Population genetics combined with field research can be very powerful > along those lines, but the math of population genetics on its own, floating > out in the ether, can't do it at all. > > Best, > Eric > > > <[email protected]> > > > On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 6:10 AM Santafe <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Nick, >> >> Two smaller replies to what have become two sub-threads: >> >> > On Mar 30, 2026, at 15:42, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > >> > DES, EPC, FW >> > >> > So far as I understand, the argument flowing from Fisher makes no >> claims about the kind of trait that produces reproductive success other >> than that it is the kind that produces reproductive success. FW, if that's >> not a tautology, it's a pretty tight circle. >> >> As usual, let’s decamp to more neutral ground in the hope of having an >> ordinary negotiation. >> >> Suppose that, in your overweening pursuit of the study of metaphor, you >> never noticed that there is a once/4-year gathering called The Olympics. >> Also never learned what any of its so-called “events” are, what they are >> about, how they work, and how one differs from another. My hypothetical >> here is meant to define a condition of having “very little prior >> information” about some phenomenon that we can, nonetheless, still >> reasonably unambiguously circumscribe. >> >> But a quick inspection shows that a subset of the participants (who all >> together seem to be called “athletes”) are given metal disks and stand on >> some kind of 3-tiered podium, while other athletes do not. Being a >> statistician — a skill so helpful in the study of metaphor that it was >> worth taking the time out to learn — you immediately recognize that this is >> a kind of marking that can be used to partition the athletes. Taking >> notice, for the first time, of some of the conversation in the society >> around you, who seem not nearly so devoted to metaphor and thus have time >> to do other things, you gather that these marked people seem to be called >> “winners” (or better, “medalists”, this “winning” thing is a finer >> sub-partition; I’ll mis-use “winner” to label the most salient marking for >> this little parable). It’s handy to have such a term, for use in later >> sentences, so they become less tedious than the ones I have been typing so >> far. >> >> You also note that while there is only one 3-tiered podium and metal-disk >> set per one “event”, there seem to be many such distinct “events”, so some >> kind of event name gives you a second kind of marking you can put on the >> athletes. Moreover, interestingly, the “event” label is again a proper >> partition (or at least seems to be; this one is less cut-and-dried than the >> observation that everyone carrying a metal disk is not someone not-carrying >> a metal disk, so we are wary; the event label seems to be a bit more >> abstract): every athlete is in some “event” set, and it appears that no >> athlete is in more than one of them. As with the “winners” label, you >> learn that there are conventionalized names for the events, and you can >> find a look-up table if you need one or another of them. >> >> Now, I can make a list of statements that seem to be of two different >> kinds (scare quotes here indicate my statisticians’ attribute labels; in my >> condition of very little prior knowledge, I don’t claim I have any more >> semantics for them than I listed above): >> >> 1. Every “winner" is someone marked as having won something. >> >> 2a. Every winner in the “gymnastics” event is shorter than the average >> over all the participants; >> >> 2b. Every winner in the “high jump” event is taller than the average >> over all the participants; >> >> … (we could presumably look for other such summary statistics that seem >> to be unusually regular and to carry different values in different >> “events”). >> >> I would say sentence 1 is “a tautology”, or close enough to it for the >> purpose of this negotiation. Maybe I should use EricC’s good, and slighly >> more flexible term, “truism”. >> >> Now you may write a protest email: But the sentences 2a, 2b, have not >> told me what constitutes “competition” in these “events”: “gymnastics” and >> “high jump”, and given me the rule book for scoring them. Okay. And they >> didn’t cook your dinner and do the dishes afterward either. Life is hard. >> And more a propos (breaking my little 4th wall here), the path to a >> fully-adequate “causal” theory through statistical inference is like the >> Road to Heaven: narrow, tortuous, and inadequate to many things one can >> rightly want to know. That’s what other sciences are then for. >> >> But if you claim: The sentences 2a and 2b didn’t give me _any >> information_ about these “events”, and couldn’t have, because they are >> tautologies, I would say you made an error. Of course, the real Nick would >> not say that, so we are all safe. >> >> The above parable is, of course, about selection. I didn’t say anything >> about heredity. But if I had happened to note that height is a fairly >> heritable trait, I could have spun out a much longer story, and defined >> some Bayesian-posterior conditional probabilities, which would be shown to >> have properties such as: the posterior probability, under various ceteris >> paribus conditions, for a child of a high-jump winner to turn out another >> high-jump winner is higher than for that child to turn out a gymnastics >> winner, and so forth. The amalgamation of both of those stories would go >> in the direction of Fisher’s fundamental theorem. It would leave out all >> the stuff that Fisher left out of emphasis in his mad pursuit of his >> covariance term as an analog to the thermodynamic 2nd law (a non-valid >> analogy, as it turns out to be easy to show), and that Price included >> didactically (and here, to EricC’s answer): that I didn’t even mention >> that the tall people might get drafted into wars and put into an infantry >> to fire rifles over tall dijks, while the short people might be drafted >> into Special Forces and sent on missions to attack through underground >> tunnels, and so the number of survivors could depend on many factors about >> which war their country had started, in what theater, and against what >> opposition, etc. These are the world of everything-else that Fisher lumped >> together into “deterioration of the environment”, as Steve Frank (and I >> think also Price) lays out. They are probably not well-analogized to >> “mutation”, but in genetics, mutation also goes into the same bin in the >> Price equation — _outside_ the term of Fisher’s fundamental theorem — as >> the “deterioration” effects. The accounting identity is flexible enough >> that we don’t need analogies to use it; we can formulate a version for >> whatever statistics our phenomenon-of-interest supplies. >> >> Anyway; at issue: Seriously, do we have a problem in scientific work, of >> people being unable to gain partial knowledge about phenomena through >> sentences of the kinds 2a, 2b, because they can’t tell the difference >> between those and sentence 1? In the world where I live, I don’t see >> evidence for this mistake. >> >> Eric >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / >> ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,GvQhgG8mgl44zu_Tqszk_wQFcC3LBswQyBsmnoa7umwcI4cM2jGPGmAYotJwNMri0nXMbYayX6uZw5iDa5Mn0zM5Lzi9_LPGwP2Q6dG2zkm1Zw,,&typo=1> >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,23DEBEu6zm1j58j5JsswXw4R4hnyuhIceP4fdD1lMWDKru8V9CE3qD4-RYjtV5Jy9hfTf9uHOrhrlBi_RdYMT7jsteJtGiX2nEMNJisxFedZstuD_29M3FA,&typo=1> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,Ec4s1UwqPKENLyqkHX4Ib_R7EzxFYgc2j7jZdKdzIhORPykt1347aKvaSNnoCQ4Arvb6m2_GLwAwKSl29d-U5DrlMczDc4AHiyyrX-KaGBCrMK9RdKapkw,,&typo=1> >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,wWOjZ0Q8WKeZG4U9_UBc_a11JtFDvedQPCTS8FL1Usmbm4F-EJO5IWv_Ignpmf4vTC3CO23cIKVFR_FtMZC8DWD4hyxlN0c7hdOfez8KEw,,&typo=1> >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,kwN2JIDPqIj9UxOfed-aORUfsTjJO1DufRCI0ppHAlXiormfdNykgyPSWLfGlw5BiruUeiaRfbSG8W1tubwpfhSXeau4oRt3nvXTRhaRUQDZn1ezcoU,&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,kQqYu7I-SVHGT_AjFnLh-XWpOng69axviT6aY8I-XQhC5yk80tH2Ke3qOfyvs8l3RCZeAkeZoIR8TnddaWkwLAXTuoc5QvUR8RvkfEpSQA4,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,Scpn5Z6qKVVYYNEU1u9CRDlFHpw1wgOZOdNM_lN_6PGv3Act07AQi7IpeyFshe33FmWkTI9CAG8DxLRlNRkf96ox2bRdyp5XC_cgCr8eGG_qVIaFKTZQtQ,,&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,NLxA-XaYLw7kDphTWfVR6urQXoJSKIwq0etxJd8ER-oc2b18abBXo9Qeee2OhAh_25GSqFBFw3JCMtIdxzYZ2dNpnjUjp4hMFRrpN814z2HxmIPhG0rfxUF-CQ,,&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
