#16. The Intermind, Engine of History? [evolutionary psychology]

EP

Red, theory; black, fact.

9-21-2016

This post is a further development of the ideas in the post, "What is intelligence? DNA as knowledge base." It was originally published 9-21-2016 and extensively edited 10-09-2016 with references added 10-11-2016 and 10-30-2016. Last modified: 10-30-2016.

In "AviApics 101" and "The Insurance of the Heart," I seem to be venturing into human sociobiology, which one early critic called "An outbreak of neatness." With the momentum left over from "Insurance," I felt up for a complete human sociobiological theory, to be created from the two posts mentioned.

However, what I wrote about the "genetic intelligence" suggests that this intelligence constructs our sociobiology in an ad hoc fashion, by rearranging a knowledge base, or construction kit, of "rules of conduct" into algorithm-like assemblages. This rearrangement is (See Deprecated, Part 7) blindingly fast by the standards of classical Darwinian evolution, which only provides the construction kit itself, and presumably some further, special rules equivalent to a definition of an objective function to be optimized. The ordinary rules translate experiences into the priming of certain emotions, not the emotions themselves, 

Thus, my two sociobiological posts are best read as case studies of the products of the genetic intelligence. I have named this part the intermind, because it is intermediate in speed between classical evolution and learning by operant conditioning. (All three depend on trial-and error.) The name is also appropriate in that the intermind is a distributed intelligence, acting over continental, or a least national, areas. If we want neatness, we must focus on its objective function, which is simply whatever produces survival. It will be explicitly encoded into the genes specifying the intermind, (For more on multi-tier, biological control systems with division of labor according to time scale, see "Sociobiology: the New Synthesis," E. O. Wilson, 1975 & 2000, chapter 7.)

Let us assume that the intermind accounts for evil, and that this is because it is only concerned with survival of the entire species and not with the welfare of individuals. Therefore, it will have been created by group selection of species. (Higher taxonomic units such as genus or family will scarcely evolve because the units that must die out to permit this are unlikely to do so, because they comprise relatively great genetic and geographical diversity.* However, we can expect adaptations that facilitate speciation. Imprinted genes may be one such adaptation, which might enforce species barriers by a lock-and-key mechanism that kills the embryo if any imprinted gene is present in either two or zero active copies.) Species group selection need act only on the objective function used by epigenetic trial-and-error processes.

In these Oncelerian times, we know very well that species survival is imperiled by loss of range and by loss of genetic diversity. Thus, the objective function will tend to produce range expansion and optimization of genetic diversity. My post "The Insurance of the Heart" concluded with a discussion of "preventative evolution," which was all about increasing genetic diversity. My post "AviApics 101" was all about placing population density under a rigid, negative feedback control, which would force excess population to migrate to less-populated areas, thereby expanding range. Here we see how my case studies support the existence of an intermind with an objective  function as described above.

However, all this is insufficient to explain the tremendous cultural creativity of humans, starting at the end of the last ice age with cave paintings, followed shortly thereafter by the momentous invention of agriculture. The hardships of the ice age must have selected genes for a third, novel component, or pillar, of the species objective function, namely optimization of memetic diversity. Controlled diversification of the species memeplex may have been the starting point for cultural creativity and the invention of all kinds of aids to survival. Art forms may represent the sensor of a feedback servomechanism by which a society measures its own memeplex diversity, measurement being necessary to control.

A plausible reason for evolving an intermind is that it permits larger body size, which leads to more internal degrees of freedom and therefore access to previously impossible adaptations. For example, eukaryotes can phagocytose their food; prokaryotes cannot. However, larger body size comes at the expense of longer generation time, which reduces evolvability. A band of high frequencies in the spectrum of environmental fluctuations therefore develops where the large organism has relinquished evolvability, opening it to being out competed by its smaller rivals. 

The intermind is a proxy for classical evolution that fills the gap, but it needs an objective function to provide it with its ultimate gold standard of goodness of adaptations. Species-replacement group selection makes sure the objective function is close to optimal. This group selection process takes place at enormously lower frequencies than those the intermind is adapting to, because if the timescales were  too similar, chaos would result. For example, in model predictive control, the model is updated on a much longer cycle than are the predictions derived from it.

12-25-2016

Today, when I was checking to see if I was using the word "cathexis" correctly (I wasn't), I discovered the Freudian term "collective unconscious," which sounds close to my "intermind" concept.

* 3-12-2018

I now question this argument. Why can't there be as many kinds of group selection as taxonomic levels? Admittedly, the higher-level processes would be mind-boggling in their slowness, but in evolution, there are no deadlines.