# reorganization, evolution **URL:** \ **Category:** CSG1995\ **Created:** [August 8, 1995, 8:46pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/reorganization-evolution/14811 "1995-08-08T20:46:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1

**Author:** ![\_Avery\_Andrews](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/_/848f3c/32.png) [@\_Avery\_Andrews](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/_Avery_Andrews)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 1995, 8:46pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/reorganization-evolution/14811/1 "1995-08-08T20:46:19Z")

[Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au 950808.1535] (Bill Powers (950806.2300 MDT)) \>The big challenge is to devise a genetic strategy that doesn't give the \>organism credit (by letting it reproduce) for going partway to a \>solution of a problem. The evolution of internal reference signals gives \>the organism an internal criterion against which to judge reduction of \>error. In standard natural selection, there is only one error: death. I \>think there are limits to what this crude method of selection can do in \>a finite time. But there is a gradient in evolution; you can have more or fewer offspring before the final oops. Or a fixed behavioral strategy (eating things that taste like so) can lead to the untimely death of more or fewer of your offspring, due to chance factors (if poisonous organisms that taste like so are rare, few of your offspring will die from eating them; if they start to get more common, more will, and strains with different dietary preferences will begin to have more of an advantage). Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au ---

**Author:** ![\_Avery\_Andrews](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/_/848f3c/32.png) [@\_Avery\_Andrews](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/_Avery_Andrews)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 1995, 2:19pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/reorganization-evolution/14811/2 "1995-08-09T14:19:38Z")

[Avery.Andres 95080918] (Bill Leach 950806.22:44 U.S. Eastern Time Zone) I don't think there's much left of a substantive nature to debate about my little speculations, since being a speculation implies a high likelihood of being wrong! But two little examples. Here's my idea of a `society of control systems'. Larvas have a reference level of 1 for being `surrounded by food'. As they are `surrounded by food' to a lesser and lesser extent, they secrete more and more of pheromone A. Nurses have a reference level of 0 for for pheromone A. As they perceive a greater and greater concentration of pheromone A, they get motivated to collect food from the larder and slather it onto the perceived source of pheromone A. Monitors have a reference level of 1 for `full larder', and as the larder gets less full, they secrete more and of pheromone B, and Gatherers have a reference level of 0 for pheromone B; the more of it they smell, the more inclined they are to go out and get food, and stick it in the larder. Four different control systems, in four different individuals, interacting to produce an ecologically significant result of `well-nourished larvae'. And re the idea that humams are ill-adapted to their environment. Suppose we found a population of creatures that looked like cheetahs, but were very bad at running: 10% never figured it out at all, while the rest seemed to run at some surprisingly low percentage of their theoretical maximum efficiency, but almost all of them could be brought up to speed, with no apparent ill-effects, by a bit of intervention from a skilled animal-trainer from a circus. This would be a really wierd situation. One possible explanation for it is that the creatures were recently developed from ones with a different way of live, in which running did not figure prominently, so that natural selection had not had time to stabilize some behavioral inclinations that would lead to it being learned properly. If something like this is true of people, we still don't know when the brain started cooking up ways of life that are militarily effective, but hard for individuals to learn. There is certainly a tendency to connect it with rise of large-scale agriculture, irrigation, etc., but maybe it's been going on a lot longer than that, as I think I interpret you as suggesting. Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au ---

**Author:** ![William\_T\_Powers4](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/977dab/32.png) [@William\_T\_Powers4](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/William_T_Powers4)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 1995, 2:41pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/reorganization-evolution/14811/3 "1995-08-09T14:41:44Z")

[From Bill Powers (950809.0400 MDT)] Avery.Andrews (950809) -- Here's my idea of a `society of control systems'. Larvas have a reference level of 1 for being `surrounded by food'. As they are `surrounded by food' to a lesser and lesser extent, they secrete more and more of pheromone A. Nurses have a reference level of 0 for pheromone A. As they perceive a greater and greater concentration of pheromone A, they get motivated to collect food from the larder and slather it onto the perceived source of pheromone A. Monitors have a reference level of 1 for `full larder', and as the larder gets less full, they secrete more and of pheromone B, and Gatherers have a reference level of 0 for pheromone B; the more of it they smell, the more inclined they are to go out and get food, and stick it in the larder. Four different control systems, in four different individuals, interacting to produce an ecologically significant result of `well-nourished larvae'. These are truly "social control systems" in that each control system can operate \_only\_ by having a physical effect on something under control by another organism. Each organism controls the variable it senses by disturbing a variable sensed and controlled by another organism. To make this picture more uniform, we should try to describe all the processes from the standpoint of the controlling system. The larva, for example, is not equipped to perceive that it is "surrounded by food". That is an observation from an external observer's point of view. This could be verified by coating the particles of food with plastic that prevents diffusion of anything from the food into the larva. Even though the larva is "in fact" (i.e., from the wrong observer's point of view) "surrounded by food," (the observer's characterization of a geometrical relationship), its controlled variable is at zero, and it excretes pheremone A as if maximum error existed -- which is true. What the larva is controlling is some internal result of being surrounded by food. If we could identify the chemical substances that, impinging on the outer surface of the larva, affect the perception it is controlling, we could shut off the production of pheremone A by supplying this substance to the larva even though it is not "surrounded by food." So by this method we would arrive at a definition of the controlled variable for each organism that is closer to what that organism is actually controlling. The others are left for the reader as an exercise. In such situations, the external observer's way of describing the relationships reflects the observer's perceptions and interests, which may be somewhat related to the variables actually under control, but are likely to be mostly irrelevant. When you finish describing each control system in terms of its own perceptions, you find that the objective state of the environment drops out of the description, leaving each system controlling only what it can perceive by producing whatever action will affect that perception. The external observer can see the mechanisms by which the actions affect the perceptions, but the individual participants can't. What the observer sees as a "social" system is really nothing of the sort: it is merely an interaction. No one participant has any way of knowing that there are other participants -- at least under the stated terms. Since the individual organisms other than the larva seem to be controlling variables that are of no benefit to themselves, we can wonder if this picture could possibly be correct. Let's suppose that we find that the gatherers do not eat during their lifetimes. They perform their function and die, without ever having benefited from their own actions. How could such gatherers ever have evolved? Their own fitness is exactly zero. They never reproduce themselves; they exist only to support the reproduction of a different organism. So if all the Gatherers died out, there would be no mechanism to replace them and the whole community would die. It seems that this can't be correct. Something they do must have effects that cause more Gatherers to be reproduced. One possibility is that Gatherers have a reference level for a certain number of others like themselves, which translates into a certain level of a perception affected by other Gatherers in the vicinity. When the level of this perception falls, each Gatherer begins secreting a hormone into the food that causes a certain number of the larvae to mature into more Gatherers. If too many Gatherers are present, they stop secreting the hormone. So the Gatherers could control their own numbers even though they themselves have no reproductive organs and transmit no DNA to succeeding generations. This begins to sound a lot like the role of cells in an organism. The original cell reproduces and eventually the cells begin to differentiate into different kinds of organisms. These organisms happen to be immobile and attached to each other, but each one controls what matters to it by acting chemically on its environment. While only a very few of these cells actually participate in reproduction, all of them have effects on the whole organism that influence its reproductive success, and in the long run thereby influence their own reproductive success even though they pass no DNA on to the next generation. The organism called "the brain," for example, can select mates according to criteria existing in the brain and thus influence the next generation of brains. Some of Darwin's female finch brains, for example, select mates for large (visually perceived) body size. These mates have large beaks and can crack certain tough seeds that smaller finches can't manage, and can thus survive on parts of the island where smaller birds can't survive in a drought. The female finch brains thus assure themselves a niche where more of the same kinds of female finch brains, which also select large mates, will continue to exist. These brains can control the secretion of hormones that influence the circumstances under which the body organism has an urge to reproduce, and so can have many influences on the next generation. What we observe, of course, is the steady state of all the control systems that influence the circumstances of reproduction, and of course we interpret the result -- mistakenly -- as selection by the environment. > **···** > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Phil Runkel (8 August 95) -- > > The author advised readers not to think about the way of swinging > the arm, placing one's feet, hitting the ball with the center of > the racket, or any such thing, but instead to pay persistent > attention to the spot where you want the ball to go--the target on > the other side of the net where you want to see the ball appear. > > This assumes that you have already learned how to control swinging the > racket, placing the feet, etc. and can rely on those control systems to > achieve whatever reference conditions they are given. If you've never > held a racket or bounced a ball or bounced yourself around on a tennis > court, this method would probably not work very well. > ------------------ > To answer an outstanding private query: There are circumstances under > which reinforcements are provided to animals in such a way that too few > can be obtained to sustain life. These are the circumstances, I believe, > that generally pertain when a sustained positive relationship between > behavior rate and reinforcement rate is observed. In these conditions, > life is maintained by providing the reinforcer between experimental > sessions; typically there is an hour or two of experimental session > followed by return to the home cage where the deficit is made up over > the rest of the 24-hour period (usually in a limited way so as to > maintain a low body weight or low fluid intake). Keeping the rat in > these experimental conditions indefinitely would kill it. > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Best, > > Bill P.