If you live in an extended family or something similar, as long as you don’t give out physically, it’s helpful not to give out psychologically. So if psychological exhaustion is something that naturally happens, selection could push it off until physical exhaustion so that you can keep contributing to the tribe as long as possible.
Of course this is a just-so story but I don’t see why it’s an unreasonable one.
So if psychological exhaustion is something that naturally happens, selection could push it off until physical exhaustion so that you can keep contributing to the tribe as long
But why would psychological exhaustion naturally happen at a rate that’s fast enough to be relevant? There’s no second law of thermodynamics for algorithms; it’s simpler for evolution to build a brain that never gets psychologically exhausted, so that’s (to a first approximation) what would happen. It seems that evolution layered a routine for suicide on top of our brains too, but it seems that that routine doesn’t check for “how old are you”, it checks for “how low status are you”, probably because your family may lose resources trying to help you and thereby reduce the inclusive genetic fitness of your genes etc.
The argument that you’re making (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_shadow) specifically only works for things that need active effort to prevent them from breaking, which tends to mean physical stuff. Psychology isn’t really susceptible in the same way, because although or psychological health will be in the selection shadow at e.g. age 300, there isn’t that pressure of thermodynamics to break it.
There may not be any second law of themodynamics for algorithms, but there’s surely something pretty similar. If I leave my computer running indefinitely, it quickly becomes “psychologically exhausted”, runs slowly, starts causing programs to crash, and so on. If I leave it on anyway, at some point it’s going to commit suicide with a blue screen.
So I still don’t see why it would be simpler for evolution to build a brain that never gets exhausted, or why my story isn’t a reasonable one.
If I leave my computer running indefinitely, it quickly becomes “psychologically exhausted”, runs slowly, starts causing programs to crash, and so on.
really? Oh you mean if you kept using it, not if you just left it there? I would suspect that the equivalent (and this is a stretched analogy, but let’s go with it) would be that a human brain would “fill up” with memories. But over what timescale? The amount of genuinely “new” experiences that a human has probably already varies by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Do people with particularly exciting lives full of new careers/hobbies/travel/goals/relationships go insane after 20 years? No… I mean maybe they would after 1000 years. But that’s my point: the timescale for psychological “exhaustion” will be hugely varied. We kind of already know that it is.
If you live in an extended family or something similar, as long as you don’t give out physically, it’s helpful not to give out psychologically. So if psychological exhaustion is something that naturally happens, selection could push it off until physical exhaustion so that you can keep contributing to the tribe as long as possible.
Of course this is a just-so story but I don’t see why it’s an unreasonable one.
But why would psychological exhaustion naturally happen at a rate that’s fast enough to be relevant? There’s no second law of thermodynamics for algorithms; it’s simpler for evolution to build a brain that never gets psychologically exhausted, so that’s (to a first approximation) what would happen. It seems that evolution layered a routine for suicide on top of our brains too, but it seems that that routine doesn’t check for “how old are you”, it checks for “how low status are you”, probably because your family may lose resources trying to help you and thereby reduce the inclusive genetic fitness of your genes etc.
The argument that you’re making (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_shadow) specifically only works for things that need active effort to prevent them from breaking, which tends to mean physical stuff. Psychology isn’t really susceptible in the same way, because although or psychological health will be in the selection shadow at e.g. age 300, there isn’t that pressure of thermodynamics to break it.
There may not be any second law of themodynamics for algorithms, but there’s surely something pretty similar. If I leave my computer running indefinitely, it quickly becomes “psychologically exhausted”, runs slowly, starts causing programs to crash, and so on. If I leave it on anyway, at some point it’s going to commit suicide with a blue screen.
So I still don’t see why it would be simpler for evolution to build a brain that never gets exhausted, or why my story isn’t a reasonable one.
really? Oh you mean if you kept using it, not if you just left it there? I would suspect that the equivalent (and this is a stretched analogy, but let’s go with it) would be that a human brain would “fill up” with memories. But over what timescale? The amount of genuinely “new” experiences that a human has probably already varies by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Do people with particularly exciting lives full of new careers/hobbies/travel/goals/relationships go insane after 20 years? No… I mean maybe they would after 1000 years. But that’s my point: the timescale for psychological “exhaustion” will be hugely varied. We kind of already know that it is.