When I use IGF in the dialogue I’m doing so mostly because Nate’s sharp left turn post which I quoted used ‘IGF’, but I understood it to mean inclusive fitness—ie something like “fitness of an individual’s shared genotype”.
obvious example that there is nothing about optimization processes that would favor inner alignment)
If this is his “obvious example”, then it’s just as obviously wrong. There is immense optimization pressure to align the organism’s behavior with IGF, and indeed the theory of IGF was developed in part to explain various observed complex altruistic-ish behaviors.
As I argue in the dialogue, humanity is an excellent example of inner alignment success. There is a singular most correct mathematical measure of “alignment success” (fitness score of geneset—which is the species homo sapiens in this case), and homo sapiens undeniably are enormously successful according to that metric.
I agree with what you say. My only peeve is that the concept of IGF is presented as a fact from the science of biology, while it’s used as a confused mess of 2 very different concepts.
Both talk about evolution, but inclusive finess is a model of how we used to think about evolution before we knew about genes. If we model biological evolution on the genetic level, we don’t have any need for additional parameters on the individual organism level, natural selection and the other 3 forces in evolution explain the observed phenomena without a need to talk about invididuals on top of genetic explanations.
Thus the concept of IF is only a good metaphor when talking approximately about optimization processes, not when trying to go into details. I am saying that going with the metaphor too far will result in confusing discussions.
When I use IGF in the dialogue I’m doing so mostly because Nate’s sharp left turn post which I quoted used ‘IGF’, but I understood it to mean inclusive fitness—ie something like “fitness of an individual’s shared genotype”.
If this is his “obvious example”, then it’s just as obviously wrong. There is immense optimization pressure to align the organism’s behavior with IGF, and indeed the theory of IGF was developed in part to explain various observed complex altruistic-ish behaviors.
As I argue in the dialogue, humanity is an excellent example of inner alignment success. There is a singular most correct mathematical measure of “alignment success” (fitness score of geneset—which is the species homo sapiens in this case), and homo sapiens undeniably are enormously successful according to that metric.
I agree with what you say. My only peeve is that the concept of IGF is presented as a fact from the science of biology, while it’s used as a confused mess of 2 very different concepts.
Both talk about evolution, but inclusive finess is a model of how we used to think about evolution before we knew about genes. If we model biological evolution on the genetic level, we don’t have any need for additional parameters on the individual organism level, natural selection and the other 3 forces in evolution explain the observed phenomena without a need to talk about invididuals on top of genetic explanations.
Thus the concept of IF is only a good metaphor when talking approximately about optimization processes, not when trying to go into details. I am saying that going with the metaphor too far will result in confusing discussions.