The Modern World Hasn't Left Our Evolutionary Past Behind
No, we are not living in a mismatch with our biological evolution
I love the clash of ideas. There’s something profoundly wholesome about polite, not to be confused with uncritical, exchanges of perspective and opinion in the pursuit of providing frameworks to illuminate experience in new and, hopefully, better ways. In a recent article I wrote on the nature of beliefs, I referenced the writing of Dan Williams and David Pinsof.
Dan Williams was responding to David Pinsof, and, as is the case with lively intellectuals, Pinsof responded with a note to hopefully clarify a few points.
David Pinsof comment:
1) Mismatch is increasingly being recognized by evolutionary psychologists to be overrated as an explanatory approach—I’ve talked about it with a few guests on Evolutionary Psychology (the Podcast), in particular with Daniel Nettle and Josh Tybur, and my sense is that the idea is losing steam in the field. The story about humans gorging on junk food is too simple: it has been complicated by research by Daniel Nettle and colleagues (and a moment’s reflection will make you realize that we obviously have mechanisms for curbing overconsumption of food and craving nutrients that we lack). The story on obesity may have to do with adaptively storing energy in the form of fat when we receive cues of future food insecurity, as Nettle has argued (and he has some data on this), but plenty of questions remain. The story about ancestral, small-scale, egalitarian groups has also been challenged by Manvir Singh, who has argued that ancestral hunter-gatherer groups were considerably more variable in structure than is commonly assumed, with some societies being very large and very unequal. Perhaps the main purpose of our big brains is to figure out how to achieve our adaptive goals in novel contexts, so even if conditions are novel right now, our brains will very often be up to the task of figuring things out. In any case, even if mismatches were a big issue, it is unclear whether intellectuals would be much better at getting over them than the masses. After all, intellectuals have their own highbrow versions of junk food and misinformation.
References
Daniel Nettle on “sweet nothings”
Manvir Singh on variability in early hunter-gatherer societies
This notion of a “mismatch” is so extraordinarily common that, personally, I had a hard time even acknowledging that it was a perspective rather than a necessary and inevitable truth. Reflecting on this, I realized that I’d fallen into a similar trap to that of viewing one’s own difficulties as unique, and/or one’s generational struggles as uniquely difficult. I’ve used some version of the “mismatch” idea often in my own life and in my professional work. However, I like to assuage my ego by noting that I softened the notion by focusing attention on the immediate functional behavioral consequences of individual environment and behavioral outcomes, rather than always making a larger assertion about evolution.
The examples provided by Pinsoff, concerning sugar and the simple view of our hunter-gatherer ancestry, are common, though others exist, and the general notion that there’s a mismatch between our species and the modern world pervades a lot of the analysis that occurs these days about the nature of phones in school, the role misinformation plays in people’s development of opinion and voting behavior, and the supposed rise in mental health concerns. With that in mind, particularly the latter example, I think there’s a case to be made that the assumed mismatch notion helps support what some have referred to as “therapy culture,” and the fragility that it assumes and perpetuates. Before we dive in, let’s consider an outline of the mismatch perspective:
Outline of a Mismatch
We evolved in a particular environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (EAA) that created specific mechanisms to address it.
Behavior that leads to negative outcomes indicates a lack of fit within a particular environment
There are observable, seemingly maladaptive behaviors that have led to an increase in negative mental and physical health outcomes.
These destructive outcomes stem from technology and human culture broadly creating an environment so quantifiably different from the EAA that we are no longer capable of dealing with it in healthy ways.
What immediately strikes me about this outline is how it points to the general conclusion people have about their own lack of flexibility in the face of adversity. There’s a certain sneering contempt that people who declare themselves pro-science have for those who question or don’t agree with the theory of evolution, where ‘survival of the fittest’ gets thrown back on those who, admittedly quite wrongly, portray evolution as simply a ‘strong survive’ story. Yes, ‘fittest’ is a better framing, but few seem to understand what that means. ‘Adaptable’ may sometimes be thrown around, and that is certainly closer, but ‘flexible’ also captures the idea and may be more helpful. It’s, perhaps, easy to think of ‘adaptation’ as a set of mechanistic set points, like a Transformers toy going from one state to another. ‘Flexible’ allows for focus to be brought to processes and, therefore, hopefully, we don’t get stuck on a singular relationship being made. My favorite example of this is using a butter-knife to turn a flat-head screw, which anyone over a certain age has likely done. The butter-knife hasn’t adapted to the new environment, but there’s a process of evaluation that allows it to be used in different and flexible ways.
With the above in mind, let’s consider an assumption that each of the points about ‘mismatch’ carries.
Assumptions
The adaptive mechanisms are proprietary to the EAA, as if it holds a biological form of digital rights management (DRM).
Behavior can only be judged as beneficial or maladaptive within a single environmental context.
Judgements about outcomes allow us to ignore the potential adaptive strategies that supported the behavior.
Our technology is fundamentally different, not just in type but kind, such that what exists now is incomparable in context to what came before.
I want to add a point for clarity here, for those who may be, rightly, coming up with examples of single-point-failures in the animal kingdom. Yes, we exist in a natural universe, and while the usage of the term ‘mechanism’ can induce a tendency towards simplistic reductionism, biology is still certainly mechanistic in the sense of having parts that work together. As such, there are undoubtedly examples that exist in the broad story of evolution where a single biological response resulted in failure to reproduce, and therefore can be considered maladaptive in a single environment. Home sapiens is not like that, certainly not after having added in the sapiens part. Our surplus of neurons, an amusing way to highlight cognition as an evaluative predictive processing device, has catapulted us to the head of the animal pack, surpassing all forms of humanity before us. Our species’ adaptations have centered on the growth of imagination and the ability to conceptualize possible future failures. We don’t need to wait for failures to actually occur in experience; we can imagine them and plan accordingly.
What the assumptions noted above can be seen as is a denial of our human nature and can be summarized in two points: we’re inherently fragile creatures in the face of change, and adversity is a sign that something is “wrong.”
Therapy Culture and Fragility
The idea that we’re inherently fragile supports the adversity point. If we’re inherently fragile creatures, then it becomes easy to view all difficulties through a lens that calls for the removal of adversity as a moral good. Struggle is no longer an inherent part of being human and therefore an inevitable part of the natural world, but an affront to the seeming noble aspiration that nobody should ever feel bad. The repercussions of this are several and documented by many others smarter than me. As Jonathan Haidt notes:
The idea that adversity is a sign of something wrong is most clearly seen in policy changes leading to grade inflation, the removal of testing, and, generally, telling kids and adults that the central concern in their lives is to pay attention to their feelings as guides to the personal truths of their lived experience. The idea is also found in issues related to calls for equity, where any differential in outcome between two groups must be and only can be understood as due to a systemic problem.
This is the connection between fragility and “therapy culture.” Initially brought up by Frank Furedi in his book “Therapy Culture” in 2003, Richard Hanania summarizes it nicely:
There’s a lot here that will be covered in later articles, though it’s already been a particular annoyance of mine in my profession for a while now, and one I’ve touched on previously.
Navigating Failure Should be at the Center of Psychotherapy
Let’s face it, failure (or whatever word one desires to use there) is a fact of life. Being wrong may, in fact, be far more human than being right; it most certainly takes up a greater amount of our lives.
In the face of our seeming inherent fragility and our lives, to be lived, requiring us to embark on journeys of chaos and turmoil, whatever are we to do? Perhaps, just maybe, instead of seeing ourselves as fragile and in constant need of saving, we can learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. Perhaps we can see the aspirations of our conscious selves not as indications that something in the world has gone wrong, but as goads to support our values through critically reflective behavior. Just maybe, instead of seeing our capacity for informational gluttony as an imperative to doomscroll ourselves into deliberate depression, we can pause to connect with those closest to us and support the immediate communities we’re a part of. We can, perhaps, remind ourselves that anger is not an energetic declaration to the universe, where the more we have, the more likely something will magically happen.
With those maybes, here are four counterprinciples to the mismatch framework that can be helpful:
Principles of Evolutionary Adaptation
Our evolution in the EAA equipped us not only with specific mechanisms but also with the flexibility to address novel situations.
Behavior serves many purposes, some proximal and others long-term, with variable consequences.
Behavior is fundamentally about addressing functional concerns in specific contexts, which are constantly changing.
Technological development emphasizes certain behavioral patterns only by modifying environmental boundaries, not by undermining alternatives.
There’s a fascinating idea put forward by Andy Clark and David Chalmers called “the extended mind.” This is the notion that our mind, rather than being seen as wholly encased or bound within the body only, can instead be expanded to include the technological tools and relationships that make up our world. This is not some woo-woo notion of mental powers, but an appreciation for how integrated we are as part of nature, not apart from it. Annie Murphy Paul has a great article on this:
We as a species have been overcoming adversity for as long as we figured out fire to ward off the cold and dark, to stealing the majesty of flight from the birds by building airplanes, and providing new tools to access the ubiquity of knowledge that is the internet and real-time translation devices to bridge communication gaps, tools that used to be the perogative only of gods. We are not so much finding ourselves a mismatch with nature as fallen victim to our hubris in thinking we are so unique and clever to have ever left it.