Author: Steve Scott

I should have put Questions in that title but it was getting a bit wordy. Hopefully it will make sense in a minute.

Let’s gets straight to the catchy bit. Like many living things, cuttlefish reproduce by mating and one common tactic in the mating game is for males to try to become dominant or ‘alpha’. Unlike most of us, cuttlefish can change their surface colouring (other than by adding makeup or foolishly sitting too long in the sun). They do this in response to stress and as a way of sending messages, like bird calls.

Now, people who look at evolution to simplistically see the ‘dominant’ word and think that is all that matters. The rush out and buy supplements and sit staring at themselves in gyms. This applies to all genders and sexual preference because dominance applies in a groups.

The cuttlefish is a good example of alternative strategies. The males, especially smaller ones, can adopt female colouring on the side facing the dominant male and a male display pattern on the other side. Clever. Some males also herd females into a hollow and sit over them, getting exclusive access. Other clever males can eve adopt female colouring and sit in the pile under the dominant males quietly mating when the chance comes.

So far so very male minded. The male cuttlefish is either a bulky bully or a sneaky smally. Evolution is way more complicated than that and females instinctively know it (they have evolved that way). The classic male interpretation of the herding into a hollow habit is that the females trade some loss of freedom for protection and access to the dominant gene. How simplistic.

I have said elsewhere that evolution is the survival of those that happen to survive, to try to emphasise this complexity. The statistics will indicate that there is no one way for a single individual to predict what will make their offspring survive. There are options that are simpler to adopt and that also sit higher up in the pile of options but there is also variation in both mating and offspring care adopted. This indicates that the statistics often favour those who adopt each way bets. So females let the dominant male sit there on edge guarding his harem and then sneak off and mate with other males who have shown the resilience not to give up and the with to appear in the right place for the opportunity to arise. That ensures the most favourable balance of gene survival to deal with the complexities of survival.

So what has all this to do with reasoning? The first stage of reasoning is hinted at above. You only get past the simplistic understanding of evolution if you ask questions. The questions to ask here is ‘how does the male cuttlefish decide which range of colours to adopt?’ and ‘how does it decide that fighting is not the best option but sneaking into the hollow has chances? If you think a bit further on from that you can ask how the successful adoption of a tactic get passed on to offspring? Is it a better instinctive colouring ability or a brighter brain?

Of course I don’t know the answers to those questions but the existence of the questions has wider implications for the ways we reason about all sorts of things. Sadly the habit of asking questions seems to have got a bit lost in some of the narrower results led approaches to education that we have adopted. We already had a habit of using reasoning to show dominance in various ways. As well as helping people recruiting others to jobs and courses, exams and qualifications have always been used in that way. I think we are in danger of losing the habit of asking questions about our own reasoning. As with evolution and the cuttlefish we need to keep our options open. We must remember that ‘fitness’ to purpose of a person can’t simply be measured by exams but involve adaptability and the ability to ask relevant questions.

And anyone else’s children and grand children

I’ve just been drilling holes through several strips of corrugated roofing at a time. It is a slow and boring job. Hard on old wrists too. That is just one of the many things I now do (as a retiree) to please myself and to help other people.

It made me think about schooling, because I failed (the word they used then) to get into the more academic school that my brother ended up going to. That meant that I went to a school where I did woodwork, metalwork and pottery. All skills I have used in one way or another throughout my life. We also did technical drawing, like an architect or someone designing a machine would use. I was absolutely awful at that and still am.

What I’m writing is not about how useful practical skills are but about how early failure, or failure at some things, does not define you or hopefully limit your chances.

When it came to the exams at age 16, I didn’t do well at those either. I aced maths but not others that I was supposed to be good at and failed several of the nine I was put in for. I didn’t care much because I’d decided to try Art School. It seemed better for me than the hair dressing option anyway.

At school I had been kind of adopted by people for whom art was a normal part of life but when I got to Art School, I realised just how little I knew about it. I also came across my first ‘posh’ people, with different sorts of names, different schooling and assumptions about life that were alien to me. Not everyone of course, but it was an eye opener. I also realised that I could not imagine how I would make a living from art, other than as a teacher and I was still off teachers. Oh well try again.

At Technical College I met again with others from my school who hadn’t flown through it acing everything either. I still couldn’t decide what to do but at least the sandwich course I did gave me work experience beyond stacking shelves and other bits and pieces I’d done for years. The result was that I didn’t ace things again, despite it becoming even more obvious that I could have done better if I’d tried. I was also socially awkward and embarrassed (though I think I hid it well) and often went along with things like heavy drinking that didn’t help anything.

The tale goes on but there is no point here in listing my series of failures to live up to expectations. I never found a course or job that completely felt like what I wanted to do. But I’ve had jobs all my life that keep me going. I slowly realised that I could make things better by using my skills and also that I could explain things clearly to people. I discovered that sticking at things was easier than I thought. I’ve always tried to keep on doing other things that help make me happy too.

I hope you can find a way through all the ups and downs too. Love from a grandad.

Ruth just introduced me to the idea for the need for the Friction given by human interaction and debate for keeping our brains active and developing. Aside from dismissing it as the next fad in brain training circles and Ruth’s understandable need to remind me of of reclusive tendencies, I realised that it gelled with earlier things I have written and said. When calculators started to become compulsory for schooling I saw that students started to trust them too much. They didn’t have the general estimating ability to see that their answer was way too small or large. My own struggles with mental arithmetic have at least schooled me in checking those problems of scale. Those struggles are one form of stimulative friction. I started giving lessons in estimating to counter the calculator tendency.

The huge rise in the trust in AI, at the same time as the rise in doom stories, is another calculator moment. We need to find ways of helping people to see through the mist of AI to recognise what is trustworthy and what is not.

I’ll be mulling over that from now on.

My last AI briefing was https://valleycreations.me/wp-admin/post.php?post=5083&action=edit