Although the paper presenting the theory of evolutionism to the world was published in 1858, Charles Darwin first conceived the idea in 1838.
He had spent five years as a geologist on HMS Beagle when he noticed something peculiar in his records: the geological distribution of fossils and wildlife showed a pattern of change between different species.
At the time, the controversial predecessor to Darwin's theory was communication, which rightly suggested that one species changed into another, but which incorrectly believed it to be caused by some innate vitality, or laws that God Run at different predetermined times. , Or some other mysterious but unknown process.
Critics saw this as a terrible attempt at materialization of life, an idea that had held the world since enlightenment, without any compelling evidence to support its radical claim.
An early paper published by Darwin (with Alfred Russell Wallace, who came to a similar conclusion), however, was stronger where broadcasting was weaker: given a specific process for this change.
In a population of any species, we differ in phenotypes (observable characteristics) arising from mutations occurring in genotypes and epigenetic changes that occur during life, and this results in different individuals in a group of organisms. There is a difference in Their ability to adapt to the environment - some do well and survive; Not others.
This simple process of differentiation and selection describes how a common ancestor produces the diversity of life that we see in the biosphere.
In this way, life is - as Jonas Salk, the famous medical researcher put it - "an error-making and error-correction process." It makes several attempts to overcome the challenges of any environment by introducing diversity to us, and then choosing the right answer by eliminating what does not work.
Useful knowledge survives and reaches new generations, who can then use this knowledge to increase their effectiveness. But, this is not the only type of knowledge available to us.
Experimentation and refinement
The actual process of learning (or being smarter) extends beyond our predetermined genome, but evolution has set a precedent.
Even what we learn in the world is in the form of variation and selection (through elimination). We try a lot of different things, we look at what works, and then based on the results, we eliminate competition options, choose the skills that will be most useful in the future as well .
Cognitive neuroscience has a theory of mind (called predictive processing) stating that the human brain is a predictive engine, which continually makes our assumptions about the world based on our previous interactions within the same environment.
In the beginning, when you are younger, there is not much information to go out, so you get mostly untrained input from the outside world into your brain, but as you get older, you can use this for utility. Start filtering diversity, making better distinctions.
You build mental concepts in your mind about what is important and what is not, and then these concepts shape your future perceptions to select knowledge using already selected knowledge.
This whole process is mostly spontaneous, and the one that updates it is pain / pleasure, which tells your body that a certain perception and your associated response must either be reinforced or not. But some form of experience, like wonder and amazement on the axis of pain / pleasure, can be used to deliberately tell your mind that something unexpected was experienced, encouraging you to consciously read the conceptual model doing.
Whether you are learning to play a game or are just trying to create a more accurate mental model of reality in your mind, you are working with a variety of experiences, and within those experiences, you will find those people You have to choose and strengthen those which are most useful for you.
In this way, everything you do is essentially an experiment that becomes refined and perfect with experience and practice.
The difference between you and, say, a professional tennis player is almost certainly that they have a gene that makes them more suitable to play their game, but more importantly, they have all their Predictions have intuitive knowledge in his brain. To refine their feeling for what works and what does not, in very specific environments.
The same can be said for great artists and scientists, entrepreneurs and investors, and other everyday people who do well.
Our brain is a predictive engine that builds knowledge and becomes smarter as it better aligns what it has to do with the demands of the environment.
Estimates and their deputation
The only possible processing that makes humans unique. If this is indeed the process by which we make sense of the world, then the possibility is that some form of it also appears in other animals of nature.
What makes man a step beyond this simple empirical knowledge-making is that we can think in abstract concepts with a complex language, and then share this knowledge among the culture between us.
The best formal system we have devised for this is the scientific method, which operates based on asking questions, formulating hypotheses, and then testing those hypotheses based on data collected from our experiments and observations.
In the same way as we vary and select evolution (and in our empirical mental modeling), philosopher of science Karl Popper suggested that we also have it in scientific inquiry, where we begin by making an inference based on incomplete information. (A theory), and we improve our estimates by denying them.
In this way, science can never be completely certain but it can only be more and more correct as we refute bad estimates and replace them with better ones and so on. And to consider something as a scientific theory, one has to be able to prove it wrong.
We do not need to rely on updating our minds by putting them in different environments just to gain knowledge; We can also use the abstract knowledge that we collectively build in culture.
While personal experimentation and refinement can improve a brain by making its intuitive sense straight, abstract theory (based on evidence) can do the same thing that we need to go through the same process that someone else gathered that knowledge Had to do.
Of course, there is some important practical knowledge that is lost from translation to abstraction to concrete, such as empirical knowledge (from predictive processing) lacking the rigor that comes with constantly challenging the scientific community, but both are capable of ours. To adopt the mind in a way that is more useful to us.
By updating our mental models, good estimates based on strong collective evidence can make our predictions of reality more accurate.
Luck
Knowledge, whether implicit or explicit, underlines everything we do.
Based on evolution, much of this knowledge is encoded in our genome, which programs us before we are born. It has been chosen on the basis of efforts to survive from generation to generation, superimposing us with the common template of a phenotype that is best suited to our environment.
In the 21st century, however, as our environment is changing at an exponential rate, the knowledge encoded in our genomes is becoming less and less sufficient for our efforts to make sense in the world.
Fortunately, evolutionism has also programmed us with the ability to learn. With a mind that experiments, predicts and corrects, we can adapt us to other relevant environments by building empirical knowledge.
We can use the axis of our pain / pleasure and the effect we experience as wonder / fear to correct ourselves in building an intuitive understanding of the world that gives us our surroundings and their demands. Allows to complete.
To further enhance this intuitive understanding, we can also stand on the shoulders of veterans who have come before us in culture, using their theories and evidence to further intensify our mental models of reality.
There are many ways to define intelligence, and different definitions meet different expectations, but ultimately, it is about how effectively an agent can understand and navigate their environment.
Knowledge and its application is a process that we build on everything, and it starts with what we do to feed it.
){kind=link}
Social Plugin