EVOLUTION EVERYTHING Paperback – September 29, 2016

Matt Ridley's latest book claims to have the thesis that humans mistakenly see top-down processes when the dynamics are driven by bottom up effects. However Matt doesn't spend too much time on that thesis - and instead spends most of the book arguing that design frequently results in bad outcomes - and that we ought to let things evolve more.Ridley categorizes processes according to whether they are designed or evolved. The ones classified as being the product of intelligent design by humans are then castigated as being a form of "creationism".This perspective is a rather curious one. Creationism is often opposed by evolutionists - since the intelligent designer in question is often an invisible sky daddy. However, in human affairs there really are intelligent designers at work - and invoking them in explanations seems to be perfectly reasonable.Ridley extends the explanatory domain of Darwinism to all human culture. In universal Darwinism, the next step after that is usually to extend Darwinism to developmental processes - the reproduction of cells and other structures within organisms during their lifespan. This extends Darwinism into the brain, where copying with variation and selection is ubiquitous. Axon firing patterns, ideas and other structures are copied within the brain with variation and selection - and so the mind evolves along Darwinian lines. D. T. Campbell, G. Eldeman, G. Cziko and W. Calvin pioneered this further expansion of the domain of Darwinism long ago. However Ridley fails to take this next step towards universal Darwinism.An evolving mind and brain expands Darwinism so that it covers intelligent design. This step is an unpalatable one to many evolutionists - who regard intelligent design as a traditional foe. They fear that intelligent design can explain any outcome - and so isn't scientific. However, these concerns are unfounded.If Ridley had expanded the domain of Darwinism to cover development as well as culture, his narrative would have had to take a different form. With Darwinism on both sides of the equation the battle between evolution and design evaporates and is replaced by a struggle between two different kinds of Darwinian explanation. It is no longer so obvious that one of these forms of explanation is bad.What can we say about the strengths an weaknesses of intelligent design from a Darwinian perspective? Since its mutation and recombination occur within minds rather than within cells, a broader range of operations is possible - so this sort of evolution is potentially more flexible and powerful. This is seen in its outcomes - which include skyscrapers and spacecraft. What then can we make of Ridley's attempts to denigrate intelligent design? More powerful isn't always necessarily better - sometimes a powerful tool can hurt its user. Ridley also points out that use of intelligent design also sometimes results in individuals attempting and failing to model massive systems within their minds - and doing a poor job of it.Another possible problem for intelligent design is that it often employs testing in a simulated environment. While simulating the environment allows rapid testing and failures are not so painful, the simulated environment may differ from the real one, and it may favor different solutions. Ridley doesn't actually make this criticism, but perhaps it explains some of his intelligent design failures.Overall, Ridley presents an stimulating case against intelligent design. However his approach is pretty anecdotal. It seems quite vulnerable to the accusation that he cherry-picked the evidence. An equally long set of anecdotes could be assembled showing how intelligent design works miracles where using "stupid" evolutionary approaches results in slow progress towards a sub-optimal maxima.Since Ridley's approach is to take on intelligent design as a form of creationism, we don't get to find out where it is best used or how it can usefully be combined with the "bottom-up" evolutionary approaches Ridley favours. Instead, the advice seems to be to abandon or replace it. I think that is too simple a prescription that neglects the many strengths of using intelligent design.Ridley also doesn't consider the ways in which we could improve on intelligent design approaches. If a single human mind is too small to contain the problem, then we can represent it on a server farm and process it using an intelligent machine. If the mental virtual world in which evaluation is performed is too unrealistic, then we can gather more data and build a better model using a computer. If intelligent design by humans is flawed, we can often use intelligent design by machines instead - overcoming our limitations in the process.While Ridley's central thesis often seems like a rather one-sided tirade, his book is very entertaining and readable. It is a book that only he could have written. Ridley is known for his contrarian views about climate change. Mercifully there's only a small section about climate change. Ridley puts this in his chapter about the evolution of religion. No doubt this will make his critics go apoplectic.For those interested in the expansion of the domain of Darwinism, this book offers only limited coverage. It only extends Darwinism as far as culture - and that is really only the first step. Ridley doesn't discuss the topic very much. For example, he doesn't address criticisms of the idea. Instead of debating the merits of the various theories of cultural evolution he takes the idea for granted and allows it to form a backdrop to his arguments about politics and economics.

The evolution of everything is Matt Ridley's most recent published book coming after the Rational Optimist. It is a brief history from a rationalist point of view of a host of interesting topics ranging from hard sciences to philosophy. At times it can seem quite cold but it is always based on reason and thus the perspective is always worth reading, even if it is disagreed with. If one wants to get a sense of how many of mankind's culture evolved this book is a great resource.The evolution of everything gives a synthesis of a host of topics that often define humanity. The author begins with the Universe and starts by introducing the idea of a skyhook. In particular that when at a loss for explanation defer to the divine as a hook to hang the answer on. Matt Ridley endeavors to remove skyhooks across a host of topics throughout the book. He begins with Morality and discusses how Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments was on to a very important idea when he discusses how morality evolves to create social stability. The book is a great composition of history, science and philosophy. The author discusses evolution as an idea and how intelligent design has been shown to hang itself on skyhooks that time has removed. The author discusses genes and the idea of the selfish gene and in particular that genes don't evolve to fit a function but rather surviving genes somehow improve chances of success in unbeknownst to them. The author gives great overviews of how culture can change over time and is contextual he tackles how the economy evolved. The author gets into topics like education and will likely cause alarm with his criticisms of modern education. In particular the author discusses how the modern education system was developed to modernize the Prussian state and doesn't encourage creativity. The author gets into the benefits of the Montessori system. The author also discusses historically sensitive subjects like population and how Malthusian and Social Darwinist ideas dominated the last 200 years inclusive of even recent history. In particular the author is highly critical of population containment policy advocated even in the last two decades towards poor countries as paternalist and Malthusian. The author is critical of government and discusses how the state arose not out of benevolence but as a kind of social parasite preying on the productivity of its citizens. The author also documents how societies function much better than imagined in the absence of government and the Hobbesian outcome of life being brutish and short in the absence of government is an overstatement. There is an extremely strong libertarian narrative throughout the book. The author spends a lot of time discussing how the idea of government sponsored research as being the bedrock of modern development is nonsense and how ideas like the internet being developed by the government reinforce his point. In particular the author feels strongly that individuals don't make as large of a difference as is usually advocated and that important developments are usually being considered by contemporaneous citizens (calculus, the lightbulb, the steam engine all had multiple simultaneous people realizing their significance). The author takes aim at lots of people including those fearful of global warming. These arguments aren't taken as anti scientific but rather that becoming obsessed with an idea that isnt well understood can be similar to becoming religious about the cause. The author discusses things like bitcoin as well and the likely creator and ends with the internet which is of course a force that we are still coming to grips with.It is hard not to learn something from the evolution of everything. Personally there is much that i agree with and much that i don't but everything in the book has supporting evidence and is argued with reason. It is not all fact as reasoned opinion remains opinion but one should not dismiss any of this commentary because it disagrees with ones beliefs. Definitely an enjoyable read, most sections retain the readers interest, others draw sympathy and some cause irritation but they do not bore.