[sadmann1]

I have a question regarding dark personalities as they are called.

Now it seems clear to me that dark personalities are a problem. My question is, aren't these personalities evolutionary adaptations? And if they're evolutionary adaptations isn't the bigger problem the fact that the environment rewards them? I'm seeing a lot of people bordering on sociopathy who are highly successful.

Why focus on the individual instead of the environment that rewards him

[throwaway4889]

Here's a handy tip you won't find often on HN: any time you're wondering whether X is "an evolutionary adaptation", where X is "any complex phenotype that isn't a genetic disease", the answer is very probably no. Most of our evolution is accidental, because the dominant evolutionary process is genetic drift [0]. There are exceptions to this rule but they have been usually very easy to demonstrate - natural selection, when it occurs, is fairly obvious to see. There's no such thing as a hidden force that invisibly yet tangibly acts on all genes in such a subtle manner that you can't ever detect it through a reliable genetic mechanism - that's just 21th century essentialism.

[0] https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2019/08/evolution-by-accident....

[Waterfall]

Just because evolution is accidental doesn't mean there's no structure behind it (emergent intelligence). Because in this environment they are successful it means there is random genetic changes that give these same traits.

How does this explain different phenotypes in grouped populations? Let's say for instance that a species of ant is known to be more aggressive, why it was that way is probably generic drift. Why it stays that way is because of its environment, and it is selected for.

He asked why the environment is like that they rewards this behavior, some serial killers get screwed up in childhood. Did they all have dark personalities before?

[throwaway4889]

>How does this explain different phenotypes in grouped populations?

Random fixation and/or founder effect, among a myriad of effects that don't involve natural selection.

>Let's say for instance that a species of ant is known to be more aggressive, why it was that way is probably generic drift. Why it stays that way is because of its environment, and it is selected for.

Or the different alleles for aggressiveness (whatever that means, and assuming they exist) got fixed due to drift? Who knows. The burden of proof is on the adaptationist to show that something other than contingency happened.

[Waterfall]

Why is the founder effect not a part of natural selection? If one population lives and becomes specialized in a way of life is it not natural selection? All mammals come from a common ancestor and genetic drift occured or the founder effect over a long period of time. There are cave fish that are blind but bred with non blind types gives their offspring eyes back. What is the difference between founder effect, and natural selection? Are they not part of the same force?

[jcims]

The part of the randomness that I struggle with is the sheer volume of data to be manipulated into useful output (a form of the infinite monkeys with typewriters adage). For example, the smallest genome I can find with a quick google is Carsonella ruddii, which has approximately 160,000 base pairs in its genome.

That many base pairs represents 4^160000 possible combinations. Brute forcing the genome to something better is clearly possible, but if you converted all of the matter in the visible universe into DNA and mutated every strand a trillion times a second for a trillion years, it's very possible you would never even encounter a viable strand of DNA for that organism.

How many reproductive events have occurred in the lifetime of this planet and how has that led to the vast genetic diversity that we see? You can upper bound it by taking some multiple of the biomass on earth times some percentage of that which is DNA by some average reproductive cycle duration, and you're going to find a shockingly paltry number in the face of what exists today.

edit - Look, wikipedia already did the work for us (no idea of the methodology): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)

>The total number of DNA base pairs on Earth, as a possible approximation of global biodiversity, is estimated at (5.3±3.6)×10^37, and weighs 50 billion tonnes.

So to box it in a bit, 5e37 base pairs is 5e37/160,000 or (rounded up) 4e32 Carsonella ruddii. If they reproduce every 4 minutes for 4.5 billion years you have ~6e14 generations for a total of 3e47 distinct instances of DNA as a terribly rough approximation for an upper bound of genetically distinct individuals.

That's almost enough to fully explore a section of DNA that's 80 base pairs long. Most genes are ~1000 base pairs. A butterfly has 100,000,000 base pairs in their DNA. Humans have ~3,000,000,000.

Randomness is clearly a factor, but it seems insufficient.

[throwaway4889]

No one is saying evolution is all random, only mostly random. Natural selection obviously plays a role in shaping the direction of individual mutations - deleterious ones get purged relatively quickly. When those are culled, the vast majority of mutations are neutral or nearly neutral.

>Brute forcing the genome to something better is clearly possible, but if you converted all of the matter in the visible universe into DNA and mutated every strand a trillion times a second for a trillion years, it's very possible you would never even encounter a viable strand of DNA for that organism.

Yes, but consider the following. I just ran:

>>> np.random.random()

0.8867453976799686

What were the odds that I ended with this specific 18-digit float in the whole set of floats in [0.0, 1.0)? And yet, here we are.

The word you're looking for is contingency. Gould spoke much about "replaying life's tape" and how it would yield different results every time it was "replayed". Interestingly, people have actually attempted to put this thought experiment into practice at a very prosaic level [0] [1]. They find that although there are convergent patterns of adaptation, over the long term populations diverge considerably.

[0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6415/eaam5979

[1] https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2019/09/contingency-selection-...

[euru3he3fgh]

This was the opposite of my takeaway. Dark personalities are just playing to win, the reason they're signaling victimhood is tied to the benefits it brings them. It's not cheating, it's a gamer's blunt acknowledgement of the metagame. If the support system is so generous that victimhood becomes advantageous you're going to find a lot of victims. We can either narrow our definitions/rewards or ignore actors who go against the spirit of the thing.

[Teever]

I think that you're forgetting that people with dark personalities are all too often the perpetrators against victims.

In that light this is just another instance of these kinds of people victimizing people by abusing the system to reap benefits that are meant for victims.

[DangitBobby]

In the FA, the system that rewards them is actually the same social system that attempts to help people who are unfortunate or who are treated unfairly... The biggest problem is that these "dark personalities" will weasel their way to game any system, because any system designed by humans is fallible. Without the ability to have complete knowledge and someone to wield that knowledge altruistically (a role that can be entrusted to no human), it's an unsolvable problem.

[082349872349872]

It's easily solvable if one thinks that helping many people is clearly worth helping[1] a few[2] manipulative hooligans.

My country may be higher-trust than yours, but my impression of how our social system works is that we've found it cheaper and easier to make social aid readily available, and pay a few people who double-check on recipients for possible fraud, than to pay many people to administer red-tape as a hurdle for social aid.

In any case, the immediate problem (at least going by the leaders of the UN security council permanent members), is not dark personalities claiming victimhood soaking the system, it's dark personalities claiming victimhood running the system.

[1] Mark Twain on punishment:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2986/old/mt5bg10.txt

> "Lord, there is one who needs to be punished, and has been overlooked. It is in the record. I have found it."

[2] I would claim that if dark personalities were not rare in one's society, one would have much bigger problems than "victimhood signalling."

[llimos]

Interesting thing about that Mark Twain quote, that he failed to spot the logical fallacy in it.

> S. No, Lord. To him there is no difference of consequence. To him they are all microbes, all infinitely little and equally inconsequential.

> L. To me there is no difference of consequence between a man & a microbe. Man looks down upon the speck at his feet called a microbe from an altitude of a thousand miles, so to speak, and regards him with indifference; I look down upon the specks called a man and a microbe from an altitude of a billion leagues, so to speak, and to me they are of a size. To me both are inconsequential. Man kills the microbes when he can?

He uses the word infinite. If the Lord is infinite, mathematically infinity divided by a very large number is identical to infinity divided by a very small number. So the microbe should get the same amount of attention from the Lord as the galaxy etc.

The argument only works if the Lord is not infinite but merely very very big

[DangitBobby]

The problem that I'm claiming is unsolvable is this:

> Why focus on the individual instead of the environment that rewards him

I agree that we shouldn't stop trying to help people just because there will always be fraud.

[doctorowfan]

To quote Cory Doctorow, "Every ecosystem has its parasites."

[euru3he3fgh]

Is it really a parasite if it meets the selected definition of a victim? Calling them parasites makes it sound like they shouldn't qualify but do. The reality is that the system says they should qualify because the designers decided on broad definitions for various reasons. I think the acknowledgement is important because the alternative just seems like a way to dismiss responsibility for their presence and the resources they take up.

[jcims]

Yes of course it's possible. Welfare/unemployment/insurance industries have been dealing with it since their inception. It's fraud.

The more subjective and unfalsifiable the criteria (e.g. chronic pain, depression) the easier it's going to be for looters to fake their way into the system. Even if it was possible, effectively gerrymandering the definition to include all and only those in need is going to be exceptionally difficult and expensive. A little bit of fraud is part of operating costs.

The problem we have with social media is that volume is the only thing that seems to count. Tribes don't generally police their own because the small hit to the overall credibility (which can be explained away as agent provocateurs) is a small price to pay for the additional 'voice'.

[Waterfall]

Someone mentioned generic drift but that doesn't really answer your question. By evolution do you mean genetically different from other humans (like psycho genes) or as a human trait that is innate for humans?

Serial killers sometimes change from childhood, or have the triad of problems ( fire setting, bed wetting being beaten for it and animal killing) and some people get molested and develop different personalities, splitting or bipolar. They had to have been predisposed to it, but yes you can get these traits from bad experiences.

The adaptation is natural. I mentioned serial killers to show failures of society, sociopath isn't always successful most are not like most people aren't. It's not a Willy Wonka ticket to success. If you can apply Machiavelli to stuff you can change too (unless it's always been in is, who knows).

The article is misleading to me as well

>Despite future long-term mating desires which are unlikely to be achieved with a narcissistic male and possession of substantial mate sampling experience, females view the narcissistic male as a suitable partner.

They say it as if the personality is the only thing that matters. These men are probably narcissistic because they're attractive, women aren't attracted to ugly narcissistic guys and narcissism isn't likely why they're more attractive. Men are also very attracted to these traits in women, I dated a girl like that and if she was ugly with that personality I'm sure nobody would have given her more than laughter. Imagine if Bundy looked like the elephant man, would he have gotten away? Replace narcism with attractiveness and you'll get a much more accurate statement

>People with dark triad traits will tailor their strategies to obtain these benefits, depending on their social environments.

Spoken as if normal people don't.

I'm sorry but the world is just that people like these combined charactistics. It's like being mad at the laws of physics. You also need to attractive to pull most of this shit off.