#superstimulus

Bioturbation //  Superstimulus @ a&o Kunsthalle, Leipzig, 2019

So, I feel safe in saying that on the whole, the “rationalist”/LW/SSC bunch aren’t exactly fans of “junk food.” And bringing up evolution in the arguments is not dismissed as “irrelevant.” Indeed, there’s plenty about how our taste buds and hunger system etc. have evolved, and worked well vis-a-vis the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). That we crave sugars and fats and such because they were rare and precious sources of high-density calories in the EEA, and so on. But now the correlation between “tasty” and “healthy” has been broken. You have things like Twinkies or Doritos that provide the signals our adaptations seek, without the “substance” that was the reason we adapted to seek those signals. The term “superstimulus” has been used. We are, like all organisms, “adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers,” and so we still tend to seek the signals, not the substance, unless we consciously choose otherwise. And the argument is that we should so choose.

While “adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers” is used as an explanation, none of them seem likely to accept it as an excuse. I don’t see any of them saying “there is no teleology in biology, the reasons our taste buds evolved as they did are totally irrelevant, we should just execute our adaptations. If it tastes good, eat it.”