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adjacency - between - progress - progress trap - maladaptive - cultural evolution - attention - focus of attention - Exploring this statement further, it isn't just that it is our dualistic thinking applied here is a problem - but that it is the very nature of human analytic reasoning coupled with our innate ability to focus our attention which requires a deep unpacking - For to focus on an object of attention - is something we can only accomplish by defocusing on everything else - Indeed, it is the very act of attention on the one, that is inextricably accompanied by the act of inattention of the many - Our body, and that of many other organisms is evolutionarily designed - to focus our attention in our field of view on emergent phenomena that is salient to our survival - The nature of reductionist-type research - which is to say, most research - is that we continue applying this evolved adaptive behavior, even though cultural evolution (ie. progress) has accelerated exponentially to such an extent - that this same biologically evolved behavior has become maladaptive in the context of modernity

• for: polycrisis, adapt or die, evolutionary pressure, maladaptive
• paraphrase
  • the fact that we could be in the early stages of extinction is evidence that there is something deeply dysfunctional about the systems we have designed
• comment
  • from evolutionary biology perspective, also could argue that
    • we have become maladaptive due to the huge mismatch between
      • rate of genetic biological evolution and
      • rate of human cultural evolution
    • in other words,
      • human (cultural) progress,
      • cumulative cultural evolution,
      • gene-culture coevolution
      • has resulted in progress traps
    • Progress traps leading to our progress traps may be evolutions milestone / marker / indicator to us that
    • we must now evolve to our next stage if we are to even survive
    • in other words, the polycrisis itself may be contextualized as an evolutionary pressure to adapt or die

• key observation
  • we often vote for "strong men" who are not in the business of public service but are oriented towards conquering and dominating due to a cognitive bias developed from tens of thousands of years of evolution.
  • in ancient times, a physically strong man to lead us often increased our chances of survival.
  • This is no longer true today, but that cognitive bias is still with us because evolution takes a long time.
  • Hence, this cognitive bias to select strong men is maladaptive today.

• Timothy Morton's concept of = hyperobject
• can be interpreted as reflections of alienation
• emerging out of rapid cumulative cultural evolution
• that has made our cognitive machinery genetically evolved and adapted to small group living ( within Dunbar's number) over hundreds of thousands of years

• maladaptive to our too-quickly-culturally-evolved modernity

• References

• https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=Maladaptive+cognitive+bias

• belief perseverance
• definition
  • a cognitive bias in which people encountering evidence that runs counter to their beliefs will, instead of reevaluating what they’ve believed up until now, tend to reject the incompatible evidence

• Confronting facts that don’t line up with your worldview

• may trigger a “backfire effect,”

• Comment

  • in contentious issues, merely presenting facts may more deeply entrench there other's held beliefs

• It can feel like an attack on you

• if one of your strongly held beliefs is challenged.

• Comment

  • question
    • what causes a strongly held belief?
    • what makes use feel a threat?
    • why does it generate fear in some but not others?

• example
  • people’s desire for sweet and fatty tasting foods
  • In ancestral times,
    • sugar and fat typically signaled positive nutritional value (Ramirez, 1990).
    • Consequently, people’s sensory systems are designed
    • to detect the presence of sugar or fat in food,
    • and the brain’s gustatory centers produce desirable taste sensations
    • when those foods are consumed.
    • This would have served our ancestors well,
    • facilitating the choice of beneficial and nutritious foods.
  • in modern times
    • Many foods found in post-industrialized societies
    • contain processed sugars, hydrogenated oils, and other additives that enhance the taste of the food
    • without adding any nutritional benefits.
    • Foods laden with corn syrup, for example,
    • typically contain high numbers of calories
    • and their regular consumption can result in obesity, diabetes, and other problems.
  • Thus, the mismatch between
  • the features of ancestral versus modern foodstuffs
  • can lead adaptive sensory mechanisms
  • to produce maladaptive physiological consequences.
  • The desire for sweet and fat foods
  • promotes health problems,
  • even when this desire operates in a perfectly normal manner
  • and would produce health benefits
  • in the environment for which it was designed

• Some of the challenges people face today,
• diverge quite a bit from those
• faced by their ancestors.
• Such divergences can ,- lead adaptive psychological mechanisms to “misfire”
• to respond in ways that might have been adaptive in the past,
• but that no longer produce adaptive consequences today.

• Psychological adaptations have been designed over thousands of generations of human evolution.
• The adaptations humans possess today, then,
• were designed to operate in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness,
• a composite of the social and physical challenges as they have existed for hundreds of thousands of years (Bowlby, 1969; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).
• As such, they may or may not be well-adapted
• for life in contemporary society

• we describe a conceptual framework
• for understanding adaptive sources of dysfunction
• for identifying and combating “adaptations gone awry.”

• Each of these 4 problems
  • anxiety disorder
  • domestic violence
  • racial prejudice
  • obesity
• reflects the operation of psychological mechanisms
• that were designed through evolution
• to serve important adaptive functions, - but that nevertheless can produce harmful consequences.

• question
  • What do
    • anxiety disorders,
    • domestic violence,
    • racial prejudice, and
    • obesity
• all have in common?
• answer
  • maladaptive cognitive biases!

• cognitive biases may cause dysfunction due to mismatches between:
  • current environments and
  • ancestral environments

• from aggression and international conflict to overpopulation and the destruction of the environment,
• people display a capacity for great selfishness and antisocial behavior.
• Can an evolutionary perspective
• with its inherent focus on the functionality of human behavior
• help explain the occasionally self-destructive and maladaptive side of human nature?

The maladaptive cultural evolution of our species has led us to the height of human technological and economic prowess as well as the height of ecological disaster. This can be interpreted as the result of linear vs nonlinear thinking, simplistic modeling vs complex modeling and reductionistic approach vs a systems approach. An attitude of separation engenders a controlling attitude of nature based on hubris, instead of humbling ourselves at the vast ignorance each of us and also collectively we have about nature. Design based on a consistent attitude of willful ignorance is sure to fail. Then Ascent of Humanity will lead to a trajectory of its own downfall as long as that ascent depends on the cannibalization of its own life support system based on ignorance of our deep entanglement with nature. http://ascentofhumanity.com/text/

Williamson, H. C. (2020). Early Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Relationship Satisfaction and Attributions. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1479–1487. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620972688

Fluharty, M., Paul, E., & Fancourt, D. (2020). Predictors and patterns of gambling behaviour across the COVID-19 lockdown: Findings from a UK cohort study. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8qthw

Marples. M. (2020) Pandemic denial: Why some people can't accept Covid-19's realities. CNN health. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/16/health/pandemic-covid-19-denial-mental-health-wellness/index.html

The important point here is that those who meditate and do not recognize their thoughts as maladaptive will just end up increasing their awareness of this.