The Math of Mismatch

• Tinbergen, Ethology, and Mickey Mouse by James Brody, 5/31/97
  
  

Psychologists spoke once about multiplicative relationships, especially between motivation and learning. Neither factor was sufficient by itself to produce overt behavior; thus, some minimal quantity of each was defined as required before our rat friends ambled down an alley. Performance = Drive x Habit Strength whether you were Hull or Fred Skinner. (1) It's legitimate to blame mismatch on agriculture or on technology; still, the form of mismatch is revealing. We don't go off and randomly mismatch ourselves. There is great uniformity, great synchrony in our excesses.

The concept of Psychological Adaptations is so powerful in the context of mismatch theories. We have highly efficient information systems that detect specific cues and activate predictable, somewhat repetitive behavior sequences.

We also share, with perhaps most of creation, a preferential bent for things that are bigger or brighter, that offer greater contrast between the positive and negative discriminative stimuli of our lives. It's possible to boost an artificial cue into Supernormal Status that turns natural stimuli into S-deltas. (Check with the wives after their guys watch a 19 yo stripper!)

Take a Psych Adaptation, any one of them, multiply by resources (r-Selection?) and supernormal stimuli. Bake a few millennia and harvest traffic jams, Jeep Grand Cherokees, Superbowls, university medical centers (2), and health care networks. (3)

Some alpha, supernormal bard commented "The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves." (4)

NOTES:

1) Skinner had early, theoretical leanings despite his later convicitions. Check the "Behavior of Organisms" in the opening chapters; Skinner had his own formulae for calculating Performance, differing from Hull largely in the nature of theoretical inhibitory factors. He may later have bored with the exercise and chased Serendipity's skirts. "If you see something interesting, drop everything else and study it" ... an ADHD or a manic scientist?

2) I was late for a seminar at Hopkins this past May. I had never been to the medical school and was struck by its similarity to a cancer or a symbiotic growth, to be navigated only with the help of highly specific maps and signs. Penn and Pitt are no different. You do well until you miss a cue.

3) r-Selection is associated, by definition, with relatively greater resources but of uncertain duration. Physical resources (petroleum, food) become more scarce (K-Selection, population approaches carrying capacity of the environment); the next most abundant resource is that of other people. r-Selection can operate again, but with a different fuel. Salesmen & "service economies" bloom as organizations evolve to perform functions once met by the hunting/gathering band.

4) Essays by Stuart Kauffman (1995, "At Home in the Universe," NY: Oxford), Brian Goodwin (1994, "How the Leopard Changed Its Spots," NY: Simon & Schuster), and Lynn Margulis (1997, "Slanted Truths,") seed thoughts that our stars may have the same difficulties that we do.

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