I have just attended The Biological Basis of Preferences and Behaviour conference at the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. It was a good conference with some high quality presentations. I will post on some of them over the next few months once I digest the presentations and papers (or they exit embargo). In the meantime, the conference has triggered some thoughts on how economics will contribute to the evolutionary sciences, and how biology will be integrated into economics.

A quote from Arthur Jensen (From Steve Hsu. A fuller version of the interview can be found here): [T]he outstanding feature of any famous and accomplished person, especially a reputed genius, such as Feynman, is never their level of g (or their IQ), but some special talent and some other traits (e.g., zeal, persistence). Outstanding achievements(s) depend on these other qualities besides high intelligence. The special talents, such as mathematical musical, artistic, literary, or any other of the various “multiple intelligences” that have been mentioned by Howard Gardner and others are more salient in the achievements of geniuses than is their typically high level of g.

The fundamental insight that utility in economics should be based on the concept of fitness from evolutionary biology lies at the heart of Gandolfi, Gandolfi and Barash’s Economics as an Evolutionary Science: From Utility to Fitness. The first half of the book is fantastic, as the authors describe the economic way of thinking and Gary Becker’s seminal work on families, marriage and reproduction. For someone unfamiliar with Becker’s work, it is a good introduction to what Becker was setting out to achieve.

The Consilience Conference on evolution in biology, the social sciences and the humanities wrapped up on Saturday, and it was generally a high quality conference. It’s strength was that most of the presenters were doing work across multiple fields, usually with an evolutionary twist. Conferences such as these often involve people trying to frame existing work around the topic, even if it is a weak fit, but here the presenters’ work generally fitted the subject nicely.

The first day of the Consilience Conference has strengthened my feeling that support for group selection is growing in the social sciences. While the slant of speakers such as Edward O. Wilson and Herb Gintis is no surprise, the degree of support among many conference participants that I have spoken to was. The general argument is that the evolution of “altruistic” and cooperative behaviour requires group selection. Again, the question in my mind is at what point do the evolutionary biologist critics of the group selection approach enter into this evolution of cooperation debate that is happening outside of their field?

From a debate between Gary Marcus and Geoffrey Miller on the biological basis for musical talent: **Miller:** Music's got some key features of an evolved adaptation: It's universal across cultures, it's ancient in prehistory, and kids learn it early and spontaneously. ... Marcus: “Ancient” seems like a bit of stretch to me. The oldest known musical artifacts are some bone flutes that are only 35,000 years old, a blink in an evolutionary time.

I am sympathetic to the argument by Robert Frank and others that competition for positional goods is a major factor driving our behaviour. The natural outcome of this is that we should want to work more, or at least more than anyone else. However, recent trends in working hours do not neatly fit with this story. When Jared Diamond proposed that agriculture was the worst mistake in the history of the human race, he was referring primarily to work hours.

Nicholas Gruen writes: [Y]ou’d think that economics would have a good theory of herding, or at least that it would be a prominent subject within the discipline. Alas, if you thought that, you’d be mistaken. When Oswald looked at the biology of herding, the canonical article was Hamilton, W. D. (1971). “Geometry for the Selfish Herd”. Journal of Theoretical Biology 31 (2): 295–311. This theory models herding as a ‘rational’ strategy to avoid predators.

A common recommendation for an addition to my evolution and economics reading list is Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. These thoughts are designed, in part, to explain why I don’t plan to add it. The core theme of The Rational Optimist is that exchange is the major driver of human progress. Exchange allows specialisation and division of labour, which results in people doing the tasks they do best.

In The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, Eric Beinhocker argues that the economy should be studied as a complex adaptive system made up of adaptive agents. The economy emerges from the interactions of those agents. It is an excellent book and possibly the best discussion of why the economy should be studied as a complex adaptive system. But as for other explorations of this area, Beinhocker does not successfully bring complexity economics to life as an applied science.