False claim from Evolution 2.0 - The rules of a language are always defined in advance

This is the third post in a series reviewing Perry Marshall's Book Evolution 2.0, Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design. To see the first post with links to each article in the series, start here. 

On page 185 of Perry Marshall’s book, Evolution 2.0, we see 1 of 3 major factual errors the author makes throughout its pages. Don’t get me wrong, the book contains many more than 3 factual errors but this one is the first of 3 that erroneously lead him to his big conclusion: the genetic code must have been intelligently designed.

“The rules of any communication system are always defined in advance by a process of deliberate choices. There must be prearranged agreement between sender and receiver, otherwise communication is impossible.” page 185, emphasis added

This claim is presented time and again throughout the book as what he thinks is an impassable chicken-and-egg conundrum. Each time he insists the rules of a code or language must be designed in advance. 

“The broader question of life itself is a chicken-and-egg one... why would a code appear before there was anything to code?” page 202, emphasis added

While it is true that some codes/languages have been designed in advance (binary code, morse code and so on), this is actually the exception to the norm. Languages usually emerge gradually from accidental ques. Here I’ll show you how intelligent creatures (like humans, dogs, and birds) are able to use their brains to develop languages from ques. In future posts I’ll show you that creatures without thinking brains, and even what most people would consider to be non-living chemical systems, are also capable of developing codes from accidental cues through the simple process of evolution—descent with modification, acted upon by selection.

The entertaining case of an emerging new language between humans

I have an identical twin brother. His name is Mike. When we were born our parents spent many hours each day playing with us and speaking to us in hopes that we might learn English—a communication system with rules established well in advance, just like Perry Marshall would expect. The problem was, no matter how much time my parents spent with us, Mike and I spent even more time with each other.

Though we were slowly learning English, at about 2 years old we had also established a mini-language of our own that our parents didn’t understand. Simple as it was, we used it successfully to coordinate secret plans like how to steal candy our parents had stashed on top of the refrigerator, or how to unravel and flush entire rolls of toilet paper without getting stopped by our Mom. Sadly, the only word from our secret language that I still remember today is “guguk”. It means “candy”. How did this word develop?

If we were to take Perry Marshall’s claim literally—that “the rules of any communication system are always defined in advance”—we would be forced to assume that some outside intelligence, God perhaps, delivered the word “guguk” into our minds with the meaning defined in advance. This, however, is clearly not true.

According to people who study signalling theory, when both the sender and receiver have assigned meaning to a word (or a behavior, smell, sign ect), researchers call the word a “signal”. When only the receiver has assigned meaning to a word, researchers call the word a “cue”.

To see how this works for things beside words, let’s leave the babies for a second and think about bears in the woods.

An aside about bears, signalling theory, and the Boy Scouts of America!
Humans and bears have clashed violently for centuries. Black bears can usually overpower humans in a fair fight but it’s risky business and humans usually cheat. Because of this, bears don’t usually like to take their chances. If loud enough, the sounds that humans accidentally make with their feet when walking through the woods act as “cues” for the bears, alerting them to our presence and allowing them to run away long before they find themselves in fighting distance. In this case, the accidental sounds we make are considered “cues” by researchers, because at this point, only the bear (the receiver) has assigned meaning to the sound.

Because bears sometimes don’t hear footsteps until it's too late, as a Boy Scout, I was told that when walking through dense bear territory, I should stomp my feet extra hard or loudly sing. This would make sure any bears knew I was coming and allow them to distance themselves before an encounter. When behaving like this, researchers would say that I went from sending an accidental “cue”, to actively sending a “signal” to the bear.

When senders of cues are rewarded for transmission and begin magnifying their cues, the cues officially become signals.

Now back to the story of my brother and I:

The word “guguk” didn’t start out as a signal. Like footsteps in the forest, it started out as an accidental cue. Babies like to babble and the sounds of their babbles often change with their moods. One of us (we don’t remember which one but let’s just say it was Mike) tended to babble in a similar way every time he was eating or seeing candy. He was accidentally transmitting a cue. I noticed this cue and made an association. Each time I heard the transmission, I knew to look his way and I would likely find sweets. Maybe the sweets were being handed out for free, or maybe Mike spotted them in some hiding place. Either way it was worth my attention.

Once Mike realized I regularly responded to his accidental babble of “guguk”, he started magnifying the babble, making it louder and clearer to alert me of candy. He might have done this out of goodwill (we are close friends and, like many social animals, we are rewarded with pleasure from helping each other out). Mike might have also been alerting me to the presence of candy for more selfish reasons—he wanted my help getting it. In either case, the act of him magnifying the cue to modify my behavior transformed the noise from an accidental cue, to a meaningful signal. A legitimate language was beginning to emerge.

3 simple steps for producing language from accidental cues

In a simple 3 step process, Mike and I had transformed noise into language

1. Cues are accidentally transmitted by a sender (in this case, Mike's babbling)
2. Meaning is assigned to the cue by a receiver (in this case I associated the babble with candy)
3. The sender, being rewarded for sending the cue, amplifies the cue, making it a signal (in this case, Mike pronounced the babble "guguk" louder and clearer in hopes that I would respond)

Humans are instinctively obsessed with verbal language. We constantly mimic and deliberately try to learn and teach the meanings of signals to each other. These behaviors speed up the process of code production but these special human traits are not actually needed to get the process going. Any two entities that are either capable of learning with their minds, or adapting to their surroundings through the process of evolution, can develop codes for communication through this simple 3 step process.

Contrary to Perry Marshall’s repeated claim in his book Evolution 2.0, languages/codes do not need to be decided upon in advance. Languages can emerge as two learning or evolving entities interact with and adapt to one another.

The unpassable chicken-and-egg conundrum Perry Marshall thinks he has found is simply an illusion. In the next post I’ll show how languages emerge between evolving entities that don’t have thinking minds.

Further Reading

For more information on how languages emerge, there are many places to learn about signalling theory. It has developed in many different fields and has wide applications. Below are two of my favorite overviews:

Overview of Signalling theory in business

Overview of Signalling theory in biology

This is the third post in a series reviewing Perry Marshall's Book Evolution 2.0, Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design. To see the first post with links to each article in the series, start here. 

<< Previous Post In Series  ::::::  Next Post In Series >>