Perception-Mediated Selection
Perception-Mediated Selection is Bret Weinstein's term, endorsed by Eric, for the way conscious agents can perceive possible outcomes and then make choices that alter selection. Eric uses it to argue that purpose and even a bounded form of intelligent design can arise within Darwinian evolution: selection produces agents, and those agents can intentionally influence which organisms, traits, or crosses are reproduced.
Eric's Main Takes[edit]
- Eric explicitly credits Bret with developing the term.
- He frames the underlying problem as whether living systems can acquire a "look-ahead" function capable of introducing purpose. His answer locates that capacity in consciousness and agency rather than in genes literally knowing what they are doing.
- Consciousness allows an organism to direct behavior among perceived alternatives: what to eat, whom to approach, whether to fight, and how to evade predators. Eric suggests that these choices may connect consciousness to fitness.
- Once agents can choose among perceived possibilities, their choices can also shape reproduction. Eric's concrete example is the intentional maintenance and crossing of horse and donkey lines to produce mules.
- Eric therefore says that intelligent design is, in a limited and non-supernatural sense, "part of Darwin" through perception-mediated selection. This is a deliberate expansion of a politically charged phrase, not an endorsement of young-Earth creationism or a claim that Jesus belongs in scientific accounts of selection.
- He treats the origins of purpose and the adequacy of the neo-Darwinian synthesis as legitimate questions that can be distorted both by religious dogmatism and by scientists whose anti-religious commitments make them unwilling to revisit evolutionary assumptions.
Why It Matters[edit]
The concept gives us a way to resist a false binary between wholly blind evolution and supernatural design. It preserves Darwinian selection while allowing evolved perception, consciousness, and agency to become causally relevant to later selection. It also illustrates Eric's recurring willingness to recover a valid, narrower meaning from terminology that scientific culture has placed outside acceptable discussion.
On X[edit]
But to the right folks, sexual selection isn't even sexual selection. It's 'perception mediated selection'. Selection is itself unified.
This is amazing. It is also proof of (endogenous) Intelligent Design *within* the Darwinian paradigm. The intelligent designers are the birds who are on the margin between falling for the trick and spotting it. @BretWeinstein calls this perception mediated selection. Great find.
@whereisdaz @SwipeWright I wasnât much moved so Iâd rather you do it Doctor, as you seem to think I have poor command of the theory. Iâm happy enough if you want to say the bird lacks intent as it is no more intentional than a murderous strangler fig or that the birdâs intent is to feed w/o being eaten.
@whereisdaz @SwipeWright But whether weâre saying that intent is impossible (as all selective processes are in some sense blind) or that intent is meaningful (in which case âmarginal birdsâ are the unwitting designers) I donât seem to find myself confused. Also I prefer the term âselectionâ to evolution.
@whereisdaz @SwipeWright Delighted to be wrong. Professor.
@Okfej @whereisdaz @SwipeWright To the extent that the bird should be said to have intent, it is not to design the snake. Rather it is to feed without becoming food. It is to that process of *unwitting* design that I addressed my original tweet. Iâm just waiting to be graded by experts.
@whereisdaz @SwipeWright Just eager to learn where I might better my grasp of perception-mediated selection as occurs in Ophrys orchid pseudocopulation strategies, lampsilis mussels parasitism of freshwater bass, or other such systems (e.g. Batesian and Mullerian Mimicry).
@whereisdaz @SwipeWright As you find me âcompletely inaccurateâ on a topic in your area of expertise (whereas I have yet to take my 1st biology class) it should be quite straightforward to point out the critical flaws. I would like to learn where I am misunderstanding biology.
@SwipeWright @whereisdaz [Shakes hand]
@shivownz @whereisdaz I do. But there is a lot at stake here and we canât afford to pretend that intelligence and design are not major forces in the theory of natural and sexual selection just because we donât want any Jesus-Smuggling in biology. Itâs a sloppy way to try to drive out young-earthers.
@shivownz @whereisdaz My point is intelligent design is endogenous to selection. Iâm now being lectured by a Doctor and Professor. This is great news. Letâs have this discussion. Deliriously happy to be completely wrong. I just havenât heard a competent argument. At all.
@shivownz @whereisdaz But thanks Shiv. I appreciate your care as well.
This is a super interesting idea to abstract the language of Batesian mimicry. Maybe itâs common but I havenât heard it.
The idea is parasitzing the fitness of the duped males through the opportunity cost of missed reproductive rather than missed predation opportunities.
@bretweinstein did earlier work relating the two behaviors in defining âPerception Mediated Selectionâ and I added Selection-compliant âendogenous intelligent designâ to cover both.
This should one day be a big deal, but it is taking a long time due to fear of âJesus Smugglingâ.