Covid-19 and evolutionary point-of-view

You can think about the Covid-19 pandemic from the evolutionary point of view. You have only one life. There is path dependence. If you die to this virus, everything else is irrelevant. This applies to all diseases and potentially other lethal events. The only smart thing to do is to minimize your odds of having to suffer from them. People who undermine the possible impact of the virus are, plain and simple, stupid. There are opportunity costs for minimizing the odds, but the opportunity costs of dying are infinite. You have to find the balance of avoiding the virus and the other life.

Instead of the survival of the fittest, this pandemic is about the survival of the most adaptable. People who thrived before the pandemic can have great problems in adapting to new conditions if they maximized their output compared to their resources before the pandemic. People who have slack in their lives are in pole position to survive Many lives are disrupted in one way or another. Some people suffer the wrath of the virus and most do not experience big effects. It is safe to say that some people are more adaptable for fighting this virus than others. Even young and healthy individuals have died to it. Nobody knows why it happened to them. From an evolutionary point of view, Covid-19 makes genes of the human race more adaptable to the current situation in total.

What about the necessary changes in this situation? Can you adapt your rhythms of life to the current situation with the virus? Can you change your schedule in a way that you can minimize the odds of possible contagion of the virus? Can you change your daily rhythms to make the change? Can you use trial and error if you have to go out to exercise or work out at home? Can you go out when others stay at home or do you follow a tight schedule? Can you work or do your chores like buying groceries from home? Can you find a place to live far away from others and grow your own food or cook it yourself? If you have not done these things before, can you reprogram your brains to do them?

Even though survival is the most important thing, you have to think about the financials. This situation brings higher-order effects. Some of these effects cause financial distress. Can you adapt your finances to the new situation or new world? This pandemic will have profound effects on the world, nations, companies, and individuals. Some financial rules will probably change. There will be no return to the past. Some nations, companies, and individuals will thrive financially while others will suffer. Many old successful business models will crash and new models will be born. Some industries will change permanently. Best-adapted companies will pay small money for the destroyed businesses that were in ok shape before the pandemic. They can become more successful. Companies and individuals who have cash and small fixed costs concerning their total costs and income can buy things cheaply.

It is a great time to make changes

Covid-19 pandemic is not all about doom and gloom. It is also a great time to make changes. When your life has changed, it is easier to make other changes too. For example, you can use your time more efficiently because some time wasters have disappeared. You do not have to use so many hours to get to work and back. You can also avoid colleagues who waste your time. You can arrange your work in a way that is not dependent on others. It can be easier to develop ways to become more productive in your work without explaining it to others. Or listening to them tell you it is a bad idea to do things differently because it is not the way we do things here.

This is also a great time to get rid of bad habits or other behavior or develop new ones. Bad habits can disappear if the trigger and the prize do not exist anymore. You are then forced to make changes and reprogram your brain. The paths of least resistance to growth with new behavior can be easier to develop. It can also be harder to reach out to old paths of least resistance because the physical and mental efforts can become too hard. You can also develop a better attitude to a crisis when you notice that you can survive this one and thrive after it. Do not be afraid of the future, because it can be better than you think and the odds to make changes are higher today than before the pandemic.

Until next time!

-TT

PS. Do you consider yourself a helpful person? If you found anything useful in this text, please teach it to your friends

Disruption

Definitions

Disruption can be defined as ”A radical change” or as ”Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process” or as ”To break apart or alter so as to prevent normal or expected functioning.”

Sources of disruption

You live in a world where disruption happens all the time and fast compared to even hundred years ago. Most disruptions come from technological change. There are many examples. For example steam engine launched the industrial revolution. Today, internet, artificial intelligence, many biological breakthroughs and other disruptive technologies change the world faster than anyone could have thought even thirty years ago. And the speed of change is accelerating. It is very hard to imagine what the world looks like thirty years from now. Environment brings you some of the disruptive events. Earthquakes, big storms and other ways of nature can radically change your environment and disrupt millions of lifes during their life times. Diseases can disrupt your life too. And so can changes in politics.

Disruption and evolution

Evolution happens mostly gradually during a very long time. Random mutations happen and some of them survive. When the environment suddenly changes, disruption happens. The species that survived in the environment in the past, fail to reproduce after the change. There is a theory that dinosaurs died, because of a big meteorite hit on the surface of the earth, creating a whole new environment. And different species were better adjusted to the new environment. Humans wouldn´t probably live on this planet without the results of many disruptions. And we probably wouldn´t have consciousness. Sometimes disruption starts slowly and erupts violently. For example, many new technologies are adopted slowly at first. They evolve from the first version. It may take years before a disruptive technology is good enough to displace an old technology. After the critical mass of users have been reached, an exponential growth starts.

Disruption and personal change

Change is one of the constant truths about life. Real disruption changes things forever. Change can be gradual or sudden. Which one should you prefer? There is not a single right answer to this question. I am sorry to say this, but it depends on the circumstances. Gradual change is easier. It should be a preferred way of doing things, when there is no need to disrupt your thoughts, emotions and actions. I have succeeded better, when I have tried to change gradually. It may not be the best way for you. You should figure out yourself which is a way to change.

Disruption is sometimes the only way to do things. If you have unhealthy habits like drinking or smoking, or eating too much unhealthy food, you cannot change your habits slowly. Another dose of alcohol may create severe health problems for persons that have destroyed their liver. They have to disrupt their drinking habits and avoid alcohol at all cost. You can be a person whose way of doing things is change things completely and fast. I know some people like this. They are not in majority. Most people prefer fast results, but what you prefer and what is best for you is not the same thing. Fast results is what you see in different medias. What you don´t see is how many people fail doing the same thing.

You should think about your core beliefs, the environments you associate with and the most important actions you take. Think deeper and try to figure out if you should disrupt some of them. There are some questions you can ask yourself. For example, do you use most of your time to get you where you want to be or are you just wandering around waiting for some random event that changes your life for good? Could you change your environment to get you where you want to be? Do you hang around with people who can help you be a better version of yourself or should you move to another neigborhood or another country? There are many other questions you can ask. Figure out more of them yourself.

Sources:

Disrupt Yourself, Jay Samit

Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore

Innovator´s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen

Have a nice week!

-TT

Evolution

Definitions

Evolution in biology can be defined as ”A change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.” You can also have a general definition for evolution, such as ”A process of gradual development in a particular situation or thing over a period of time.”

Evolution is a gradual, random, and slow process most of the time

All the living things started from a birth of a self-copying system with some kind of basic, heritable mutation. Mutations are random errors in copying. Your genes replicate themselves slowly and gradually through the generations. Gradualness is the key feature of evolution. It moves step-by-step from one stage to next. These moves compound in a very long time This process creates new structures and behaviors. And it has no reason or goal in mind. Humans have evolved from simple cells to conscious animals in billions of years. This process adapts to changes by changing itself.

All mutations have an element of luck. Genes maximize their own survival. Genetic effects have their own time and place. These effects may have to be changed by working together with other genes. Together they create chemical environments in our cells. Genes have usually many effects. Some of them are beneficial and most of them bad. Beneficial effects are likely happening later than good ones. Species change through these effects all the time, but slowly. You have to consider this slow speed of change, when you think about how human beings behave. For example, our brains and bodies have changed very little in the last 10,000 years. The environment around us has changed a lot more.

Evolution is a self-organizing system

Evolution happens by adding new strucures, feedback loops, or rules. This ability is the strongest form of a system resilience. Self-organization has rules. They tell the system itself where, how and what can be changed by adding or subtracting something from the system and the under what conditions these changes can happen. Biological evolution has simple set of rules. It has created a complex world with wide variety of species. DNA´s genetic code has four different letters, combined into words with three letters. This pattern and the rules for copying and rearranging it has not been changed in billions of years. These rules have created a variety of failed and successful creatures.

DNA is an evolutionary raw material. It is a stock of variable information and a means for experimentation. It is used for selecting and testing new patterns. Spontaneous mutation creates variety for selecting raw aterial. Changes in the environment are testing mechanisms that determine which individuals survive or reproduce. For technological evolution, the raw material is the understanding of the science. The source of variation is creativity and the selection mechanism are the organizations that fund research or human needs.

Survival of the fittest is not the best definition for evolution

There are some misunderstandings about the evolution. The most common one is that the fittest individuals always have the best chances to survive and thrive through time. You should talk more about the most adaptable and co-operative individuals. Fastest, strongest and biggest do not always cope with changes in the environment. Top-Down hierarchies or bigger structures have problems in coping with change. The faster the changes, the bigger the problems for these structures. Biological evolution is full of random bottom-up processes.

You talk about all the self-replicating genes that are always fighting for the available resources. Genes that are more efficient of getting themselves copied tend to replace the less efficient genes. In the long run, your DNAs become full of well-surviving genes. These genes are best for surviving in the average environment of their species. When the average environment changes, the surviving genes change too. In DNA´s point of view, the average environment is the body, in which DNA visits for a body´s lifetime. The other genes are maybe the most important aspect of the environment. They are not the only things concerning on the environment that matter. For example geographical separation can create different species, because conditions change by the changing geographical location. When the conditions in the environment change fast, we can talk about disruption. 

Adaptability is very important for the non-living things like companies. Their environments are in states of constant change. These changes are many times completely random. Many great inventions like penicillin have been discovered accidentally. Sometimes best solutions for the problem do not win. VHS videos beat Beta videos even though the latter one was the better technology. These examples are all around you. Many researchers have no way of knowing if they ever find anything useful. Companies that suffer from these unexpected discoveries can be the fittest before them and after these discoveries some of these companies even go bankrupt. These things happen because companies couldn´t adapt to changing environments because they are still applying the rules that worked before to the new situation.

This text is just the tip of the ice-berg about evolution. Evolution is all around us and it effects on every living thing on earth. I hope I have covered some basics in an understandable way. Please tell me, if I have failed.

Sources:

Thinking in Systems, Donella H: Meadows
River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett
The Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley

-TT