Evolution - Just a Theory

An aspiring politician in the US has just described evolution as just a theory. And he is quite right, it is just a theory.  But what a theory!

As he is running for the top job I imagine that he is an educated, intelligent and perceptive man who choses his words carefully. He has done well here because the people who knock evolution often latch on to the fact that it is called a theory and not a law.  But for as long as it is possible to conceive of an experiment you can do that might disprove it, evolution will remain a theory and not a fact.  Evolution isn't a fact.  That there are huge numbers of observations that have been made that are consistent with evolution is a fact.  That there is not one single observation that contradicts is a fact.  And we have a lot of observations.

So for my money, I think that although evolution will always remain just a theory treating it as a fact is a small enough risk to take.  And treating evolution as a source of insight into how the world works is a pretty solid and profitable thing to do.  A good example is the technique I have been using for avoiding distractions.  It turns out that evolution has hard wired us to react quickly to external stimuli.  When we lived in a world where a rustle in the bushes could mean there was something in it that was going to kill you, moving first and thinking later was the kind of behaviour that kept you alive.  Today we are still set up to treat anything that comes up as a reason to shift our attention or even our body.

In fact, it is a bit deeper even than that.  We need to use up energy to prevent ourselves reacting. That is why we have more willpower when we are well fed and relaxed.   It also explains why pausing is proving so much more successful than resisting or ignoring distractions.  It takes a lot less energy to pause - though it still takes some.

If you are aware of the way your brain works you can come up with a range of strategies that can be trialled to increase your effectiveness.  I'll be using this blog to document my personal experiments and the results I get from them.  The pausing experiment is still running because one week isn't long enough to be sure it works in the long run.  But even if it doesn't, I have enjoyed the insight from evolution.

I am looking back on a week when this bit of insight has enabled me to clock up about 4 hours extra work at no cost to me.  Appreciating the power of understanding the way the world really is one of the things that will do most to make your life more rewarding and productive.