The Path of Least Resistance

[rousseau]

Recently, I've been thinking about this idea a lot in the context of our history and the evolution / growth of our communities, and I wonder if it might be a fundamental concept in sociology / human behavior. I haven't seen it, although that doesn't mean it isn't there somewhere.

We usually think about our communities as being in tension between individualism/collectivism, and I think this heuristic applies well to that conversation. That is, for an individual person it is always more feasible to go with the flow, as it were, as opposed to fighting for a more wholesome, collective solution, which could have serious personal consequences.

The flip-side of this heuristic is return on energy in evolutionary theory, which is that human behavior usually aims for the least possible energy expenditure for the most gain. IOW, we guarantee the most return on our effort by doing as much as we need, but no more - going with the flow and not fighting the tide of change.

To provide a concrete example you could look at something like the infrastructure being built for cars in the early 20th century, or the size of property lots / housing. In theory, even if an individual person understood the long-term consequences of these decisions, it would be almost impossible for them to devise a political solution that actually stopped the decisions being made. On a personal level it would be political suicide.

A few corollaries I can think of

• Dominant ideas in culture end up having a kind of inertia that is resistant to change
• Most politicians will give the appearance of being helpful, but there isn't much incentive for genuine leadership and devising real solutions

I don't know if there is much conversation to be had here, but I thought it was an interesting thought worth sharing.

 

[steve_bank]

Hunger is the great motivator. In the west at least it is usally not a factor.

If you expend more nergy than you take in you die, so Id say minimizing effort is probably genetic. If you do not use your brain capacity diminishes. If you do not use muscles they go away.

If your body gets cold it automatically begins to limit blood flow to extensiveness to conserve hea in critical areast.

 

[rousseau]

Hunger is the great motivator. In the west at least it is usally not a factor.

If you expend more nergy than you take in you die, so Id say minimizing effort is probably genetic. If you do not use your brain capacity diminishes. If you do not use muscles they go away.

If your body gets cold it automatically begins to limit blood flow to extensiveness to conserve hea in critical areast.

When I was doing my undergrad we studied evolution pretty extensively, but somehow return on energy never came up. But recently a lightbulb went off and I realized that it's fundamental to why something would evolve. Pretty much any physical feature you can think of can be tied back to net energy acquisition in some way.

 

[steve_bank]

The way I heard it said is that organisms evolve to fill an energy niche. In the extreme birds with long beaks adapted to getting nectar from one plant species.

Giraffes.

 

[atrib]

Hunger is the great motivator. In the west at least it is usally not a factor.

If you expend more nergy than you take in you die, so Id say minimizing effort is probably genetic.

I'm not sure what you mean. Over the long term, a period of weeks and months, yes. But its not just energy, its also chemicals that are needed to sustain life.

If you do not use your brain capacity diminishes.

No. Repeatedly using your brain to perform certain tasks likely creates pathways/neural arrangements that allow more efficient processing of these tasks. But I've never heard that the number of neurons in your brain physically diminish if you don't use your brain.

If you do not use muscles they go away.

Again, no. The muscles may atrophy and lose mass, but they don't "go away".

 

[steve_bank]

Hunger is the great motivator. In the west at least it is usally not a factor.

If you expend more nergy than you take in you die, so Id say minimizing effort is probably genetic.

I'm not sure what you mean. Over the long term, a period of weeks and months, yes. But its not just energy, its also chemicals that are needed to sustain life.

If you do not use your brain capacity diminishes.

No. Repeatedly using your brain to perform certain tasks likely creates pathways/neural arrangements that allow more efficient processing of these tasks. But I've never heard that the number of neurons in your brain physically diminish if you don't use your brain.

If you do not use muscles they go away.

Again, no. The muscles may atrophy and lose mass, but they don't "go away".

After a long stay in the hospital for heart failure I was atrophied. I lost muscle mass and could not get into a wheel chair without being lifted. You loose muscle mass. They 'go away' as in no longer exist.

When you crash diet by starving yourself initially you loose weight quickly. At some point the body goes into a survival mode and makes it harder to loose weight. A well known weight loss and dieting phenomena.

When I got out of the hospital and the following nursing home when I got back online I could barely compose a sentence. whereas before I culd easily run off a series of paragraphs without thinking. It took me several years to recover and recall my technical experience and knowledge. Facts that came to mind with ease no longer came.

As to cognition mainstream medicine has said since the 90s 'use it or loose it'. The brain is a major consumer of energy.

Today the term is bain health which includes both nutrition and mental active.

In the 90s neirl or brain p;asyicity was discovered. It was once thought we grow a number of brin cells and then it declines. Studies show new mental activity grows mew brain cells.

Turn off a refrigerator ans its temperature will go to the background. The brain-body is a thermodynamic system. Things run down through a path of least resistance.