Scott Alexander, curated
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How Do We Get Breasts Out Of Bayes Theorem?

Quality
73
Strong
Claude Shift
52
Moderate
RWI
2
of 10

Summary

Raises a genuine puzzle: predictive processing builds concepts up from sensory data (object permanence takes months), so how can a gene 'reach into' the high-level concept 'breast' to make men find big breasts attractive? Genes code for proteins; with only ~20,000 genes, a 'Rube Goldberg breast-locating circuit' seems implausible. Yet instincts clearly exist sometimes (baby gulls' red-dot algorithm; heterosexuality), so it can't be learning all the way down. The interesting tie-in: autistic people (impaired top-down PP) are ~8x more likely to be trans, suggesting gender itself is partly inferred and evolution can bias but not hard-code high-level concepts. Heuristic for good vs bad evo psych: strong prior against claims where genes reach into already-formed concepts. (Problematizes evo psych rather than relying on it; the autism-gender link is robust -> no caveat.)

Why this score

Quality 73 · Strong. A sharp, original, idea-dense essay raising a real theoretical puzzle (the levels-mismatch between gene-coded proteins and PP-constructed concepts) with a useful evo-psych heuristic and an interesting autism/gender tie-in. Strong; somewhat speculative (flagged as 'an expression of confusion').

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Moderate. The levels-mismatch puzzle and the evo-psych heuristic are a fresh, original framing in 2017.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A sharp, idea-dense essay raising a real theoretical puzzle (the levels-mismatch between gene-coded proteins and predictive-processing-constructed concepts like 'breast') with a useful evo-psych heuristic and an interesting autism/gender tie-in. Conceptual influence within rationalist/bio discourse, speculative, no material change — low RWI.