Contingency and Convergence in Evolutionary Biology

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Contingency in evolutionary biology highlights the profound impact of small changes on the course of evolution, such as the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals. A slight delay in the asteroid's impact could have altered the entire evolutionary path. Convergence, on the other hand, emphasizes the regulatory order in evolution where certain traits prevail due to their effectiveness. For instance, the remarkable similarity between human and octopus eyes despite 400 million years of evolutionary divergence showcases the concept of convergence in evolutionary biology.

In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, to get into the existential lessons and grander meaning for a life well-lived once one finally accepts the power and influence of randomness, chaos, and chance. In addition, we learn not to fall prey to proportionality bias - the tendency for human brains to assume big, historical, or massively impactful events must have had big causes and/or complex machinations underlying their grand outcomes. It’s one of the cognitive biases that most contributes to conspiratorial thinking and grand conspiracy theories, one that leads to an assumption that there must be something more going on when big, often unlikely, events make the evening news. Yet, as Brian explains, events big and small are often the result of random inputs in complex systems interacting in ways that are difficult to predict.

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