Consequences

Paper Two co-opts terminology from Behaviour Analysis and Evolutionary Biology into two general categories of consequence, which together define the Neurobiological/Fitness Gap.

Neurobiological consequences

An often-immediate neurobiological event — a feeling or sensation — experienced consciously or unconsciously as desirable/rewarding or undesirable/aversive. Formally, this is Behaviour Analysis's "reinforcing" or "punishing," and it is this outcome that actually determines, moment to moment, whether a behaviour is likely to be repeated. How a reinforcing consequence is delivered matters: reinforcement on a variable-ratio schedule (intermittent reinforcement, as in gambling) produces particularly strong and persistent behaviour patterns, linked to the dopaminergic system and reward prediction error — the mechanism behind the appeal of novelty and surprise.

Fitness-relevant consequences

The effect of a behaviour on an individual's — or group's, or species' — likelihood of surviving and reproducing. These can be costly or beneficial, and immediate or delayed, but are characteristically more distant and diffuse than neurobiological consequences. They can be understood as self-inflicted selection pressures: the compounding, delayed bill a population's behaviour runs up against itself.

Worked examples (Paper Two, Table 2)

Behaviour	Neurobiological consequence	Fitness-relevant consequence
Using PFAS-laden products (non-stick cookware, raincoats, carpets)	Reinforcing convenience	Longer-term adverse health effects from PFAS exposure
Using a superyacht or private jet	Reinforcing status and pleasure gains	Increased mate preference from higher status; increased atmospheric carbon leading to ocean acidification and heat-related mortality
Outsourcing cognitive function to an AI LLM	Reinforcing ease	Depletion of freshwater and greenhouse-gas emissions from the resulting rise in energy consumption
Intensifying a dairy farming operation	Reinforcing financial and social status gains	Increased mate preference from higher status; delayed groundwater nitrate increases, with elevated cancer risk
A group decision to avert an operational crisis at a sewage plant by discharging partially treated sewage	Socially mediated reinforcement (crisis averted)	Increased disease burden from pathogen exposure downstream

See also

Selection by Consequences · Neurobiological/Fitness Gap · Discounting