What does this equation mean?

Put those three pieces together and a real audit standard falls out, rather than having to be invented from nothing. A mismatch claim earns the name only if it specifies, first, an evolved mechanism — not “the brain” in general, but a particular system with a describable function; second, an environmental novelty — a measurable, dated way in which the present differs from the conditions that shaped that mechanism; and third, causal evidence linking the two, ideally a dose-response relationship or an experiment, rather than a plausible-sounding correlation. Formally, treat a claim as confirmed only when all three hold at once: $\text{mismatch confirmed} \iff \text{mechanism specified} \;\land\; \text{novelty dated} \;\land\; \text{causal link demonstrated}$. Three modern cases will be run against that standard here: myopia, obesity, and the claim that screens and social media exploit evolved attention systems the way Tinbergen’s striped rod exploited a gull chick’s pecking reflex. One of the three clears every bar. One keeps a real mechanism but loses the specific evolutionary story to a genuine, still-unresolved dispute between two named theories. One borrows the vocabulary of supernormal stimuli without yet producing evidence of the kind Tinbergen actually had for gulls.