[extropy-chat] RE: Re: Intelligent Design and IrriducibleComplexity

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Spike wrote:
> 
> If that is the case, then we have an example of
> natural selection working at the group level.  But
> this only works if we use the term natural selection
> to include both survival selection and mate selection.
> If we allow natural selection to work at the group
> level, we suggest some possible solutions to the
> more difficult puzzles of evolution. 

Group selection may be the wrong word for this, since it's usually taken to 
imply a conflict between individual-level selection and group-level 
selection with the group selection pressure winning.  What you're talking 
about is an isolated subpopulation undergoing genetic drift augmented by 
sexual selection, that then pops up and outcompetes other subpopulations. 
That's not 'group selection' as usually defined because there's no obvious 
conflict between group-level selection pressure and individual-level 
selection pressure.  No one denies that groups (such as human tribes) are 
occasionally the vehicles selected upon; the difficult part is for 
group-level selection pressure to ever defeat a countervailing individual 
selection pressure.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence