[ExI] Evolution "for the Good of the Group"

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 21 09:14:01 UTC 2008


--- On Sat, 9/20/08, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

> "Is evolution a team sport, or is the
> contest for survival played out
> strictly between individuals?"
> 
> Trivers, Hamilton, and others showed and it was popularized
> by 
> Dawkins that evolution happens at the *gene* level.  So the
> first 
> sentence is out of main stream evolutionary thinkings

That is certainly the mainstream opinion but the mainstream itself has drastically changed its opinion over the years like a car swerving back and forth over an icy road. I think what you see is the result of overcompensation from one extreme viewpoint to another. Ultimately both "selfish gene theory" and "group selection theory" are extremist views that fail to see the big picture. To adhere blindly to either view is to ignore mountains of evidence that show merit to either side of the debate. I am in favor of a multi-level selection theory that correctly observes that evolution occurs at *all* levels of complexity from molecules to nation-states and beyond. 
 
> "There's
> no question that natural selection acts
> on individual organisms: Those with
> favorable traits are more likely to pass
> along their genes to the next generation."
> 
> Of course as Hamilton showed, that's not the only way. 
> Consider bees 
> for ghod's sake.

Well there are thousands of species of bees. Are you talking honey bees or mason bees. Mason bees are all fertile and live a solitary existence. I have been seeing a lot mason bees and other types up here Washington state since all the honey bees started disappearing. 

> "But perhaps similar processes
> could operate at other levels of the biological
> hierarchy. In this way natural
> selection could perpetuate traits that
> are favorable not to an individual but
> to a social unit such as a flock or a colony,"
> 
> Depends.  Does the flock/colony consist of related 
> individuals?  Again, think of bees defending a hive.

Spike's ants vigorously defend aphids which aren't even in the same phylogenetic order as they are let alone related members of the same species. Could there be ant genes that increase the fitness of aphids? After all ants will kill and eat most other insects.

> "or to an entire species, or even to
> an ecosystem made up of many species.
> The underlying question is: Can
> biological traits evolve "for the good
> of the group"?"
> 
> It depends on the group.  What gets passed from generation
> to 
> generation is genes.  Another example.

Mitochondria and a bunch of other cytoplasmic organelles get passed from generation to generation too but only from the females of course. Other things that can pass from generation to generation are territories, commensal organisms, and vertically transmitted infectious diseases.

Remember that the only reason termites can digest wood is that they harbor a protozoa in their stomachs that helps them. And amazingly these protozoa could not digest wood on their own either except that they harbour bacterial symbionts that help them by making crucial digestive enzymes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichonympha

And as Natasha astutely pointed out in a different thread, we are composed of 1000 trillion cells only 10% of which even contain human genes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flora

> And evolution is the differential survival of genes.

Call me an atypical biologist but I would say that evolution is the differential survival of cells. A naked chromosome is not even alive so how can it survive? The transhumanist in me would go farther and say that evolution is differential persistance of replicating information encoded on any substrate whatsoever. So in my opinion even automobiles evolve, even though they don't even live in a strictly biological sense.   
 
> I have made the case in "EP, memes and the origin of
> war" that humans 
> have similar psychological traits.
> When the risk to the genes of an individual warrior is less
> than the 
> risk summed over his relatives multiplied by their
> relatedness, i.e., 
> without killing the neighbors the kids will starve next dry
> season, 
> then psychological mechanisms get turned on that synch up a
> tribe's 
> warriors to make a do or die effort.

While I don't doubt that is certainly part of the psychology of humans, I am not certain how much of that has a genetic basis. After all there are females of many species of birds that placed in a similar situation simply kill their kids and await more plentiful times to have more kids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology)
 
> Just because someone rates as high as EO Wilson doesn't
> mean what he 
> says should be taken without examining the logic behind
> what his claims.

In science the most water-tight logic must yield to the weight of evidence. That is what distinguishes empiricism from formal logic.
 
> Of course this applies even more to people like me far down
> the feeding chain.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Keith. Nobody is insignificant and nobody is indispensible.
 
Stuart LaForge

"See them clamber, these nimble apes!  They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss."- Friedrich Nietzsche



      



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list