4 ms·

I know the TSG gets lots of attention and lots of people seem to take it as the fundamental word on how evolution works. This is simply not true. TSG presents t

by hyperion2010 11y ago

I know the TSG gets lots of attention and lots of people seem to take it as the fundamental word on how evolution works. This is simply not true. TSG presents the rather limited view of a geneticist thinking about genes and is directly at odds with other understandings of how evolution works such as genes as followers [0]. I often have a visceral reaction to such individualistic and incredibly western views of how evolution proceeds because they seem to be wilfully blind to the fact that for 99+% of the time evolution does not operate at the level of individuals, in fact, if you are in one of those rare events where individuals DO matter your likelihood of extinction is incredibly high and as a species you really don't want to be there. If the perspective offered in TSG has a place anywhere in evolution it is long before there were multicellular organisms or perhaps even cells. I was inspired to this rant the other day when watching a video of tortoises flipping each other over [1]. Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies as a result. No amount of kin selection can prevent this if there is not already a significant latent potential in the organism's behavioral repertoire to cooperate (flip). The notion that a single gene is somehow in control is a complete and utter fiction, SNPs are not robust ways to build behaviors or even to create phenotypic diversity. The variation that leads one tortoise to flip the other over is likely the product of thousands of genes and is far more continuous than a simple 'flipping gene.' In fact, if you see flipping behavior at all it is extremely likely that the developmental program and the genome of the organism as a whole is structured such that the behavior will arise repeatedly in different individuals as a result of a number of different minor changes in gene expression. If a flower grows, its is more likely to be the case that the ground is good for growing flowers than that the flower suddenly innovated. tl;dr If you want your tortoises to flip, you're going to need more than one gene and you can't think about evolution on an individual basis. 0. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21257223 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21257223, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva_Jablonka2/publication/226572469_Genes_as_Followers_in_Evolution__A_Post-synthesis_Synthesis/links/552806e90cf29b22c9ba0641.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva_Jablonka2/publicati... 1. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tortoise+flip https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tortoise+flip

msteinert 11y ago
> Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies as a result. I believe Dawkins would argue this doesn't result in an evolutionarily stable strategy. Refer to chapter 10 of the Selfish Gene, I think it directly answers the concerns you have.
- dominotw 11y ago
  prisoners dilemma blew my mind when I read it as a teenager.
emmelaich 11y ago
Buuut, TSG does not say evolution operates at the level of individuals. Furthermore I don't see how your turtle flipping example negates the TSG idea. (but I'm very far from an expert on the topic)
qb45 11y ago
> I was inspired to this rant the other day when watching a video of tortoises flipping each other over [1]. Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies as a result. I'm not sure if you are actually disagreeing with TSG. Dawkings repeats several times in the book that to him evolution is not about individuals, but about genes. Heck, even the title is "selfish gene", not "selfish tortoise". Your tortoise benefits from screwing over his competitors, but his genes might not. Like, for example, suppose there is a combination of genes for noncooperative tortoise. He leaves others to die so the next generation is all assholes like him and they die out because there is noone to help when they inevitably get in trouble. Boom, genes are gone. In fact, TSG also tries to analyze how cooperative and noncooperative strategies may coexist in single species and tend towards some equilibrium, which depends on costs/benefits of particular behaviors. And, iirc, such crude strategies like "always defect" often ended up outsmarted by subtler ones.
- hyperion2010 11y ago
  Yes, I guess in the right light a selfish gene operating locally ends up promoting cooperative behavior for exactly the reason suggested to the local detriment of the individual (It is just that there is unlikely to be any single gene that can do that). It would be interesting to see what the carrying capacity of such defector genes is as a function of population size. I usually interpret 'selfish' to mean genes that produce defectors (ie no flip) since there is a local benefit to the organism (and thus the gene itself over short timescales) but Dawkins does use it a bit more broadly. I still find implying telos to genes is misleading since the same gene (allele) can produce opposite effects when surrounded by different environments and thus any function it may appear to serve is not intrinsic but conditional.

msteinert 11y ago

> Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies as a result. I believe Dawkins would argue this doesn't result in an evolutionarily stable strategy. Refer to chapter 10 of the Selfish Gene, I think it directly answers the concerns you have.

dominotw 11y ago
prisoners dilemma blew my mind when I read it as a teenager.

emmelaich 11y ago

Buuut, TSG does not say evolution operates at the level of individuals. Furthermore I don't see how your turtle flipping example negates the TSG idea. (but I'm very far from an expert on the topic)

qb45 11y ago

> I was inspired to this rant the other day when watching a video of tortoises flipping each other over [1]. Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies as a result. I'm not sure if you are actually disagreeing with TSG. Dawkings repeats several times in the book that to him evolution is not about individuals, but about genes. Heck, even the title is "selfish gene", not "selfish tortoise". Your tortoise benefits from screwing over his competitors, but his genes might not. Like, for example, suppose there is a combination of genes for noncooperative tortoise. He leaves others to die so the next generation is all assholes like him and they die out because there is noone to help when they inevitably get in trouble. Boom, genes are gone. In fact, TSG also tries to analyze how cooperative and noncooperative strategies may coexist in single species and tend towards some equilibrium, which depends on costs/benefits of particular behaviors. And, iirc, such crude strategies like "always defect" often ended up outsmarted by subtler ones.

hyperion2010 11y ago
Yes, I guess in the right light a selfish gene operating locally ends up promoting cooperative behavior for exactly the reason suggested to the local detriment of the individual (It is just that there is unlikely to be any single gene that can do that). It would be interesting to see what the carrying capacity of such defector genes is as a function of population size. I usually interpret 'selfish' to mean genes that produce defectors (ie no flip) since there is a local benefit to the organism (and thus the gene itself over short timescales) but Dawkins does use it a bit more broadly. I still find implying telos to genes is misleading since the same gene (allele) can produce opposite effects when surrounded by different environments and thus any function it may appear to serve is not intrinsic but conditional.