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Regardless of how you define what a "gene" is, the "unit of selection" is a fragment of an organism's dna, not the organism itself. In this context Dawkin's exp
by ollysb 15y ago
Regardless of how you define what a "gene" is, the "unit of selection" is a fragment of an organism's dna, not the organism itself. In this context Dawkin's explores an ESS(evolutionary stable strategy) that exhibits altruistic behaviour. It's also worth noting that group selection is shown to be unstable as an evolutionary strategy. This review of The Selfish Gene gives some good background http://www.miketuritzin.com/writing/review-the-selfish-gene/ http://www.miketuritzin.com/writing/review-the-selfish-gene/.
- beefman 15y agoIt's a lot like a binary diff, where phenotype is the source code, natural selection the programmer, and the genome the binary. Natural selection works on the phenotype, and you are saying that at all times the binary diff is compact, or sensible to talk about. Untrue. In fact it's trivially untrue because the genome is too small. Group altruism is stable and is a very strong attractor of population behavior. All that's required is that group members be able to recognize one another. http://people.brynmawr.edu/twong/models/pseudoaltruism.html http://people.brynmawr.edu/twong/models/pseudoaltruism.html Individuals born into such a group may learn this or it may be genetically inherited (instinctual), or both. Of course the distinction between learning and instinct is also a bit fuzzy.