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The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes. Since Dawkins became fashionable, it is now normal to portray human beings as nothing m

• 6ren 15y ago
  A question on his genetic theory of altruism: although it is to do with allele frequency (interchangeable alternatives) in a specific population, is the argument applicable to a wider conception of a population? This is getting new-agey, but selfish promotion of our genes would logically include helping all mankind, since we share many genes (of course, we'd have more reason to help those more closely related); then, to similar species such as apes, then to mammals, then animals in general, then plants - which we'd prefer over rocks. All based on genetic similarity, of ones own genes helping other instances of itself. Which does seem to fit in which the attitudes of most people.
• onemoreact 15y ago
  That's an overly simplistic view of animal behavior. Spend some time studding game theory and you will find cooperation is natural in all but the most ruthless environments. Aka 3 man enter 1 man leave suggests creating a temporary alliance. Shure animals may posture 1v1 but both competitors are trying to avoid injury.
  • JonnieCache 15y ago
    The highly questionable practice of applying game theory to human psychology is also dangerous IMO. It didn't get anyone anywhere in the cuban missile crisis, and it won't help us understand the "problem of altruism" either. People are not rational! This is demonstrably true. Even if they were uber-rational, they never have enough data about the world to make useful rational decisions WRT maximising gene propagation through strategic altruism. It is very telling that this modern notion whereby every time someone acts selflessly towards another they are in fact acting with laser-precise logic in their own interests was developed by the RAND corporation at the height of 1950s/60s cold-war paranoia.
    • onemoreact 15y ago
      Umm, I was not talking about human behavior. Bird flocks are often a great demonstration of emergent and cooperative behavior in the animal kingdom. As to your point, while I would not assume people are strictly rational it’s important to understand the transition points where rational behavior becomes destructive for society. Not because everyone acts in a strictly rational fashion but rather because there is a tendency for the average individual to do so. for example corruption often links to both the benefit and the risk of being corrupt and enforcement is far more important than what's in the books. IMO, the most important insight is given a large population there are usually several productive approaches that tend to balance over time. PS: If you think about it Sociology and Psychology are considered separate disciplines for obvious reasons. But economics is plenty complex to avoid being merged with Sociology because how you exit a burning building is only peripherally related to which brand of soda you buy.
    • scott_s 15y ago
• matwood 15y ago
  The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes. Reminds me of what a friend of mine used to tell his girlfriend when she would catch him looking at other girls walking by. "I can't fight thousands of years of evolution." :)
  • fexl 15y ago
    And if she says "Men are no good", he can reply "Hey, somebody's gotta do the math!" ;)
    • GrooveStomp 15y ago
      That is so cheeky and perfect in context. :D
• Goladus 15y ago
  The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes. Why would you say this essay "paints us as slaves to our genes?" I didn't read it that way at all. In fact there's so much content there to discuss that I think it's really unfair to make such an unrelated generalization about the whole thing. There is much discussion about evolutionary traits, for sure, but just because it's there as an explanation doesn't mean it's "painting us as slaves" any more than is really the case. To some extent, you must admit that people are slaves to their biological disposition. We can't, for example, stop and start our own heart at will. Admitting that for the purposes of discussion is not "painting us as slaves."
  • sliverstorm 15y ago
    It's amusing to live in a world where instinct in animals is readily accepted as heritable, and yet whether or not humans can inherit behaviors is hotly contested. Almost seems like another round of people looking to maintain the illusion that humans are separate from animals. What was the last one we had, tool use?
    • forensic 15y ago
      Instinct is by definition inherited genetically. All experts in this field agree that humans inherit behaviour genetically. For example, the rooting reflex.
      • gnaritas 15y ago
        Or in humans, the language instinct.
      • westicle 15y ago
        I wasn't familiar with the rooting reflex and had to wiki it. Good thing I did, in Australia "rooting" is common parlance for sexual intercourse. Which I suppose would also qualify as an inherited instinct.
    • jordan0day 15y ago
      I'm on the opposite side of that. I find it amusing when people try to justify certain actions with corollaries found in animals. The amazing thing about being human is that we can overcome instinct, and it doesn't even require superhuman effort. Regular old human effort will do.
• iamwil 15y ago
  All heritable behaviors that lead to men or women not reproducing don't stay in a population very long. It's not so much slave to genes as it's a boundary condition. That doesn't take away from your daily experience as a human. You can still do whatever you want, day to day, year to year, not giving much thought of your genetic viability and still be a happy, healthy human being. Just because you know how a rainbow works doesn't take away from your visceral human experience of one. (double rainbow!) In fact, I'd argue that knowing how a rainbow actually works adds to your appreciation of one.
  • run4yourlives 15y ago
    >All heritable behaviors that lead to men or women not reproducing don't stay in a population very long I'm not sure about this. What I mean is that I can clearly see the logic here, but I'd love to see a discussion for instance on the continual existence of evolutionary destructive traits such as homosexuality, which by all accounts has not only been around for a great deal of human existence, but also other species. It's possible perhaps that there are evolutionary paths that, although dead-ends, are easily mutated into and thus always present in a species...
    • sophacles 15y ago
      Humans are social (group) creatures. This means anything that promotes group survival is good. So how does your favorite strawman play out here? Well assuming an extremely strong genetic component: 1. Homosexuals by not being inclined to reproduce may now contribute excess resources to the group well-being. 2. Homosexuals can pick up slack child-rearing duties, e.g. in cases of orphaned children, and do so without the complications and child favoring that happens very frequently when a child is adopted by someone with his own offspring. Furhter contributing: Homosexuality is not strictly binary, it is a combination of factors, so that those who never mate will not contribute too strong of a homosexual orientation to future generations, there are those who are bisexual or "a little gay" who can keep passing the genes that will make some portion of the population homosexual. Cultural norms of course will play in here as well sometimes being more permissive, other times not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is subtle genetic idea of balance that is driving this cultural throttle to the homosexual thing. The big thing to remember tho, is that evolution doesn't always select on individual basis, but frequently on a group basis. NOTE: i use active words here, as if evolution has a goal, but that is just because I don't want to write like: the selection pressures sometimes result in an overal systemic balance and species or group wide advantage while at the same time resulting in some individuals with a much lower reproductive probability.
• Hisoka 15y ago
  If genes do determine the bulk of our behavior, do you think it's worthwhile to fight against it?
  • MattArnold 15y ago
    Genes influence, not determine. Certainly it is worthwhile! Your goals, and those of your genetic code, are not the same. Your genes would happily ruin your life in order to propagate.
• oflannabhra 15y ago
  I also have noticed this philosophy ( or I guess worldview, as it encompasses multiple disciplines) gaining traction (especially on sites like reddit), but I haven't read many rebuttals or articles even mentioning it. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. Anyone got good links?
  • tokenadult 15y ago
    Anyone got good links? There is a collection of book citations (rather than links, mostly, so far) in Wikipedia userspace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol... I'm amazed how neglected most of the best scholarly sources are in online discussions of these issues. The linked Wikipedia user subpage has a suggestions page (its "talk" page) for suggesting further resources, which would be helpful to participants here on HN.
• sliverstorm 15y ago
  "slaves to our genes"? Hardly. One of the most commonly forgotten things about evolution and DNA is it describes the system, not the individual. In other words, it's kind of like statistics. When I roll these two dice, I could get any combination of results. The past has no control, the future has no control. But if I take it beyond one trial, and execute many trials, I will find the system tends towards statistically predictable results. DNA and evolution is like those statistical predictions.
• 6ren 15y ago
  Animals cooperate at times, as in herds, troups and packs. One can see our instincts as our "animal" aspects, and that we also have an instinct for cooperation. An example is language, which being learnt unconsciously by children is arguably an instinct. Language is primarily used for cooperation. One can further see our emotions as being based on instincts, and clearly we have cooperative emotions and destructive emotions. Though sometimes labeled as "higher" or "lower" emotions, both are emotions. Secondly, our instincts do delegate perceptual control to our intellectual selves: e.g. if we can work out who the bad guy is, our anger is directed at that person. We can even talk ourselves into all sorts of things! Though we have no choice in having instincts, we have great influence in applying them.
• divtxt 15y ago
  I'm sorry but you have this backward. We already ARE barbarians. Figuring out the cause does not suddenly make us so. Plenty of people believe in equality but have trouble following through. Figuring out our impulses will only help us understand and control them better. (e.g. genetically-caused discrimination has been countered in many parts of the world by the brainwashing of "equality" memes)
• todayiamme 15y ago
  >>> idea is dangerously embedded in society now, and it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism. <<< That's something I don't understand. What does a paradigm useful for understanding biological systems have in common with human society? I'm not saying that human society isn't a biological system. I'm saying that extending an abstraction suited for understanding and explaining how and why genetic evolution works, to the complex intricacies and dances of human society is like trying to use ohm's law (a very useful, proven and beautiful abstraction) to make a video game. Sure, you can predict how the amount of current flowing per unit potential difference will change as the wires get thinner, and you can understand how transistors work to a certain point, but you won't see what that processor actually is and does. You'll miss the several layers sandwiched between this abstraction that video game. Layers built on top of each other, creating a richer set of knowledge, tools in the process. I think that we have jumped the gun several times in this regard. Take the entire glorious soviet communism vs. Ayn Rand-ian capitalism. They are in fact different from the predecessors in the idea that they separate the producers and the consumers using something called the market, but they differ on how that market should be run. Before you launch a debate, I'm not saying that one is better than the other. It's just that both of them are economic theories talking about different ways to run a market. What on earth do they have to do with raising children? Or, our actions as human beings? So, yes Dawkins is right and so was Price, but they explained how biological systems worked. Not how human society ought to, and must be forced to, work. If people were indeed such beings then the financial crisis wouldn't have happened. This article wouldn't have been written. I might be wrong over here, but I really think that this born from a mistake of finding ways for humans to be perfect. I really think that this search to portray humans as rational beings, or beings that are genetic machines (note the implicit association with precise perfection we have in our mental models) is a product of human chauvinism. This is in a bizarre way the product of our quest to make ourselves special. We aren't that special. We're flawed and it's okay, and I think that it's about time we as a species moved on.
• ap22213 15y ago
  I don't think it's dangerous at all, because 'culture' and 'society' are derivatives of genes. The larger organization of culture and society stabilize the individual in context. It would take quite a bit of evolution to expel those 'stabilizing' parts from Humanity, if it ever happened. Some people are genetically more likely to be generous, in certain conditions, and others are more likely to be selfish in those same conditions. Change the conditions, and change the probabilistic response. Those types of genetic probabilities keep the chaotic system stable. The probability of action in context probably fits like a normal curve. Its a balancing act of some flitting genes moving around a median point equilibrium. I'm making all these assertions from my intuition, of course.
• lkrubner 15y ago
  >Since Dawkins became fashionable I am curious why people keep taking this attitude to Dawkins. And Dawkins himself was also curious why people had this reaction to his books. In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, he says: "We can rise above our genes, indeed, we do every time we use contraceptives." As he makes clear, several times, in the book, our evolution allows a range of behavior that allows for more than simplistic game-theory calculations. Personally, there were 2 main things that I got from The Selfish Gene: 1.) sometimes simple experiments, with simple motivations, lead to surprising results (or sometimes game theory models have surprising conclusions). For instance, the story of the 2 pigs was surprising -- they had to push a lever on one end of the pen to get a reward at the other end of the pen, and it turned out that it was the dominant pig who had to do all the work whereas the submissive pig got to eat most of the food. 2.) evolution is too slow to react to fast changing circumstances, so behavior was "invented" to allow creatures to quickly adapt to circumstances. The word "behavior" in this sense, is meant to suggest a range of possible actions that a creature can change without having to change its genes. Dawkins devotes a lot of time to this idea, and it seems to me this idea goes directly against the interpretation that so many people want to ascribe to Dawkins: "it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism". I suspect that a lot of people who criticize Dawkins have never actually read Dawkins. This sentence deserves special criticism: "How is it even possible to behave in a non-animalistic manner once you have internalised these ideas?" Here the word "animalistic" is being used to suggest a failure of morality. There is history behind this usage, which I don't have time to get into. For now, I'll simply point out that humans are part of the animal branch of life, and therefore all human behavior is animalistic by definition. The above sentence suggests that being an animal leads to immoral behavior. Frans B. M. de Waal has been especially good about undermining this idea: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp/0674356616/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1310761399&sr=8-10 http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp... Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals Kindness is also a product of evolution. Our sense of decency is also a product of evolution. To be clear about this, all human behavior has been facilitated by evolution. Our genes do not control us in a rigid and deterministic way, but our genes do establish perhaps the outer limits of the possible for us. It might be best to use the word "facilitate" when describing the effect of evolution on our behavior. When Saint Francis of Assisi gave all of his possessions to the poor, his actions were facilitated by evolution. When Hitler ordered 6 million Jews killed, his actions were facilitated by evolution. When marine Jason Dunham decided to sacrifice his life to save his fellow soldiers, by diving on top of a hand grenade, his actions were facilitated by evolution. When Susan Leigh Vaughan Smith killed her 2 children, her actions were facilitated by evolution. When Adrienne Rich decided to write a book denouncing male-dominated family life, and when she came out as a lesbian, her actions were facilitated by evolution. When George F. Gilder wrote a book denouncing feminism, his actions were facilitated by evolution. What we are capable of has been facilitated by our history so far, all 4 billion years of it. This includes all behavior, including what some might regard as "good" and some might regard as "bad". But, while keeping all this in mind, it is also important to realize that we are still evolving today, still inventing the new, day by day. Possibly the pace is so slow that it is hard to see, but still, evolution is still happening, for every species on the planet, including humans. If we could get in a time machine and skip 100,000 years in the future, we would probably note the emergence of many new behaviors in the human line.
• VladRussian 15y ago
  >What possible motivation does one have for behaving in a manner other than that of an animal, well, actually most of "behaving like an animal" is only done by humans and such behavior can't be found in the animal kingdom. Calling it "like an animal" is a typical hypocrisy of humans. >human beings as nothing more than meat-based mechanisms for storing and transporting DNA. yes, like any lifeforms we know. >This idea is dangerously embedded in society now, and it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism. Blaming society, ideas, whatever ... instead of taking personal responsibility is a human species trait that, i think, will either have to disappear or it will take the human race down (it wasn't that important before, when Mother Nature held your personally responsible for your actions, yet with technological growth and power wielded by individuals and small groups over highly organized masses of humans it becomes an extremely dangerous trait - i think the 20th century was a nice preview of the future and the WW III is going to be an interesting exercise).
• bermanoid 15y ago
  On an entirely separate note, all this talk of inter-gender differences is useless without some consideration of their scale relative to intra-gender differences. But isn't that exactly what the author is suggesting? That the within-group variance tends to be higher in men than in women, even if the differences in averages between the groups are not significant?
• qubit 15y ago
  We are slaves to our genes plus our conditioning, both of which are greatly influenced by our ancestors and completely influenced by things outside of our control.
• jongraehl 15y ago
  > The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes. 1. It doesn't. 2. What's wrong with the gene-centric view of human nature?
• saturn 15y ago
  Attacking Dawkins (of whom I am not even a reader) by citing some other guy's fall into religion, depression, and eventual suicide is not only tasteless but utterly irrelevant. > The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes The problem with your comment is that in the very first sentence it makes a huge assumption that we are not slaves to our genes. Compelling arguments may well be made otherwise but not by some attempt at an "appeal to assumed general knowledge" for want of a better description.