>>> 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

>>> 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.