3 ms·

For me that parses as an endorsement of Wilson's group selection theory. Dawkins has made a career out of shallow criticism of others and self-promotion. Wilson

by User23 5y ago

For me that parses as an endorsement of Wilson's group selection theory. Dawkins has made a career out of shallow criticism of others and self-promotion. Wilson was an intellectual giant. Perhaps we'll see how it shakes out. In any event any sexually reproducing species is going to evolve under a minimum group size of two. That we've evolved a mostly monogamous mating strategy, despite the apparent advantages for powerful men to instead build a harem and deprive weaker men of mating opportunities, is suggestive.

nabla9 5y ago
You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481 > Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae, and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al. 2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al. 2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept of group selection largely fails to do.
- User23 5y ago
  > You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. I'm no expert in this area. I'm just a mathematically literate college-educated person of at least average intelligence that enjoys reading. In some ways, I imagine that makes me harder to convince, or more skeptical if you like. I also have a bit of a contrarian streak. However, I'm genuinely fascinated by the subject and quite curious. So much for my inadequacies. > You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound[1]. I can follow the mathematical arguments in that paper and I find them convincing. I am, I hope understandably, disinterested in spending the mental energy to achieve a layman's understanding of a theory that's been mathematically debunked. I trust math more than I do debates for judging the merits of a theory. The latter is a species of rhetoric, which is a wonderful tool for persuasion and sometimes entertainment, but not so helpful for achieving understanding. The former is dialectic, and has a pretty good track record for, if not finding truth, at least ruling out some species of falsehood. > Wilson was an intellectual giant but wrong in some cases. Indeed. Much scientific progress has been achieved by standing on the shoulders of past giants and proving them wrong. The domain of evolutionary biology is dizzyingly complex and I'm in no way disparaging those working in the field. Quite the opposite, I'm grateful for their work and the opportunity to learn from it. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20135 https://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20135
  - nabla9 5y ago
    > My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound That's not what the article you reference says. Generality of inclusive fitness does not rest on of regression (correlational) analyses of social scenarios the article critiques. Figuring out group selection vs. inclusive fitness on your own is good training for your thinking process. Mathematical, but not too difficult to follow. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-selection https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-selection The Tragedy of Group Selectionism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-tragedy-of-group-selectionism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-traged...
- 5y ago

by User23 5y ago

nabla9 5y ago

You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481 > Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae, and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al. 2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al. 2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept of group selection largely fails to do.

User23 5y ago
> You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. I'm no expert in this area. I'm just a mathematically literate college-educated person of at least average intelligence that enjoys reading. In some ways, I imagine that makes me harder to convince, or more skeptical if you like. I also have a bit of a contrarian streak. However, I'm genuinely fascinated by the subject and quite curious. So much for my inadequacies. > You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound[1]. I can follow the mathematical arguments in that paper and I find them convincing. I am, I hope understandably, disinterested in spending the mental energy to achieve a layman's understanding of a theory that's been mathematically debunked. I trust math more than I do debates for judging the merits of a theory. The latter is a species of rhetoric, which is a wonderful tool for persuasion and sometimes entertainment, but not so helpful for achieving understanding. The former is dialectic, and has a pretty good track record for, if not finding truth, at least ruling out some species of falsehood. > Wilson was an intellectual giant but wrong in some cases. Indeed. Much scientific progress has been achieved by standing on the shoulders of past giants and proving them wrong. The domain of evolutionary biology is dizzyingly complex and I'm in no way disparaging those working in the field. Quite the opposite, I'm grateful for their work and the opportunity to learn from it. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20135 https://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20135
- nabla9 5y ago
  > My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound That's not what the article you reference says. Generality of inclusive fitness does not rest on of regression (correlational) analyses of social scenarios the article critiques. Figuring out group selection vs. inclusive fitness on your own is good training for your thinking process. Mathematical, but not too difficult to follow. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-selection https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-selection The Tragedy of Group Selectionism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-tragedy-of-group-selectionism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-traged...
5y ago