

The False Allure Of Group Selection by Steven Pinker - tokenadult
http://edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection

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rdw
It's amazing to me how often people get tripped up on the behavior of colonial
insects like bees and ants. Because all reproduction is done by a queen, it
makes little sense in most circumstances to think about the sterile workers as
individuals.

A better way is to think of the the workers as body parts. Some of the
parallels are pretty direct. The movement of ants is strongly influenced by
chemical scent gradients, much like our muscles respond to ion gradients. This
puts insects' seemingly-extreme altruism into perspective. Do you consider
your skin cells altruistic when they are burned by excessive sun?

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vorg
If workers in a bee colony are body parts, then why not the queen and drones
also? The queen is like a brain in the body. Following on, then why not
males/females in an animal tribe? People communicate with each other using
subliminal smells indicating sex, anger, fear, etc. Just because animals use
50-50 gene splicing instead of 67-33 doesn't mean the group is any less an
organism in itself.

My personal observation suggests some humans (and presumably other animals)
are the natural born leaders, most others are like the cytoplasm in a cell,
and some others like the outer membrane, showing the most altruistic behavior.
Pinker has a valid point that all this shows is some individuals are better at
exploiting others tendency to altruism, but my observation is some humans in a
group are less motivated to survive and mate than others are. Then there's
those who do survive but are hard-wired to mate with their own gender, not
producing offspring. How do these two groups ("Gays" and "Losers")
consistently show up in animal societies?

~~~
dllthomas
> The queen is like a brain in the body.

The queen is much more like the genitals.

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shokwave
It's tempting to think that since a group is bigger than an individual, they
should have some sort of power to select beyond the individual's procreation -
but while groups are more powerful than individuals, groups are not more
powerful than procreation.

It's easy to expect, and believe, and accept group selection, because the
method of transmission is _so obvious_ , that behaviours are taught to the
next generation! This obscure 'years later, gene expression' stuff just seems
so unlikely - humans aren't wired to expect causality over years or decades.

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leephillips
If you find this interesting you might also want to look up Richard Dawkins'
demolition[1] of Wilson’s book _The Social Conquest of Earth_ , in which
Wilson (according to Dawkins) promotes a discredited and confused theory of
group selection.

[1][http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/edward-wilson-
soc...](http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/edward-wilson-social-
conquest-earth-evolutionary-errors-origin-species/)

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Historiopode
(My interest in evolutionary biology is quite lax, so bear with me if I say
something particularly wrong.)

I was under the impression that, in recent years, there had been a small but
significant surge of interest in the possibility of epigenetic inheritance,
evidence for which had been found in a few studies on chickens, rats and
plants. This article seems to explicitly states that no such thing is
currently recognized.

Have I been deviated by fringe neo-Lamarckist press releases, are they simply
too recent and in need of consolidation, or did Pinker avoid mentioning them
for the sake of clarity and fidelity to the most safe, "gcd" theory?

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gort
I'm not sure how it's relevant to the issue of group selection and altruism;
but anyway such inheritance still seems to be relatively rare, as far as I
know.

It's interesting that you call it Lamarckian - the epigenetic inheritance
system itself would have to evolve in a normal Darwinian way... e.g. if genes
get methylated (turned off semi-permanently) and passed down to offspring in
this state, one could call that Lamarckian, but the methylation system itself
is in need of a Darwinian explanation.

~~~
Historiopode
I assume it is not relevant, indeed: I was merely asking for comments over an
unrelated point that was made in the essay, which is that there are no working
Lamarckian mechanisms in biology.

I certainly agree over your second point, which I had considered myself, but
that did not seem to be particularly relevant to my doubt.

~~~
gort
"point that was made in the essay, which is that there are no working
Lamarckian mechanisms in biology"

Fair enough - Pinker seems a bit too firm about that.

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Evbn
Interesting that Dawkins and Pinkers rebuttals of group selection have gotten
so much more press than Wilson's affirmative proposals. Has anyone actually
seen a serious proposal of the narrow notion of group-level selection that
Pinker is refuting?

~~~
chewymouse
The original 2010 Nature paper coauthored by Wilson
([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7310/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7310/full/nature09205.html))
received a lot of press when it was initially published, and Wilson's back-
and-forth with Dawkins and Pinker got just as much press back then. What
Pinker is arguing against is not the initial paper (which he does address in
this article briefly by repeating the kin fitness argument) but the claims
that Wilson is reaching toward in his new book, The Social Conquest of Earth.
Wilson's "press" is essentially this book. The "serious proposal" Pinker is
refuting is this book, so this article is essentially a preemptive criticism.

