

The Origins of Altruism - Edward O. Wilson's Alternate Theory - mhb
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/04/17/where_does_good_come_from/?page=full

======
Stormbringer
Having followed for a while the various debates about evolution (except
Intelligent Design, I've got no time for that), I am continually amazed by how
unscientific the people upholding the scientific status quo are.

I understand that they would circle the wagons to repel attacks by the
'ignorant savages' outside of their own group... but to see them behave the
same way against 'one of their own' is quite remarkable. I wonder if it is
just a knee-jerk reaction they have developed... that anyone who even
questions their pet theory is attacked as not knowing what they are talking
about. How can someone claim to be 'rational' and yet at the same time be
making ad hominem attacks against one of the _founders_ of a field and
claiming that he doesn't know what he is talking about? The levels of self
deception implicit in that are simply staggering.

I liked the quote in the article that a scientist who can't change his mind
isn't much of a scientist at all.

~~~
gort
The fundamental criticism seems to be that the authors take kin selection to
be a fundamentally different sort of thing from "ordinary" natural selection.

That is indeed a very strange view since the two are really tightly connected
logically.

------
colanderman
Without any prior knowledge on the subject, it seemed obvious to me that the
reason altruism exists is the same reason our bodies' cells don't attack each
other. Groups of coöperating individuals have a much higher chance of
surviving than groups of naïvely self-serving individuals.

I was surprised to find this is the "alternate" theory:

> Under certain circumstances, groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of
> non-cooperators, thereby ensuring that their genes — including the ones that
> predispose them to cooperation — are handed down to future generations.

Surely others have thought of this idea before, as it seems to me much simpler
than kin selection. Why was it not until the 21st century that this idea has
gained even a modicum of traction?

~~~
pessimist
The simple answer in most cases is that group selection is vulnerable to free-
riders. A free-rider gene that didnt help out would out-compete altruists and
spread.

The group of cells in a body is not a group of unrelated individuals - they
are all perfectly related!

Non kin-related altruism usually requires mechanisms of enforcement like
reciprocal altruism ("you scratch my back, i scratch yours, and if you dont
play along you'll be ostracized").

Historically, naive group selection was commonly held until the 1950's and
60's, when George Williams forcefully argued against it in
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_and_Natural_Selectio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_and_Natural_Selection).

Then Hamilton, John Maynard-Smith and other developed mathematical models
showing how kin selection and group theoretic models (like a repeated
Prisoner's Dilemma) could allow for altruism to evolve even though genes are
really "selfish".

E. O. Wilson's late attack on kin selection is odd and misguided, see a
response here - [http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/big-
dust-...](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/big-dust-up-
about-kin-selection/) or
[http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/theory/inclusiv...](http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/theory/inclusive-
fitness-nowak-wilson-2010.html). There were several replies in Nature as well
but of course those are paid.

~~~
scotty79
There are free riders and they are in balance with altruism.

I saw footage when some squirrels (or monkeys) ware picking up something tasty
out of the shallow water. They had to be careful because there might have been
predators in the water.

If individual spotted predator they yelled and whole pack ran to the trees.

But occasionally weaker individuals yelled even when there was no predator to
drive away stronger individuals to get some food himself.

So they altruistically warned each other but there was free-rider in who
occasionally abused the altruistic system for personal gain. He couldn't do
that too much because other individuals would notice and kick his butt. So
altruism and free-riding in nature can be in balance and still give obvious
advantage in cooperation.

~~~
scotty79
Maybe whole reason for the altruism is to create opportunity for future
occasional free-riding for an individual.

There are many examples in human society when someone shown and loudly
encouraged altruism just to free-ride on others where nobody was looking
carefully.

------
dougabug
Wilson's critics appear to engage in a great deal of uncalled for ad hominem
attacks. I hate those kinds of personal insults. As far as kinship not being
essential to group cooperation, this seems plausible (though unproven) to me.
Dogs are not particularly close genetic relatives to human beings, but they
will clearly raise alarm and even risk their lives to protect their human
companions. Dogs don't appear to understand that this might not represent an
appropriately greedy strategy for propagating their genes. I'm not even sure
dogs know what genes are. Dogs and humans appear to be able to socially bond
without particular genetic affinity.

Functional systems may be formed from dissimilar parts. Some theorize that
eukaryotic cells originated through a fusion of ancient viruses and
prokaryotes. Chocolate and peanut butter. Certainly this could be created
within a mathematical model. Whether it occurs in nature is a different story.
Group selection strikes me as an inadequate label, since particular tribes,
kingdoms, nations, corporations, religions, movements emerge and vanish all
the time. Human beings are masters of jumping on bandwagons and abandoning
sinking ships. The real survival talent is joining and leaving groups when
called for, and being valued as group participants. Being esteemed within a
group may permit an individual to more readily leverage group powers.
Something along the lines of "free riders earn no karma."

This gives rise to a significant individual motive: raising an alarm to warn
the herd may simply be a calculated risk, which if successful might raise the
actor's standing within the group (or the standing of his kind or lineage,
essentially a kinship argument).

As far as the free rider argument goes, it's kind of hard to love a parasite.
Being a jerk is somewhat anti-social behavior, and most groups tend to cast
out or marginalize people who aren't team players. Ironically, this seems to
be what's happening to Wilson. He's not being a team player, so the group is
attempting to expel him (from his place within the rarified academic elite).

Selfishness is generally viewed as unattractive, while kindness, loyalty to
others and generosity are often cited as desirable traits in a potential mate.
That alone would be sufficient to promote specific altruistic traits. Why does
sex selection in modern day humans appear to support furtherance of altruistic
tendencies, in opposition to the more clear cut, selfish motivations of the
individual? Saying, "I'm the most self-centered, greediest, oppportunistic
prick out there, how bout a date?" ought to be a more successful pick up line
than it is.

------
davidmathers
Fascinating. Jerry Coyne (quoted in the article) has a blog post about the
article:

[http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-
bosto...](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-boston-globe-
on-kin-selection/)

------
scotty79
The actual theory occurs in the middle of article. I was seriously exhausted
of digging through long journalist effor to show how "rad" it is.

To spare you the digging:

> The alternative theory holds that the origins of altruism and teamwork have
> nothing to do with kinship or the degree of relatedness between individuals.
> The key, Wilson said, is the group: Under certain circumstances, groups of
> cooperators can out-compete groups of non-cooperators, thereby ensuring that
> their genes — including the ones that predispose them to cooperation — are
> handed down to future generations.

I'm still not sure why this idea is dismissed because I don't see any false
statement or inconsistency in it and it seems to lead to apparent altruism.

~~~
benl
The reason it is dismissed is that group selection has been proposed and
investigated many times in the history of evolutionary theory and found
wanting, ironically because the mathematics don't hold up in realistic natural
scenarios.

This article doesn't go into enough detail to tell us what is different in
this new formulation of group selection. We'll have to read the paper to find
out.

~~~
scotty79
I think those two theories might be considered as two factors promoting
altruism and their should be tested in (unrealistic) simulations to find out
how powerful they are in causing altruism.

Realistic, natural scenarios are not good for spotting significance of
multiple factors. As with the bike, natural realistic bike just does not fall,
and why is that is left for discussion, but when somebody builds a bike that
nullifies some probable cause then it can be plainly seen that other factors
also might have significant role.

------
discreteevent
I think that altrusim that involves the death of the individual seems very
hard to understand. But in general there doesn't seem to be much trouble
explaining cooperation. In the paper "Kropotkin Was No Crackpot" by Stephen
Jay Gould he states "Kropotkin therefore created a dichotomy within the
general notion of struggle – two forms with opposite import: (1) organism
against organism of the same species for limited resources, leading to
competition; and (2) organism against environment, leading to cooperation."
The really interesting thing is that the paper also explains why certain
societies are more collective than others e.g. Russians Vs English people.
Darwin admitted a second form of struggle "metaphorical" that pits organism
against the harshness of surrounding physical environments, not against other
members of the same species. However Darwin's focus was mainly on the other
form of struggle which pitted individual against individual in a gladatorial
struggle. The Russians could not understand this "It was foreign to their
experience because, quite simply, Russia’s huge land mass dwarfed its sparse
population. For a Russian to see an inexorably increasing population
inevitably straining potential supplies of food and space required quite a
leap of imagination." So their environment influenced their politics which
seems natural enough and refreshing to me as it always seems that a more
social economy is some kind of artificial thing that is forced on people by
intellectuals and goes against our nature as murderous individuals. Of course
we are also murderously competitive individuals but the point is that in
certain environments you won't survive if you don't cooperate.

------
forkandwait
Barely related, but I have always been surprised by the rejection of "group
selection" -- I actually think our discomfort with it is sort of ideological,
and motivated by the fact that we have an individualistically structured
society (capitalism) that would be deeply challenged by group selection. Sort
of out there, but perhaps worth thinking about.

(EDIT: I am speaking of the hyper-individualistic capitalism popular in
America and (I think) Britain, not the lets-have-unions-and-govt-cooperate
capitalism of Germany or Japan. Also, I still remember driving for 100 miles
with a biologist who told me that group selection violated the basic premises
of evolutionary theory, which is basically "selfish gene" only.)

~~~
gort
While many traits that help an individual also help its group, I take it that
"group selection" refers to traits evolving that _harm_ an individual for the
benefit of the group.

It's really difficult to get this to work, since the selection pressure at the
individual level tends to outweigh the pressure at the group level; every
group will eventually produce mutants that don't have the trait; these then
come to make up an increasing proportion of the group, since they have higher
fitness.

Out discomfort with it is due to this.

~~~
forkandwait
Why the following: "the selection pressure at the individual level tends to
outweigh the pressure at the group level".

Also, I wonder if built in variability with social roles (e.g. a human might
be a leader or follower for reasons NOT determined by genetics -- debatable,
but I/ many others would hold that early childhood and culture might trump DNA
in many important cases ) might alter the equations? Perhaps we evolve _past_
genetic determinism in order to allow for larger group structures to feel the
selection pressure more than individuals.

If I had another lifetime, I would study evolution enough to know what I am
talking about.... Thanks for the interesting comment

~~~
gloob
_Why the following: "the selection pressure at the individual level tends to
outweigh the pressure at the group level"._

Because "I had 1.8 viable offspring before I died" is more fit than "I had 1.5
viable offspring before I died", no matter how you slice it. Any trait that
moves an individual from the former statement to the latter makes that
individual less fit, even if it benefits the group, and since the individual
is less fit, that trait is less likely to be passed on, resulting
(asymptotically) in more fit individuals massively outnumbering less fit ones,
irrespective of the impact those individuals have on group fitness.

------
scotty79
It would be nice to build an evolutionary simulation in which cooperation is
beneficial, but cooperation between related individuals are essentially
forbidden by the physics of the environment and see if the cooperation genes
still arise and prevail.

------
joe_the_user
Kudos to Wilson for taking a different. Right or wrong, it's impressive for
someone to challenge orthodoxy twice in a lifetime.

Still, looking at the topic mathematically, it's hard for me to see the models
as absolutely opposed.

A behavior of animal could to a degree enhance their kin's survival and
enhance their groups' survival. I suspect the two models seen as opposed
through the difficulty of modeling such a general selection process.

------
st4lz
I had the impression that precise arguments for each hypothesis are completely
not important, and it looks more like being about politics than science.

If we assume that groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of non-
cooperators (called 'heresy') as complete and true, we challenge Dawkin's
atheism.

~~~
al-king
Not sure I follow your last comment. Atheism is not implicitly uncooperative,
and regardless Dawkins contends that atheism is correct, not that it's an
optimal strategy.

~~~
st4lz
Following the assumption above if you take more benefits belonging to a group,
it doesn't matter what you think is correct, in evolutionary sense at least.

I didn't try to say that atheism is uncooperative, rather there are attempts
to put some theories in favor of religion in evolutionary biology.

