
In Retrospect: The Selfish Gene - Hooke
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7587/full/529462a.html
======
danieltillett
The selfish gene is one of the few books if you read it with an enquiring mind
it will change you forever. I first read it 30 years ago now (amazing how time
flies) and it still affects the way I see the world.

~~~
mindcrime
It definitely had an effect on me.

To elaborate... prior to reading TSG, I thought of myself as an atheist, but I
held open a (very) small amount of willingness to consider the idea of some
sort of creator, mainly because I'd not heard a convincing counter to the
"irreducible complexity" idea. After reading TSG, I felt convinced that there
is a reasonable way for, say, the eye, optic nerve, etc., to evolve, that
doesn't require the entire thing to appear at once.

Once I crossed that hurdle, I felt a lot more confident in publicly declaring
myself an "atheist" instead of just saying "agnostic" which always felt like
something of a weasel term.

Of course, having grown up in the "Bible Belt" and having many family members
who are devout Christians, this led to some interesting, erm, "discussions"
over the years.

I also appreciated TSG for introducing me to things like the Iterated
Prisoner's Dilemma and the works of Robert Axelrod, Robert Trivers, etc. and
ideas like "kin altruism", "reciprocal altruism", etc. A lot of things make
more sense after reading that book.

~~~
lttlrck
Climbing Mount Improbable had much the same affect on me. However it is worth
noting that Dawkins himself is not certain God does not exist.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-
Daw...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-
cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html)

------
rsync
All of these years later, I still find it _fascinating_ that the man who
brought us the notion of the evolutionarily stable strategy, and who spelled
out why it would be a fools errand to try to work against the ESS ... spends
his free time railing against all of the dimwits he sees going to church.

He should read his own book.

~~~
yomritoyj
It was Maynard-Smith and not Dawkins who introduced ESS.

~~~
sbardle
Contrary to popular belief, Dawkins has never produced original research. He
is a popular science writer, who synthesises recent discoveries in the field
of evolutionary biology into an understandable narrative for the layperson
(albeit with extensive commentary on the non-existence of God).

~~~
garthferengi
I'm not sure why you'd think that, it's clearly false. Dawkins publication
record is easily available (it's even on Wikipedia) and he has most definitely
published original research.

------
lisper
If TSG has a flaw it is IMHO that Dawkins did not fully have the courage of
his convictions. When he introduced the concept of a meme he insisted it was
just an allegory, an illustrative thought experiment but nothing more. I think
this is wrong. I think memes are every bit as legitimately considered alive as
genes. This idea has a lot of explanatory power. We humans are hosts not just
for genes, but for memes as well, in a sort of symbiotic relationship.
Sometimes the interests of our genes and our memes align, such as when we
invent antiseptics and antibiotics. Other times they conflict, such as when we
invent birth control. The seemingly irreconcilable split between liberals and
conservatives could be explained as the beginning of a species split resulting
from this conflict, with liberals evolving a bias towards the interests of
memes and conservatives biased towards the interests of genes

~~~
azakai
I think he was right to not focus too much on the "meme" concept he invented,
because it is quite different from genes, scientifically (which is what he
cares about).

1\. The crucial thing with genes is that they are "binary", you either get a
gene from a parent, or not. Mutations happen, but they produce new genes.
Genes are "immortal" (exist for many, many generations in identical form).
Memes, on the other hand, are not binary in this way. Ideas constantly change,
and we can't reduce them to a binary code.

2\. The rules of genetic competition are complex, but we have a good
framework: natural selection and sexual selection. However, to explain memetic
competition, we need to talk about psychology and sociology and so forth (in
addition to biology). There are already fields doing that, from psychology and
sociology to literature and religious studies, mostly in a non-scientific way,
because we have yet to find a good scientific one.

3\. For those reasons, "memetics" never succeeded as an academic discipline.
The field has not succeeded in providing useful theories to be tested that
tell us quantative things we don't already know.

Of course, at the same time the insights you mention are true. But they are
not anywhere near as powerful as the concept of genes. They are mostly useful
as an analogy, and to open people's minds, but not scientifically.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The crucial thing with genes is that they are "binary", you either get a
> gene from a parent, or not. Mutations happen, but they produce new genes.
> Genes are "immortal" (exist for many, many generations in identical form).
> Memes, on the other hand, are not binary in this way. Ideas constantly
> change, and we can't reduce them to a binary code.

Memes are not ideas, they are behaviors. They are either preserved exactly
(like genes) or something modifies them to create a new replicable behavior
(again, like genes.) The difference you attempt to paint here is spurious.

~~~
azakai
> Memes are not ideas, they are behaviors.

Why do you say that? Wikipedia's definition disagrees with you,

> A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from
> person to person within a culture".

as does Dawkins himself,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins)

And Genes aren't behaviors either. Behaviors are something that the phenotype
might perform due to certain genes, but the behavior is not the gene.

Genes are a code. They are abstract, discrete, and immortal. That's why they
are so useful in biology. As the Wikipedia article notes, the lack of such a
parallel in memes limits their scientific utility.

------
edanm
Great article!

Here's a question: What other books that were written for a popular audience
(or that achieved a largely popular audience) also served as works that
affected science itself? E.g. the article talks about The Selfish Gene being
both a pop-sci book, but also a book that profoundly changed the field of
Evolution.

Are there other good examples?

~~~
gordon_freeman
On the origin of species by Charles Darwin

~~~
JadeNB
That's an interesting one, but was it _written_ for a popular audience? (Maybe
it was; I don't know.) In terms of achieving a popular audience, "Relativity:
The special and general theory" may be in the same league as Darwin.

~~~
lolc
I read Origin of Species before The Selfish Gene and I enjoyed it a lot. I
actually knew enough about evolution to follow all arguments easily. This is
not surprising given that Darwin tried to introduce the idea to an audience
that was largely alien to the concept.

I think what I liked most about the book is the (clearly labeled)
speculations. He was already anticipating a lot.

------
slazaro
The first chapter alone blew my mind the first time I read it around ten years
ago. I read this book once every couple years and it's always thought
provoking.

------
gstn
A groundbreaking book to me, both for the genetics as well as the concept of
the meme. Brilliant.

------
estefan
Ridley's The Red Queen was a fascinating follow up after having read this.
They both completely changed my world view.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, _The Red Queen_ was great. Some other good related titles are _Sperm
Wars_ , _The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating_ , and _The
Mating Mind_.

------
jostmey
When I first picked up the book I was not ready for it---I hated it. It took
about ten years for me to read the book, and by the time I finished my view of
biology/evolution was forever changed.

~~~
ap3
What did you hate about it?

~~~
danieltillett
I can’t speak for the OP, but my experience with giving the book to people who
say they hated it, is that for some people it questions too many of their
basic assumptions about the world. They can’t rationally argue against the
content so they are left with irrational hate.

~~~
id
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)
at work

------
dominotw
Dawkins and Jiddu Krishnamurthi changed the way I see/experience life, the way
I see culture, my sense of morality, forever.

------
twoy
The Extended Phenotype:The Long Reach of the Gene, another author's book is
also very interesting. Althought the book might include too expert knowledge,
the core idea is simple as such it can be explained in the book's title. To
think what the idea implies caltivate our view of world.

------
hyperion2010
I know the TSG gets lots of attention and lots of people seem to take it as
the fundamental word on how evolution works. This is simply not true. TSG
presents the rather limited view of a geneticist thinking about genes and is
directly at odds with other understandings of how evolution works such as
genes as followers [0]. I often have a visceral reaction to such
individualistic and incredibly western views of how evolution proceeds because
they seem to be wilfully blind to the fact that for 99+% of the time evolution
does not operate at the level of individuals, in fact, if you are in one of
those rare events where individuals DO matter your likelihood of extinction is
incredibly high and as a species you really don't want to be there. If the
perspective offered in TSG has a place anywhere in evolution it is long before
there were multicellular organisms or perhaps even cells.

I was inspired to this rant the other day when watching a video of tortoises
flipping each other over [1]. Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE
benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the ladies
as a result. No amount of kin selection can prevent this if there is not
already a significant latent potential in the organism's behavioral repertoire
to cooperate (flip). The notion that a single gene is somehow in control is a
complete and utter fiction, SNPs are not robust ways to build behaviors or
even to create phenotypic diversity. The variation that leads one tortoise to
flip the other over is likely the product of thousands of genes and is far
more continuous than a simple 'flipping gene.' In fact, if you see flipping
behavior at all it is extremely likely that the developmental program and the
genome of the organism as a whole is structured such that the behavior will
arise repeatedly in different individuals as a result of a number of different
minor changes in gene expression. If a flower grows, its is more likely to be
the case that the ground is good for growing flowers than that the flower
suddenly innovated.

tl;dr If you want your tortoises to flip, you're going to need more than one
gene and you can't think about evolution on an individual basis.

0\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21257223](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21257223),
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva_Jablonka2/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva_Jablonka2/publication/226572469_Genes_as_Followers_in_Evolution__A_Post-
synthesis_Synthesis/links/552806e90cf29b22c9ba0641.pdf) 1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tortoise+flip](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tortoise+flip)

~~~
qb45
> I was inspired to this rant the other day when watching a video of tortoises
> flipping each other over [1]. Early in tortoise evolution there are HUGE
> benefits to a male that doesn't flip his buddies over and gets all the
> ladies as a result.

I'm not sure if you are actually disagreeing with TSG.

Dawkings repeats several times in the book that to him evolution is not about
individuals, but about genes. Heck, even the title is "selfish gene", not
"selfish tortoise".

Your tortoise benefits from screwing over his competitors, but his genes might
not. Like, for example, suppose there is a combination of genes for
noncooperative tortoise. He leaves others to die so the next generation is all
assholes like him and they die out because there is noone to help when they
inevitably get in trouble. Boom, genes are gone.

In fact, TSG also tries to analyze how cooperative and noncooperative
strategies may coexist in single species and tend towards some equilibrium,
which depends on costs/benefits of particular behaviors. And, iirc, such crude
strategies like "always defect" often ended up outsmarted by subtler ones.

~~~
hyperion2010
Yes, I guess in the right light a selfish gene operating locally ends up
promoting cooperative behavior for exactly the reason suggested to the local
detriment of the individual (It is just that there is unlikely to be any
single gene that can do that). It would be interesting to see what the
carrying capacity of such defector genes is as a function of population size.
I usually interpret 'selfish' to mean genes that produce defectors (ie no
flip) since there is a local benefit to the organism (and thus the gene itself
over short timescales) but Dawkins does use it a bit more broadly. I still
find implying telos to genes is misleading since the same gene (allele) can
produce opposite effects when surrounded by different environments and thus
any function it may appear to serve is not intrinsic but conditional.

~~~
qb45
> I usually interpret 'selfish' to mean genes that produce defectors (ie no
> flip) since there is a local benefit to the organism (and thus the gene
> itself over short timescales) but Dawkins does use it a bit more broadly.

Dawkins seems to define "selfish gene" as "one caring about its long term
survival and spread", whether individual tortoises like it or not. Because
that's what ultimately counts - contemporary tortoises are shaped by genes
which survived millions of years by whatever means happened to be successful,
which needs not to be defection.

And, btw, you may want to actually read TSG, it's pretty cool :)

------
waspleg
My best friend is a devout atheist and he likes to quote dawkins and hitchens
and other high priests of his religion. I use these terms purposefully. He's
every bit as fervent as any hell fire and brimstone Baptist.

We are/were both raised in, and still live in, the "Bible Belt" as well. I've
studied most world religions, have read quite a bit in that arena from the
esoteric like "A Course in Miracles", "The Book of Urantia", Meister Eckhart,
much of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Tao Te Ching, etc etc to formalized things
like William James's the variety of religious experience.

I've had my own, I would say spiritual rather than religious, experiences that
are deeply personal and beyond the rationale of atheists. I have seen
firsthand how introspection and quiet-minded observation can provide insight
and intuition.

However, I also I went to science magnet schools starting in pre-school, work
in IT, and am quite a rational pragmatic individual.

I consider myself to be an agnostic at the moment mostly due to a lack of
options. I don't consider it to be a "weasel term". Uncertainty is ubiquitous
in life. How is this topic any different? There's always Pascal's Wager ;)

~~~
mikeash
Uncertainty is ubiquitous, yet few people feel a need to qualify their
disbelief in leprechauns, unicorns, Darth Vader, etc. Why is it only gods
where this seems to be required?

As for Pascal's Wager, what if God rewards atheists and sends believers to
Hell?

~~~
martinflack
> Uncertainty is ubiquitous, yet few people feel a need to qualify their
> disbelief in leprechauns, unicorns, Darth Vader, etc. Why is it only gods
> where this seems to be required?

It's because those things would by definition be within our universe and thus
probably testable. However a deity that controls our universe may be outside
it, thus leaving us with no way to test for him, despite his control.

In hacker analogy, would a Sim character in a VM be able to be completely sure
that you (god) don't exist?

To "not believe in god" is rational based on available evidence. To "believe
there is no god" is an act of faith in itself because it (very likely) cannot
be tested.

At least IMHO.

~~~
mikeash
Darth Vader, having lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, is
untestable too.

~~~
ricksplat
and what's more if he's outside my light cone that's a physical fact.

------
tosseraccount
If selfishness is driving genes, why do they mutate?

~~~
lowmagnet
See the note in the article about the use of the phrase immortal instead of
selfish. Simply, selfish was a poor word choice, not a literal statement of
the action of genes.

Genes don't "choose" to mutate any more than they "are selfish"

~~~
tosseraccount
"the digital information in a gene is effectively immortal"

I'm having a tough time with this part; the information is clearly NOT
immortal. It changes.

[ btw, looks like dang got here before you did ; thanks, dude ]

~~~
svachalek
If you increment the number 3, you get 4, but 3 has not changed -- it's still
and always will be 3.

~~~
lowmagnet
I love this, and will use it in the future to explain a few things to people
who believe in the essential immutability of the being (such as ourselves)
versus the invariants of the universe.

------
sridca
While it has become fashionable and easy to cease believing in God, humans are
wont to continue believing in Authority.

Why, for example, that despite professing to uphold the gene-centric
evolutionary understanding humans, who are otherwise flesh and blood bodies,
can't help but think inside the restrictive box of self/ identities .... while
granting authority to select set of identities - not just clergy men, but
authorities in various forms.

Modern social justice movements are another example of this authority-complex,
wherein victim-disciples "pray" to the Government-God to "bless" them with
advantages and "fight" against the privileged-evils. Does not anyone recognize
a familiar pattern?

Belief in a supernatural being (God) is but a symptom of something much more
sinister about humanity. It is one thing to question _a_ belief, but entirely
another thing to question _the_ need to believe itself.

Refer to the Milgram experiment for the classic study done on Authority:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)

~~~
dominotw
Religion != God.

~~~
sridca
I renamed the one mention of "Religion" in my post to "Belief in a
supernatural being". This is such a trivial edit anyway ... do you have
anything substantial to contribute towards the key point I've made in my
comment above?

~~~
orionblastar
There exists religions that do not believe in a God like Buddhism. Buddha was
just a human being who reached enlightenment and taught how to reach it. He
was not a God or super natural.

~~~
sridca
Be that as it may ... as existence of religions without Gods is a tangential
point, do you have anything substantial to contribute towards the key point
I've made in my (mysteriously downvoted) original comment further above?

~~~
orionblastar
You got downvoted because you attacked religion and authority.

Let me try and make a point. When Steve Jobs founded Apple he also had founded
a religion that worshiped technology. Apple had a certain cult following of
Apple users wanting to belong to Apple's culture and way of life. Steve Jobs
wanted a different company than IBM and other corporations, he wanted Apple to
be different from Microsoft. Steve Jobs was an authority on how computers
should work and function. He tried to make easier to use computers with the
Lisa and original Macintosh but both failed because they cost a lot and didn't
have a lot of apps available for them. After being fired in 1985 or resigning
whatever you want to believe, Steve Jobs founded a new company named Next that
used Unix instead of starting over from scratch. Steve Jobs tried to create a
new religion with a new company. Apple struggled without Steve Jobs, it seemed
as if the CEO chair at Apple had an ejector seat. When Steve Jobs was brought
back at Apple he turned around the company and got people interested in the
new projects they worked on. Apple has this user experience factor that just
attracts people to their religion. The iPhones and iPads basically sell
themselves and the Macintosh sells itself because it doesn't have the flaws of
a Windows PC. Even after Steve Jobs died, Apple still has a religious
following to it.

Sure there is a religious experience wired into our genes to worship something
and obey some sort of authority. Which is why people follow politicians as
authority figures even if they pass laws taking away rights and freedoms and
doing domestic spying. It is why some people worship sports stars or musicians
or movie makers or even the rich elite.

Atheists for some reason don't seem to have this gene to worship something.
Their brains are wired for skepticism and they question authority instead of
blindly follow them.

The more math and science one learns, the more likely one is to become an
atheist. This is a problem Islam faced when they had their golden age of
science and math discoveries. It is what had stopped the golden age out of
fear that people would abandon Islam and worship science and math instead. The
Catholic Church also faced this and it lead to the dark ages. In fact India,
China, and other nations, once they stopped researching math and science,
their empires declined.

During the golden age in Europe, people wanted to worship science.

The more science, math, and technology advances the more likely people will
abandon religion because they don't need it anymore.

Sure you got Dawkins criticizing religion in many areas, he used to be a
Catholic but lost his faith. People see him as an authority and want to follow
him as well. He has written great books on biology and is very smart.

People want to follow some authority figure and be like them, they want
leaders to tell them how to live their lives and what the meaning of life is
to them. Be it a God, a politician, a business person, a sports figure, a
musician, a singer, an atheist, whatever people want to follow someone they
think has it all figured out. I think this is some part of evolution and in
our genes but not everyone has this in their genes. It goes back a long way
when people formed tribes for survival. Perhaps before religion was developed.
Every tribe has a leader who is an authority figure. For religions that leader
happened to be a God or in the case of Buddhism a human being who discovered
enlightenment and the end to suffering.

Even if there was no belief in a God or Gods, there still would be a religion
worshiping something else.

The rich elite worship money and power for example, and most have stopped
practicing their religions in order to spend more time to manage their
businesses.

The poor who can't find a good paying job, turn to religion for hope and help.
There exists a fellowship of people they can get support and advice from.

I don't know if any of this makes sense to you. But religion plays a role in
humanity and has played a role in evolution as well. Over time people have
followed a religion because of some basic need for hope and understanding. As
technology and medical science advances people leave religion because they
feel they don't need it anymore as problems are solved by technology and
medical science.

The human race goes through a social evolution as well, changes to society
that don't always agree with religious views.

~~~
sridca
I am not at all sure what point you are trying to make. Moreover you
contradict the key point in my original comment - that despite being an
atheist, one is _not_ free of the belief in an Authority. And there is no gene
to worship something (which gene some people lack); that is your (strange)
belief, as no scientist anywhere on the planet has discovered such a gene. The
need to believe in, and follow, an authority is as instinctual as any other
emotion.

