Re: Challenges for Evolutionary Ethics

From: John Edser (edser_at_tpg.com.au)
Date: 10/09/04 

Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 17:30:44 +0000 (UTC)

"Phil Roberts, Jr." <philrob@ix.netcom.com> quoted:
>
> "A Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism"
> http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/
>
> "The basic argument is that when current environment + current
> culture leads to sizeable deviations from ancestral environment,
> the ability of one generation to "program" the preferences of
> the next can evolve, because it is fitness-enhancing to be so
> programmed. But preference programming is the same as instilling
> goals in individuals, which they then desire to maximize. When
> susceptibility to programming (called "socialization" in
> sociology) is fitness enhancing, even individually fitness-
> reducing goals can be programmed in individuals (e.g., suicide
> bombers), and the gene that facilitates being programmed can
> proliferate." (Gintis)

JE:-
The "gene that facilitates being programmed can
proliferate", if and only if, the total Darwinian
fitness of it's parent form is _increased_. If one
form only increases its fitness relative to
another then _both_ forms may have suffered a
total Darwinian fitness _reduction_ moving both
the programming gene and its competing wildtype
gene towards extinction. Hamilton's logic
(which is what Gintis logic is based on) remains
faulty. It cannot measure any _total_ increase
or decrease in fitness. All it can measure is
just a relative difference between rb and c via
simple subtraction. This being the case it cannot
measure the difference between c as a selfless
donation and c as a selfish investment that
may entail a risk of death. Phil Roberts has
a total blockage factoring in this cost when
insurance companies have been doing so for
over a century making enormous profits as proof
of the correctness of death as risk for a gain.
Unless c is a selfish (but mutual) investment both
genes become absolutely reduced and therefore move to
extinction. Hamilton et al have got way with selling
false organism fitness altruism (OFA) for over 50 years.
What they have in fact been peddling is organism
fitness mutualism, i.e. they sold off OFA in
OFM clothing to a gullible public and got away
with it. Today a multi million dollar industry which
includes Sociobiology has been built on this misuse
of Hamilton's rule. So much money and prestige
has been invested in it that nobody has the stomach to
critically examine the gross error that exists
within Hamilton et al logic. To his credit Dr O'Hara
has admitted in sbe that c remains arbitrary within
Hamilton's rule and that the rule was never meant to
be used to sustain OFA after group selection failed to
do so. However, history shows that this has been the
only consistent (mis) use of Hamilton's rule!
 
Dr O'Hara refuses to admit that Hamilton's rule was misused
to support OFA after group selection failed to be able to
do so. You will probably find him in the bar attempting to
come to terms with such a self contradiction.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@tpg.com.au

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Most important paper in evolutionary biology
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  • Re: Interview with Samantha Kleinberg on CL-GODB, Common Lisp & Bioinformatics
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