Re: OOL I - Manifesto and metatheory


"Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t"; <rem642b@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:d3mbdm$buv$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Handicap theory is a theory of biological communication in which
> > > information sent by a cell, organism, etc., must be costly to the
> > > sender in order to be reliable to the recipient.
> > > (Which would usually require group selection within an enclosed
> > > micro-ecosystem in order for natural selection to result in such
> > > willingness of sender to pay that cost.)
>
> > No. It doesn't require group selection. But the evolution of
> > communication is a complex subject with a theoretical structure that
> > is still immature. Maynard Smith was one of the leading researchers,
> > and the main theoretical tool is game theory.
>
> I'm aware of only three mechnisms by which cooperation can be an ESS
> (Evolutionary Stable Strategy):
> (1) Selfish gene cooperates with copies of self, so that the species of
> gene is essentially helping itself even if instances of that species
> are helping others. This is generally manifested as "kin selection". It
> doesn't work unless individuals can recognize their relatives with high
> reliability.

Not true. All that is required for kin selection to operate is that the
actor must socially interact with relatives more frequently than he does
with the general (breeding and competitive) population.

> (2) Tit-for-tat game theory, whereby individuals keep track of who is
> being nice and who is being nasty, and cooperate only with others who
> have been nice. This doesn't work unless individuals can recognize
> specific others and distinguish them and keep track of which have been
> nice and which haven't.

Which doesn't necessarily require nervous systems. Plants, for example,
could conceivably play tit-for-tat with other nearby plants.

> (3) Group selection, whereby groups of individuals are trapped
> together, and there are many such groups, so that the groups as whole
> entitites are competing with each other, so that groups which cooperate
> survive better than groups that have constant infighting. In the case
> I'm talking about, the "individuals" are individual replicators within
> a "micro-ecosystem" that constitutes a single "cell".
>
> There's no way that individual chemical replicators have the
> intelligence to either recognize kin (and realize the behaviour
> required to help such kin even if recognized), nor play tit-for-tat
> game theory.
>
> If you know of a fourth way cooperation can be an ESS, please tell.

If the sending of trustworthy signals is classified as "cooperation",
then there are certainly ways of having an ESS that don't fit into
the above three.

> Meanwhile, you seem to be claiming that within a single cell, various
> chemical replicators are intelligent enough to play tit-for-tat game
> theory with each other. If that's your claim, please post so I can have
> a laugh.

I think you have been interacting with Hendricks474 too long. You are
beginning to acquire his rhetorical ploy of totally inventing and/or
misrepresenting the "opponent's" position, and then burying it with
heavy ridicule.

I said nothing about tit-for-tat, nothing about cooperation, and, in fact
nothing about communication at all other than the fact that group selection
is not necessary to explain it. Zahavi's insight that trustworthy signals
must be costly makes sense precisely because there is no group-induced
shared interest between the sender and receiver of a communication.
The only congruence of their interests arises from the externally imposed
cost/benefit structure of a non-zero-sum game.

However, since you raise the subject, let me say that I think that
reciprocity (of which tit-for-tat is one model) is probably of central
importance in any OOL scenario in which there is symbiosis (leading to
union) between two species of replicators.

To explain this, let me first offer my own (non-standard) taxonomy of
degrees of symbiosis (or mutualism).
1. Weak mutualism (or ecological mutualism) is a relationship between
species. For example, plants provide food to animals, who then return
CO2 to the atmosphere and nitrogen to the soil, thus benefiting plants.
Cycles of this sort are of little evolutionary significance because no
individual plant or animal organism has much incentive to hold up his
end of the bargain.
2. Strong mutualism (or 1-1 mutualism) involves an exchange of benefits
between individuals (presumably of different species). A flowering
plant provides nectar to the bee, and the bee reciprocates by transporting
pollen. The reciprocity of the transaction is almost automatic - neither
bee nor plant has any need to remember individuals of the other species.
However, if the species can remember each other, then there is the possibility
of deferred strong mutualism (tit-for-tat) in which the reciprocity is not
automatic.
Note that I said that the reciprocity is "almost" automatic. Cheating IS
possible - a flower could provide pollen, but no nectar, or a mutant bee
could have teflon-coated hairs on the legs that do not transport pollen.
Models of this situation are VERY complex, involving Zahavi processes as
well as the possibility of group-selective and kin-selective mechanisms.
3. Iron-clad mutualism is strong mutualism without the possibility of
cheating by either party. This (impossibility of cheating) might arise
in one of two ways:
a. There are no cheating variants because there are no variants - no
mutations. Many models of primitive replicators (including yours IIRC)
make heritable variation in the replicator almost impossible.
b. Cheating is physically impossible. A "fair" exchange of benefits
must take place or there is no exchange at all. For example, the
host interacts with symbiotic mitochondria by exchange of material
through port-antiport mechanisms. The structure of these mechanisms
requires balanced flows in both directions. If a mitochondria doesn't
provide high energy phosphates to the host, the host does not (can not!)
provide reduced organics to the mitochondrion. And vise-versa.

Iron-clad mutualism between two autocatalytic cycles could take place
if the two exchange materials at an intersection between the two cycles.
An ecological mutualism between two cycles, in which the waste products
of one are released to the "soup", from which they are extracted as
food by the second (which then releases wastes, etc.) - such ecological
mutualism is IMO without evolutionary significance for OOL. For OOL,
we need iron-clad mutualism, or else we should forego the symbiotic
union model all together, and start with a quasi-cellular organism.


.