Re: Issues: A Question Of Integrity
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 21:00:48 -0400 (EDT)
Tim Tyler tim@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
> TT:-
> The idea that it's not organisms that benefit but genes seems
> pretty much at the heart of kin selection theory to me.
> Various people have described Dawkins as Hamilton's PR department -
> and as I recall, Dawkins is among them - saying something along the
> lines of there'd been an important revolution in biology - but that
> nobody on the street seemed to have noticed - and that he saw his
> role mainly as explaining the discoveries of others.
JE:-
I would argue that Dawkins could see that the empirical reality of
Hamilton's Rule was of a Darwinian c being compared to one rb total.
This was just a repeat of the old discredited battle of individual
selection Vs group selection (individual selection always wins hands
down). A Darwinian individually selected c cost being compared to a
group selected rb is just more apples being compared to oranges.
Evolutionary theory was yet again being subjected to the unsightly saga
of individual selection Vs group selection when Hamilton's Rule was
supposed to of saved it from such humiliation. The only way out was gene
centricity which Dawkins made explicit as the now, sole basis of
Hamilton's Rule. Maybe Dawkins just forgot (or perhaps he just didn't
care) that not a single empirical non epistatic gene fitness existed
only allowing gene centricity to be a misused heuristic.
> > JM:-
> > As you may know, I have some reservations regarding the "gene's
> > eye" view, and I somewhat prefer the 1964 logic to the 1970 logic.
> > My reasoning here will sound a little "Edserian". The 1970 logic
> > is fine as math, but somewhat misleading as biology. Based strictly
> > on the 1970 "regression" definition of r, one is led to consider
> > "green beard altruism" as a real possibility. But the 1964 logic
> > does not lead in that (mistaken, IMO) direction.
> TT:_
> There may be a few places where "green beard" altruism can occur.
> http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=39061
> Defines the effect pretty broadly:
> ``A "green beard" refers to a gene, or group of genes, that is able to
> recognize itself in other individuals and direct benefits to these
> individuals.''
JE:-
It simply doesn't work.
Such an event requires gene fitness epistasis to suddenly become "non
deleted" within the rule because more than one locus is now required. In
this event (r^e)b > c where e=2 minimally. Because e is the exponent of
r the cost of gene fitness epistasis increases geometrically forcing the
price of proxy reproduction to very quickly become far too expensive to
bother with.
I would strongly suggest you also consider the ramifications of the rule
multiplied by -1 (-rb<-c). Both the rule (rb>c) and the transformed rule
produce exactly the same numerical result. However Hamilton's Rule is
*NOT* just about a 100% relative comparison of rb to c it is also about
who did what to who in order to produce the same inclusive fitness
result. This point can be sharply proven by simply comparing the social
action in the rule and the transformed rule. The non transformed rule
represents a fitness DEBIT for the actor because the actor provided b to
recipients but in the transformed rule the negative cost c represents an
actor fitness CREDIT because the recipients provided b to the actor via
the proactive action of the actor which the passive recipients were
powerless to stop. Unless you argue that an actor donating something is
the same act as an actor stealing something just because the amount b is
the same in both cases, then the transformed rule CANNOT BE RATIONALLY
EQUAL to the non transformed rule as everybody here (including
yourself?) argues. This being the case the rule can only measure
organism fitness altruism (OFA) OR organism fitness selfishness (OFS) as
the cause of ANY subsequent inclusive fitness event (where the rule
cannot even diagnose which is which). Please note: CRITICAL organism
fitness mutualism (OFM) cannot be diagnosed, at all, using either rule.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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