Re: Issues: A Question Of Integrity (was: Issues)



"Perplexed in Peoria" jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-

> > NAS:-
> > The gene's eye view is fairly explicit in the 1964 paper. Hamilton
> > formulates neighbour-modulated fitness, which is gene centric, and
then
> > switches to inclusive fitness as a way of recovering the individual.
I
> > will concede though that there is a case to be made that it was
Fisher
> > who invented the gene's eye view -- in my opinion, this is only
> > implicit in Fisher's writings, but then, I haven't read all of his
> > work.

> JM:-
> Fisher certainly formulates the notion of the fitness of a type, which
> turns out to be the same thing as the fitness of a gene in the gene's
> eye view. But his main theorem is that mean fitness of organisms is
> maximized.

JE:-
The only possible way that the mean fitness of an organism can be
maximized by not contradicting Fisher's dictate of what is and what is
not heritable and therefore selectable within nature, is to assume that
the mean fitness of one organism is just the mean fitness of each and
every genomic gene within one organism. This requires initially that an
independent fitness empirically exists for each gene. These must be
added to form one organism total which must then be divided by the
number of genes. The problem with all that is that within nature not
even the fitness of the smallest trait, i.e. one coded by just to loci
has never been _empirically_ demonstrated to be the addition of the
fitnesses of each of just two genes that code for it let alone ALL the
genes that constitute one organism. Neo Darwinism became (after Carol
and Van Valen's usage of Carol re: his Red Queen hypothesis)a Mad
Hatter's Tea Party after Fisher's dictate because even if the
mathematics worked the evolutionary biology and the refutability of
evolutionary theory became reduced to an absurdity.

> JM:-
> AFAIK, he never says (though he could have) that the mean
> fitness of a locus is maximized. If he ever stated this theorem, then
> I would have to concede that he was the true originator of the gene's
> eye view.

JE:-
Yes but can't you see that because additive gene fitnesses remain
heritable via Fisher, fitness independent genes were being assumed to
provide Fisher's maximised organism mean fitness so that selection had
to be operating FIRSTLY at a supposed _independent_ gene level between
independent in fitness genes and not at the empirically based Darwinian
organism level. Fisher's dictate of what is and what is not heritable
simply deleted all gene fitness epistasis when in nature, all gene
fitnesses remain epistatic. Fisher forced the CRITICAL first act of
selection to operate at a mythical gene level and not the empirically
based Darwinian fertile organism level. In reality the very first act of
selection remains at the Darwinian level and NOT Fisher's gene level.
Below the fertile form level all acts of selection remain fitness
DEPENDENT acts which are entirely dependent on the single Darwinian
level so they are all just SUB SELECTIVE EVENTS and not SELECTIVE
events. Fisher confounded sub selective events with selective events.
Subsequently this produced Haldane's false Dilemma and Hamilton's false
explanation of evolution organism fitness altruism derailing the
evolution sociality within nature. The confounding of selective events
with sub selective events became known as the "multi level approach".
Because of the original misuse of Fisher's dictate all the multi level
approach became good for was evading refutation via ad hoc hopping to
some other level after the level you were employing at the time became
refuted.

> JM:-
>snip<
> In his introductory essay (written in the 1990s) to the 1964 papers,
> Hamilton writes (p27) regarding his breakthru:
>
> In essense what I had come to see was the simplification to be
> effected by attacking the problem from two new points of view.
> One was simply the 'gene's eye', as expressed in the 1963 paper
> and in the closing remarks of Part I of the 1964 paper. This view,
> of course, was later brilliantly developed by Richard Dawkins at
> Oxford.

JE:-
It was never just a "simplification" employed these views it was a
empirically based Darwinian fitness *OVERSIMPLIFICATION*. In one stroke
Hamilton's inability to more exactly understand what empirically based
Darwinian fitness actually is and his inability to understand that if
you oversimplify this you reduce evolutionary theory to just a heuristic
exercise, reduced evolutionary theory to a non refutable proposition.
There it has remained ever since.


> JM:-
> [Continued quote of Hamilton's Paper]
> But, at least as we humans perceive the matter, it is
> not genes but we - whole diploid organisms - that make the
> decisions, so I had been delighted to find something approaching
> an individualistic view that I could justify for whole genotypes
> and which could serve as a guide to social adaptation. That was
> the idea of inclusive fitness.

JE:-
What Hamilton appears to be suggesting is: inclusive fitness was only
meant to be a model engineered to help understand fitness at the
Darwinian individual level, i.e. it was never meant TO REPLACE IT. It
appears that dunderheaded mathematicians misused Hamilton's model to
replace organism fitness. Where has it all this nonsense ended up? NAS's
oxymoron: a NON centric model fitness floating about in a Mad Hatter
mathematical aether created to get rid of IBD relatedness which remains
the only allocated fitness lifeline that Hamilton el al heuristic
relatedness, had.


> JM:-
> The 1963 paper says:
> As a simple but admittedly crude model we may imagine a pair of
> genes g and G such that G tends to cause some kind of altruistic
> behavior while g is null.

JE:-
And CRUDE it remains because all gene fitness epistasis remains deleted
to this very day. When you included it Hamilton's reasoning fails
because the rule now becomes: (r^e)^b where e (epistasis) = (minimally)
2 and not just 1. This forces the cost of proxy reproduction to increase
exponentially so that just a few alleles coding for just the one trait
(let alone all the alleles coding for one maximised organism Fitness as
Fisher wished) makes inclusive fitness non affordable. I find it amazing
that NAS (along with most of the other Neo Darwinians that post here)
simply evade this argument.

> JM:-
> [The 1963 paper says] continued:
> Despite the principle of 'survival of
> the fittest' the ultimate criterion which determines whether G
> will spread is not whether the behavior is to the benefit of the
> behaver but whether it is to the benefit of the gene G; and this
> will be the case if the average net result of the behavior is to
> add to the gene pool a handful of genes containing G in higher
> concentration than does the gene pool itself.

JE:-
Firstly, note that Hamilton has absolutely no idea of what an
empirically based Darwinian fitness is. All he knows and all the Neo
Darwinian establishment appears to want to know is Herbert Spencer's
hopeless tautology which is not a valid theory of anything. Secondly,
the argument "..it is to the benefit of the gene G; and this will be the
case if the average net result of the behavior is to add to the gene
pool a handful of genes containing G in higher concentration than does
the gene pool itself" CANNOT prove organism fitness altruism on behalf
of his only proactive actor yet Hamiton's evolution of altruism argument
(the only reason he created this rationale) rests on just this one
supposition.


> JM:-
> In the closing remarks of Part I of the 1964 paper, Hamilton is
> discussing the idea that selfishness to close relatives may be
> counterproductive. But only to close relatives. His final line is:
> Clearly from a gene's point of view it is worthwhile to deprive a
> large number of distant relatives in order to extract a small
> reproductive advantage.
>
> Sorry, John. I misled you. Hamilton did invent (or revitalize)
> the gene's eye view. But he did so only in parallel with a revised
> "inclusive fitness" interpretation of the organism's viewpoint.

JE:-
No apology required because Hamilton's argument remains _hopelessly_
polycentric and therefore entirely non refutable. Why don't you ask the
Pope of Neo Darwinism?

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@xxxxxxxxxx





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Darwins Dangerous Idea
    ... Dennet never points out what a Darwinian MAXIMAND may be, ... which I have termed Total Darwinian Fitness. ... it-too by allowing at least two contradictory units of selection within the ... fitness bound to at least one other _non neutral gene_ within the same ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Removing Lewontins Fallacy From Hamiltons Rule
    ... fitness epistasis which remains total per gene per genome. ... of genes over _organism_ generations of these genes. ... r = relatedness of the actor to the recipients ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: The uncorrected simplifications/oversimplifications of
    ... >> altruism (organism fitness altruism) within nature as supposedly, ... >> binomial expansion (in which all gene fitness epistasis remains deleted) ... >> Hamilton's tautology for the diploid case. ... HR is verified no matter what you define a gene to be. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Can Cultural Evolution Go Backwards ( was: Can evolution go backwards?)
    ... >> increase the Darwinian fitness maximand ... A maximand is something that must always be ... when fertile organism fitness altruism could ... deletion of epistatic genomic gene _fitness_. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Ernst Mayr: Where Are We (1976)
    ... the contribution of any one gene to fitness, ... > organism level. ... the standard "independent selection of loci" model ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)