Re: Underestimating 'r'
- From: an588@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catherine Woodgold)
- Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:14:09 -0400 (EDT)
"Perplexed in Peoria" (jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) writes:
> "Catherine Woodgold" <an588@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:diq3mu$1irv$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> ... It turns out that if the rate of A
>> in the population is high, then the best strategy
>> for the Aa organism if it wants to promote the
>> rate of A may be to commit suicide (or to
>> stay alive only if by doing so it can cause
>> a lot of harm to its relatives!)
>
> But there is no reason why an Aa organism would
> 'want' to promote the rate of A. It has an
> equal 'interest' in promoting the rate of a.
....
> However, even people like me who LIKE teleological
> language become somewhat nervous about the use of
> 'want' and 'interests' in a case like this.
Maybe some people "want" to use teleological language
at certain times, and other people "want" to use it
at other times. I happened to feel like using it
right then, even though I figured somebody would
probably object to it. How about just translating what I
said into non-teleological language and assuming
that's what I meant?
> In fact, if the frequency of A in the population
> is high, the organism will be more interested in
> promoting the success of the rarer allele a than
> in promoting the success of the common allele A.
I disagree with this statement. Can we make
it more clearly stated and testable and then
test it?
Do you mean this: If A is common and a is rare, then
(averaged over many possible genes A and a) an organism
with Aa is more likely to behave in a way that promotes
the prevalence of a than it is to behave in a way that
promote the prevalance of A.
I hereby argue that it's the other way around: if a is
rare, it's more likely to be a recent mutation and
to just behave in some random way. Since A is common,
it must have gotten common somehow so it's more
likely to behave in a way that promotes its own success.
A is more likely to have been tested in pairs with
other genes -- that is, it's probably been
paired with a lot of other genes in the
past, yet it's still common. So A may tend to cause some
behaviour in Aa that promotes A, while a might behave in a
way that promotes either A or a.
--
Cathy Woodgold
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html
We are all Iraqis now.
.
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- Underestimating 'r'
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- Underestimating 'r'
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