Re: Removing Lewontin's Fallacy From Hamilton's Rule
- From: "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:51:47 -0500 (EST)
<jim_bowery@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dkt9cf$3c3$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > as Hamilton's
> > logic for kin selection shows, there is almost no gain in inclusive
> > fitness that can be gained by recognizing distant kin and treating them
> > more beneficiently that extremely distant kin.
>
> You obviously aren't aware of the implications of Price's equations as
> explicated by W. D. Hamilton in "Innate Social Aptitudes of Man":
>
> http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/isaom.html
>
I am quite aware of them. It is curious that the only item of Hamilton's
writings that you seem to be aware of is this paper, the one that Trivers
called 'Fascist' and Washburn called 'racist'. As I look at the ideas
expressed in your web site and your newsgroup oeuvre, I am let to suspect
that these criticisms are what drew you to the paper.
However, Hamilton wrote many other things, some of them more recently.
You may wish to check out the introductory essay (written in the 1990s)
to his 1971 'Spite' paper, which appears in Chapter 6 of "Narrow Roads of
Geneland". In it, Hamilton clarifies that the use of the Price equations
to justify group selection doesn't really work in the real world. The
point has been made more mathematically by Queller, Grafen, Taylor,
Frank, and others.
Now, admitedly, when I stated that there would be no gain from the ability
to recognize distant kin by racial cues, I was thinking only about kin
selection and not group selection. I do tend to discount the importance
of group selection, since I have seen adequate mathematical treatment
to convince me that no 'group' which persists longer than a single
generation can be of evolutionary significance.
The idea that you seem to be promoting - the evolutionary and biological
importance of human racial groups, with populations in the millions and
histories of coherent existence for thousands of years, and with a
kind of Spenserian duty for these groups to engage in a conflict for
group survival - well, I consider these views to be better suited for
a political newsgroup than a scientific one.
.
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