Re: Removing Lewontin's Fallacy From Hamilton's Rule
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:20:16 -0500 (EST)
"Perplexed in Peoria" jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
> > > name_and_address_supplied@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
> > > > If we want to show that Hamilton's
> > > > rule is a general principle, this is the way we have to go. But if
> we
> > > > want to say anything about causality we need an explicit model, and
> > > > with that disappears our generality.
> > > JE:-
> > > Yes, Popper would agree with you because the most general of
> statements are
> > > just epistemological perpetual motion machines, i.e. tautologies where
> > > causality remains 100% reversible. So far, Hamilton's Rule has not
> been
> > > supplied with any empirically based fitness limits which are
> absolutely
> > > required to break Hamilton's fitness tautology. Like Price's
> mathematics, HR
> > > does not represent a valid proposition of science.
> John, you seem to limit 'proposition of science' to things that I would
> call 'laws of nature'.
JE:-
Jim, I limit propositions of science to conjectures (theories) that can be
verified or refuted within nature.
> Hamilton's law - at least the 1970 tautological
> version - is not a law of nature. It is a theorem of mathematics. But
> that doesn't mean that it is useless to scientists. Science makes use
> of a variety of propositions with no inherent physical content -
> Liouvilles's theorem, Bayes's theorem, Wigner's CPT theorem, etc.
JE:-
The issue here concerns the proper or improper use of heuristics within the
empirically based sciences. Hamilton's Rule was and remains an empty
tautology of mathematics incorrectly proffered as valid theory of nature in
its own right. Please take another look at the premises that Felsenstein
used to derive HR and confirm or deny to readers that the premises he used
were tautological. I have requested all sbe posters of integrity to make
this basic test on a number of different occasions where I have stated will
not do this for anybody here. I find it inconceivable that anybody of
integrity would simply refuse to make this test.
HR is derived from a major oversimplification of Darwinism where TDF for the
actor was and remains, deleted. This has allowed cause and effect to become
reversed within a 100% relative proposition providing the empirically false
gene centric argument that "genes use organisms to replicate genes" which is
permeating consciousness like Herbert Spencer's tautology "survival of the
fittest" did with disastrous results. The testable scientific truth is the
contrary proposition: organisms use genes to reproduce organisms. It is just
history repeating itself because we flatly refuse to correct the errors of
the past. HR also allowed two critical simplifications: the deletion of all
epistasis e within relatedness r^e by just artificially fixing e to 1 and
the deletion of the number of recipients n which was and remains, absolutely
required to CORRECTLY convert Hamilton's ONE group centric b selectee into a
heuristic gene centric measure so that it could be compared to a gene
centric version of the ONE organism centric c with which it competes for x
reproductive resources. HR remains uncorrected for one oversimplification
and two simplifications yet it has been allowed to contest and win against
the empirically based theory it was oversimplified from which constitutes an
utter misuse of Hamilton's model, i.e. just an absurdity.
> > NAS:-
> > See above.
> >
> > Also, natural selection does not care about causation, only
> > correlation. A trait that is correlated with high fitness is favoured,
> > whether it caused that high fitness or not.
> That depends on whether you wish to view 'natural selection' as a
> biological process (in which case formulas describing it ARE in some
> weak sense 'laws of nature') or whether you only wish to view 'natural
> selection' as a technique for organizing data about past populations.
JE:-
Darwin's description of the non random process of natural selection which he
employed within a very specific theory of evolution which was then and
remains today empirically based, did allow that theory to be verified or
refuted within nature so it is NOT based on just "correlations" it is based
on very specific predictions of nature.
> If you want to view it as a biological process, which continues in the
> present day, then you need to attach some kind of causality to those
> correlations, if only so that you can project the observed motions of
> the past into the future.
JE
The "causality to those correlations" is non random natural selection
operating within refutable Darwinian theory providing predictions of non
random gene freq. changes within one population a just an effect and NOT as
a cause. That "cause" is TDF which represents a Darwinian maximand fitness.
This means that TDF cannot be selected to be reduced as Hamilton et al
continue argue that it can be within however, just a misused heuristic
exercise. I argue that TDF represents the only EMPIRICALLY refutable
maximand that actually exists within evolutionary theory where I have
outlined a test to refutation for this conjecture. NAS argues that inclusive
fitness is such a maximand. I have pointed out to him that a relative
fitness cannot constitute a maximand simply because you cannot differentiate
it from a minimand within a 100% relative proposition where a minimand
represents a contrary proposition to a maximand so it cannot be both.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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