Re: Haldane's Dilemma - again, again, again, ...
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 13:45:45 -0400 (EDT)
joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Joe Felsenstein) wrote:-
Here:
http://www1.minn.net/~science/CostTheory1.pdf
is a link to Remine's more recent summary of his argument.
You have my sympathies. Wikipedia is vulnerable to people pushing one
side of an argument, and changing each other's text back and forth
endlessly.
In the associated discussion page I see Walter is contributing without
signing
his name -- tacky, tacky.
Probably the best one can hope for is to say: some people say (this), but
others reply (that).
At the risk of pushing my own views ... take a look at my 1971 article
in American Naturalist. It argues that the "cost of natural selection"
is imposed by environmental deterioration, which is counteracted by
natural selection after a delay. The cost is in the extra reproductive
excess necessary to keep the population from going extinct in the face of
these environmental deteriorations. If the substitutions are advantageous
mutations, not brought about by an environmental change, then they
cause an increase in reproductive excess (or a reduction in mortality)
quite sufficient to offset any cost and the more of them there are the
better off is the species. I thought then, and think now, that this
clarified the matter.
JE:-
My understanding of this issue is that ReMine appears to be arguing that an
absolute (total) cost of substitution has to be paid no-matter-what whereas
Felsenstein seems to be arguing that this cost can be totally absorbed
within a relative cost structure so that it can become reduced to just a
zero cost. A simple analogy may help to illustrate these contradictory
positions.
The absolute cost to the car manufacturing sector for each car that it sells
is the production and marketing costs per car, per _independent_ car
manufacturer within that sector. If this cost remains the same for one
particular firm but sales keep on increasing for that company so that a
break even point is eventually reached where the total profits pay for the
total costs then it will only appear that each car is being manufactured and
marketed at just a zero cost by that particular firm. The "excess" generated
via increasing profits can absorb the absolute cost but only AFTER it has
firstly been paid. No way around this non reversible logical linkage exists.
In every case each and every firm must pay its own absolute cost before it
can become absorbed by profits. In a population of independent firms each
and every firm has to pay its own absolute cost for each and every car that
it manufactures BEFORE sales by that firm can contribute to removing this
cost on just a relative basis. Treating a population of independent firms as
just the one same financial entity by adding all costs and all profits
together will utterly confuse the payment of this cost and may even reverse
cause and effect within the argument. Averaging these costs will not help
much because the better firms become absorbed by the poorer ones within just
a group selective accounting scheme. Such classically group selective
arguments remain almost entirely mathematically based. IOW they can
represent a misuse of mathematics within which a critical non reversible
linkage in logic allowing a rational argument becomes reversed.
The absolute (total) cost of substitution has to be paid BEFORE so called
"reproductive excess" can possibly absorb any of this cost. Each Darwinian
parent has to _independently_ pay its own additive share of the total cost
of substitution per population before reproductive excess can possibly
absorb any of the cost of substitution. I do not know if this is ReMine's
the-cost-of-substitution-must-always-be-paid, argument. It appears to me
that it is not Felsenstein's position.
snip<
Remine is right about one thing -- the 1970s discussion was left
unresolved, a
mess. It was not population genetics's finest hour. I'd like to think my
paper is the closest thing to a resolution, though it did not go back and
work
through competing, different notions of cost like Warren Ewens's, which
are
close to Remine's and work differently (if at all).
JE:-
The problem was and remains: the use/misuse of simplified/oversimplified
models within evolutionary theory. This is the issue I have attempted to
raise here again and again. I appeal to Felsenstein and anybody else of
integrity to address and not just evade this most basic of issues.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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