RE: sci.bio.evolution mailing list



"Jim McGinn" jimmcginn@xxxxxxxxx wrote:-

Robert Karl Stonjek wrote:
The idea that group selection (or multilevel selection) could have any
validity is sometimes dismissed in rather derogatory terms on this list.

Group selection is generally dismissed for reasons that are
subconscious and ideological to those that dismiss it.

JE:-
Neither RKS or JMcG are correct in what they wrote. It is not bias _against_
group selection that is occurring within evolutionary theory but a bias
_for_ group selection. However this massive bias remains very cleverly
hidden within non refutable polycentric (more than one unit of selection
within the same theory) theories which can be proven to be just
_uncorrected_ simplified/oversimplified models of refutable monocentric
Darwinism.

Here are the most basic facts:-

1) No observation of group selection acting within nature exists which can
be validly argued to be a product of only group selection. All supposed
group selection verifications employ a fitness measure which is the simple
sum of the parts which make one assumed group unit of selection. This simple
_empirical_ fact allows EITHER group selection or individual selection as
valid explanations where no test exists that enables anybody to test one in
favor of the other. This being the case, Occam's Razor requires the deletion
of the more complex (group selection) in favor of the least complex
(individual selection) as the candidate to be assumed and empirically tested
within the sciences. IOW any _efficient science_ must assume individual
selection until a refutable theory of group selection is produced. To date
no such theory has been produced. OTOH a refutable theory of individual
selection has existed since Darwin.

2) So called gene centric theories of nature are just more _ambiguous_ group
selection. This can be proven by carefully examining Hamilton's Rule or any
other oversimplified model of mono centric Darwinism which has been allowed
_uncorrected_ for their modeling _oversimplification_. A simplification can
be defined as the deliberate deletion of the total fitness of any proposed
selectee (no matter how you define fitness) providing a refutable constant
fitness per selectee per population.

3) Not a single testable to refutation polycentric theory of nature has been
produced by anybody. Without exception, all of them are misused, non
refutable, simplified/oversimplified models of entirely refutable
monocentric Darwinism. The reason why model builders agree that all
polycentric models are just simplifications/over simplifications but
continue to _refuse_ to say what they were simplified/oversimplified from (I
have been asking now for about 5 years without an answer being provided) is
because they wish to evade the critical difference between a model and a
theory (and I might add the difference between a simplification and an
oversimplification). If they did not continue to evade such basic issues
their misuse would become apparent. The greater the number of just
irrefutable units of selection which become allowed within polycentric
theory the more this type of theory can employ them to just evade testing
that theory to refutation. Not even a minimally polycentric, i.e. just a
bi-centric theory has been produced which can be verified, non verified OR
refuted.

Most of the time non verification becomes substituted for refutation within
polycentic theories. Such a false substitution is either due to
epistemological ignorance or something more sinister. The _empirical
science_ of evolutionary theory that Darwin and Wallace pioneered has become
reduced to irrefutable mathematical models where the model that is allowed
to prevail is just the most politically correct model for the times. IOW
evolutionary theory has become reduced to just the bully boy politics of the
argument from authority.


There is no
shortage of empirical data/observations that prove the validity of
group selection. Even the existence of multicellular organisms (in the
context of the assumption that they evolved from single celled
organisms) proves the validity of group selection.

JE:-
Verification/non verification remains insufficient.

It
may therefore come as a surprise that one of the main "fathers" of ev
psych,
Edward O. Wilson, now theorizes that kin selection is NOT the why of the
evolution of eusocial insects, as widely accepted, but rather group
selection -- and the same seems to hold true for humans.

There has never been any empirical evidence for kin selection (as it is
described by Hamilton). Its acceptance--as I've demonstrated here in
this NG--is based only on the confusion associated with the rather
loose (specifically, semantic ambiguity) terminology of the current
paradigm. It's hard for me to imagine that this isn't obvious to a guy
as smart as Wilson. But then maybe he's as much a victim as anybody
else.

JE:-
The ambiguity within Hamilton's Rule is not just semantic. It is ambiguity
remaining within a supposed _reasoned_ argument allowing the evolution of
organism fitness altruism within nature. This ambiguity remains hidden away
within Hamilton's tautological mathematical model. The model is only an
empty tautology because the total fitness of Hamilton's actor, which alone
can provide the rule with a constant fitness supposition and a critical
point of reference, remains deliberately deleted and uncorrected. This
produces an unacceptable level of ambiguity within the rule (no matter how
you define fitness) which is so extensive that an altruistic donation cannot
be separated from a selfish investment.

snip<


The key to Wilson's new theory is the relatively recent recognition that
genes can be plastic in their expression, in response to different
environmental conditions.

Recent?

JE:-
All the models based on Fisher delete nearly all heritable genetic epistasis
and therefore the most important mechanism for the heritability of genetic
plasticity. Note that this includes all examples of gene centric fitnesses
because all of them remain empirically epistatic. Only Waddington's revision
of Haldane published about 50 years ago but which remains entirely ignored
(Waddington's model was posted here by myself without comment within the
thread "Waddington's Revision of Haldane") included a selective coefficient
for the empirical heritable genetic epistasis that he studied. This allowed
a minimal inclusion of canalization and assimilation which can more easily
code for gene plasticity within population genetics.


"So consider a gene that has plasticity such that
in one setting an individual carrying that gene becomes reproductive.
Maybe
this individual was the ant or wasp that arrived first, maybe it was the
biggest one, or maybe it was the one to just by accident start laying
eggs
first. The important thing is that the reproductive role can shift from
one
colony to next and from one generation to the next. The group forms,
and
some individuals by circumstance become workers. Their cooperative
behavior
and the division of labour confer superiority on that group, with that
particular gene, over other groups. It could be as simple as that."

It is as simple as that.

JE:-
Cooperative behavior is entirely fitness mutualistic. Group selection
requires organism cooperation to become reduced to organism fitness
altruism. Here an organism selectee suffers a loss providing a fitness gain
for another. Eusocial groups are based on sterile workers with mostly one
fertile queen. IOW the majority of sterile-for-life immatures have become
exploited by their own parents to such an extent that they are now forced to
act as quasi-body-part extensions of their parents and not as possible
parent reproductions. This means that each eusocial nest constitutes just
the ONE Darwinian FERTILE form and just the one Darwinian monocentric unit
of selection. IOW no group selection (inclusive fitness remains organism
group selective) is required to explain eusociality. The genes for
continue-to-the-death sterility have to be selected for within the bodies of
exploitative parents and not within the exploited sterile immatures
themselves BECAUSE these immatures remain sterile prohibiting them passing
on any of their genes (which is just a "duh" proposition).



Wilson explains that altruism is normally discouraged due to the fitness
advantages of individual survival and reproduction, but it could pay for
individuals to subvert their own interests to those of a group if the
group
is able to defend and exploit a very valuable resource (such as a hollow
stem that could be a nest site).

The tendency to reside in enclosures is what set the stage for social
insects to begin to be group selected.

JE:-
Yes I agree. I have been pointing this out within sbe for about three years
(at the very least).

And once ants and termites became "fully
social" they went on to dominate the world.

As for humans, Wilson agrees with Darwin that our evolution was largely
a
matter of "tribe against tribe"



Tribe against tribe? Nah. Human evolution clearly indicates something
different: community against community. (The differences being
communities also involve territory and the resources therein.)

JE:-
All traditional tribes had their own territory and demarked their resources
within it. What we see today are not tribes but super-tribes where tribal
territories have become combined to increase productivity.


Strangely enough this competition did not originally involve much of
any direct conflict between communities. Rather the competition was
economic (as described in my hypothesis in detail).

JE:-
The conflict required to combine tribes within super-tribes was long and
bloody and is not over, even for the 1st world. For 3rd world still battling
the sociological basics required for such an enormous conversion, increasing
weapon technology provides a frightening future for them and of course, for
the first world as the politics and suffering an envy muddy the waters of
reason and fire up tribal hatred.


-- which might explain the endemic warfare

Yes, it involved warfare as a means of preserving resources (economic)
in a community's territory. It was part of a strategy to survive
seasonal dessication. Communities that failed to preserve the
resources in their communal territory were, essentially, massacred by
predatory feeding frenzies during the depths of the dry season.

JE:-
The best way to increase security against famine etc is to increases surplus
production (resources like food etc become produced above just a subsistence
level). Even non human groups attempt this. The only way for us to achieve
this is to more and more combine tribes into larger and larger super tribes.
We invented mutualised exchange via _cognition_ (trade) which forces the
conversion of tribes into bigger and bigger super tribes because of the
division of labor principle. However, our basic tribal psychology which
provided so much for each and every individual in the past fights tooth and
nail against this necessary expansion every step of the way.


AND
altruism in which humans have engaged since prehistory. "The genes that
favour this type of group cohesion would also favor an innate sense of
morality and group loyalty. It would explain how so often group or
tribe
loyalty overrides even family loyalty." Seems like there's already a
ton of
proposals along those lines....Wilson is presumably working on
clarifying
why group selection, and not kin selection, is the more significant
mechanism (but at the end of the interview he says his theorizing is
still a
work in progress and formal presentation on humans might take a couple
of
years).

The best he can hope to do is to recast the hypothesis that I've
already established.

JE:-
What hypothesis was that?

snip<

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx




.

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