Comments on: Selfish genes, selfish individuals or selfish nations ?

By: sennoma

sennoma — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 04:11:54 +0000

Gareth: briefly, what’s wrong with it is that not all eusocial insects are haplo-diploid (termites are diploid); not all haplo-diploid insects are eusocial (predatory and parasitic wasps, for instance, are haplo-diploid but not social); in colonies with multiple queens, the extra degree of relatedness between females and nieces/nephews does not obtain; and phylogeny of the Hymenoptera suggests that haplo-diploidy arose in several separate instances, in each case in insects which already had somewhat developed social structures. (Also, the salient point is the haploid/diploid sex determination, not the use of a haploid stage; humans have haploid gametes!)

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 04:11:08 +0000

Gareth, I’m glad at least someone agrees with a point I thought so obvious as to require no explication. I certainly didn’t intend to present it as a revelation.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 21:18:00 +0000

I don’t see how anyone who isn’t a creationist can deny the basic premises of Evolutionary Psychology. Dispute some individual explanation, sure. But can you deny: (1) Complex biological structures develop through evolution as guided by natural selection. (2) Natural selection will favour a complex biological structure just to the extent that its benefits outweigh its costs, where both are measured in inclusive fitness. John Q.’s point that sociobiology contradicts a strict rational choice model with no other-regarding preferences is hardly a revelation. It was a big part of the point. One of the original puzzles that started the whole sociobiological revolution was the “problem of altruism”, and, in particular, why insects with a haploid-diploid genetic structure had vastly more complex social structures than other insects. The reason was because individual haploid-diploid insects are more closely related to their neices and nephews. What’s wrong with this explanation?

By: Kimmitt

Kimmitt — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 09:36:18 +0000

Kimmitt, your (2) frames the question of needing to explain deviation from morality rather than compliance with it, when one could legitimately ask what explains our compliance with morality in the first place… Well, I want to be moral. I feel happy when I’m being a moral person. Why would I wish to do anything to interfere with that?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 03:25:06 +0000

Abiola, if you check a few comments back, you’ll see that I didn’t capitalize Monica’s name either (and I was agreeing with her). I didn’t mean any offence by this, but I’ll be more attentive to it in future. Also, I wasn’t referring to your comment as “trivial” but to the kind of model that’s needed if you are going to make, for example, rational self-interested utility maximisation agree with a selfish gene hypothesis. I’m thinking of the kind of case, which I encounter frequently, where altruism (for example, towards kin) is explained by making the welfare of others an argument in the utility function, while still claiming that the behavior described is self-interested.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:31:36 +0000

“The point I tried to make is that Pinkers account of aggression as individually rational (in terms of obvious individual-level goals like access to food, sex and power) is inconsistent with (or at least renders redundant) a claim that aggression is a genetically-driven behavior induced by sex-specific adaptions to a now-vanished environment.” John, Again, I say that you are simply wrong here in stating that there is any sort of inconsistency between the two positions you lay out, and that it ought to be obvious why this is so. The “redundant” part isn’t necessarily true, either. For an evolved tendency to aggression to be irrational in the context of the modern world, one would have to show that aggression is no longer efficacious in winning struggles for influence, mates and so on, but anyone who’s ever had to work in a competitive, heavily male atmosphere, even in the Western world, will realize straight away that aggressiveness, even physical aggressiveness, does still indeed often pay, often enough that men will go out of their way to cultivate a reputation for aggressiveness out of all proportion to their own real inclinations (“machismo”). Aggressiveness is indeed an evolved trait, and as someone else has already mentioned, we even know a biological precursor for it – testosterone. It is a trait that paid off often enough to be passed on not just in the Paleolithic, but anywhere in the world where young men have had to compete with each other for the “good things” in life – those being usually defined as women and booty. To address the “redundant” part (which, by, the way, if true, would be inconsistent with your claim of inconsistency), a trait could have evolved in a certain historical context only to have become obsolescent with the passage of time; indeed, this is the very stuff of which evolution is made. Not everything that is the result of evolution is necessarily adaptive in the current context, and if a trait is indeed still adaptive, it needs to be shown to be so. As such, your claim of redundancy is also without merit. (By the way, John, I don’t want to read too much into it, but why did you choose not to bother capitalizing my name when mentioning it, even though you took care to do so with everyone else? I’m not particularly bothered by it, but it does seem to say to me that my response got to you at a personal level. You dismissed what I had to say as “trivial”, but the fact is that your original statement was blatantly false, and a shocking lapse in reasoning from someone from whom I expected better.)

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:20:06 +0000

monica: “I think John’s point is that a “selfish gene” explanation says you throw yourself on the grenade because that’s behavior that saves your kin, who then go on to propagate genes similar to yours, while a “selfish individual” explanation says you throw yourself on the grenade because you want the glory and status that will accrue to your name aftewards, and a “selfish nation” explanation says you do it because you love your country. ” The “selfish gene” explanation for adaptive behavior(!) implies that the rationalization for throwing yourself on the grenade is with an eye to kin and country when in actuality it’s the genes that made you rationalize it in just such a way. (Just as the innate, genetic drives for sex, food, and power are driven by needs for satisfaction, or posterity, not a desire to pass on particular genes.) One can, of course, find logical incompatibility even when just sticking with a single explanation because adaptive behaviors, whether expressed in genes, individuals, or groups are statistical trends, or, rational choices involve proximate and distal ends which may conflict on their way to an ultimate end.

By: push

push — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 22:25:48 +0000

By: Kimmitt

Kimmitt — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 21:26:33 +0000

The reason Evolutionary Psychology spoke to me was that it was the first set of ideas that sought to address two questions that had devilled me for some time: 1) If we are evolved creatures, why do we even think about morality? Where do human universals regarding morality come from? 2) Why the heck do I, personally, behave in ways which are opposed to my own morality? Why would I ever want to do that? I guess what I’m saying is that EP has been good to me personally.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 21:20:36 +0000

monica, you have it exactly right in my view.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 19:16:57 +0000

John, What I think about it tends to depend on what I’ve read most recently. I’m very suggestible. I think it’s at least possible, and worth investigating and researching.

By: jay

jay — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 19:06:43 +0000

Aggression and violence are strongly linked to testosterone levels. There is a lot of variation in testosterone levels among men AND women, and it, by the way, declines with age. Testosterone promotes dominance, risk-taking, and sexual activity in both males and females. It’s pretty easy to see how this might get selected for evolutionarily, because more sex, with more desirable partners (because of dominance), means more reproductive success. But low testosterone ALSO gives a genetic advantage. Simply put, high-testosterone individuals die a lot faster, or tend to wander off, and thus aren’t around to help their offspring become adults. The meek shall inherit the earth. Violence may not be reproductively beneficial in today’s world, but dominance pretty clearly still is. My best source for this is the book Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers by James McBride Dabbs. I think of Pinker’s work as pre-scientific—it shows where to look—and work like McBrides to be the science that backs it up.

By: theCoach

theCoach — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 15:21:43 +0000

monica’s post elucidates the arguments, me thinks. the problem, is the desire to have a “primary” motivator. there is no such thing. even at a very low level genetic explanations compete with each other. I was under the impression that no one, not even from the Chicago school, thought agents were truly maximizing, just that they thought that was a good approximation. The interesting thing about EP, as has been pointed out earlier, is to find the differences between maximizing in our current environment compared to what it would be in the formative environment of our genes.

By: Greg Hunter

Greg Hunter — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 15:11:47 +0000

The underlying tone in some of the discussion is that men are violent and that women are not and have thereby have a diminished role in the choice for aggression. I think it is evident that on an individual basis men would have a tendency to have a more violent response when threatened or on the hunt. Women have a tendency to desire negotiation. These two responses seem to have been honed in the hunter/gatherer society. The simplistic view of this setting – Men making a plan and then silent execution. Women working together and discussing every aspect of life until the men got back. In short, Women have been able to study men as a group and are very perceptive in discerning how to manipulate men to achieve their desires. The problem is that women have never, “looked in the mirror”, and analyzed how their desires have influenced the aggressive choices of a nation. I think if women turned their “perceptive?” gaze at themselves they would see that aggressive national responses are initiated, when women approve them. As another side analysis, look at the blogosphere and inside your own households, women are rarely involved in the discussions, but when it comes time to vote they will name a candidate and quote some headline out of a paper as the rationale for the selection. While all I heard out of their mouths until that time was “what color should we paint the kitchen”, “jimmy is a better soccer player than bobbi” “my husband does not do (blank) right. Fill in the (blank).

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 13:55:12 +0000

Quit being so reasonable, Monica, it’s spoiling the mood.