Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I've always thought inclusive fitness was a chimaera -- an empty mathematical abstraction, a sum over infinity, ginned up to make the math work and avoid postulating group selection. I'm glad to welcome Wilson to my own school of evolutionary biology, howsoever belatedly.

mjs

the linked article i think gets at some of this

i can't get it to cut and paste here
its on the bottom of page three and first column of page four

http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/publications_nowak/NowakJTB2012.pdf

in essence the hamiltonian approach was a divide chop and add algorithm

once the interconnnects between action and the cascadde of consequences get anything like realistically complex

poof !!!

i hate the over use of non linearity
it appears to be an answer when its realy only a challenge to dig deper and work harder
but alas it is a matter of transcending linerar assumptions

mother nature and Clio both hate simple answers to complex questions
buy into one
and the blood starts flowing
or starvation insues
very soon there after

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100825/full/news.2010.427.html

a better popular summary
then the new yorker article

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100602/full/news.2010.272.html

a nice exculpation of my sort
the lazy among us

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110608/full/474146a.html

ohhh dennis ...here's
another mr wilson

A "shallow, monocausal answer-for-everything smart-aleck" begs to differ from Wilson.

sk

the dawkins twist here

"Kin selection is not a subset of group selection, it is a logical consequence of gene selection. And gene selection is ‘standard natural selection’ theory"

contrast with mjs above in search of
lethal attacks on gene only based
causal "just so stories "

in http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/publications_nowak/NowakJTB2012.pdf

you'll find a fuller survey

Al and i often toss back and forth the ritual ham on what gets called a structured population

he'd like the bit about active linking

and relinking

seems to suggest the archepeligo
of hobbit hamlets might not be a match
for a more interactive member exchanging
group forming and group culling set up

queen bees ?

well they needed by of flesh and blood
to import structure
perhaps just a nucleatic charismatic ass hole ???

thanx for that link to mjs at his best sk

i often notice the value of this line of thought

a belief can only be replaced
by another belief not non belief

but as to the genesis of conviction
its strength and durability
i think that is more innate
and various among us

i know myself i have many eurekas
almost one every day

but i learned to step away from them quickly
thanx to hume read at 18 and applied ever since

but its not my "nature to doubt "

others strike me as quite naturally sceptics

my dear ex wife was of that superior coloration

i suspect btw
hume wasn't himself
i'd cite his break down after
birthing the treatise
jacob like he must have wrestled
long hours with an inspired
flock of
brain biting
'Skeptikoi '

I feel like theorizing of his sort suffers from a similar problem to economic theories where "externalities" are left out of the account. There seems to be a hangup on the idea the evolution is one big competition--to regard evolution in essentially capitalistic terms, one could say. Inclusive fitness apparently an ad hoc explanation cooked up to deal with the problem of non-reproducing but integral members of a species, treating small, closely-related groups like a Mafia family looking after it's own (Dawkins at one point to tries to deal with the existence of homosexuality in a similar matter--suggesting "back in the Savanna" the homosexual fulfilled some (unspecified) critical survival role). So a refutation of the theory should be welcomed. Unfortunately I suspect alternative leaves a lot to be desired as well...

I think whole concept of survival of the species needs to be abolished for the science to start making much sense: a species that becomes extinct because of another species may be as biologically important to the surviving species as the sterile worker bee to the colony, and could in today's popular jargon be regarded as "absurdly" behaving altruistically, leading to much head-scratching and confusion among the Scholars. Or, to put it another way, the coyote is as essential to a hare's survival--in defining what a hare is in biological terms--as the grass is the hare eats or the nurturing the mother provides it's helpless young. The whole survival of the fittest principle seems to me based on an unfounded assumption of a God-given determinism (if not outright will) that should be shelved along it Newton's laws.

I think there was a major breakthrough in Darwin's, day but no fundamental achievements have been made sense--in some was the debate has become more dogmatic, and simplistic than what Darwin originally wrote--with an economics-inspired statistical veneer lacquered on for effect.

Yeah. It's pretty clear -- to me, anyway -- that for Dawkins, and the people who enjoyed reading him, the selfishness of the selfish gene was the point. Nothing to do with science, but a lot to do with ideology.

Ouch, my brain exploded.

And if the genes are cooperating, who's the unmoved mover?

It's time to start believing in water turned into wine again; the BIO 101 coursebook has managed to become equally fanciful and less interesting.

I'm on a Hobbesian kick these days, Owen. In the absence of anything fulfilling and rewarding, group cohesion can be supplied by serial, shared contempt for nucleatic charismatic assholes. Any old asshole will do. Which leads to another, more appalling theory and—of course—presidential elections.

the chicoms must enjoy hobbes

domestic tranquility is the only public good the state need provide
not even protection from outside invasion
runs a close second

in fact i suspect ole hobbes kinda liked the battle between states
the long run outcome surely is stronger states

imagine how flaccid we were before ...."munich"

which munich owen ?

either one works if you take a long view

a nice bit of ambiguity in the algebra

the benefits of co operation
are well mimiced
by the benefits of corecion
another point for dear old hobbes

Al you are always three steps ahead of me

even when we're both going in tight circles

"a belief can only be replaced
by another belief not non belief"
including without commiting a logical blunder

the belief in your non belief

agnostics are annoying spirits to me
i find the notion of an agnostic on god
and a believer in darwin's natural selection
to be a go goo irritating
bloodless mush head like erasmus-sssh

at least get driven antic like hamlet
even if he foo yourself by saying
the wacky antics are
pure misdirection ....pure acting

Which one of youze bombardiers says he was goin' to Left Frm this weekend? I am asking for, begging for, livestream ustream real-time SMBIVA blogging on the festivities - please? Especially from the plenary, oh please yes, SMBIVA at the goddamed plenary.

mjoe

u cackling grinch u

who ville needs its toots and hoots too

Oh, okay, okay, I guess I'll have to go. Though the online instructions for registration are as labyrinthine as getting a Catholic annulment from Rome.

You've done this post very well.. I love reading your thesis as well, it gives me more idea scientifically.

Carla from piqûre punaise