Michael Shermer on Howard Bloom's "Global Brain"

[Jeremy1952]

XilogQuote:Its not clear to me in what way you think I have mis-represented Dawkins, could you spell that out for me?Dawkins says, (paraphrasing), "Genes are bits of chemicals, that can do nothing but reproduce as fast and as far as possible", and you say, "Dawkins is wrong, humans are not selfish". Quote:However, my objection to Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" is both that his conclusions are scientifically unsound and that the work is morally objectionable.I guess that's as good a place as any to end the discussion... I find your position reprehensible, and taken further, this will likely deteriorate into a mudfest.

[Jeremy1952]

Timothy SchoonoverQuote: Ok, that helps Jeremy thanks. Do you think you, or anyone really, could put this in some sort of a thesis statement? I tried and just don't have the background in this to do it justice. Again, I would really appreciate this. Not me. . . I don't think it HAS one; in fact, it is quite utter nonsense; it is a bandwagon that people ignorant of biology jump on. "Group Selection" is to biology as "New Age" is to religion.

[xilog]

For the record, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Biology group selection is:Quote:A mechanism originally proposed to account for the evolution of altruism in social groups of animals. It was suggested by the British ethologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards (1906-97) in 1962, and arose from his observations that individual animals often expose themselves to danger (for instance by warning of predators) or forego reproduction (as with worker bees in a colony) for the greater good of the group as a whole. Hence, groups containing altruistic individuals would have some selective advantage over groups lacking such members. This conflicts with Darwinian orthodoxy, which views natural selection as operating strictly on individuals. Group selection has now been supplanted by the theory of kin selection as an explanation of apparently altruistic acts.However, for the purposes of a discussion of "Global Brain" I don't think we should take it that group selection has been supplanted by kin selection.If anything, in Bloom the movement is in the opposite direction.I recommend also to you the following interesting and brief survey of the history of the group selection debate:The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of Group Selectionism Edited by: xilog at: 1/14/03 1:59:16 pm

[Timothy Schoonover]

Thank you xilog. That is exactly what I was looking for. Edited by: Timothy Schoonover at: 1/15/03 6:31:03 pm

[LanDroid]

"Groups do not have the range of heritable variation that would allow any significant contribution to evolution."You keep saying that differences between human groups are trivial, but I think that is speculative as is my own opinion that there may be genetically significant differences we cannot perceive. Giraffes are still evolving, but no one can predict in what fashion because we cannot perceive the minute differences that are being selected.The background for what I'm saying comes from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - A Search for Who We Are by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. They note that humans are very adept at noticing minute differences between individuals, associating with those who are alike, and separating from those that are different. Human evolution would have proceeded most rapidly when groups evolve in isolation, concentrating adaptive improvements in that environment over time, and then on rare occasion spreading these genes by mating outside of the group. That's why I think it's quite possible the gene pool is affected when one group slaughters another. But of course, we'll never know.

[LanDroid]

Bloom discusses the Wynne-Edwards observations in a very different way than has been summarized here. On pgs 11 - 12 of the prologue he does not mention the reduction of egg laying or the warning behavior taken on by altruistic individuals. Recalling the ill effects suffered when one is cut off from the superorganism as discussed in The Lucifer Principle, Bloom concentrates on the self destructive behavior when individual birds do not succeed in the group. Their health declined in such a way that Wynne-Edwards theorized the unsuccessful birds were unwittingly sacrificing themselves to adjust the group to the environment. Jeremy capsulized Wynne-Edwards' egg counts, then stated "That's it... that's what all the {group selection} noise is about." I'm certainly no expert, but that doesn't sound right - as Bloom states "David Sloan Wilson has pointed to over four hundred studies that support the group selectionist point of view". (p. 6) Edited by: LanDroid at: 1/15/03 8:39:47 pm

[rielmajr]

I have watched, as an interested non-biologist, over the last 4 decades and have found myself frequently amused by the way in which the issue (like so many others) is often framed as an exclusive disjunction: selection acts at the group level or at the group level but -- heaven forbid! -- never at both levels. If individuals are successful in reproducing, they do so with fellow conspecifics. And if the group is successful, it will have successful individual members. It seems to me that selection operates at both levels.

[ZachSylvanus]

I don't know if this helps at all, but I stole it from my Behavioural Ecology notes.A good hypothesis should also be logically consistent. That is, the mechanisms proposed should be plausible and the deductions valid in logic and math, if necessary. This is why most evolutionary biologists reject group selection. It is not so much that it has been proved wrong as that it is not easy to come up with a theoretical framework under which it would work. Sometimes, however, very original hypotheses postulate processes not widely accepted but that actually turn out to be correct. We shouldn't reject a hypothesis based simply because it violates traditional thought patterns in a field. There are many examples of resistance to original ideas in science due to tradition that was portrayed as logic. Edited by: ZachSylvanus at: 2/18/03 2:12:38 am

[Gsus4]

[Jeremy1952]

Rielmajr Quote: I have watched, as an interested non-biologist, over the last 4 decades and have found myself frequently amused by the way in which the issue (like so many others) is often framed as an exclusive disjunction: selection acts at the group level or at the group level but -- heaven forbid! -- never at both levels. If individuals are successful in reproducing, they do so with fellow conspecifics. And if the group is successful, it will have successful individual members. It seems to me that selection operates at both levels. Your statement, " if the group is successful, it will have successful individual members", is the standard refutation of "group selection", not an instance of it. I think the group selection standard-bearers have come up with enough examples and scenarios where it is acknowledged that it probably does happen occasionally. The mainstream answer, though, is that it is not an important force in evolution.Group Selection is on Lynn Margulis' list of terms/concepts that are too vague to have any place in scientific discourse. On the other hand, her list includes many terms that I find useful and explanatory, too.