Wilson and Group Evolution

Article E.O. Wilson is claiming that altruism (not "good"- the article title is inaccurate) has little or nothing to do with kin selection (or individual evolutionary competition) but is a function of what he is calling "Group Selection" (AFAICT this is individual animals sharing the benefits of group collaboration with each other). He is being widely challenged within the scientific community because everyone believes that altruism results from the survival of altruistic genes within groups of kin-related animals, including humans. If Wilson is right, then one implication is that human group differences are more than superficial, they are biological and conflict between them is inevitable (Wilson hasn't made this specific claim, but it seems unavoidable given what he is saying).

Discuss.

I think conflict is an inevitable and essential part of being human, without conflict, I feel we are diminished as a species.

Original paper and a good explanatory article.

Sorry, but can you explain this for me? Group selection certainly works on a much more biologically superficial level than kin selection.

You know, the way the article is written, the proponents of kin selection theory come off as rather silly zealots. Wilson makes some seemingly sensible points and they just kinda shake their heads sadly, saying "How can he change his opinion? At his age! I was a big fan of his, so it's a pity, he follows scientific princip... I mean, has gone totally nuts."

But quite frankly, having never heard of either theory, Wilsons makes more sense intuitively. Not that that says much.

I don't think you can conclude that group differences are biological. If anything, Wilsons new theory means groups have no inherent biological differences, since individuals don't necessarily form groups with their kin, but more or less at random. Thus the groups are interchangeable, without unique attributes (like genetic makeup).

And I suppose groups compete in kin selection theory as well.

@Penguin/O Emmanuel re Wilson's model: "...Group selection certainly works on a much more biologically superficial level than kin selection..." Not according to Wilson, it doesn't. Basically he is claiming that when individual animals collaborate (essentially by sharing risks) then they become selected by nature at the group level, and that this is more important to the development of altruism than competition between genetic strains (he claims to have the math to back this up). This implies (Wilson has not stated this, but it's obvious) that any behavioral differences between these competing groups will become part of the members' evolutionary heritage.

Might as well just say it- the problem people are going to have is what all this implies for human races. Wilson seems to be adding support to the notion that we have been selected for belonging to different biological groups. Again, he hasn't said this outright, at least not yet, but what other conclusion could one come to?

Sorry, if I am overly slow on this, but I still don't see how you reach your conclusions. At least not after only reading the three sources so far presented in this thread. Could you maybe rephrase it somehow?

It's biologically more superficial because it requires reciprocity but not relatedness. Both processes result in selection at the gene level, and both can work within the other. This isn't meant as an argument against Wilson & crew's mathematical models re: the relative importance of group vs. kin selection, which I'm not qualified to judge, but I really don't see how his conclusions are supposed to damage race relations any more than our current understanding of population genetics. People will use differences within the human species at any level - genetic, sexual, cultural - to justify bigotry; this just seems to be another way of looking at natural divergences in our evolutionary/behavioral history.

edited 21st Apr '11 9:54:51 AM by Penguin4Senate

So, what, are people trying to read this as "black people and white people have evolved to be enemies?" That's just plain stupid even within the context of the theory—there's nothing stopping a member of one group from defecting to another for mutual advantage.

@De Marquis: Selected for belong to different cultures maybe; different races are utterly irrelevant to this theory.

Yeah, without conflict we would not enjoy peace.

For what it is peace without a blessed fight?

By conflict do you guys mean like...war and shit? or like...competitive sports?

If our species needs to slaughter each other to justify its existence, we are a sad sad species.

Either sports, or a good ol' fashioned pub brawl.

edited 21st Apr '11 2:57:56 PM by LoveHappiness

I'm fine with being competitive, but not war conflict.

I don't understand how people can feel we NEED war as a species.

Care to tell me what this has to do with anything?

I found the link above to the original article requires a payment, so here is another one

To explain the basic idea requires some elaboration. Basically, if we are two organisms that belong to the same group, say an ant colony, and one of us makes a sacrifice of some kind for the other, the survival of the colony itself is selected for, irregardless of any shared genes. In the beginning stages, we don't have to share any genes at all (according to the Wilson et al. model, members of the colony will end up interbreeding eventually, thus becoming inter-related, but this isn't a necessary pre-condition for altruism to be selected).

Exactly how this applies to humans Wilson hasn't said, however he did go on record saying that it does. Within the human species, it's difficult to see how this applies to us unless he thinks humans have experienced selection at the group level, and within our species it's difficult to see what group he could be talking about except biological groups, i.e. races (or "ethnicities" if you prefer).

Now, until Wilson himself publishes something on this, we cant know for sure what he intends, but I think other people are going to try to use this to justify race-based social policies. They have in the past.

What follows is more speculation on my part: As for differences between human groups, the reason groups get selected for in the first place is due to the behavior of their members. Members must act in a way that confers benefits to other members of their group. These behaviors do not have to be due to genetic influences, nor do the individuals manifesting the behaviors have to receive any advantage for displaying them. Thus, there is no reason why cultural differences or socialized behaviors wouldn't be included, provided that the socialized behaviors cause members to confer advantages to other members of their group.

edited 21st Apr '11 2:57:48 PM by LoveHappiness

I watched the entire thing.

It's sad that you won't explain, I agree.

Who is he, and why should I take his completely unsubstantiated claims seriously?

edited 21st Apr '11 2:57:38 PM by LoveHappiness

Ooh, I'll have to get His autograph.

Assuming that Wilson is right, I don't see that really changing anything. So we don't have only conflict between a bunch of cells aka humans were we compete for potential mates, but a similar conflict between a bunch of humans aka societies/cultures? Well, those bunch of cells normally get along quite well, so I don't see that big of a problem here.

It could be used to argue for some kind of moral relativism though, using the inherent differences between cultures as an advantage.

This isn't actually new. In principle, group selection can happen, but in practice it is rarely stable enough to do so, rarely passes the Ockham's razor criterion (so you can get far without invoking it) and it is largely restricted in scope to a few social species.

First, you have to be in a group. A lot of animals get by, being lone wanderers or just incidental herding creatures.

Second, the group has to be highly inclusive among its members and highly exclusive to outsiders (i.e. there has to be a clear "in-out" boundary, like there is between the body and the environment). This is to prevent migrations which would weaken the genetic isolation of the group, and therefore reduce its chances of evolving stronger social connections within the group. After all, it's pretty difficult to compete with another group if you spend half your time being the other group. There has to be some kind of common interest, and usually it comes about by degree of relatedness (probability of sharing copies of a gene) anyway.

Third, the group has to last for longer than a few generations - on an evolutionary scale, this either means that the group will have to be geographically isolated for hundreds of thousands of years, in which case it pretty much evolves into a subspecies or species by allopatric evolution and defeats the whole point, or that it must isolate itself by other genetic means, in which case it will almost always be on its way to speciation by natural selection in any case. Indeed, the only way I could imagine a species reproductively isolating itself from other eligible members would be behavioural, which must be based on neurological factors, which would have a genetic origin, which would be related to kinship (who else has those genes) and genetic factors anyway. The natural selection part is that it thrives better among copies of itself - for example, if a species of greenfly bred during April, or at the base of a tree, and a mutant and its carrier siblings had a recessive gene that meant that they bred during June, or at the base of a different species of tree, it would only flourish among copies of itself.

Fourth, it needs some sort of self-policing mechanism to discourage individual selfishness at the group's expense. Genomes can cohere because they have chemical means of ironing out defective genes (cancers can result when these mechanisms fail), and interbreeding within a species encourages cooperation within gene pools. The effect gets weaker the larger the scale, because sometimes it pays a gene to follow group interests and sometimes it doesn't, whereas it nearly always pays a gene to follow its host's interests and it always pays a gene to follow its own interests. At that large scale you need more elaborate countermeasures to police it.

Fifth, altruistic self-sacrifice becomes less likely the longer the term, because the more times you risk your survival to save another, the more likely you are to get unlucky one day. Any gene whose possessors became more risky would only prosper if the dangers were rare or if the saved were possessors of its copies or likely to benefit the possessors of its copies (like a spouse).

There are conditions in which these criteria are met, and I can't think of a better species to show that than Homo sapiens, but to toss out Kin Selection Theory is more than a little misguided. I also object to the insistence that there is "the" theory that explains all group cooperation, as if there was only one way to get there.

I pretty much agree with this point from (thanks for the link, Penguin 4 Senate):

The second and much more egregious overreach is to disparage kin selection theory simply because it might fail to explain the evolution of eusociality. Going hand-in-hand with this exaggerated claim is the unwarranted elevation of the study of eusociality to the pinnacle of all social evolution studies. It simply is not the case that all areas in which social evolution is studied would be better off without kin selection theory. And as Trivers rightly pointed out, some aspects of eusociality are still best explained by applying the thinking underlying kin selection. Even if the origin of eusociality lies not in kin selection but in group selection, we need to acknowledge that different theoretical constructs will be useful to explain different evolutionary phenomena. ... What is very painful about all this is that it was not necessary to try to wholly supplant kin selection theory in order to write a paper that — as David Sloan Wilson has been quoted as saying — “knocks inclusive fitness off its perch”. I believe that kin selection as a mechanism is probably overused and more importantly applied in a sloppy manner, but this does not mean that it ought to be scrapped entirely. Ironically, it appears that some advocates of group selective processes are bent on doing the same thing to kin selection that was done to group selection in the 1960’s: throwing out the baby (a theory that makes sense in many contexts) with the bathwater (sloppy or unsubstantiated use of that theory).

The paper isn't really extremely ground-breaking or have very heavy implications. It merely argues that the more generalized model of reciprocal altruism is a better explanation for the rise of eusocial insects than the less general model of kin selection. Any implications for human social interactions is peripheral at best.

Hmm, I never saw this necroed thread when it was fresh.

I'm definitely not seeing the racist implications Marquis was concerned with. Sure, selection pressure has operated on bands or tribes in competition with each other, but individuals can defect and intermarry.