From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Jun 06 2002 - 22:09:05 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Emlyn O'regan wrote:
>
>>>ERROR 514: group selection hypothesized
>>>
>>Maybe. I would have said it was individual behaviour selected for in
the
>>context that there is always a group.
>>
>>Should I have replaced phrases such as "many societies have evolved
to..."
>>with "many individual behaviours, which collectively resemble a
society,
>>have evolved in the context of external social influences to...", and
"it
>>makes the society a nicer place to be" with "it improves what the
individual
>>can expect of his/her social environment"?
>>
>
> It doesn't fix the logical problem, unless you can explain how the
behaviors
> which improve the social environment collectively also improve
reproductive
> fitness individually.
>
> -- -- -- -- --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>
There's no logical problem. The behaviours are learned, and move from
person to person independently of genetics. Furthermore, I don't think
that the majority of human phenotypes act in the interest of their
genotype; their motivations are learned and are far more complex, but
they are directly related to packages of ideas (like moralities,
religions, isms).
I wouldn't try to explain how particular ideas propagate by explaining
how they benefit the neurons involved, or by explaining how they benefit
the molecules making up the neurons, and likewise I would not try to
explain how the genome benefits. As long as some of the species' genomes
carry on, and they construct phenotypes who are capable of social
interaction, then further detail in genetic evolution is irrelevant;
everything else, socially/behaviourally, while slightly influenced by
genetics, is learnt.
In fact, which particular human genome you carry seems to have been, for
quite some time, more like a lottery which results in what genetic
diseases you might have, and whether you are predisposed in one area or
another, but really the influence is not that great. Social evolution
utterly swamps any effects of genetic evolution.
Emlyn
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