The False Allure Of Group Selection by Steven Pinker • Hacker News Board

Re: The False Allure Of Group Selection by Steven Pinker

#11

Post by Historiopode » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

gort wrote: post #10

Historiopode wrote: post #8

(My interest in evolutionary biology is quite lax, so bear with me if I say something particularly wrong.) I was under the impression that, in recent years, there had been a small but significant surge of interest in the possibility of epigenetic inheritance, evidence for which had been found in a few studies on chickens, rats and plants. This article seems to explicitly states that no such thing is currently recogni…

I'm not sure how it's relevant to the issue of group selection and altruism; but anyway such inheritance still seems to be relatively rare, as far as I know. It's interesting that you call it Lamarckian - the epigenetic inheritance system itself would have to evolve in a normal Darwinian way... e.g. if genes get methylated (turned off semi-permanently) and passed down to offspring in this state, one could call that L…

I assume it is not relevant, indeed: I was merely asking for comments over an unrelated point that was made in the essay, which is that there are no working Lamarckian mechanisms in biology.

I certainly agree over your second point, which I had considered myself, but that did not seem to be particularly relevant to my doubt.

Re: The False Allure Of Group Selection by Steven Pinker

#12

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

vorg wrote: post #7

rdw wrote: post #4

It's amazing to me how often people get tripped up on the behavior of colonial insects like bees and ants. Because all reproduction is done by a queen, it makes little sense in most circumstances to think about the sterile workers as individuals. A better way is to think of the the workers as body parts. Some of the parallels are pretty direct. The movement of ants is strongly influenced by chemical scent gradients,…

If workers in a bee colony are body parts, then why not the queen and drones also? The queen is like a brain in the body. Following on, then why not males/females in an animal tribe? People communicate with each other using subliminal smells indicating sex, anger, fear, etc. Just because animals use 50-50 gene splicing instead of 67-33 doesn't mean the group is any less an organism in itself. My personal observation…

> The queen is like a brain in the body.

The queen is much more like the genitals.

Re: The False Allure Of Group Selection by Steven Pinker

#13

Post by gort » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:41 PM UTC

Historiopode wrote: post #11

gort wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how it's relevant to the issue of group selection and altruism; but anyway such inheritance still seems to be relatively rare, as far as I know. It's interesting that you call it Lamarckian - the epigenetic inheritance system itself would have to evolve in a normal Darwinian way... e.g. if genes get methylated (turned off semi-permanently) and passed down to offspring in this state, one could call that L…

I assume it is not relevant, indeed: I was merely asking for comments over an unrelated point that was made in the essay, which is that there are no working Lamarckian mechanisms in biology. I certainly agree over your second point, which I had considered myself, but that did not seem to be particularly relevant to my doubt.

"point that was made in the essay, which is that there are no working Lamarckian mechanisms in biology"

Fair enough - Pinker seems a bit too firm about that.