[FRIAM] Group Selection Redux?

Wed Jan 5 12:40:05 EST 2022

Glen,

As you-sual you hit the nail on several of its heads.  It's quite easy to represent inheritance as co-variance among the generations.  In fact, absent all the blather about genes and alleles and loci, etc., that's what inheritance IS.  

The crucial issue in groupselection (as it is with any selection) is the maintenance of sufficient variance between groups to keep it going.   Kin selection  IS group selection.  Its charm is that it has a mechanism built in for maintaining variance between [kin] groups.  

n

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, January 5, 2022 11:01 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection Redux?

<obligatory-caveat-of-ignorance>

But I suppose it makes some sense to eliminate the concept of inheritance and focus on variation. Inheritance assumes a discreteness in traits that variation doesn't. And in this way, we might track the ontogeny (intra-generational variation) of units of selection similarly to tracking inter-generational variation.

But this would require a rigorous similarity measure. In "space", as 2 units evolve over time, we need some concept of how [dis]similar they become. In time, as a unit evolves, does it wander, or cycle, or [con|di]verge? It seems to me that *how* that similarity measure is constructed becomes the difference between kin vs group selection. Differences measured off organisms (blue eyes and hyena penises) would preference organisms as the unit. Differences measured off groups (altruism and religion) would preference groups. Only a mix of both organism and group differences could construct an agnostic similarity measure.

</obligatory-caveat-of-ignorance>

We had such a conversation last night in the context of adversarial exploration strategies. E.g. when 2 opponents in a game like, say, traditional boxing, trashtalk each other, that ad hominem serves the functional purpose of polarizing them and increasing their ability to find the corner cases in the space circumscribed by the boxing game. But as well-defined as that game is, there are still "parasitic" behaviors that identify some players as acting in bad faith. Those "parasitic" behaviors are thought (normatively) to NOT target a better collective understanding of the space circumscribed by the explicit rules. If we expand beyond the particular game to related games like wrestling and kick-boxing, or to define a broader game like MMA, we rely even more on our ability to identify, informally, bad faith actors. We could construct a similar story for fintech (e.g. 2008 crash), eusocial insects, or (I'm guessing) any other potential grouping. Unless we measure variables from across a large spectrum of granularity, we won't be able to tell what variation correlates with what potential unit of selection.

Even if group selection can be shown to be mathematically isomorphic to kin selection, and there's a theoretically sound but computationally infeasible way to model cross-grain evolution from either perspective, it'll still be *convenient* to model and explain it at higher levels ... in the same way that it's convenient to explain, say, Swing music without resorting to quantum mechanics.

And on that note, since I know we have a few Ψ enthusiasts here:

Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01209-2

On 1/4/22 15:42, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> If memory serves methylation can prevent the expression of a gene for a generation or so because of some experience the gene endures, like being in  a male or a female, for instance.  Lamarckism, is the principle that animal can, by striving to achieve a goal, increase the likelihood that “factors” advancing those goals will appear in its offspring.  Both involve an effect upon what is inherited by experience, but I think their structure is quite different.  But it’s been a while.
> 
> n
> 
> Nick Thompson
> 
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
> 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
> 
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Marcus 
> Daniels
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 4, 2022 5:29 PM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection Redux?
> 
> Isn't Lamarckism alive and well with the existence of DNA methylation?   Finding a way to thread the needle to get altruism and so forth out of genetic inheritance seems rather academic?
> 
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> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com 
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of 
> thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> 
> <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 4, 2022 3:27 PM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection Redux?
> 
> J.
> 
> You don’t address the point that Wilsons trait-group selection mechanism is actually an INHERITANCE mechanism.  Is that because you don’ get it, or because you don’t like it and are being polite.
> 
> n
> 
> Nick Thompson
> 
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
> 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
> 
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com 
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 4, 2022 3:59 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection Redux?
> 
> :-) D.S. Wilson is one of the few who is on the right path. What he gets right is that social groups can sometimes be treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individuals or individual interactions [1]. This is what he emphasizes in his articles about group selection and in his book "Darwin's Cathedral" [2].
> 
> 
> The question is what is selected? In natural selection a genotype is 
> selected if the phenotype has high fitness and lots of offspring. For individual animals it is clear. For groups we can argue that successful groups are selected if their phenotype has high fitness and attracts lots of new members. This naturally leads to the question "what is the genotype and the phenotype for groups" ?
> 
> The phenotype is apparently the group character which is characterized by group traits as you mentioned. The group traits are in turn created by the common rules of the group, which can be commandments or norms or laws. The only thing that I miss in Wilson's work is that these rules are identified as what they are (as the genes that can create a group if they are expressed and applied regularly).
> 
> If we define and identify the genotype and the phenotype correctly, then we can really shift the metaphor of the selfish gene and the metaphor of natural selection to the group level, as the title of your paper says.
> 
> [1] David Sloan Wilson, Elliott Sober, "Reintroducing group selection 
> to the human behavioral sciences". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 
> (4) (1994) 585–654
> 
> 
> [2] David Sloan Wilson, "Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and 
> the Nature of Society", University of Chicago Press, 2002
> 
> -J.

--
glen
Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.

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