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<p>Nick -</p>
<p>Thank you for your kind words.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:021f01d4e6a8$c42d14d0$4c873e70$@earthlink.net">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">We
were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my
“HORSEFEATHERS!” below. </span></p>
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</blockquote>
I'll see your HORSEFEATHERS and raise you a CONFLATION ALERT!<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:021f01d4e6a8$c42d14d0$4c873e70$@earthlink.net">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"><o:p> </o:p></span><span
style="color:#993366"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==></span></i></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">
</span><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:red">HORSEFEATHERS!</span></i></b><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">
One or two generations of sociobiologists were directed
away from group level explanations by this pernicious
metaphor. <==nst] </span></i></b></p>
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</blockquote>
<p>Just to split hairs, I will claim that Dawkins wasn't "striving"
(nor was his metaphor by extension) to direct sociobiologists away
from anything, he was merely offering another way of looking at
the problem. You of course are in a much better position than I
to know how he conducted himself during this time. As an entirely
outside outsider, I have no idea what he was pushing the community
for. At the time, I just saw him as a disruptor with a
significantly novel metaphor to be offered.</p>
<p>At our "Salon" at Jenny's 2 summers ago, we rambled on about
metaphor quite a bit for a couple hours in the cool shade of her
arbor with cool drinks in hand. Dave West, as I remember, was
mostly incensed at the way the AI community had gone astray for
more than a while by taking the "Machine Metaphor for Mind" too
literally. It seems to me that might be what the sociobiology
community did?</p>
<p>We often conflate what something was intended to do/be with what
we hope/fear most from it. I offer that might be what happened
in both cases, actually granting the worsh(ish) case more power
over the imagination than appropriate, then *blaming* the source
of the "pernicuous idea" for being more "pernicous" than it really
was (intended)?</p>
<p>In any case, even if Dawkins *was* dead set on ramming the
Selfish Gene Metaphor through the hearts of all more mature
models, I guess I'm calling out a "group phenomena" where the
actual disruptive idea or person ends up being given more power
(like a boogeyman) than it deserves, *thereby* participating in a
self-fulfilling prophecy?</p>
<p>I think Trumpism is one of those... He was just trying to tweak
up his brand and now he's halfway to being the world-dictator, and
we helped do it by under-estimating the hope/fear we carry around
the topics he tweaked in us?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:021f01d4e6a8$c42d14d0$4c873e70$@earthlink.net">
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<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p>It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to establish
a fairly strong metaphor which deserves careful dissection to
understand the particulars of the *target domain*. An
important question in the target domain becomes "why does the
shortcut of thinking of genes as selfish actually have some
level of accuracy as a description of the phenomena when in
fact the mechanisms involved do not support that directly?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>I
don’t think it does. I think it’s a subtle and largely
successful attempt to import Spenserian ideology in to
evolutionary biology. <==nst] </span></i></b></p>
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</blockquote>
I have to admit to having a nearly belligerent (maybe only
willfully) naive view of ulterior motives in the Sciences. I know
that competition of this type exists and that it may well be
pervasive, but I have to admit to not thinking in those terms until
prompted. <br>
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cite="mid:021f01d4e6a8$c42d14d0$4c873e70$@earthlink.net">
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<p><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p>For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and
there is NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"... <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy of
hydraulic systems for DC circuits is misleading. I forget
the specifics of where he shows that the analogy breaks down,
but it is well below (or above?) the level of "normal" DC
circuit understanding and manipulation. For the kinds of
problems I work with using DC circuits, a "battery" is a "tank
of water at some height", the Voltage out of the battery is
the water Pressure, the amount of Current is the Volume of
water, a Diode is a one-way valve, a resistor is any
hydraulic element which conserves water but reduces pressure
through what is nominally friction, etc. As you point out,
there is plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as
source domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits
as target domain, and if one is to use the analogy effectively
one must either understand those over/under mappings, or be
operating within only the smaller apt-portion of the
domains. For example, I don't know what the equivalent of an
anti-hammer stub (probably a little like a capacitor in
parallel?) is but that is no longer describing a simple DC
circuit. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>I
think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst] </span></i></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p>A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand it
using the source domain of "draft animal" and can't go
particularly wrong by doing things like "giving it a rest off
and on to let it cool down", "planning to feed it well before
expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the elements
when not in use", etc. your "excess meaning" would seem to be
things like the farmer going out and trying to top off the
fuel every day even when he was not using the tractor, or
maybe taking it out for a spin every day to keep it exercised
and accustomed to being driven. The farmer *might*
understand "changing the oil" and "cleaning the plugs" and
"adjusting the points" vaguely like "deworming" and "cleaning
the hooves" but the analogy is pretty wide of the mark beyond
the simple idea that "things need attending to".<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>OoooooH.
I like the above! May I plaigiarise it some day? Do
you by any chance know Epamanondas from your childhood.
Very politically incorrect, now, I fear, but endlessly
instructive on the perils of over using metaphors.
<==nst] </span></i></b></p>
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</blockquote>
<p>Plagiarize at will. <br>
</p>
<p>I do not know Epaminondas and as I look him up (thanks to the
pervasive and at-my-fingertips interwebs) I don't quite get the
connection with Metaphor nor Political Incorrectness?</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.ancient.eu/Epaminondas/">https://www.ancient.eu/Epaminondas/</a><br>
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