<div dir="ltr">Thanks, Nick. Just like you struggled to get your head around entropy, I\u2019m battling to wrap my mind around how the basic but very powerful mechanism of evolution works in human groups. I can easily understand individual human selection, or even group selection in swarming insects where only the queen has babies.<br><br>I think I\u2019ll take a page from your book and work with George to help guide me through this learning journey. Every now and then, I might check in with you and others here for a chat or to ask a question.<br><br>The only catch is that I\u2019ve just started a really exciting AI project, so I might not have much time for my group-level evolution journey \u2014 but I\u2019ll try to keep it going.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 03:40, <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="msg2205119609093215092"><div lang="EN-US" style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="m_2205119609093215092WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Thanks Pieter, <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Sorry I have taken so long to get back to you. If FRIAM ever started a journal, it should be called \u201cthe emperors new clothes\u201d. We are not committed to anything if not to the validity of an \u201camateur\u2019s\u201d perspective. As people will be quick to tell you, mine has always been of that sort. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">If I read you carefully, the position you take is that laid out in Dawkins The Extended Phenotype \u2013 that the genes are the basic unit of selection. But as Dave Wilson has been pointing out for years, Who made that decision? For one thing, as epigenic studies have made clear, when one looks in detail, it is really hard to find a thing that is exactly the gene. For another, that decision runs the risk of confusing the the thing that is selected with the forces that are selecting it. Whatever level you care to calculate the impact of selection, it is differential group success that is driving selection or it is not group selection. And if it is differential group success that is driving selection, then it is group selection. I think you might quite enjoy The Extended Phenotype. For a whild ride, have a look at Elliott Sober and D. S. Wilson\u2019s Reintroducing Group Selection to the human behavioral sciences. There is a wonderful metaphor in there about two riders riding three horses. It was the article that broke the tide for me. I had been totally up Dawkins ass for the preceding 20 years. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Here is the citation, courtesy og George Patrick Tremblay IV <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Wilson, D.</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">\u202f</span><span style="font-size:11pt">S., & Sober, E. (1994). <i>Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences</i>. <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17</i>(4), 585\u2013608. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00036104" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00036104</a> <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/WILRGS?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">en.wikipedia.org+15philpapers.org+15</a>\u2026.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Nick <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><div style="border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:none;border-top:1pt solid rgb(225,225,225);padding:3pt 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Pieter Steenekamp<br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, August 6, 2025 12:55 AM<br><b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">Nick, I'm genuinely impressed. Honestly, I feel a bit out of my depth trying to respond meaningfully on this topic.<br><br>So please take my reply in the same spirit I\u2019d expect a response from my 10-year-old grandchild when debating computer programming with me. The gap between your understanding of evolution and mine feels about that wide.<br><br>That said, I\u2019d still like to offer a response to your group selection argument\u2014fully aware that it may come across as amateurish, and I'm okay with that.<br><br>Here's the question I\u2019m grappling with:<br><br>Is the following valid?<br>Genes as the Unit of Selection:<br>Modern evolutionary theory generally views genes as the primary unit of selection. Natural selection acts on individuals, and the success of an individual is ultimately determined by the genes they carry. <br>Group Selection as a Modifier:<br>Group selection can be seen as a process that influences the expression of genes. For example, if a group-level trait (like cooperative behavior) is advantageous, then genes that promote that behavior will be favored, even if those genes also have individual-level costs.<u></u><u></u></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 at 00:12, Prof David West <<a href="mailto:profwest@fastmail.fm" target="_blank">profwest@fastmail.fm</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p></div><blockquote style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:1pt solid rgb(204,204,204);padding:0in 0in 0in 6pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Nick,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">I wish to embody the fear of being dragged away from what you think you are supposed to be doing, to be engaged in the topic you raise in your paper.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">I have read the paper before and, as then, I find it meritorious, well written, and reasonable in argument. I am, basically, convinced.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">However; two points:<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">First, your use of the concept, "metaphor," is the way that I use the term, in a manner that glen pointed out is inconsistent with the literal definition of the term. I speak of metaphor when there is some thing of which I think I know something and I have a suspicion that some other thing might be of the same ilk. I use what I think I know to craft a 'model', one that suggests particular points and particular relations that, if my suspicion is correct, will have direct analogs in the unknown thing. I check them out individually and in combinations and, if substantiated, confirm my suspicion. If unconfirmed, the metaphor is refuted.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">This seems to me to be what you are doing in the paper, albeit it more abstractly and academically. Please correct me if wrong.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Second, and here is the real time sink, would it be possible to make your ideas concrete, real groups with actual history and demonstrated differential "success." If you were amenable to such a conversation, I would propose the Mormons as a test case.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">One of 20 or so "religions"/"societies" to emerge from the "Burnt Over District" of western New York. The only one still extant.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Disproportionately successful, (in material and social terms), to their neighbors. Smith was living in a two-story New England style home while down the road, Abe Lincoln, was living in a log cabin with mud floor.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">A schism immediately after Smith's death, with the Reformed LDS barely evident while the main group flourished. (Last time I checked, Mormonism and Sokka Gokai, in Japan, were the two fastest growing religions.)<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">In Utah there was a concerted effort to spawn multiple small groups by sending out colonies. Because each group was originally "seeded" with four or five families, you get a strong genetic/heritance component as well as "traits." (It is still possible to identify what part of Utah someone is from (especially females) by their physical appearance.)<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Some interesting "adaptations" at the trait level, e.g., when Smith was alive blacks were included in the community and held the priesthood\u2014something that Missourians, at the time, could not abide. Brigham Young 'suspended' (restored in 1978 with the admission that the suspension was not for theological, but merely political reasons) black priesthood membership and gave up polygamy (de jure only) to appease the Federal Government and avoid a second martyrdom.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">davew<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Tue, Aug 5, 2025, at 1:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:<u></u><u></u></p></div><blockquote style="margin-top:5pt;margin-bottom:5pt" id="m_2205119609093215092m_7485421507059469756qt"><div><div><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">Dear Colleagues in FRIAM,<u></u><u></u></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">Sometimes, if I am going to get anything done, I just have to ignore Friam, and keep my head down, and work at the thing I am working at. It always seems, on that occasion, that you-guys dangle in front of me some enticing topic so I must scream and put my fingers in my ears to keep focus on my work. So it was that when I decided I must fish or cut bait on entropy or it would take me to my grave, that almost immediately you-guys started not one but two conversations close to my heart: on the centrality of metaphor to science and on the group selection controversy. <u></u><u></u></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">A couple of decades ago I brought those two interests together in a paper called \u201cShifting the Natural Selection Metaphor to the Group Level. There are two things about this paper that make it salient for me. The first is that I think it is the best paper I ever wrote. The second is that for each of the two people whom I most hoped to reach when I wrote it, D. S. Wilson and Elliott Sober, it is a piece of crap. In it, I try to show that the problem with metaphors is not with their use in scientific thinking: on the contrary, it is with their ill-disciplined use. Metaphors need to be worked in a systematic way, not simply flung out in a gust of poetic exuberance. This lesson I try to teach by working the natural selection metaphor in a systematic way to show that if it had been treated seriously in the first place, the whole dispute about group selection might have been avoided. Thus the paper is not only arrogant, but meta-arrogant. <u></u><u></u></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">Nothing is more pitiable than the retired academic who would do anything to have anybody read his moribund essays. But, alas, I simply am such a person. So, I am attaching a copy of the paper in the hope that it will have some value to you within the context of your two discussions. <u></u><u></u></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">Mumble,<u></u><u></u></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%">Nick<u></u><u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"> <u></u><u></u></p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">--<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas S. Thompson<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Clark University<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:nthompson@clarku.edu" target="_blank">nthompson@clarku.edu</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson" target="_blank">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson</a><u></u><u></u></p></div></div></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Attachments:</b><u></u><u></u></p></div><ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal">Shifting the natural selection metaphor to the group level.pdf<u></u><u></u></li><li class="MsoNormal">Shifting the natural selection metaphor to the group level.pdf<u></u><u></u></li></ul></blockquote><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal">.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><u></u><u></u></p></blockquote></div></div></div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..<br>
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