tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post8891143023420592861..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: The selfish gene vs the lucky alleleLarry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-59718260717862577522017-05-10T11:16:41.325-04:002017-05-10T11:16:41.325-04:00I don't understand Dawkins' forcing of his...I don't understand Dawkins' forcing of his selfish gene idea onto coalescent theory. I've read both books and the link is pretty tenuous. If anything, it's misleading. The Ancestor's Tale traces species back from present to past, as they coalesce into common ancestors. In Dawkins' book, there is a single history (or topology) that one traverses back in time. Coalescent theory shares this retrospective approach, but it is specifically not concerned with any specific topology of alleles as they trace back. In fact, the shape/topology of a given gene genealogy as it traces from a present sample of N to a past sample of a single ancestral allele is mostly unimportant; rather it is the statistical properties of numerous simulated genealogies that is important; one can then extract useful summary statistics from these simulations in order to determine the possible evolutionary scenarios that produced the pattern of variation in the present sample of N alleles. rich lawlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13353965284524429553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-9653401974755669512017-05-06T06:12:34.044-04:002017-05-06T06:12:34.044-04:00"The Selfish Gene" certainly is influent..."The Selfish Gene" certainly is influential inasmuch as people are still talking about it - at least, you are. <br /><br />His health issues aside, I think Richard Dawkins would be disappointed if his ideas about science didn't develop over forty years, including new research (done by other people). Then, he can write another book.<br /><br />"The Selfish Gene" and "The Lucky Allele" both sound like titles for children, but "The Selfish Gene" may be considered as poor teaching for the very young child because selfishness is rewarded with success. This is not to say that it isn't true. Also, the story involves sexual reproduction prominently. <br /><br />"The Lucky Allele" I am imagining as a story about the little allele that could, and did, but it also should acknowledge the other alleles that could, and they tried, but they didn't - because they weren't lucky. But "lucky" isn't a thing, it is just an outcome. Another outcome was equally possible. This may be a useful lesson for a small child in a large public school class. But the lucky allele also has to succeed by its efforts, or by those of its carriers. The bad allele may prosper, by accident, but the way you should wager is on the better allele.<br /><br />Luck is a thing in scenarios where a person or a creature has the friendship of leprechauns, or God. For instance, in the bible, the brothers Esau and Jacob. Esau is honest, hardworking, loyal, rather gullible. Jacob is a liar and a thief. God favours Jacob. God apparently likes clever, sneaky people. (Or, Esau is described as a hairy man, which is gross. Or God forms emotional attachments at random.) Although you could also argue that Jacob made his own luck (including leaving home hurriedly after committing so many crimes. Twice.) But God also helped him a lot in the story. In the bible, the nation of Israel is descended from and named after Jacob. I tell the story only to make a point about "luck"; I am fairly confident that "Jacob" is a person who never existed, and so is God.<br /><br />I have no idea if this interests you at all.<br /><br />Perhaps also a point about what the bible tells Israel to believe in. I think this advice is not good.<br /><br />In the time after Jesus (who also may not have existed), God now doesn't like clever people and prefers gullible ones. The bible says that.Robert Carnegiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11868446481195390009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-73144915559342740632017-05-05T10:04:07.297-04:002017-05-05T10:04:07.297-04:00I don't really know how strict population gene...<i>I don't really know how strict population genetics deals with this</i><br /><br />Simple Haldane-Wright-Fisher models of Darwinian selection just don't: they assign fitness values to genotypes and evaluate those to the population mean fitness. It is true that fitness of genotypic classes already incorporates inclusive fitness, but that does not really give a lot of intuition about kin selection and such. I really don't understand Simon's point, so maybe he could elaborate a bit?Corneelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02884855837357720225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-56053662870272823952017-05-05T10:02:57.926-04:002017-05-05T10:02:57.926-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Corneelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02884855837357720225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-82255422797333278022017-05-05T09:04:32.151-04:002017-05-05T09:04:32.151-04:00I am probably using 'kin selection' in a s...I am probably using 'kin selection' in a somewhat loose sense, while retaining the idea of gene copies helping other copies not in their direct lineage. I don't really know how strict population genetics deals with this, given the implicit assumption (an many models) of efficient population stirring, which acts in direct opposition to the benefit in real-world multicellularity.AllanMillerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05955231828424156641noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-51951099131130691152017-05-04T17:29:06.384-04:002017-05-04T17:29:06.384-04:00Of course somatic cells have a fitness - it's ...Of course somatic cells have a fitness - it's 2p, where p is the probability that the cell will divide before it dies. If the argument is that we are shifting a level here, I agree. But that's explicitly not something kin selection can handle - it deals with fitness at <b>one</b> level. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04521153536420798640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-63073207501970636952017-05-04T06:04:28.808-04:002017-05-04T06:04:28.808-04:00Mean of what? Somatic cells don't really have ...Mean of what? Somatic cells don't really have a fitness if their lineage is ultimately terminated in favour of the same genes in gametes. The status of 'individual' pops up a level, from cell to colony.AllanMillerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05955231828424156641noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-35976578025966587162017-05-03T18:06:00.003-04:002017-05-03T18:06:00.003-04:00This is a silly debate. The only thing that ultima...This is a silly debate. The only thing that ultimately matters are <i>mean</i> fitness values. The difference between inclusive fitness models and non-inclusive fitness modes is how you divide up fitness between individuals. If w_i is the fitness of the ith individual in one, then you can write w'_i=w_i+c_i for the fitness of the ith individual in the other, where the sum over all i of c_i is 0.<br />There's not a thing in evolution you couldn't adequately address without inclusive fitness. There is also not a thing in evolution where you couldn't provide an inclusive fitness version. Some people might find one more intuitive than the other in some case, so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYS9EQWkXgAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04521153536420798640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-13250868496767433702017-05-03T15:41:55.804-04:002017-05-03T15:41:55.804-04:00Dang. I was going to say multicellularity. Good th...Dang. I was going to say multicellularity. Good thing I had a quick scan of posts to date. <br /><br />The key with multicellularity is the gametic bottleneck. The relationship of diploid genes to the <i>gamete</i> is what stabilises the whole. If the route out of the organism were diploid, there would be no payoff for foregoing somatic replication, despite 100% relatedness. Not to mention the dependence of 'selfish genes' on reduction for their very existence as units, via crossover. AllanMillerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05955231828424156641noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-44517149973042022352017-05-03T09:23:10.900-04:002017-05-03T09:23:10.900-04:00@Jonathan Badger
If that were true clonally reprod...@Jonathan Badger<br />If that were true clonally reproducing and parthenogenic organisms would be the most altruistic beings alive. This is not the case because freeriders and selfish mutants can still spread in a clonal population unless there is some spatial pattern that prevents this. <br /><br />@Larry<br />Evolution of multicellularity is a consequence of inclusive fitness. Is that trivial?Corneelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02884855837357720225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-35400646927453186002017-05-03T08:50:34.259-04:002017-05-03T08:50:34.259-04:00Inclusive fitness makes a trivial contribution to ...Inclusive fitness makes a trivial contribution to the evolution of life over the past 3.5 billion years. Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-67335431981085023262017-05-03T07:46:12.298-04:002017-05-03T07:46:12.298-04:00You can try and force microbes into an inclusive f...You can try and force microbes into an inclusive fitness analysis, but it doesn't really add anything because the whole difference between "self" and "non-self" is arbitrary in a clonal population. Helping another clonal cell isn't just helping a few genes you carry -- it's helping something indistinguishable from you!Jonathan Badgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921990886076027719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-48029631213554816772017-05-03T03:53:37.135-04:002017-05-03T03:53:37.135-04:00@Larry
This is the second time that you suggest th...@Larry<br />This is the second time that you suggest that inclusive fitness does not exist outside of animals. <a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.nl/2017/03/correcting-correction-of-video-about.html?showComment=1490031213958#c5363415021029359568" rel="nofollow">As stated before</a>: inclusive fitness does occur in all living organisms, including microbes. It will occur whenever there is some spatial pattern that keeps related cells together. If you scroll down a bit from my comment, you'll find that Brian and rich lawler gave some actual examples of features that evolved because they increase inclusive fitness, e.g. quorum sensing in bacteria. <br />Corneelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02884855837357720225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-16986054481391284802017-05-02T22:46:11.067-04:002017-05-02T22:46:11.067-04:00If Dawkins does know he was corrected, or somewhat...If Dawkins does know he was corrected, or somewhat, a person would be reluctant to see the correction of admit it ot just try to wave it away. We all find thinkers who come up with ideas,get famous by them, and then corrected RESIST the correction.<br /><br />Its possible Dawkins does hear the gene not being seen as the selective agent.<br />However his textbook claim on the gene would mean he does sincerely see the gene as the selective agent in modern evolutionary biology ideas.<br /><br />For evolutionism it must be the reproducing population that is getting evolved.<br />No matter what is going on at the gene level. What is being reproduced is what is making a population and that then is what will evolve(including statis).<br />After that a reproducing pair can start a new population however its all about populations. Especially to do the great biology changes evolutionism imagines.<br /><br />So the selfish gene must be a error even within evolutionism. <br />Not only is it not the genes that are the agent, instead instead its successful reproductions, but the genes are not being selfish or tenacious. <br />Luck, randomness etc etc, as written in the thread, are nullifying a gene struggling to maintain existence. Successful genes reproducing are nbot all struggling that hard.<br /><br />I think Dawkins is seeing the mutation(gene) as the essence of evolution<br />while textbook evolutionism sees surviving/reproducing populations as the essence. Thus random mutations , newly, are being seen as important as instantly selection beneficial mutations. <br />Population genetics is a successful criticism and correction.<br /><br />A YEC creationist however would see the genes as the origin for biology change. Like in human colours instantly changing for a whole migrating population. No selection going on.<br />Not selfish but survivalist in a general program of the biology of the entity.<br /><br />Robert Byershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05631863870635096770noreply@blogger.com