In reference to my previous post about multi-level selection, I have an admission to make, I am generally more open to group selection, strictly speaking interdemic selection, for human beings than I am for other creatures. The reasoning is culture, as my intuition is that ingroup vs. outgroup psychological dynamics can generate the relatively high ratio of intergroup vs. intragroup variance that is needed for this form of selection to keep up with within group selection (e.g., individual selection). To some extent, I have been influenced by the book, Not by Genes Alone, a popularization of the work of theoretical anthropologists Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson. Additionally, recently I have been in a discussion with Judith Rich Harris about the role that multi-level selection plays in No Two Alike. But finally, I am going to publish a 10 questions with James F. Crow on my other weblog tomorrow morning, and in it I ask him about group selection and he responded that he did believe that it was important for human evolution. I suspected as much as I did a literature review before asking him the questions. But in any case, reputation matters, if the most eminent population geneticist alive believes in its relevance for human evolution, I am more hesitant to dismiss it.
More later....
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Dunno what to say: "welcome aboard"?
Dunno what to say: "welcome aboard"?<?i>
well, i've had this opinion for about 6 months. the key is that i still stand by my overall contention that multi-level selection is 'confused' and difficult to work with in terms of modeling, etc. i think culture is plausibly more likely modeled as group selective, though james crow is also referring to biology.
meh, while I'm willing to believe that some people do things for the good of the group to their own detriment, what we're looking at is the fact that proximate mechanisms are imperfect methods of adherence to ultimate causes. Humans in general are a perfect example of how a proximate mechanism that evolved due to one ultimate cause can end up the basis of all sorts of behaviors that have nothing to do with the original cause.
also, i think a lot of evidence for 'group selection' is crap.
In other instances is actually an illustration of dominance being displayed through helping weaker group members. We see that in primates and wolves.
Finally, if the good of the individual is contingent upon the good of teh group, we could see this again. This might be true of low-ranking members of a group rather than high ranking members. A rich dude in Africa lives about as well as a rich dude in the US. A poor person in America is more than a little better off than a poor person in Africa.
also, i think a lot of evidence for 'group selection' is crap.
agreed. my main point in this post is that the variance criterion might be fulfilled in the case of human culture. for example, language exhibits more intergroup than intragroup variance, even at a relatively small scale often (e.g., highlands of papua new guinea).
in any case, here is a critique of cultural group selection from my other blog by david burbridge. worth reading.
David's critique is good
is that all there is to the variance criterion? If that's it, color me skeptical. All that means is that it looks like it's for the good of the group.
I'm just finding it very very hard to leap from group adherence to 'must hurt the individual more than it helps!'
If we're talking about some kind of more generalized form of group selection in which you can help the group without hurting yourself and it still be group selection, I wan't no part of it and would sooner lose a testicle than to further such a confusing terminology (I really dont' want to hear 'for the good of the species' type crap come back).
argh, comment about inter vs. intra got too long. I'll email it to you when i get home. Q#@$(^#&*filtered work internet
a lot of this is semantics. i used the term interdemic selection very consciously with crow. i'll have to check out his papers with aoki.
i'm not a humans-are-special type of person, but in a lot of ways morphology we are pretty weird (a mammalian biped without fur and a brain way oversized is pretty weird). so i would not be surprised if strange evolutionary dynamics are at work.
*shrug* I don't doubt the existence of interdemic selection. Chimpanzee, baboon, and capuchin hunting traditions for one. social carnivores for another. I want to say parrots and corvids, but i'm not a bird person. I do know it's been more or less documented for several of the monogamous/cooperative breeding south american monkeys.
I just see it as an epiphenomenon of individual selection. Not to mention that by separating it from individual-level selection we're pretty much begging for bastardization.