![\"q\"](\"https:\/\/news.truthjuice.co.uk\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cf8c33bedf_q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Three years late, Scientific American<\/a> is reacting to a paper on evolution of cooperation<\/a>\u00a0 [2012<\/a>] with a hint that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. \u00a0This is what my wife used to call an FGIO, a faint glimpse into the obvious. \u00a0The paper was by interlopers from physics, mathematically adept senior luminaries. \u00a0The message of their mathematics was that if you put together a group of selfish individuals what evolves is (I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll be shocked to hear this) a selfish community. \u00a0A non-communal community. \u00a0The authors use the colorful word \u201cextortion\u201d to describe the dysfunctional social relations.<\/p>\n The reason this is important is that the standard evolutionary theory of cooperation says that global cooperation can emerge\u00a0from behaviors that are individually selfish. \u00a0It can\u2019t.<\/p>\n (We may be tempted to dismiss the whole topic as esoteric or peripheral, but in fact it pokes a hole in a framework of evolutionary thinking that has become sclerotic, and is overdue for rethinking from the ground up. \u00a0At stake is the way that we think about evolution, and by extension, the way we understand purposes and mechanisms in all of biology. \u00a0Aging is one particular case in point.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Diverse forms of Altruism in Nature<\/b><\/p>\n Human soldiers offer up their lives all too readily in wars of questionable legitimacy<\/a>. \u00a0Amoebas stop competing among themselves and form a \u201cfruiting body<\/a>\u201d that behaves like a single organism. \u00a0Worker bees spend their entire lives serving a colony whose only reproduction is by a queen bee that may not even be a blood relation<\/a> to the worker. \u00a0And yeast cells will commit suicide to digest themselves as food for their cousins<\/a> when they detect that the local region has run out of food. \u00a0Fish of two different species<\/a> work together to hunt more effectively.<\/p>\n When we look at the biosphere, the ubiquity of grand alliances is striking. \u00a0Everywhere, we see extreme examples of individuals sacrificing their lives and their legacy for the good of the community. \u00a0Not infrequently, the sacrifice is complete, in that the individual leaves no offspring at all; and yet the benefit to the group seems modest and indirect. What theory could account for the mismatch between individual cost and communal benefit?<\/p>\n In stark contrast to this broad observation, we have the dominant version of evolutionary theory that purports to explain how all this came about. \u00a0This is the \u201cselfish gene\u201d model. \u00a0The great majority of papers published in evolution today are still framed within this model. \u00a0This mode of thinking has infected and distorted scientific understanding of aging, which is why I became interested in the problem originally, and why this subject belongs in an aging blog.<\/p>\n Of course, adherents of the dominant school feel responsible to provide some account of cooperation, but they look at\u00a0the world with tunnel vision. \u00a0There\u00a0are just two narrow windows through which the broad spectrum of cooperative phenomena are permitted to be viewed. \u00a0One is kin selection: a gene that causes altruistic behavior in its bearer may survive if the altruism is directed toward close relatives who are likely to have copies of the same gene. \u00a0Second is Tit for Tat reciprocal altruism. \u00a0Higher animals that recognize each other as individuals may learn who they can trust, and on the basis of a network of pairings, broad cooperation can spread through a group. \u00a0It is reciprocal altruism that has been called into question by the 2012 paper referenced above, by William Press and Freeman Dyson.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Hamilton\u2019s Contributions<\/b><\/p>\n I find it curious that both these windows were opened by William D Hamilton, early in his career, before Hamilton became a convert to group selection<\/a>. \u00a0He died untimely of malaria after a trip to Africa observing and collectins specimens in 2000.<\/p>\n Kin selection is understood in terms of Hamilton\u2019s Rule<\/a>, which says C < rB. \u00a0In order for an altruistic behavior to evolve, the cost to the altruist (C) must be less than the benefit to the recipient (B) multiplied by their mutual relatedness (r). Relatedness r is \u00bd between siblings or for parent and child, and it goes rapidly down from there. \u00a0\u201cI wouldn\u2019t jump into the river to save my brother,\u201d quipped J.B.S. Haldane<\/a>, \u201cbut I\u2019d lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.\u201d<\/p>\n Reciprocal altruism is understood in terms of the \u201cTit for Tat\u201d strategy, made famous in apaper<\/a> by Hamilton with Robert Axelrod in 1981. \u00a0Based on a simulated tournament implemented with the crude computer facilities available at the time, Hamilton and Axelrod concluded that the most successful selfish strategy could be a basis for global cooperation. \u00a0This was validation of the \u201cinvisible hand<\/a>\u201d that Adam Smith had described two centuries earlier. \u00a0Emergent order in a system where everyone was only looking after himself. \u00a0Emergent cooperation in a system where everyone is behaving in a manner wisely selfish.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat looks like cooperation is really selfishness\u201d is a theme that pervades the evolutionary literature, in guises both direct and quite subtle. \u00a0It was the basis of the sociobiology movement a generation ago, and it thrives today in fields as diverse as evolutionary ecology and the medical biology of aging.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Origin of the Current Crisis<\/b><\/p>\n This way of thinking took it on the chin in 2012 when Dyson and Press published their paper, demonstrating a form of selfishness that Axelrod and Hamilton had not considered. \u00a0Their diabolical strategy took evolutionary learning into account, and gradually trained opponents over time to be submissive, using a purely mathematical form of \u201cextortion\u201d.<\/p>\n This is but the latest scream in the chorus of voices telling us that the \u201cselfish gene<\/a>\u201d version of evolutionary theory doesn\u2019t work. \u00a0The strength of cooperative groups is that they win out in competition against other cooperative groups. \u00a0The idea that the power of a cooperative group is just a lucky side-effect of selfish behavior self-organizing never was credible, and finally it may be biting the dust<\/a>. \u00a0The truth is that the \u201cselfish gene\u201d version of evolution has outlived its usefulness. It is long past due for an overhaul. \u00a0Evolution does not work \u201cone gene at a time\u201d. \u00a0Cooperative relationships have evolved not by accident, but because cooperative groups are very successful competitors, and they can spread and take over areas where individuals are unorganized and selfish.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n What does Selfish Gene Theory Leave Out?<\/b><\/p>\n Now that we see the truth, we can go back and ask about the Selfish Gene theory, what is the reasoning that supports it, and what is the flaw in that reasoning?<\/p>\n There are two lines of reasoning relied on by Selfish Gene adherents:<\/p>\n This is a compelling perspective, and not obviously wrong. \u00a0However, it does not describe the world that we see. \u00a0It predicts that cooperation should be rare in nature, when in fact we find cooperation wherever we look, and not just among close kin.<\/p>\n So we know that the argument for the Selfish Gene must have a catch somewhere\u2026what can the problem be?<\/p>\n In my theoretical work<\/a>, I have offered a general answer to this question that I derived from the work of Michael Gilpin<\/a> in the 1970s. \u00a0It goes like this:<\/p>\n All animals depend on an ecosystem. \u00a0There is a common reservoir of food in the form of living plants or animals on the next trophic level<\/a> down. \u00a0The community of animals dependent on the same food stock is tied together in their fate by a need to conserve that resource. \u00a0It is all too easy to eat everything in sight, to deplete the food species and to use all that extra food energy to reproduce like crazy. \u00a0But the collective consequence of this behavior is rapid disaster. \u00a0Once the food species is gone, it takes a long time to grow back. \u00a0The next generation will starve, and the ecosystem will take a long time to recover, if it ever does.<\/p>\n There is a powerful tendency for population dynamics to fluctuate wildly, leading to extinction. \u00a0The extinction is rapid, and can occur in a single generation. \u00a0Therefore, it constitutes a very potent force of natural selection, one that can easily counterbalance selection for pure selfishness, and defeat the Selfish Gene.<\/p>\n So when Selfish Gene adherents think about a gene for selfishness taking over a community, what they\u2019re leaving out is that the community would likely be destroyed in the process\u2013the community would die out before the selfish gene could become dominant. \u00a0This is true of the easiest and most powerful form of selfishness, which is overconsumption. \u00a0And computer simulations show<\/a> that once this most powerful form of selfishness is tamed, it ties communities together in a way that makes it easier for other forms of cooperation to evolve.<\/p>\n This is the mother of all cooperation, the glue\u00a0that binds\u00a0communities and makes selfishness a dead end. \u00a0Selection for population homeostasis opens a door that permits all other forms of cooperation to evolve.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Bottom Line<\/b><\/p>\n Let me conclude with this bold statement of my radical new thesis: \u00a0If it looks like cooperation, it probably is.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n This article originally appeared on Josh’s blog Aging Matters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n [Editor’s note, see also\u00a0http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/physicists-suggest-selfishness-can-pay-1.11254<\/a>]<\/p>\n The post \u201cWhat Looks Like Cooperation is Really Selfishness\u201d<\/a> appeared first on h+ Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three years late, Scientific American is reacting to a paper on evolution of cooperation\u00a0 [2012] with a hint that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. \u00a0This is what my wife used to call an FGIO, a faint glimpse into the obvious. \u00a0The paper was by interlopers from physics, mathematically adept senior luminaries. \u00a0The … <\/p>\n\n