{"id":3116,"date":"2012-07-09T17:54:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T22:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2012-07-09T17:55:07","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T22:55:07","slug":"group-selection-plays-the-virtue-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2012\/07\/09\/human-nature\/group-selection-plays-the-virtue-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Group Selection Plays the “Virtue” Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know, I\u2019ve been a mite heavy on the group selection stuff lately, but I can\u2019t help it. Recent developments touched off by the publication of E. O. Wilson\u2019s The Social Conquest of Earth<\/em> are, to coin a term, \u201cfascinating,\u201d if you know the history of the theory and the controversy surrounding it. The latest plot twist is the appearance of an article by group selection proponent Martin Nowak<\/a> entitled \u201cWhy We Help<\/a>,\u201d as the cover story in the latest edition of Scientific American<\/em>. Nowak was co-author with Wilson and Corina Tarnita of a hard-core group selection paper entitled The Evolution of Eusociality<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that appeared in Nature in August 2010. I say \u201chard-core\u201d because the paper included a section announcing the \u201cfall of inclusive fitness theory,\u201d a claim alluded to by Wilson in his book as if it were an accomplished fact. This drew immediate counter-blasts from inclusive fitness theorists such as Richard Dawkins<\/a>, Steven Pinker<\/a> and Jerry Coyne<\/a>. Now, perhaps all unbeknownst to themselves, the group selectionists have played the \u201cvirtue\u201d card.<\/p>\n

Scientific American<\/em>, as it happens, should have been renamed Politically Correct American<\/em> long ago. Its editors are relentless promoters of the \u201cprogressive\u201d version of the Good. Enter Martin Nowak, with an article about the evolution of cooperation, a progressive Good if ever there was one. To make sure its readers get the point, SA added the following blurb on the cover: \u201cThe Evolution of Cooperation; Competition is not the only force that shaped life on earth.\u201d Competition is, of course, anathema to all right thinkers on the left. The Dawkins\/Pinker faction, on the other hand, has stressed the notion of the \u201cselfish\u201d gene, which they associate with innate \u201cselfish\u201d human behaviors. If history is any guide, they are treading on thin ice. In the past, Scientific American has responded to such deviations from the \u201ccorrect\u201d line with thinly veiled hints that their authors are \u201cconservative,\u201d or even, heaven forefend, fascist!<\/p>\n

Group selectionists have long had the virtue card up their sleeves. For example, Mark Borrello cites saintly anarchist godfather Peter Kropotkin (fondly referred to by Lenin as \u201cthat old fool Kropotkin\u201d) as an early advocate of the idea in his book, Evolutionary Restraints<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Kropotkin argued (in a series of articles published between 1905 and 1919, ed.) that in the course of the struggle against the environment, species were more apt to practice mutual aid, and that cooperative species would increase in numbers and outlast their individualistic rivals. In this scenario, natural selection ceases to be \u201ca selection of haphazard variations, but becomes a physiological selection of those individuals, societies and groups which are best capable of meeting the new requirements by new adaptations of their tissues, organs and habits. It operates largely as a selection of groups of individuals, modified all at once, more or less, in a given direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, Kropotkin was a political ideologue, and political ideologues have a habit of construing \u201creality\u201d to favor whatever flavor of utopia they happen to prefer. I\u2019m not aware of the political proclivities of Nowak, and have no evidence that his theories are tainted by ideology. However, there are some hints in the article, perhaps reflecting the context (Scientific American<\/em>) in which he is writing. For example,<\/p>\n

As the human population expands and the climate changes, we will need to harness that adaptability and figure out ways to work together to save the planet and its inhabitants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

Policy makers should take note of indirect reciprocity and the importance of information and reputation in keeping defectors in check. And they should exploit the capacity of these factors to make better cooperators of us all in the mother of all public goods games: the seven-billion-person mission to conserve the rapidly dwindling resources of planet Earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is interesting that Nowak is very reserved about his advocacy of group selection in the paper. Instead, he cites his background in the mathematics of game theory. Group theory is only mentioned in passing as the last of five mechanisms that may have contributed to the evolution of cooperation. As Nowak puts it,<\/p>\n

Last, individuals may perform selfless acts for the greater good, as opposed to abetting a single peer. This fifth means by which cooperation may take root is known as group selection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No matter, at this point, \u201cNowak\u201d and \u201cgroup selection\u201d are virtually synonymous among evolutionary biologists, so they\u2019ll get the drift, although most of them would probably dispute the fact that the acts involved are really \u201cselfless.\u201d Still, \u201cselfless acts for the greater good\u201d hits the right tone for an article in Scientific American.<\/p>\n

And so continues the melodramatic career of the theory of group selection. Used by Steven Pinker as a pretext to dismiss the life work of the most effective and influential debunker of the Blank Slate, Robert Ardrey, in a single paragraph as \u201ctotally and utterly wrong\u201d in his comical \u201chistory\u201d of the Blank Slate, it would seem the theory has now risen from the grave. Pinker had better step lively, or he may soon find himself on the wrong side of the \u201cvirtue\u201d line.\u00a0 There may be poetic justice in science after all.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, I\u2019ve been a mite heavy on the group selection stuff lately, but I can\u2019t help it. Recent developments touched off by the publication of E. O. Wilson\u2019s The Social Conquest of Earth are, to coin a term, \u201cfascinating,\u201d if you know the history of the theory and the controversy surrounding it. The latest … Continue reading “Group Selection Plays the “Virtue” Card”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,48,105,109,28,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-evolution","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-group-selection","category-human-nature","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-Og","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}