Text 1029, 288 rader
Skriven 2004-12-15 06:28:00 av John Edser (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: Hollowness of Hamilto
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"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net> wrote:-

> > JMcG:-
> > [snip]
> > Does IBD actually measure relatedness
> > or is it, as I indicate, a vague abstraction that
> > is only peripherally indicative of relatedness?
> > [snip]

> JM:-
> Short answer:
> What "really" matters is how frequently the recipient of altruism
> carries the gene for altruism, as compared to non-recipients.  All else,
> including the causal reasons why he happens to carry or not carry
> the gene,
> is irrelevant.

JE:-
IBD does not measure "how frequently the recipient
of altruism carries the gene for altruism" it
only measures the probability that ANY parental
gene has replicated itself over n _organism_
generations (not gene generations) of
that gene. What that gene is or does has
no bearing on IBD as long as it is defined
as the same gene. A mutated gene restarts
IBD all over again. Two identical genes that
carry out identical tasks may only have
a close to zero IBD relatedness. Hamilton
use of IBD was not concerned with what the
genes do only from which gene they were replicated
because genes within his THEORY were all supposed
to be INDEPENDENTLY selectable (they are not
within NATURE).


>snip<

> JM:-
> Long answer:
> What we are interested in is under what circumstances a "gene for"
> altruism can increase in frequency in the population.  Naively, it
> would seem that this is impossible, since the carrier of the gene
> indulges in altruistic behavior, which is by definition detrimental
> to its fitness, which means that it will pass on fewer copies of the
> gene to the next generation.

JE:-
You have to differentiate between an
absolute detrimental fitness (a reduction
in the total fitness of the actor) and just
a relative detrimental fitness (a
reduction within an incomplete fitness
total for the actor) or you cannot differentiate
between fitness altruism and fitness mutualism.

Unless the total fitness of the actor can be
selected to be reduced, no altruism can be
proven. Hamilton's Rule, as it stands with the
total fitness of the actor deleted, cannot
differentiate between altruism and mutualism,
because the sign of c remains entirely
arbitrary within the rule.

Any reduction of the total fitness of the
actor which is heritable, cannot be selected
for. If it could be then Darwinian theory
stands refuted. Darwinism predicts that any
heritable reduction in a parents total fitness
must produce extinction as each generation’s
parents reduces their total fitness on a
heritable basis to just nothing at all.

The only naivety that exists is the Neo Darwinian
irrational belief that the total fitness of
an actor can be _selected_ to be _reduced_.
It cannot be so selected. Because the rule
remains 100% relative gene centric Neo Darwinists
can only prefer to label positive
measures of c as fitness altruistic.
Their assumption of same remains entirely
unwarranted.

It appears everybody prefers to be seduced
by the so called "elegance" of Hamilton's
mathematics. Also, it is more politically
acceptable to argue that altruism can be
selected FOR within nature. The simple
truth is that neither “selfishnessö
or “altruismö can be selected for within
evolutionary theory. Unfortunately this
science was and remains, the meat within
a politically hot sandwich.

> JM:-
> However, there is a loophole in this
> argument.  If the carriers of the gene happen to be disproportionately
> represented among the *recipients* of the altruism, then perhaps they
> will receive enough fitness benefits to more than compensate for the
> fitness they lose by *being* altruistic.

JE:-
No loophole exists.
Recipients of the gene are donating
their fitness as fast as they receive it.
This being the case, as a heritable total fitness
is selected to be reduced, the entire population
plummets towards extinction as mad altruists
contest each other for an ever diminishing
number of sane non altruists. When the entire
population becomes altruistic (which is
a logical impossibility) all normal
reproduction ceases and everybody becomes
extinct. Now the whole process can repeat
itself.



> JM:-
> How do we put a metric on this "disproportionate representation"?
> Clearly, it involves the probability that a recipient carries the gene.
> It clearly also involves the probability that a random member of the
> population carries the gene.  Now, as it turns out, a fairly simple
> algebraic combination of these two probabilities is all we need to
> define a number "r".  If the value of "r" (which we will call
> "relatedness"
> just to confuse McGinn) happens to be greater than the cost/benefit ratio
> for the altruism, (i.e. if the representation is disproportionate enough)
> then the gene will increase in frequency.
>
> Now let us look at causation.  Why are the carriers of the gene
> disproportionately represented among the recipients?  There are several
> possibilities:
> 1.  The donors recognize the gene's presence or absense in a potential
> recipient and only direct their altruism to carriers.  This is
> "green beard
> altruism".  But there are problems with this that I won't go into.


JE:-
Here is that problem:


		r^eb > c

Dawkins green beard nonsense fails because
the lineal gains are exceeded by geometric
costs.

> JM:-
> 2.  The donors recognize altruistic behavior and reward it by
> being altruistic
> to other altruists.  This is "reciprocal altruism" - it is best studied
> within a game-theoretical framework.


JE:-
This logic is exactly the same as organism
fitness mutualism where any mutualism is the
nemesis of any altruism within Hamilton’s
Rule. The renaming of mutualism to becomes
so called "reciprocal altruism" only constitutes
a desperate effort by the political left to
maintain altruism within nature. The term
is just a self contradiction unless what is
being exchanged only constitutes a total reduction
in parental fitness. Of course, in this hopeless
situation, both are selected to “helpö each other
commit evolutionary suicide.

> JM:-
> 3.  The donors direct the altruism disproportionately to their
> close relatives.
> There are several ways this might happen - they might actually recognize
> their relatives, or they might scatter their benevolence indiscriminately
> but just happen to "hit" their relatives more frequently because their
> immediate neighborhood happens to contain a lot of their relatives.  In
> either case this is "kin selection".

JE:-
It suffers from the same fatal disease as
Dawkins’ Green Beard pantomime:

		r^eb > c


> JM:-
> snip <
> Hamilton's 1964
> paper focused
> on the IBD version of relatedness.  His 1970 paper rederived "rb>c" using
> the "disproportionate representation" version of relatedness.
> Grafen's paper,
> like most modern treatments, takes the "disproportionate representation"
> version as the basic one, but also shows how IBD yields
> essentially the same
> results.
> For the algebraic details in support of the above, and for the
> details about
> the assumptions and approximations, CONSULT A TEXTBOOK!!!!
> However, if you insist that "relatedness" has to refer only to
> the probability
> of having something in common, and not to a *disproportionate* probability
> (relative to the rest of the population), then you are going to
> continue to
> fail to understand Hamilton's rule.

JE:-
Hamilton’s THEORY (from which Hamilton’s
over simplified model was derived) assumes that
an INDEPENDENT gene level of selection
exists within nature. It doesn't. Not
one single independent genomic gene
selection event has ever been documented
within nature. Hamilton et al are plying
their heuristic model as some sort of
competitive theory. It is no such thing. For
Hamilton’s independent gene level of selection
to exist gene fitness epistasis is required
to be deleted. If it remains included then
all genomic genes remain DEPENDENTLY selected
at Darwin’s fertile organism level of selection
prohibiting the evolution of organism fitness
altruism. If Hamilton is correct then Darwin is
wrong and vice versa. Both cannot be correct
because one is the anti-thesis of the other.

> JM:-
> Relatedness, as used here, requires more than simply having something in
> common.  You have something in common that a large piece of the general
> population does NOT have.  Relatedness can only be defined within the
> context of a population.  And that adds some complexity to the concept.

JE:-
When is doubt always employ the “open sesameö
of group selection. It is guaranteed to cure all
ills. Hamilton’s rule was supposed to replace group
selection (of course it did not do so because
rb constituted a group of Darwinian competitive
fertile forms).

> JM:-
> You may have noticed that simplified derivations of Hamilton's rule will
> frequently make the assumption that the altruistic allele is rare.  This
> assumption is not necessary for the validity of the rule.

JE:-
The rule cannot work (even on just an irrational
100% relative basis) if just one allele has mutated
to become “altruisticö. Unless a number of these
alleles have mutated at the same time in the
same way within the same population, the rule
cannot work. If n alleles
are required to mutate within the same genome
(an epistatic mutation) then not only has
a number of alleles required to mutate within
the same population in the same way at the
same time, n are required to mutate
simultaneously in this way within the
one individual. If n alleles are required
then no hope exists for the rule. Of course
a complex trait like organism fitness
altruism would require n alleles.



Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@tpg.com.au
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