Text 1289, 65 rader
Skriven 2005-01-03 06:32:00 av Jim McGinn (1:278/230)
Ärende: Hamiton's Rule: Solution
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EKurtz99 wrote:
> "Joe Felsenstein" <joe@removethispart.gs.washington.edu> wrote
> > If I list a set of assumptions and show that Hardy-Weinberg
> > proportions spring from them (and that is easy with a simple
> > discrete-generations random mating model), does that mean
> > that McGinn is either going to agree, or is going to show
> > that these assumptions do not in fact lead to those
> > conclusions?
> >
> > If so, I'd be happy to make the argument.
> >
> > Or is McGinn just going to demand that I show that these
> > assumptions have "causal validity"?  i.e., that those
> > assumptions are true in real life?  Of course the model
> > will at best be an approximation to real life.  All
> > theoretical population genetics models are.  They
> > therefore won't be literally true in real life.
> > The models can be made to be better and better
> > approximations to real life, but will always be loftily
> > dismissed by McGinn.
>
> I think you are putting the theoretical cart before the
> empirical horse here; the point about models is that they
> must eventually be applied to data, and their usefulness
> is what they tell you about the data.

I agree that Joe is confused.  He seems to not comprehend
that Hamilton's rule is supposed to relate to real physical
processes.

The really funny thing about Hamilton's rule is that it is
a solution to a problem that does not actually exist.  The
artificial problem that underlies Hamilton's rule is that
Darwin's understanding of natural selection dictates the
conclusion that altruistic behaviors/morphologies could not
possibly evolve in that natural selection is a process that
only improves the fitness of individuals (and/or genes of
individuals).

It's really comical how many people continue to believe that
Darwin proved (or at least demonstrated) that natural
selection is a process that *only* effects adaptive change
on individuals and not also on or at all other levels of
biological phenomena.  Most of those that maintain this
belief do so on a psychological level such that they are
unaware that they do so.

This is really what's going on with Joe (and many others).
Their understanding of biological evolution is so completely
compromised by miscomprehension of Darwin (and Mendel) that
the result is they spend all their time spinning their
wheels in endless loops of logic that achieve nothing but
the illusion that they are making sense.

Jim
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