The Origins of Altruism - Edward O. Wilson's Alternate Theory

Having followed for a while the various debates about evolution (except Intelligent Design, I've got no time for that), I am continually amazed by how unscientific the people upholding the scientific status quo are.

I understand that they would circle the wagons to repel attacks by the 'ignorant savages' outside of their own group... but to see them behave the same way against 'one of their own' is quite remarkable. I wonder if it is just a knee-jerk reaction they have developed... that anyone who even questions their pet theory is attacked as not knowing what they are talking about. How can someone claim to be 'rational' and yet at the same time be making ad hominem attacks against one of the founders of a field and claiming that he doesn't know what he is talking about? The levels of self deception implicit in that are simply staggering.

I liked the quote in the article that a scientist who can't change his mind isn't much of a scientist at all.

Without any prior knowledge on the subject, it seemed obvious to me that the reason altruism exists is the same reason our bodies' cells don't attack each other. Groups of coöperating individuals have a much higher chance of surviving than groups of naïvely self-serving individuals.

I was surprised to find this is the "alternate" theory:

> Under certain circumstances, groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of non-cooperators, thereby ensuring that their genes — including the ones that predispose them to cooperation — are handed down to future generations.

Surely others have thought of this idea before, as it seems to me much simpler than kin selection. Why was it not until the 21st century that this idea has gained even a modicum of traction?

Wilson's critics appear to engage in a great deal of uncalled for ad hominem attacks. I hate those kinds of personal insults. As far as kinship not being essential to group cooperation, this seems plausible (though unproven) to me. Dogs are not particularly close genetic relatives to human beings, but they will clearly raise alarm and even risk their lives to protect their human companions. Dogs don't appear to understand that this might not represent an appropriately greedy strategy for propagating their genes. I'm not even sure dogs know what genes are. Dogs and humans appear to be able to socially bond without particular genetic affinity.

Functional systems may be formed from dissimilar parts. Some theorize that eukaryotic cells originated through a fusion of ancient viruses and prokaryotes. Chocolate and peanut butter. Certainly this could be created within a mathematical model. Whether it occurs in nature is a different story. Group selection strikes me as an inadequate label, since particular tribes, kingdoms, nations, corporations, religions, movements emerge and vanish all the time. Human beings are masters of jumping on bandwagons and abandoning sinking ships. The real survival talent is joining and leaving groups when called for, and being valued as group participants. Being esteemed within a group may permit an individual to more readily leverage group powers. Something along the lines of "free riders earn no karma."

This gives rise to a significant individual motive: raising an alarm to warn the herd may simply be a calculated risk, which if successful might raise the actor's standing within the group (or the standing of his kind or lineage, essentially a kinship argument).

As far as the free rider argument goes, it's kind of hard to love a parasite. Being a jerk is somewhat anti-social behavior, and most groups tend to cast out or marginalize people who aren't team players. Ironically, this seems to be what's happening to Wilson. He's not being a team player, so the group is attempting to expel him (from his place within the rarified academic elite).

Selfishness is generally viewed as unattractive, while kindness, loyalty to others and generosity are often cited as desirable traits in a potential mate. That alone would be sufficient to promote specific altruistic traits. Why does sex selection in modern day humans appear to support furtherance of altruistic tendencies, in opposition to the more clear cut, selfish motivations of the individual? Saying, "I'm the most self-centered, greediest, oppportunistic prick out there, how bout a date?" ought to be a more successful pick up line than it is.

Fascinating. Jerry Coyne (quoted in the article) has a blog post about the article:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-bosto...

The actual theory occurs in the middle of article. I was seriously exhausted of digging through long journalist effor to show how "rad" it is.

To spare you the digging:

> The alternative theory holds that the origins of altruism and teamwork have nothing to do with kinship or the degree of relatedness between individuals. The key, Wilson said, is the group: Under certain circumstances, groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of non-cooperators, thereby ensuring that their genes — including the ones that predispose them to cooperation — are handed down to future generations.

I'm still not sure why this idea is dismissed because I don't see any false statement or inconsistency in it and it seems to lead to apparent altruism.

I think that altrusim that involves the death of the individual seems very hard to understand. But in general there doesn't seem to be much trouble explaining cooperation. In the paper "Kropotkin Was No Crackpot" by Stephen Jay Gould he states "Kropotkin therefore created a dichotomy within the general notion of struggle – two forms with opposite import: (1) organism against organism of the same species for limited resources, leading to competition; and (2) organism against environment, leading to cooperation." The really interesting thing is that the paper also explains why certain societies are more collective than others e.g. Russians Vs English people. Darwin admitted a second form of struggle "metaphorical" that pits organism against the harshness of surrounding physical environments, not against other members of the same species. However Darwin's focus was mainly on the other form of struggle which pitted individual against individual in a gladatorial struggle. The Russians could not understand this "It was foreign to their experience because, quite simply, Russia’s huge land mass dwarfed its sparse population. For a Russian to see an inexorably increasing population inevitably straining potential supplies of food and space required quite a leap of imagination." So their environment influenced their politics which seems natural enough and refreshing to me as it always seems that a more social economy is some kind of artificial thing that is forced on people by intellectuals and goes against our nature as murderous individuals. Of course we are also murderously competitive individuals but the point is that in certain environments you won't survive if you don't cooperate.

Barely related, but I have always been surprised by the rejection of "group selection" -- I actually think our discomfort with it is sort of ideological, and motivated by the fact that we have an individualistically structured society (capitalism) that would be deeply challenged by group selection. Sort of out there, but perhaps worth thinking about.

(EDIT: I am speaking of the hyper-individualistic capitalism popular in America and (I think) Britain, not the lets-have-unions-and-govt-cooperate capitalism of Germany or Japan. Also, I still remember driving for 100 miles with a biologist who told me that group selection violated the basic premises of evolutionary theory, which is basically "selfish gene" only.)

It would be nice to build an evolutionary simulation in which cooperation is beneficial, but cooperation between related individuals are essentially forbidden by the physics of the environment and see if the cooperation genes still arise and prevail.

Kudos to Wilson for taking a different. Right or wrong, it's impressive for someone to challenge orthodoxy twice in a lifetime.

Still, looking at the topic mathematically, it's hard for me to see the models as absolutely opposed.

A behavior of animal could to a degree enhance their kin's survival and enhance their groups' survival. I suspect the two models seen as opposed through the difficulty of modeling such a general selection process.

I had the impression that precise arguments for each hypothesis are completely not important, and it looks more like being about politics than science.

If we assume that groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of non-cooperators (called 'heresy') as complete and true, we challenge Dawkin's atheism.