Altruism can be produced via evolution by kin selection or group selection. I don’t think kin selection can work for corporations, for several reasons, including massive lateral transfer of ideas between corporations (so that helping a kin does not give a great boost to your genes), deliberate acquisition of memes predominating over inheritance, and the fact that corporations can grow instead of reproducing, and so are unlikely to be in a position where they have no growth potential themselves but can help a kin instead.
Can group selection apply to corporations?
What are the right units of selection / inheritance?
Altruism can be produced via evolution by kin selection or group selection. I don’t think kin selection can work for corporations, for several reasons, including massive lateral transfer of ideas between corporations (so that helping a kin does not give a great boost to your genes), deliberate acquisition of memes predominating over inheritance, and the fact that corporations can grow instead of reproducing, and so are unlikely to be in a position where they have no growth potential themselves but can help a kin instead.
You don’t think there’s corporate parental care?!? IMO, corporate parental care is completely obvious. It is a simple instance of cultural kin selection. When a new corporation is spun off from an old one, there are often economic and resource lifelines—akin to the runners strawberry plants use to feed their offspring.
Lateral gene transfer doesn’t much affect this. Growth competes with reproduction in many plants—and the line between the two can get blurred. It doesn’t preclude parental care—as the strawberry runners show.
Altruism and merging: Two very good points!
Altruism can be produced via evolution by kin selection or group selection. I don’t think kin selection can work for corporations, for several reasons, including massive lateral transfer of ideas between corporations (so that helping a kin does not give a great boost to your genes), deliberate acquisition of memes predominating over inheritance, and the fact that corporations can grow instead of reproducing, and so are unlikely to be in a position where they have no growth potential themselves but can help a kin instead.
Can group selection apply to corporations?
What are the right units of selection / inheritance?
You don’t think there’s corporate parental care?!? IMO, corporate parental care is completely obvious. It is a simple instance of cultural kin selection. When a new corporation is spun off from an old one, there are often economic and resource lifelines—akin to the runners strawberry plants use to feed their offspring.
Lateral gene transfer doesn’t much affect this. Growth competes with reproduction in many plants—and the line between the two can get blurred. It doesn’t preclude parental care—as the strawberry runners show.