I’m well aware. If you don’t think that evolution describes the changes in the population of mitochondria in a cell, then I think you’re taking an overly narrow view of evolution!
Your mitochondrion might well live longer, but it still won’t make it to the next generation.
I happen to be male; none of my mitochondria will make it to the next human generation anyway. (You… did know that mitochondrial lines have different DNA than their human hosts, right?)
But for the relevant population—mitochondria within a single cell—these mutants do actually win and take over the population of the cell, because they’re reproductively favored over the previous strain. And if we go up a level to cells, if that cell divides, both of its descendants will have those new mitochondria along for the ride. (At this level, those cells are reproductively disfavored, and thus we wouldn’t expect this to spread.)
That is, evolution on the lower level does work against evolution on the upper level, because the incentives of the two systems are misaligned. Since the lower level has much faster generations, you’ll get many more cycles of evolution on the lower level, and thus we would naively expect the lower level to dominate. If a bacterial infection can go through a thousand generations, why can’t it evolve past the defenses of a host going through a single generation? If the cell population of a tumor can go through a thousand generations, why can’t it evolve past the defenses of a host going through a single generation?
The answer is twofold: 1) it can, and when it does that typically leads to the death of the host, and 2) because it can, the host puts in a lot of effort to make that not happen. (You can use evolution on the upper level to explain why these mechanisms exist, but not how they operate. That is, you can make statements like “I expect there to be an immune system” and some broad properties of it but may have difficulty predicting how those properties are achieved.)
(That is, the lower level gets both the forces leading to ‘disorder’ from the perspective of the upper system, and corrective forces leading to order. This can lead to spectacular booms and busts in ways that you don’t see with normal selective gradients.)
If you don’t think that evolution describes the changes in the population of mitochondria in a cell, then I think you’re taking an overly narrow view of evolution!
That may well be so, but still in the context of this discussion I don’t think that it’s useful to describe the changes in the population of mitochondria in an evolutionary framework (your lower level, that is).
happen to be male; none of my mitochondria will make it to the next human generation anyway.
Unless you have a sister :-) Yes, I know that mDNA is special.
The answer is twofold:
There is also the third option: symbiosis. If you managed to get your hooks into a nice and juicy host, it might be wise to set up house instead of doing the slash-and-burn.
Since this started connected to economics, there are probably parallels with roving bandits and stationary bandits.
I’m well aware. If you don’t think that evolution describes the changes in the population of mitochondria in a cell, then I think you’re taking an overly narrow view of evolution!
I happen to be male; none of my mitochondria will make it to the next human generation anyway. (You… did know that mitochondrial lines have different DNA than their human hosts, right?)
But for the relevant population—mitochondria within a single cell—these mutants do actually win and take over the population of the cell, because they’re reproductively favored over the previous strain. And if we go up a level to cells, if that cell divides, both of its descendants will have those new mitochondria along for the ride. (At this level, those cells are reproductively disfavored, and thus we wouldn’t expect this to spread.)
That is, evolution on the lower level does work against evolution on the upper level, because the incentives of the two systems are misaligned. Since the lower level has much faster generations, you’ll get many more cycles of evolution on the lower level, and thus we would naively expect the lower level to dominate. If a bacterial infection can go through a thousand generations, why can’t it evolve past the defenses of a host going through a single generation? If the cell population of a tumor can go through a thousand generations, why can’t it evolve past the defenses of a host going through a single generation?
The answer is twofold: 1) it can, and when it does that typically leads to the death of the host, and 2) because it can, the host puts in a lot of effort to make that not happen. (You can use evolution on the upper level to explain why these mechanisms exist, but not how they operate. That is, you can make statements like “I expect there to be an immune system” and some broad properties of it but may have difficulty predicting how those properties are achieved.)
(That is, the lower level gets both the forces leading to ‘disorder’ from the perspective of the upper system, and corrective forces leading to order. This can lead to spectacular booms and busts in ways that you don’t see with normal selective gradients.)
That may well be so, but still in the context of this discussion I don’t think that it’s useful to describe the changes in the population of mitochondria in an evolutionary framework (your lower level, that is).
Unless you have a sister :-) Yes, I know that mDNA is special.
There is also the third option: symbiosis. If you managed to get your hooks into a nice and juicy host, it might be wise to set up house instead of doing the slash-and-burn.
Since this started connected to economics, there are probably parallels with roving bandits and stationary bandits.