Mmm, I’m probably going to have to try to write a post explaining what I think I understand about the debate, because there’s a lot of other points.
Researchers in the behavioral economics literature have been conducting experiments with human subjects playing public goods games. Time and time again, it has been shown that cooperation can be sustained in groups when subjects are allowed the ability to punish defectors and reward cooperators. They argue, at the very least, that inclusive fitness theory cannot explain such behavior between strangers.
Nowak and others seem to be proposing an expansion of the biological theory of genetic evolution to a mathematical theory of evolution. He and others propose that evolution can be genetic or cultural or any other kind of evolutionary process you can dream up, as long as it fits the mathematical framework they’ve developed (which is based on evolutionary game theory).
The whole controversy seems silly, however. Group selection effects have been observed among insects in laboratory conditions. Inclusive fitness theorists argue that these conditions are rare, so they can be safely ignored for the genetic theory of evolution. The multilevel selection theorists argue that evolution is a mathematical process which can explain a variety of phenomena beyond just genetic evolution. Both sides are strictly correct, they’re simply talking past each other.
Mmm, I’m probably going to have to try to write a post explaining what I think I understand about the debate, because there’s a lot of other points.
Researchers in the behavioral economics literature have been conducting experiments with human subjects playing public goods games. Time and time again, it has been shown that cooperation can be sustained in groups when subjects are allowed the ability to punish defectors and reward cooperators. They argue, at the very least, that inclusive fitness theory cannot explain such behavior between strangers.
Nowak and others seem to be proposing an expansion of the biological theory of genetic evolution to a mathematical theory of evolution. He and others propose that evolution can be genetic or cultural or any other kind of evolutionary process you can dream up, as long as it fits the mathematical framework they’ve developed (which is based on evolutionary game theory).
The whole controversy seems silly, however. Group selection effects have been observed among insects in laboratory conditions. Inclusive fitness theorists argue that these conditions are rare, so they can be safely ignored for the genetic theory of evolution. The multilevel selection theorists argue that evolution is a mathematical process which can explain a variety of phenomena beyond just genetic evolution. Both sides are strictly correct, they’re simply talking past each other.
Okay, so, again parsing this in layman’s terms:
-Some researchers say “let’s use group selection for studying evolution.”
-Some other researchers say “when we talk about genetic evolution we don’t need group selection.”
-The first researchers say “but it’s useful in other contexts, why ignore it?”
-The second group says “because we research genetic evolution.”
Is that about right?
I think that’s about right, but this is what I understand from at most a weekend of skimming journal articles, so I might be off here.