So what are the forces at play in this scenario? Evolution will tend toward optimizing the replication of anything that replicates; the environment consists of inanimate objects and other entities that evolution is tending to optimize; each entity is optimized at an individual level despite interactions with other replicating entities. There is no foresight. Evolution will show no favoritism among the various replicating entities.
Gene fragments, genes, organelles, cells, individuals, family, and society are all replicating entities, and all can be selected for—though selection for each of the components occurs first and more often, and entirely uninterested in higher levels of selection. Information encoded in neural networks is also a replicating entity.
Consider for example a human: ~3.2 billion base pairs of DNA, comprising ~25,000 genes, on 23 chromosomes, and all the previous mostly doubled to make a diploid cell. Mendelian reproduction serves to enforce some cooperation of the various genes. Early differentiation of cells into reproductive and somatic cells serves to enforce cooperation at the cell level; somatic cells won’t reproduce indefinitely, but can assist the reproduction of the gamete cells. These mechanisms work pretty well, though despite their severity there are exceptions—for example meiotic drive and retrotransposons allow genes to cheat Mendelian reproduction, and transmissible cancer as seen devastating the Tasmanian devils shows cells can successfully go rouge. Social enforcement mechanisms exist, but are mild compared to the aforementioned methods.
Humans also contain information stored in the brain, which can be modified and transmitted (though a proper model of that would be like creating an artificial general intelligence). Ideas are not tied to the genes, and are transmitted independently of the genes of the humans holding them—so why shouldn’t there be ideas that act in opposition to the genes of the human holding them? It would be quite the achievement for evolution to produce humans immune to ideas harmful to their genes, while still keeping the enormously useful capability to generate and transmit ideas.
As a side note, consider the search space of evolution. The request, “Find the strand of DNA size 3.2 billion base pairs in length, that is optimal for reproduction in [this environment]” consists of a search space of over 4^3,200,000,000. (And the actual search space is indefinitely larger.) Even an entity with access to the combined resources of the entire universe isn’t going to be able to look through that search space.
So what are the forces at play in this scenario? Evolution will tend toward optimizing the replication of anything that replicates; the environment consists of inanimate objects and other entities that evolution is tending to optimize; each entity is optimized at an individual level despite interactions with other replicating entities. There is no foresight. Evolution will show no favoritism among the various replicating entities.
Gene fragments, genes, organelles, cells, individuals, family, and society are all replicating entities, and all can be selected for—though selection for each of the components occurs first and more often, and entirely uninterested in higher levels of selection. Information encoded in neural networks is also a replicating entity.
Consider for example a human: ~3.2 billion base pairs of DNA, comprising ~25,000 genes, on 23 chromosomes, and all the previous mostly doubled to make a diploid cell. Mendelian reproduction serves to enforce some cooperation of the various genes. Early differentiation of cells into reproductive and somatic cells serves to enforce cooperation at the cell level; somatic cells won’t reproduce indefinitely, but can assist the reproduction of the gamete cells. These mechanisms work pretty well, though despite their severity there are exceptions—for example meiotic drive and retrotransposons allow genes to cheat Mendelian reproduction, and transmissible cancer as seen devastating the Tasmanian devils shows cells can successfully go rouge. Social enforcement mechanisms exist, but are mild compared to the aforementioned methods.
Humans also contain information stored in the brain, which can be modified and transmitted (though a proper model of that would be like creating an artificial general intelligence). Ideas are not tied to the genes, and are transmitted independently of the genes of the humans holding them—so why shouldn’t there be ideas that act in opposition to the genes of the human holding them? It would be quite the achievement for evolution to produce humans immune to ideas harmful to their genes, while still keeping the enormously useful capability to generate and transmit ideas.
As a side note, consider the search space of evolution. The request, “Find the strand of DNA size 3.2 billion base pairs in length, that is optimal for reproduction in [this environment]” consists of a search space of over 4^3,200,000,000. (And the actual search space is indefinitely larger.) Even an entity with access to the combined resources of the entire universe isn’t going to be able to look through that search space.