And he did so in response to EY’s anti-group-selection interjection where the focal example had nothing at all to do with sex or speciation.
The focal example was foxes (a species) adapting to control their eating of rabbits to avoid exterminating them. That’s species selection.
His key objection is mathematical: “Specifically, the requirement is [C < FB] where C is the cost of altruism to the donor, B is the benefit of altruism to the recipient, and F is the spatial structure of the population: the average relatedness between a randomly selected organism and its randomly selected neighbor.” This applies equally to clades, species, and smaller groups. So if it’s a knockdown argument against small-group selection, it’s also a knockdown argument against species selection, which exists.
And, as I pointed out in my post, the problem with that analysis is that it assumes that there is no selection of groups. It’s arguing against a strawman “group selection” theory that has no selection. The argument thus both fails analytically, and is disproven by an example that it applies to.
What if some of our cognitive biases are evolved adaptations that make human society work better? It would be pretty surprising to me if this weren’t the case!
No foxes, no sex, and no species selection in what I was talking about. Edit: Inflamatory and non-responsive comment deleted.
The focal example was foxes (a species) adapting to control their eating of rabbits to avoid exterminating them. That’s species selection.
His key objection is mathematical: “Specifically, the requirement is [C < FB] where C is the cost of altruism to the donor, B is the benefit of altruism to the recipient, and F is the spatial structure of the population: the average relatedness between a randomly selected organism and its randomly selected neighbor.” This applies equally to clades, species, and smaller groups. So if it’s a knockdown argument against small-group selection, it’s also a knockdown argument against species selection, which exists.
And, as I pointed out in my post, the problem with that analysis is that it assumes that there is no selection of groups. It’s arguing against a strawman “group selection” theory that has no selection. The argument thus both fails analytically, and is disproven by an example that it applies to.
You must be thinking of a different EY interjection than I was when I wrote that. I meant this EY comment:
which responded to this comment of yours:
No foxes, no sex, and no species selection in what I was talking about. Edit: Inflamatory and non-responsive comment deleted.