Speech, sexual selection rituals, sex itself, cooperation in the social insects … There are many things which seem to require a more complex and subtle narrative for their explanation than the usual simple Darwinian story of a mutant individual doing better than his conspecific competitors and then passing on his genes.
But that doesn’t mean that a died-in-the-wool neo-Darwinian needs to accept the group-selection explanation any more than an Ayn Rand fan confronted with a skyscraper has to admit that Kropotkin was right after all.
However, I am taking your implicit advise and dutifully upvoting Tim’s comment.
I wasn’t suggesting that speech evolved via group selection—just that it evidently did evolve—and so proposing the existence of “evolved adaptations that make human society work better” is not an error.
Tim’s comment doesn’t say that speech evolved via group selection. It could be that it did not; in that case, Tim’s comment would be pointing out that Eliezer was unjustified in calling out a belief in “evolved adaptations that make human society work better” as an error.
Speech, sexual selection rituals, sex itself, cooperation in the social insects … There are many things which seem to require a more complex and subtle narrative for their explanation than the usual simple Darwinian story of a mutant individual doing better than his conspecific competitors and then passing on his genes.
But that doesn’t mean that a died-in-the-wool neo-Darwinian needs to accept the group-selection explanation any more than an Ayn Rand fan confronted with a skyscraper has to admit that Kropotkin was right after all.
However, I am taking your implicit advise and dutifully upvoting Tim’s comment.
I wasn’t suggesting that speech evolved via group selection—just that it evidently did evolve—and so proposing the existence of “evolved adaptations that make human society work better” is not an error.
Tim’s comment doesn’t say that speech evolved via group selection. It could be that it did not; in that case, Tim’s comment would be pointing out that Eliezer was unjustified in calling out a belief in “evolved adaptations that make human society work better” as an error.