Say you have a species. Say you have two genes, A and B.
Gene A has two effects:
A1. Organisms carrying gene A reproduce slightly MORE than organisms not carrying A.
A2. For every copy of A in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly LESS than it would have if not for this copy of A.
Gene B has two effects, the reverse of A:
B1. Organisms carrying gene B reproduce slightly LESS than organisms not carrying B.
B2. For every copy of B in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly MORE than it would have if not for this copy of B.
So now what happens with this species? Answer: A is promoted to fixation, whether or not this causes the species to go extinct; B is eliminated from the gene pool. Evolution doesn’t search to increase total gene count, it searches to increase relative frequency. (Note that this is not resting specifically on the species being a sexually reproducing species. It does rest on the fixedness of the niche capacity. When the niche doesn’t have fixed capacity, evolution is closer to selecting for increasing gene count. But this doesn’t last long; the species grows to fill capacity, and then you’re back to zero-sum selection.)
Sure, genes and species (defined as distributions over gene packages) are separate replicators. Both replicate according to variation and selection, so both evolve.
Notice in your example gene A could actually fail in the long run if it’s too successful, which causes optimization pressure at the larger system/package level to protect against these misalignments (see all the various defenses against transposons, retroviruses, etc).
Ok so the point is that the vast vast majority of optimization power coming from {selection over variation in general} is coming more narrowly from {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} and not from {selection between different species / other large groups}. In arguments about misalignment, evolution refers to {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool}.
If you run a big search process, and then pick a really extreme actual outcome X of the search process, and then go back and say “okay, the search process was all along a search for X”, then yeah, there’s no such thing as misalignment. But there’s still such a thing as a search process visibly searching for Y and getting some extreme and non-Y-ish outcome, and {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} is an example.
Ok so the point is that the vast vast majority of optimization power coming from {selection over variation in general} is coming more narrowly from {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} and not from {selection between different species / other large groups}.
No—Selection is over the distribution that defines the species set (and recursively over the fractal clusters within that down to individuals), and operates at the granularity of complete gene packages (individuals), not individual genes.
If you run a big search process, and then pick a really extreme actual outcome X of the search process, and then go back and say “okay, the search process was all along a search for X”, then yeah, there’s no such thing as misalignment.
The search process is just searching for designs that replicate well in environment. There could be misalignment in theory—as I discussed that would manifest as species tending to go extinct right around the early technocultural transition, when you have a massive sudden capability gain due to the exploding power of within lifetime learning/optimization.
So the misalignment is possible in theory, but we do not have evidence of that in the historical record. We don’t live in that world.
The search process is just searching for designs that replicate well in environment.
This is a retcon, as I described here:
If you run a big search process, and then pick a really extreme actual outcome X of the search process, and then go back and say “okay, the search process was all along a search for X”, then yeah, there’s no such thing as misalignment. But there’s still such a thing as a search process visibly searching for Y and getting some extreme and non-Y-ish outcome, and {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} is an example.
You’re speaking as though humanity is the very first example of a species that reproduced a lot, but it’s always been the case that some species reproduced more than others and left more descendant species—the ancestor of mammals or eukaryotes, for example. This force has been constant and significant for as long as evolution has been a thing(more selection happens at the within-species level, sure, but that doesn’t mean between-species selection is completely unprecedented)
Within an organism there are various forms of viral genes which reproduce themselves largely at the expense of cells, organs, or the whole organism. A species is actually composed recursively of groups with geographically varying gene distributions and some
genes can grow within local populations at the expense of that local population. But that is counteracted by various mechanisms selecting at larger scales, and all of this is happening at many levels simultaneously well beyond that of just gene and species. A species decomposes fractally geographically into many diverse subgroups with some but limited gene flow (slowing the spread of faster ‘defecting’ viral like genes) and which are all in various forms of competition over time, but still can interbreed and thus are part of the same species.
Say you have a species. Say you have two genes, A and B.
Gene A has two effects:
A1. Organisms carrying gene A reproduce slightly MORE than organisms not carrying A.
A2. For every copy of A in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly LESS than it would have if not for this copy of A.
Gene B has two effects, the reverse of A:
B1. Organisms carrying gene B reproduce slightly LESS than organisms not carrying B.
B2. For every copy of B in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly MORE than it would have if not for this copy of B.
So now what happens with this species? Answer: A is promoted to fixation, whether or not this causes the species to go extinct; B is eliminated from the gene pool. Evolution doesn’t search to increase total gene count, it searches to increase relative frequency. (Note that this is not resting specifically on the species being a sexually reproducing species. It does rest on the fixedness of the niche capacity. When the niche doesn’t have fixed capacity, evolution is closer to selecting for increasing gene count. But this doesn’t last long; the species grows to fill capacity, and then you’re back to zero-sum selection.)
Sure, genes and species (defined as distributions over gene packages) are separate replicators. Both replicate according to variation and selection, so both evolve.
Notice in your example gene A could actually fail in the long run if it’s too successful, which causes optimization pressure at the larger system/package level to protect against these misalignments (see all the various defenses against transposons, retroviruses, etc).
Ok so the point is that the vast vast majority of optimization power coming from {selection over variation in general} is coming more narrowly from {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} and not from {selection between different species / other large groups}. In arguments about misalignment, evolution refers to {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool}.
If you run a big search process, and then pick a really extreme actual outcome X of the search process, and then go back and say “okay, the search process was all along a search for X”, then yeah, there’s no such thing as misalignment. But there’s still such a thing as a search process visibly searching for Y and getting some extreme and non-Y-ish outcome, and {selection for genes that increase their relative frequency in the gene pool} is an example.
No—Selection is over the distribution that defines the species set (and recursively over the fractal clusters within that down to individuals), and operates at the granularity of complete gene packages (individuals), not individual genes.
The search process is just searching for designs that replicate well in environment. There could be misalignment in theory—as I discussed that would manifest as species tending to go extinct right around the early technocultural transition, when you have a massive sudden capability gain due to the exploding power of within lifetime learning/optimization.
So the misalignment is possible in theory, but we do not have evidence of that in the historical record. We don’t live in that world.
This is a retcon, as I described here:
You’re speaking as though humanity is the very first example of a species that reproduced a lot, but it’s always been the case that some species reproduced more than others and left more descendant species—the ancestor of mammals or eukaryotes, for example. This force has been constant and significant for as long as evolution has been a thing(more selection happens at the within-species level, sure, but that doesn’t mean between-species selection is completely unprecedented)
Within an organism there are various forms of viral genes which reproduce themselves largely at the expense of cells, organs, or the whole organism. A species is actually composed recursively of groups with geographically varying gene distributions and some genes can grow within local populations at the expense of that local population. But that is counteracted by various mechanisms selecting at larger scales, and all of this is happening at many levels simultaneously well beyond that of just gene and species. A species decomposes fractally geographically into many diverse subgroups with some but limited gene flow (slowing the spread of faster ‘defecting’ viral like genes) and which are all in various forms of competition over time, but still can interbreed and thus are part of the same species.