Gene-centered view of evolution

Question for biofags. Reading this book now, but it's 40 years old. Did it stood the test of time? What's currently accepted theory on the level that natural selection works upon (gene, individual, group...)? Or is it all more or less just opinions and dick-measuring contests.

natural selection works on individuals
evolution works on population
t. first-year biology

Nice poem.

But what does it *mean*?

Hint: it doens't always apply. Sometimes natural selection works on populations/species, and sometimes evolution works on individuals. The more you know.

Evolution is completely conjecture. It is the worst scientific theory out there, that pretty much indoctrinates the believer into an atheistic stance.

Nobody actually cares.

He ended up having an absolute shoot out with Stephen J Gould who had an opposing theory called Punctuated Equilibrium and was much more likely to argue for group selection. Gould is on record as having written "Genes may be considered selfish in a limited metaphorical sense . . "; a direct reference to Dawkins and the true progenitor of the theory, Wilson.

I think the stuff Dawkins wrote about evolutionary stable strategies and memes in that book haven't had a huge impact, but IMHO the gene centric view of evolution has won the day. No one subscribes to Gould anymore, and quite frankly a lot of us think he was batshit insane.
In Gould's "Structure of evolutionary Theory", Gould actually had enough arrogance to write that, paraphrased, what he was expounding was essentially a new theory, distinct from Darwin. Literally none of my colleagues question the selfish gene theory now; that evolution is essentially a battle between competing selfish replicators.

N.B- I am lucky enough to have in my possession a signed copy of that book, the same cover as in OP's pic.

It appears to be accurate

>It is the worst scientific theory out there
The worst scientific theory that has somehow fueled most of the major advances in the medical fields in the last 100 years.

It's fine.

Tnx for answer, it appear you're the only one who knows his shit. By Wilson do you mean E. O. Wilson? I thought he didn't subscribe to selfish gene theory but favors more a multi-level selection. Dawkins even makes some attacks on his Sociobiology, although it appears that on some issues they are in agreement.

Didn't know Gould was such a wacko, though. I have a PDF of Structure of Evolutionary Theory, but you make me believe it's mostly trash.

We had to read that book last semester, so I would say its still relevant.

Group selection however is not. The problem with group selection is that in a population with individuals with altruistic behavior, a selfish individual would have a great advantage. It would have a better chance of surviving and reproducing. Its selfish genes would spread over generations and the altruistic behavior would not survive.

Isn't the entire point of this book to introduce the "gene's eye view of evolution," or that evolution doesn't work on the individual, it works on the gene?

Or am I thinking some other book?

No, you´re right. We´re basically surviving machines for our self replicating genes

Sobers "Unto Others" fairly well dismisses this critique.

Tl;dr While an altruists genes would decline in relative fitness, compared to other members of the group, their absolute fitness, the number of offspring they have, would still increase. So, as long as other groups exist, and organisms can occasionally move between groups, altruistic genes will never go extinct, and will actually outperform selfish genes that come from groups with less altruists.

He does a lot more math and case studies, but I believe that's the gist.

That makes sense. But does it really dismiss "Dawkins" theory (I know he didn´t think it all up himself, but he informed the masses I guess)

Bear with me here, I don´t remember it as good as I should, but the gist of it is that genes that can work together with other genes survive better than others. Over time the genes that can cooperate with others while giving the individual an advantage is favored by natural selection. Since individuals in a population share a lot of common genes they may show an altruistic behavior as long as it will benefit the other individual more (twice as much I think it was, there was an equation in there, also depends on how close related they are), because by doing that they will increase the survival chance of identical genes.

Therefore the idea of selfish genes does not collide with altruistic behavior.

What if genes are just a way for "self replicating" proteins to store the information to replicate themself.
Should we make a new theory called the selfish protein?
The selfish membrane?
Honestly who the fuck cares lol.

Yes, he dismisses group selection in the book. But he goes to great lengths to explain altruism that is compatible with the selfish gene theory. Also, pure selfish behavior could not spread in the population to the point of displacing altruistic behavior, because in a population of selfish individuals natural selection would again favor some sort of altruism that provided survival advantage to its adherents. If I understand his reasoning correctly, pure selfishness is not an evolutionary stable strategy in most species that exhibit behavior.

You´re partially right, it could also be called the selfish allele, or any form of genetic material that survives several generations. Dawkins mentions this in the book.

Most people don´t care, obviously. But if everyone dedicated themselves to what the masses care about we would not be on our computers right now. I find it interesting and it gave me another perspective on life and evolution.

Yes I agree, tried to explain this in .

>fueled most of the major advances in the medical fields in the last 100 years
such as?

I asked my girlfriends genetics professor and he replied "it's outdated, nowadays it's more about kin selection and such". I didn't really have time to ask further, but that left me dumbfounded because the book talks about kin selection all the time.

Richard Dawkins is a hack and nobody knew or cared about him until he autistic spazzed out at people for believing in religion.

I'm pretty sure he's not as autistic as he seems, he just does it to stay relevant.

Kek maybe he hasn't even read it.

My point is that it's more of a semantics debate than a rigorous scientific debate.

Copy pasta, but still

1. •Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions.
2. •Diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture (Bull and Wichman 2001).
3. •Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields (Conover and Munch 2002).
4. •Artificial selection has been used since prehistory, but it has become much more efficient with the addition of quantitative trait locus mapping.
5. •Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003).
6. •Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female offspring, which retrieved it from the brink of extinction (Sutherland 2002).
7. •Tracing genes of known function and comparing how they are related to unknown genes helps one to predict unknown gene function, which is foundational for drug discovery (Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).

The list goes on and on

My point would be that if everyone went "Honestly who the fuck cares lol." every time they encountered something hard, we would not have come this far. Just because we can´t determine something does not mean that it will always be out of the reach of science.

>Also, pure selfish behavior could not spread in the population to the point of displacing altruistic behavior, because in a population of selfish individuals natural selection would again favor some sort of altruism that provided survival advantage to its adherents.
That seems like obvious nonsense. Most non-mammal non-insect animals work in a completely selfish way; you're not going to find a scrap of altruism among fish, or most reptiles, or any non-insect invertebrates that I know of.

Altruism requires a specific context to be viable. It generally exists only among social species, and even then only to the degree that social structures can exist that convert altruism into a personal advantage. Altruism is certainly compatible with natural selection, but any argument that implies it should arise everywhere proves too much.

It's actually the other way around. If everybody had to stop up and say "can u prease define this" or "guize how 2 explain prions when they haf no genes" we wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Rigorous science deals with quantitative analysis of matter, not stuff that borders on evolutionary psychology like "z0mfgz, why r some organisms altruistic if it doesn't help them spread their own seed!!11"

Don't forget biotech industry buddy. All those enzymes are literally being evolved for higher stability etc.
Inb4 "micro-evolution doesn't prove macro-ev" shut the fuck up you /pol/-cuck.

The only viable reason here is the second one, and that is well within the field of medicine.

Everything else is either breeding or segmentation of academia.

Personally I think the emphasis on individual genes is a bit too reductionist, especially when you try to extract some sort of philosophical implications from it.

>Dawkins

The is that way

What? I never denied evolution or denied its contribution to medicine, I did the opposite. I don´t see where we disagree about that

And also, do you get angry with everyone you disagree with? Whats the point? Just discuss like a grown up or go to /b/

Naive Mendel inheritance doesn't work that way in reality.
An individual gene is still going to drag other genes in close proximity on the chromosome with it.

I haven't read the Selfish Gene yet, but I have read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright and it was quite a hefty read, mostly evolutionary biology and almost 25 since its publication.

Just pointing it out if anyone is interested in it.