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?