Replication is part of the process necessary for genes to be expressed as complete bodies or behaviors, but the mechanism of replication is incidental.
Gene replication is important because you have to copy genes to get them into your gamete, as well as make more cells to replace old/dead ones. Expression is what makes a gene important for natural selection. Though replication is due other genes expressing.
Remove the word "simply", and that would be correct. Attributes that do not contribute to the survival of a gene or set of genes might still be preserved as long as they aren't costly. We are far from simple, especially animals that are able to learn. Genes may code for a brain, but that brain might not always benefit the genes. People invented birth control, and they sometimes commit suicide. We raise another person's children when we adopt them, even though they don't share half of our own genes like a biological child would...
Even genes that are costly get preserved, if they're close to worthwhile genes. Sometimes, costly traits are preserved for no other reason than finite population size and accident.
It's almost the exact opposite of the arguments for eugenics. According to Dawkins, eugenicists have completely misunderstood the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution. No, he is not. Have you actually read any of Dawkins books? Genes do in fact multiply, and proliferate - often independently of their original organism. You have seen that in bacteria, in your lab. If you send one million rabbits into space, which one will have the most copies ? They all are, in your sense. Every single word used to describe the behavior of anything except a human means something different than it does when used to describe the conscious behavior of a human. Including such words as "reaction" in the phrase "chemical reaction", for example. We are using language to describe non-human events and occurences and states of existence. If you want to point and grunt, that's your choice. Ants are altruistic, in the relevant meaning of the word - the non-reproducing ones, at least. You appear to be confusing evolutionary "pressure" with causality. It is much closer to bookkeeping. The "selfish gene" theory of survival of the gene.
I don't get why people feel it's necessary to decry eugenics or claim that their theory doesn't support it.
The Blind Watchmaker was pretty good. The Extended Phenotype The Meme Machine has a more progressive set of ideas on the "meme" which is interesting. In short the Selfish Gene was published 30 years ago and there have been a lot of advances made in the understanding of genetics since that time. Maybe the newer additions have these ideas incorporated? I read the book a long time ago so I really can't remember anything other than it was pretty good Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
could we qualify this with the some individuals? Also, I read about an MIT experiment (I think it was MIT) and in essence they had their subjects wear these monitor devices and by the end of a period of time, a computer could predict, with something like 70% accuracy, which choices they would make in their daily lives - in essence, people were for the most part just reacting to their environment and not really "thinking" per say, at all. Perhaps most of the time for most people this is their life, their "free will" so to speak. Now, think of the part religion plays in regulating daily activities, the need to care for basic needs like sex and food and toilet and we can see that for many people the % of "free will" is near nil. Anyway, it's interesting stuff....
In this sense the ant colony could be viewed as a single organism, as most ants are clones and carry 100% compliment of DNA. Perhaps not unlike the cells that are shed from our skin to protect the rest of the body...
Exactly. The ant that sacrificed itself shared genes with all it's siblings, so it's genes benefit from the death. That would be counter intuitive if we look at the individual as the unit of selection.
Not necessarily. They are merely genes that do not die ie get reproduced. Uh, what? The ant "sacrificed" itself. The gene did not. The choice, such as it is, is made by the ant. To the gene there is no difference.
In this case, the details of the mechanisms of gene expression are not relevent to the larger idea, which is that the gene is the unit of selection. The choice is made by the ant that the genes made. Genes that code for this behavior aren't wiped out by the ant's death, since by it's death, it helps all it's siblings or clones that share the same gene to survive. Do you dispute that there are genes which have such specific effects?
Again, expression or replication? You seem to be switching back and forth Complete gibberish. Yeah, because behaviour is a multi-faceted organic response, not the product of a gene expression
Expression is how the genes turn into physical structures, replication is just a step in cell division. Anyway, either one is not relevent to this discussion. The genes make an ant with built in responses. Individual ants don't reason out the need to close the nest. Every night. For the millions of years those kinds of ants existed. It's both. In higher animals, the genes create a brain that can reason things out. In lower animals, it creates specific responses to stimuli that don't require massive intelligence.
Wow, I get back from work to see this thread filled with your garbage troll posts. Thanks for the waste of space. Thanks to all the others who gave their thoughts about the book.
We all know that's not true, Sam. Repeating it isn't going to make it any more truthful. The problem here is that many of us go to great lengths to read transcripts of scriptures and other such religious documents to satisfy those theists who use the argument that atheists have no idea what they're talking about, or the argument that the translations we read are not acceptable. You've often flaunted that one yourself. So, in all fairness, if you're going to dissect a book, have the intellectual honesty to actually read the book first.
I've read the book, (Q), I simply disagree with its premise, its a reductionist theory of behaviour and makes no sense in terms of gene function OR evolution. It confuses a hell of a lot of people who have no idea what genes are or what they do. Just read the thread and you'll know what I mean.
