The selfish gene? Altruism is explained there as a species advantage, some 'people' are willing to risk their lives for the propogation of the species as a whole, one effect one answer is not a survival strategy.
But this doesn't explain it within the context of natural selection. Natural selection doesn't work on species, as the idea goes. Species don't have genetic material. Natural selection works on individuals. Or if you believe Dawkins and the current paradigm, genes.
Genes make an organism? I don't see how individual genes compete unless it is organism V organism.
This is the idea of Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" work.
Here's wiki on the subject. Competition is probably too strong a word, but the idea is that genes work to maximize the numbers of themselves. This involves at the very least a little competition, since DNA length does have an upper limit on physical size.
A nation is a niche, a nation is a subspecies (in some ways) no reproduction = no evolution = you die.Why not? If a country doesn't reproduce it ceases to exist, Germany during WWII had a medal for mothers that had lots of children.
But Nazi Germany is dead. The children of those mothers and their decendants are not. Members of a nation reproducing does not mean the nation is reproducing. We don't have hundreds of little Nazi Germanies running around Europe. Countries don't reproduce. They are born some what spontaneously, the grow and survive for a while, then they die. Quite independantly of the people in them. If you play Civ4 for instance, there is only grow, conquer, diplomacy, research and/or death.
Homo Sapieans plays the highest abstraction level? If the lower abstracition levels were removed Homo Sapiens wouldn't exist...
Lower levels aren't removed. They're resolved (meaning you won). We are the only homonid species alive today. We have no major predators. Not only do we not have a species rivaling our niche, we can build new niches as we spread through the magic of fire and air conditioning. I'd say we won the lower abstraction levels against genetic fidelity from point mutations and niche competition.
It's similar to
The heirarchy of needs. If a new game starts on a rung below where you currently are, the abstraction level collapses. Civilization would collapse, for instance, if we ran out of food (as it often does, such as Russia before the Bolshevik revolution), civilization would collapse until that food is reinstated. The group behavior is only possible if we are all winning our game against death.
Selfish genes, it is not the individual it is the species that allows the genes to exist.
Again, species aren't the core evolving agent in classical natural selection. Species cannot evolve traits. Only individuals can. Or that's the idea anyway.
We beat all the other competitore, we are now Cannibots fighting against outselves.
Exactly. We won on one abstraction level, and we moved to the next one up: infighting between groups of humans. Each higher abstraction level represents a splintering of the sole survivor from the rung below. But generally this splintering changes the rules of the game.
Aye, but if you played against Shakespeares infinite monkeys you would lose eventually.
If the game is to write works of Shakespeare, I would win because I can write English and make sentences and have even outread some of those monkeys If somehow the resources were limited, so that every book I write damages the monkeys, eventually I'll outcompete the monkeys. I can write better than a bunch of monkeys ( I hope!) Eliminating the monkeys means I never have to fight them again, since they'll be dead. I'll win this abstraction layer, and a new one might form somehow from me splintering against myself.
This analogy doesn't really work I think
Apart from the fact it can no longer reproduce and theirfore dies. If it is homosexual? it might but if a beatle species removes all other beatle species from its niche then it is immmortal 'till that niche doesn't exist or an outside influence/species/catastrophe removes it from its niche.I agree!
Exactly. What I'm trying to build is a framework for understanding why things work the way they do. The beetle species would probably further speciate. Why? Because they've advanced to a new abstraction layer.
Reproduciton is the beginning of Natural selection, without self replication you don't have evolution surely?
Indeed. This is what got me thinking. What's happening in an ex nihilo sim with no reproducers? Is it entirely random? No, because some bots will die. All bots will eventually die in fact. The odds are 100% that a point mutation will eventually kill them. But some bots last longer than others. Eventually an old bot might learn to reproduce and avoid the local problems of point mutations. Its DNA has won the most basic abstraction layer and can now maintain a high fidelity.
It "evolved" in the sense that it adapted to its environment. But there was no reproduction except as a "win" condition. What do you make of this? By definition it didn't evolve, and was not involved with Natural selection. But something did happen. Order did develop from chaos. Thinking of it as a game gives a framework for it to make sense. It doesn't make any sense using just Natural selection, since it's out of natural selection's problem domain.
To be replaced by non mutating (I assume zerobot) non replicating models of the original bot... Back to Shakespeares infinite monkeys...
Replaced yes, but not non mutating. It's replaced by a younger bot. The inevitable appearance of a replicator, and a replicator's inevitable conquering of time (replicators will continue to exist into perpituity) only makes sense if you think of it as a game (again, a game as in game theory).
Infinie monkeys. infinite monkeys, how do you think evolution evolved?
I'm not disputing evolution. I'm expanding its problem domain, abstracting it away from the processes inherant in life and trying to show it as a natural and very, very simple part of existance. Things that don't survive don't survive. For any slice of time quanta, we will see things around us that possess the capability to stave off entropy and death, to varying degrees. Things that instantly die don't exist in great numbers.
It's a very simple premise that puts natural selection as its understood into a large framework, from which conclusions can be drawn. It's a proto theory.
Or cause a mutation that wins and it will fill the assigned nich; pre something better evolving.
This is a subtle point. Winning isn't really the objective. Things happen when you win, sure, but your goal isn't to win. You're just surviving. If you "win", and conquer the present mode of death, you are upgraded to a new game with new rules and a new way to die.
There's always another way to die. Death is strangely universal.
Surely just the ultimate starting point?
Of the next abstraction level, yes. But for the game of "survive point mutations", you've reached the end. That there's been life on Earth uninterrupted for billions of years attests to that.
Killing your species without reason rarely is.
This is less true than you think. Evolution sims
always have the conspec recognition genes break, causing cannibalism. Always, always, always, except maybe under extremely specific conditions. The environment just doesn't favor this. Yet if you are cannibalistic, it hurts you in the leagues. How do we resolve this? If you view it as layers of games, it makes perfect sense. Why should a strategy that worked in checkers work in risk? They are new games, with new rules.
Leagues should be without mutation, evolution is not. Plus the chance of a round lasting long enough to allow positive mutations to take place in such a small enviroment are slim to none.
Right. But lets imagine for a moment that you set up a competition between two species that takes so long that mutations and evolution start to kick in.
Big Berhas are either a problem with the evolutionary part of the program or a representation of the Cambrian? big is better part or evolution coupled with small sim size
Undoubtedly if our goal is to create the stability real life has (and it is) this is a problem. But it's also a fact. A valid datum. Evolution can lead to extinction even in Muller Ratchet free universes. Natural selection works with generations. How do you resolve (and by resolve, I mean include) the idea of big berthas into the idea of natural selection. You could call them an aberration or pathological case, pat yourself on the back and move on, but isn't that really missing the point?
Or proving it, take your pick.
They don't contradict. Classical natural selection is a subset of the abstract natural selection. Like special and general relativity. My point is: does natural selection as we understand it immediately tell you about the possibility for altruism? What about sentience? We can explain these things as arising from natural selection, and certainly it does, even if indirectly, but does that help you make
predictions about what's going to happen?
It's like explaining a string and pulley using quantum mechanics. Undoubtedly the properties of the string and pulley arise from the properties of quantum mechanics, but that doesn't help you build or design a pulley system, or predict easily what one will do.