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jimbowen0306's review against another edition
4.0
Maybe it's just me, but my first response to The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, was "Is this ever a depressing way to see the world?"
The book charts the "behaviour" of what scientists call a gene (and what the rest of us might call the "behaviours of people"), how it might have developed, and why those "behaviours" can be boiled down to "stimulation from genes."
I don't doubt the science behind the book, I'm not some sort of religious "Flat Earther" who doesn't buy evolution, but after reading the book, I doubt that anyone who's read the book can argue with the idea that any human behaviour can be explained in terms of "genetic behaviour," and to me, that's depressing.
The book charts the "behaviour" of what scientists call a gene (and what the rest of us might call the "behaviours of people"), how it might have developed, and why those "behaviours" can be boiled down to "stimulation from genes."
I don't doubt the science behind the book, I'm not some sort of religious "Flat Earther" who doesn't buy evolution, but after reading the book, I doubt that anyone who's read the book can argue with the idea that any human behaviour can be explained in terms of "genetic behaviour," and to me, that's depressing.
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
4.0
“ There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the galaxy.”
Sometimes science books can become unintentionally funny:
“What is the good of sex? This is an extremely difficult question for the evolutionist to answer. Most serious attempts to answer it involve sophisticated mathematical reasoning.”
Okay!
One of stupidest criticism here on Goodreads of Adam Smith’s Theory of Wealth of Nations’ was that he made the human selfishness as basis of his theory. It was stupid as Smith didn’t invented that ‘selfishness’ he merely showed us how our economy was already based on selfishness of individuals.
It is same here. In fact, in this case ‘selfishness’ is apparent selfish behaviour of genes (‘apparent’ because genes do not make conscious choices, selfless-by-default ones just won’t survive) and any effects on the individuals are unconscious. Dawkins shows how selfishness of genes can actually bring out what, at first, may look like altruistic behaviour among animals.
Also, we need not be slave to our genes. In fact, we do resist behaviour imposed on us by genes. The best examples are people who remain without children all their life, contraceptives, welfare state etc.
“Contraception is sometimes attacked as 'unnatural'. So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth- control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.”
There are theories in here describing how first life must have started on planet. There is also a theory (theory, not law) that tries to explain why should people die of old age. Any explanations are better than 'God did it'. One of my favorite parts were those discussing Game theory involved in biology.
Above all, there are all those fascinating aspects how some animals behave. There are some insects who can be like Chinese-boxes:
Female greenflies can bear live, fatherless, female offspring, each one containing all the genes of its mother. (Incidentally, an embryo in her mother's 'womb' may have an even smaller embryo inside her own womb. So a greenfly female may give birth to a daughter and a grand- daughter simultaneously, both of them being equivalent to her own identical twins.)
And...do you remember that romantic dialogue, 'I'll die for you'? Ladies among matinses take it too literally:
“Mantises … When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets th e chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate.”
Isn’t that lovely?
Than there are the friendly fights (mostly to get girls):
"the notable thing about animal fights is that they are formal tournaments, played according to rules like those of boxing or fencing. Animals fight with gloved fists and blunted foils. Threat and bluff take the place of deadly earnest. Gestures of surrender are recognized by victors, who then refrain from dealing the killing blow or bite that our naive theory might predict.”
Dawkins also points out how most of Darwin’s oringal theory was wrong. Yet, you won’t find any Darwin-fundamentalists fighting against evolutionists. Several of Dawkins' own postulates must have been already proved wrong - it was written 40 years ago, that is like stone age to scientists. I don't think he would mind either.
Creationists, well, they are a different breed. I guess given the condition the world is in, with all those stupid wars and ozone holes; any ideas of intelligent design can be easily trashed. And have you ever heard of that *stops to search for a word*thing called 'Donald Trump' - what is so intelligent about his existence? If I had my way, I would also have humanity consider whether we aren’t too liberal with the word when we call ourselves an 'intelligent' race. And even assuming there was a creator -than what about his/her aesthetic sense? Why should he give us bad body order? What is so intelligent about that?
Coming back to creationists, well, I think Christian church was a little stupid (no offence) when it picked a head-on fight against evolutionists. All they needed to do was to manipulate the meaning of phrases in Bible and tell the world that evolution was embodied in Bible, it was just that they weren't interpreting it right. Hinduism and Islam are far cleverer in this regard.
For example, as India’s respected prime minister will tell you Hindu gods had already invented plastic surgeries long before lesser mortals discovered Iron. Atom bombs, flying vehicles etc – you name it, we already had them ages ago. Read this review for more details. Whatever you may do, we did it in ancient times and were clever enough to forget about it.
Also, one of most popular (pseudo) scholars on religion, Dr. Zakir Naik, tells us that truths like Big bang, evolution, Copernican solar system, existence of plasma state of matter, the growth of embryo etc. were all already explained by none other than God himself in Quran. There are many other scientific truths to be found in Quran that he has found using his
savaging's review against another edition
3.0
First: I admit that I enjoyed reading this book. Maybe even a misogynist and islamophobe like Dicky Dawkins here can sometimes have good things to say about biology.
And also I had one small breakthrough: obviously it makes no sense to think of myself and most of my favorite people as “survival machines for genes,” because we’re by and large miserable failures at reproducing, and are more inclined to support the offspring of another species than even our own kin. But Dawkins suggests: we could instead be survival machines for memes, ideas which infect our minds like viruses and use our voices and writings to disseminate themselves. Touche, Richard, Touche.
But here's what bothered me:
Dawkins’s masterwork rests on the tautological argument that what-persists is what persists. “Genes” stick around, so they’re the things that survive.
This book was written forty years ago (which, we can hope, is why there’s so much talk of “Man”), and we still haven’t figured out what we mean by “gene.” Dawkins tried to decentralize our idea of “who” was in charge by demoting the individual in favor of the gene -- which is smart. But new recognition of how other components of cells function, organize, replicate themselves, as well as our newborn understanding of epigenetics and epistasis, makes me feel like he hasn’t gone far enough in his decentralization. We’re not minions of DNA strands -- the question of “who is in charge” is far more complex than that, and could be told from a variety of angles. (I’m personally hoping someone writes The Selfish Cytoplasm.)
The “selfish gene” is actually a platonic idea of a gene. The “gene” is an idealization. Actual DNA is remade, recycled, reshuffled, sloughs itself off in dead cells -- if he’s looking for something constant, he can only rest with this gestalt of a system. The idea of self-replicating DNA. This is why it’s so easy for him to eventually cross over into the categories of “memes.” Like we can all be said to share some “thing” when we share a political leaning, or a religion, or a ditty in our heads. He can reify "ideas" because he's already forced to admit that "gene" itself is an idea.
And about the pseudo-solidity of memes: I can’t help but assume that his willingness to reduce an idea or a belief to “a structure in the nervous system” -- which is shared by all infected persons -- feeds his dogmatic atheism and racist ethnocentrism. If you think, for example, that “Islam” is A Singular Thing, you’re more likely to either be a fundamentalist Muslim, or to call for it to be wiped out like ebola. A more nuanced, flexible, nebulous idea of what "a" religion means is, might be the only way humans can live with each other.
But before Dawkins explicitly takes on human culture with the somewhat dodgy concept of memes, he does something much worse, which is to skip and blend from biology to anthropology. He puts forward zoological observations within metaphors that encourage us to see them in human culture, which naturalizes systems of oppression.
Speaking of how selfish genes build group altruism, he says stupid things like “Money is the formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism,” suggesting that our economic system has primarily natural roots in an evolutionarily-stable genetic tendency. When he’s talking about evolutionarily fit strategies, he makes the disgusting jump to the welfare state, pointing out that people can continue to have babies they can’t afford because those babies won’t starve, in the efficient way that the natural world would take care of ‘the problem.’ 1) This labels money within capitalism as the same thing as biological resources, naturalizing a very unnatural thing. 2) It equates wealth with some kind of genetic fitness -- Dawkins says he supports the idea of a welfare state, but it follows from his argument that ending the welfare state would breed a society where there aren’t any poor people, because “rich guy” genes would take over the gene pool. It would make more sense to point out that our unnatural culture allows botanically illiterate CEOs to still have babies instead of starve as they would in the 'wild.'
Dawkins graciously concludes that we shouldn’t blame these parents, since they’re surely too ignorant to know any better. Instead he blames religious leaders who preach against contraception. I am an exuberant fan of contraception -- but that has nothing to do with class. Wealthy babies slurp up far more resources than do the food stamps of the poor. Religion isn’t a phenomenon just of the working class -- and neither is ignorance. The welfare state exists because we recognize we have an extremely unfair (and, for what it’s worth, highly ‘unnatural’) way of dividing up socially-produced resources, and it makes us queasy to think people will have to die for a dumb system.
He talks about gender-based strategies in a highly essentializing way. Which might work for other species -- but evolutionary psychologists like Stevey Pinker have picked him up and giddily trumpeted around the pseudoscience of how a population of “coy” females (rather than “fast”) encourages “faithful” males (rather than “philandering”). In the discussion on gender, I found it interesting that rape -- a fairly obvious strategy for 'selfish genes' to replicate themselves -- is never mentioned. This might just be because Dawkins doesn't believe it exists.
He also suggests a biological grounding for racism, as an extension of the idea of kin-based altruism.
All of this feels like really sloppy science -- a kind of men-are-from-mars pop-psychology that doesn't take into account that there is so much more going on in capitalism, misogyny, and racism than some kind of natural biological response.
And also I had one small breakthrough: obviously it makes no sense to think of myself and most of my favorite people as “survival machines for genes,” because we’re by and large miserable failures at reproducing, and are more inclined to support the offspring of another species than even our own kin. But Dawkins suggests: we could instead be survival machines for memes, ideas which infect our minds like viruses and use our voices and writings to disseminate themselves. Touche, Richard, Touche.
But here's what bothered me:
Dawkins’s masterwork rests on the tautological argument that what-persists is what persists. “Genes” stick around, so they’re the things that survive.
This book was written forty years ago (which, we can hope, is why there’s so much talk of “Man”), and we still haven’t figured out what we mean by “gene.” Dawkins tried to decentralize our idea of “who” was in charge by demoting the individual in favor of the gene -- which is smart. But new recognition of how other components of cells function, organize, replicate themselves, as well as our newborn understanding of epigenetics and epistasis, makes me feel like he hasn’t gone far enough in his decentralization. We’re not minions of DNA strands -- the question of “who is in charge” is far more complex than that, and could be told from a variety of angles. (I’m personally hoping someone writes The Selfish Cytoplasm.)
The “selfish gene” is actually a platonic idea of a gene. The “gene” is an idealization. Actual DNA is remade, recycled, reshuffled, sloughs itself off in dead cells -- if he’s looking for something constant, he can only rest with this gestalt of a system. The idea of self-replicating DNA. This is why it’s so easy for him to eventually cross over into the categories of “memes.” Like we can all be said to share some “thing” when we share a political leaning, or a religion, or a ditty in our heads. He can reify "ideas" because he's already forced to admit that "gene" itself is an idea.
And about the pseudo-solidity of memes: I can’t help but assume that his willingness to reduce an idea or a belief to “a structure in the nervous system” -- which is shared by all infected persons -- feeds his dogmatic atheism and racist ethnocentrism. If you think, for example, that “Islam” is A Singular Thing, you’re more likely to either be a fundamentalist Muslim, or to call for it to be wiped out like ebola. A more nuanced, flexible, nebulous idea of what "a" religion means is, might be the only way humans can live with each other.
But before Dawkins explicitly takes on human culture with the somewhat dodgy concept of memes, he does something much worse, which is to skip and blend from biology to anthropology. He puts forward zoological observations within metaphors that encourage us to see them in human culture, which naturalizes systems of oppression.
Speaking of how selfish genes build group altruism, he says stupid things like “Money is the formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism,” suggesting that our economic system has primarily natural roots in an evolutionarily-stable genetic tendency. When he’s talking about evolutionarily fit strategies, he makes the disgusting jump to the welfare state, pointing out that people can continue to have babies they can’t afford because those babies won’t starve, in the efficient way that the natural world would take care of ‘the problem.’ 1) This labels money within capitalism as the same thing as biological resources, naturalizing a very unnatural thing. 2) It equates wealth with some kind of genetic fitness -- Dawkins says he supports the idea of a welfare state, but it follows from his argument that ending the welfare state would breed a society where there aren’t any poor people, because “rich guy” genes would take over the gene pool. It would make more sense to point out that our unnatural culture allows botanically illiterate CEOs to still have babies instead of starve as they would in the 'wild.'
Dawkins graciously concludes that we shouldn’t blame these parents, since they’re surely too ignorant to know any better. Instead he blames religious leaders who preach against contraception. I am an exuberant fan of contraception -- but that has nothing to do with class. Wealthy babies slurp up far more resources than do the food stamps of the poor. Religion isn’t a phenomenon just of the working class -- and neither is ignorance. The welfare state exists because we recognize we have an extremely unfair (and, for what it’s worth, highly ‘unnatural’) way of dividing up socially-produced resources, and it makes us queasy to think people will have to die for a dumb system.
He talks about gender-based strategies in a highly essentializing way. Which might work for other species -- but evolutionary psychologists like Stevey Pinker have picked him up and giddily trumpeted around the pseudoscience of how a population of “coy” females (rather than “fast”) encourages “faithful” males (rather than “philandering”). In the discussion on gender, I found it interesting that rape -- a fairly obvious strategy for 'selfish genes' to replicate themselves -- is never mentioned. This might just be because Dawkins doesn't believe it exists.
He also suggests a biological grounding for racism, as an extension of the idea of kin-based altruism.
All of this feels like really sloppy science -- a kind of men-are-from-mars pop-psychology that doesn't take into account that there is so much more going on in capitalism, misogyny, and racism than some kind of natural biological response.
dreiac's review against another edition
2.0
Listening to this 30th anniversary edition audiobook (well, I only managed about a third of it - just over five and a half hours) was hard-work. Not so much the thesis, although admittedly sometimes I didn’t have a clue what Richard Dawkins was on about, in contrast with other times, when he overanalysed and went on and on and on about the same theory that already seemed pretty easy to understood from the beginning.
The thing that completely disrupted the flow for me, and ultimately give up on it a third way in, were the constant notes sprinkled all over this edition, with endless modifications and corrections to the original text.
So imagine you’re learning about something and finding it quite interesting (and relatively proud of yourself for actually managing to pay attention, stick with it and understand the content) only to be informed in the end that what you’ve just learned is outdated or wrong in one form or another...
The thing that completely disrupted the flow for me, and ultimately give up on it a third way in, were the constant notes sprinkled all over this edition, with endless modifications and corrections to the original text.
So imagine you’re learning about something and finding it quite interesting (and relatively proud of yourself for actually managing to pay attention, stick with it and understand the content) only to be informed in the end that what you’ve just learned is outdated or wrong in one form or another...
athousandgreatbooks's review against another edition
5.0
Natural selection is the differential survival of the fittest. But fittest what? Fittest individuals, races, species, what? Turns out, it’s the Gene.
In the beginning were the replicators, the fundamental unit of life that made copies of its self, spawning into existence by chance. Through mutation, different varieties of replicators came to be. The successful ones had one or more of the three properties – high longevity, fecundity, and/or copying-fidelity. The unsuccessful ones, by definition, ceased to be.
Slowly, the replicators found more and more sophisticated ways of being that allowed them to replicate successfully, thereby increasing their population in the pool. Many replicators banded together for mutual benefit and became predominant in the backdrop of all other replicators. Soon their banding became formalized and led to the creation of many-celled bodies, vehicles for their propagation.
Note that it is not that individuals have genetic material to make copies of themselves, but rather the genes that create vehicles for protection until they can be passed on to another body, ad infinitum. In other words, vehicles don’t replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators. This is the gene-view of evolution that Dawkins espouses, the Immortal Gene.
Genes cooperate with other genes in the gene-pool only to maximize their own chances of survival. All apparent altruism is a front for the selfish gene, and careful analysis through Game Theory highlights what the Evolutionary Stable Strategies of survival and propagation could be, and have been.
Everything from parental love to fratricide at birth (case in point, British Swallows), to symbiotic and parasitic relationships – all are sophisticated (though unconscious) techniques built into the vehicle by the genes to propagate themselves into the next generation.
It does take a deliberate mental effort to turn biology the right way up, and remind ourselves that the replicators came first, in importance as well as in history.
The one bit that wasn’t quite convincing was the idea of the Meme as a completely new form of replicators. Somehow, it seemed to me a rehashing of the idea of the Archetype. But that is by the way.
In the beginning were the replicators, the fundamental unit of life that made copies of its self, spawning into existence by chance. Through mutation, different varieties of replicators came to be. The successful ones had one or more of the three properties – high longevity, fecundity, and/or copying-fidelity. The unsuccessful ones, by definition, ceased to be.
Slowly, the replicators found more and more sophisticated ways of being that allowed them to replicate successfully, thereby increasing their population in the pool. Many replicators banded together for mutual benefit and became predominant in the backdrop of all other replicators. Soon their banding became formalized and led to the creation of many-celled bodies, vehicles for their propagation.
Note that it is not that individuals have genetic material to make copies of themselves, but rather the genes that create vehicles for protection until they can be passed on to another body, ad infinitum. In other words, vehicles don’t replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators. This is the gene-view of evolution that Dawkins espouses, the Immortal Gene.
Genes cooperate with other genes in the gene-pool only to maximize their own chances of survival. All apparent altruism is a front for the selfish gene, and careful analysis through Game Theory highlights what the Evolutionary Stable Strategies of survival and propagation could be, and have been.
Everything from parental love to fratricide at birth (case in point, British Swallows), to symbiotic and parasitic relationships – all are sophisticated (though unconscious) techniques built into the vehicle by the genes to propagate themselves into the next generation.
It does take a deliberate mental effort to turn biology the right way up, and remind ourselves that the replicators came first, in importance as well as in history.
The one bit that wasn’t quite convincing was the idea of the Meme as a completely new form of replicators. Somehow, it seemed to me a rehashing of the idea of the Archetype. But that is by the way.
novabird's review against another edition
5.0
My interpretive and very condensed overview, notes et.al. of Dawkin’s most salient themes in “The Selfish Gene:” (my words are in italics)
“In the beginning was simplicity.”
Then came longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity or the process of replication, which is the same as the language of genes that jump-started the long road to complexity; evolution.
“A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material, which potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.”
Genes are the instructions of the instructions. Something similar to a decoder needed in order to be able to read the instructions.
“Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators?
“They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.”
“They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”
First hint of epigenetics that Dawkins puts forward – “The environment of a gene consist largely of other genes, each of which is itself being selected for its ability to cooperate with its environment of other genes.”
And
“I speculate that we shall come to accept the more radical idea that each one of our genes is a symbiotic unit. “If this is true, we might as well regard ourselves as colonies of viruses.”
Slightly changed from Dawkins original, where I substituted humankind for man – “What shall it profit humankind if we shall gain the whole world, and lose our immortal genes?”
“The genes are the immortals, or rather, they are defined as genetic entities, which come close to deserving that title. We, the individual survival machines in the world, can expect to live a few more decades. But the genes in the world have an expectation of life which must be measured not in decades but in thousands and millions of years.”
Biological building blocks to a functioning intelligent brain - sensory capacity, pattern recognition, capacity for learning, simulation, making predictions = biological intelligent consciousness (not necessarily sentience).
“Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.”
“Language seems to ‘evolve,’ by non-genetic means, and at a rate which is orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution.”
“Natural selection favors genes which control their survival machines in such a way that they make best use of their environment.” This is implied in Human game theory where an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) is based on the idea of a rational theory of primal mind rooted in self-preservation works out the math of – odds and stats
“… the decision whether or not to fight should ideally be preceded by a complex, if unconscious, ‘cost-benefit’ calculation.”
The actual definition of ESS is; “a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy.”
“But once an ESS is achieved it will stay: selection will penalize deviation from it.”
“I have a hunch that that we may come to look back on the invention of the ESS concept as one of the most important advances in evolutionary theory since Darwin.” Social organization and hidden group selectionism – the influence of memes? Therefore, the selfish gene concept is one that inherently preserves its genetics by adapting to its environment and social factors.
“We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation – meme.”
“When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.”
“An idea-meme might be defined as an entity which is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another.”
Memes demand: Distinct attention separate from other rival memes
Time effectiveness of transfer of idea
Translation of the language of imitation
Stepping back for a moment from the idea of the minds capacity for imitation at a meme level, there is a relatively new neurophysiological discovery of mirror neurons that have a designated brain structure and function.
“For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own.”
“We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”
“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”
“If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.”
“True warfare in which large rival armies fight to the death is known only in man and in social insects.”
My questions:
What is the purpose of self–terminating, late acting lethal, genes at all?
Can a meme function as part of the ESS? In other words what role does social upheaval play in upsetting the stasis of ESS? What about the reality of a “conspiracy of doves”?
What other type of evolution could have developed other than genes and memes?
Made me look up:
Nine-banded armadillos
Swallows fratricide/sibling disposal - RD Alexander parent winning strategy
Isogamy -
Kittiwakes -
Bruce effect pheromones –
Hymenoptera -
Aphids -
The Ik of Uganda – Colin Turnbull
I found the following to be Dawkins’ most outlandish statement:
“Individual humans who have more children than they are capable of rearing are probably too ignorant in most cases to be accused of conscious malevolent exploitation.”
A particular genetic trait that I found fascinating:
The Beau Geste Effect is the idea that animals pretend to be several animals at once in order to deceive their rivals into thinking that the numbers are too high to be supported by the environment and therefore they would have smaller clutch sizes. Where in reality there would then be smaller populations and greater resources.
The idea of god has great psychological appeal because of ‘terror management theory.’
Dawkins’ theory of life; the law that all life evolves by the differentiating survival of replication.
Superbly written Dawkins uses a 1. Tell them what you are going to say 2. Say it or write it in clear and lively language 3. Summarize; tell them what you have just said ease of reading style. It is slightly dated and loses its way in the follow-up sequel, "The Extended Phenotype."
“In the beginning was simplicity.”
Then came longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity or the process of replication, which is the same as the language of genes that jump-started the long road to complexity; evolution.
“A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material, which potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.”
Genes are the instructions of the instructions. Something similar to a decoder needed in order to be able to read the instructions.
“Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators?
“They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.”
“They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”
First hint of epigenetics that Dawkins puts forward – “The environment of a gene consist largely of other genes, each of which is itself being selected for its ability to cooperate with its environment of other genes.”
And
“I speculate that we shall come to accept the more radical idea that each one of our genes is a symbiotic unit. “If this is true, we might as well regard ourselves as colonies of viruses.”
Slightly changed from Dawkins original, where I substituted humankind for man – “What shall it profit humankind if we shall gain the whole world, and lose our immortal genes?”
“The genes are the immortals, or rather, they are defined as genetic entities, which come close to deserving that title. We, the individual survival machines in the world, can expect to live a few more decades. But the genes in the world have an expectation of life which must be measured not in decades but in thousands and millions of years.”
Biological building blocks to a functioning intelligent brain - sensory capacity, pattern recognition, capacity for learning, simulation, making predictions = biological intelligent consciousness (not necessarily sentience).
“Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.”
“Language seems to ‘evolve,’ by non-genetic means, and at a rate which is orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution.”
“Natural selection favors genes which control their survival machines in such a way that they make best use of their environment.” This is implied in Human game theory where an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) is based on the idea of a rational theory of primal mind rooted in self-preservation works out the math of – odds and stats
“… the decision whether or not to fight should ideally be preceded by a complex, if unconscious, ‘cost-benefit’ calculation.”
The actual definition of ESS is; “a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy.”
“But once an ESS is achieved it will stay: selection will penalize deviation from it.”
“I have a hunch that that we may come to look back on the invention of the ESS concept as one of the most important advances in evolutionary theory since Darwin.” Social organization and hidden group selectionism – the influence of memes? Therefore, the selfish gene concept is one that inherently preserves its genetics by adapting to its environment and social factors.
“We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation – meme.”
“When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.”
“An idea-meme might be defined as an entity which is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another.”
Memes demand: Distinct attention separate from other rival memes
Time effectiveness of transfer of idea
Translation of the language of imitation
Stepping back for a moment from the idea of the minds capacity for imitation at a meme level, there is a relatively new neurophysiological discovery of mirror neurons that have a designated brain structure and function.
“For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own.”
“We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”
“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”
“If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.”
“True warfare in which large rival armies fight to the death is known only in man and in social insects.”
My questions:
What is the purpose of self–terminating, late acting lethal, genes at all?
Can a meme function as part of the ESS? In other words what role does social upheaval play in upsetting the stasis of ESS? What about the reality of a “conspiracy of doves”?
What other type of evolution could have developed other than genes and memes?
Made me look up:
Nine-banded armadillos
Swallows fratricide/sibling disposal - RD Alexander parent winning strategy
Isogamy -
Kittiwakes -
Bruce effect pheromones –
Hymenoptera -
Aphids -
The Ik of Uganda – Colin Turnbull
I found the following to be Dawkins’ most outlandish statement:
“Individual humans who have more children than they are capable of rearing are probably too ignorant in most cases to be accused of conscious malevolent exploitation.”
A particular genetic trait that I found fascinating:
The Beau Geste Effect is the idea that animals pretend to be several animals at once in order to deceive their rivals into thinking that the numbers are too high to be supported by the environment and therefore they would have smaller clutch sizes. Where in reality there would then be smaller populations and greater resources.
The idea of god has great psychological appeal because of ‘terror management theory.’
Dawkins’ theory of life; the law that all life evolves by the differentiating survival of replication.
Superbly written Dawkins uses a 1. Tell them what you are going to say 2. Say it or write it in clear and lively language 3. Summarize; tell them what you have just said ease of reading style. It is slightly dated and loses its way in the follow-up sequel, "The Extended Phenotype."
pictusfish's review against another edition
4.0
It has some interesting points but after a bit it becomes overwhelmingly repetitive
lilliee's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Sehr wissenschaftlich geschrieben und langatmig; aber auch schon sehr interessant