In article ,
Jim McGinn  wrote:
>> 
>> > Indeed, there is alot of confusion surrounding Hamilton's arguments,
>> > even among evolutionary biologists.
>
>The confusion is due to the fact that it makes no sense.
....
>Yourself and others have had ample opportunity to 
>convince me that Hamilton is correct.  
....
>I made an offer of 10 thousand dollars to anybody 
>that can demonstrate the validity of Hamilton's 
>nonsense.  Joe started to approach the problem but 
>then bowed out when I insisted that he provide 
>justification for the assumptions that he tried to 
>slip in the back door of his argument.  

Utter hogwash.  I tried to show, by an argument using a simple model
(of the sort universally used in evolutionary genetics), that
Hamilton's rule worked in that model.  It turned out that the assumptions of
the model (that slip in the front door -- that's how you make a model)
could not be accepted by McGinn.

We finally agreed that McGinn's argument was equally a criticism
of the models used for Hardy-Weinberg proportions!  Or any
other model in theoretical population genetics.  Why does he
always make it sound like he has a criticism specific to Hamilton's
kin selection argument?  Dunno.

There is no way anyone who has a argument based on a model can win
the mythical $10,000.  Even if you're trying to prove that random
mating leads to Hardy-Weinberg proportions.

Anyone who wants to check out my characterization of this exchange is
invited to look at the thread "Re: Kin Selection contradiction?"
on April 21 of this year in this group (you can use Google Groups and
type in "McGinn Felsenstein Weinberg" and the relevant postings will be
the first or second thread you see).

-- 
Joe Felsenstein         joe{at}removethispart.gs.washington.edu
 Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology,
 University of Washington, Box 357730, Seattle, WA 98195-7730 USA
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