Jim McGinn  wrote or quoted:

> I made an offer of 10 thousand dollars to anybody 
> that can demonstrate the validity of Hamilton's 
> nonsense.

A cash offer for demonstrating nonsense?  It sounds at least
amusing.  Did you get as far as appointing an arbitrator?

> > That doesn't mean that Jim and John are wrong - that is 
> > for the reader to decide - but it does mean that they have had plenty of 
> > opportunity for making their views known.  So blaming the continued 
> > acceptance of Hamilton's rule on some fault in the peer-review process is 
> > clearly a red herring. Hamilton's rule is accepted because the majority 
> > of scientists who have taken a hard look at it think it has some 
> > validity.
> 
> Some validity?  What does this supposedly mean?  
> Either it is valid or it is invalid.  Sounds like 
> nothing more than an excuse for vagueness.

It could be a reference to the fact that Hamilton's rule
assumes that the relatedness of the actors is known to
the participants - whereas in nature, that condition
is rarely met exactly - and usually there is some measure
of uncertainty which causes a mismatich between relatedness
and percieved relatedness.

Green beards and linkage provide more wrinkles on Hamilton's rule.

Similarly, Newtonian physics "has some validity" - even though we
now have a more accurate theory.
-- 
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