"Erland Gadde"  wrote
>
> But does this argument really hold? As I see it, kin selection suffers
> from the same weakness as does group selection. For what will happen
> when all the indivduals in the group are kin altruists? This group
> will also be genetically unstable! If, in this group, a gene for
> egoism appears in a single individual, (after a mutation, say) this
> individual will benefit from the altruism of its kin (who didn't get
> the egoism gene), and save the cost of acting altruistically agaist
> its kin. This individual will then get more offspring (with the egoism
> gene) than its kin altruist kin and other (kin altruist) members of
> the group. The egoism gene will therefore, in the long run, outcompete
> the kin altruism gene, ust as it outcompeted the pure altruism gene in
> the previous scenario!
>
> Or have I overlooked something?
>
Yes. The alleles must be "identical by descent". This isn't a good phrase
since all similar stretches of DNA, barring enormous accidents, must derive
ultimately from the same ancestral piece. What it means is that the
coefficient of relatedness is calculated through the common ancestor, not by
comparing sequence homology. Otherwise I would be motivated to lose 40% of
my resources to save an octopus, which is absurd.
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