In article ,
Jim McGinn  wrote:
>joe{at}removethispart.gs.washington.edu (Joe Felsenstein) wrote in message
>news:...
>> In article ,
>> Jim McGinn  wrote:
>> >> [McGinn]
>> >> >Okay, I'll keep it brief:
>> >> >Hamilton's refuted.  Get used to it.
>> >> 
[me:]
>> >> And I'll keep it brief:  McGinn won't explain his argument.  Get
>used to it.
>> >
[McGinn:]
>> >Not true.  I'd be more than happy to explain my 
>> >argument.  Honestly.  Please delineate as briefly 
>> >and specifically as possible what part or aspect 
>> >of my "argument," you would like me to explicate.
>> 
[me:]
>> Fine, explain.  A couple of simple paragraphs should be good as a start.
>> Until I know your argument, I can't pick a part of it, so you can just
>> start at the beginning, and we'll go step by step.
>
[McGinn:]
>I've already presented my argument.  (As I'm sure 
>you realize.)

For just a brief moment I thought you had some argument other than
the rejection of all models.  And were about to explain it.  For
just a brief moment ...

The only argument I could perceive in the past postings was this
rejection of models.  Anything else I could not make out.  So I
said:

[me:]
>> But if it is just going to consist of a rejection of all models, one
>> which would equally well serve to persuade us that the Hardy-Weinberg
>> proportions are "inconsistent with reality", then we
should instead
>> argue about whether Hardy and Weinberg have been refuted.  That will be
>> easier for people to assess.
>
[McGinn:]
>Okay, you tell me why you think it's valid and I'll 
>tell you why you're wrong.

So you thus verify that this rejection of models truly is your argument.  And
that, if accepted, it equally well refutes the Hardy-Weinberg proportions,
and surely also then the elementary formulas for selection, the decline of
linkage disequilibrium, the formulas for mutation-selection balance, the
inbreeding coefficient.  And so on.

Simply put, real populations need to be described by some mathematical
approximation, and the assumptions of all these (random mating, discrete
generations, constant viabilities and fertilities, etc.) come close
enough to be useful.  We need to have some tractable way of projecting
what will happen in real populations.  The way to make this tractable is
to formulate simple models and work out their implications.  Then to make
them more and more realistic.  Hardy-Weinberg proportions are testable
in real populations and there are a very large number of examples of them
achieving a good fit.

Thank you for verifying that your argument is merely simply a wholesale
rejection of all evolutionary genetics models.  Not some specific fault in the
kin selection argument.  That Hamilton was just exactly as much a fool as
were Fisher, Wright, Haldane, Kimura, Crow, Lewontin, Maynard Smith,
Robertson, Cavalli-Sforza, Nei, Hill, Karlin, Ohta, Slatkin, Gillespie, Lande,
Feldman, the Charlesworths, Wen-Hsiung Li and the rest of us.  I have met and
known all the folks in that list (except Fisher) and to me they seemed like 
nobody's fools.

The audience to this exchange (if any) can take their pick between the
great McGinn and his conclusion that all their models were wrong and all
their derivations are refuted, and that list of all these other folks who made
the models and drew many conclusions from them.  There's little doubt which way
people will go on that.   I'm happy to leave it there.

-- 
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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