"Anon."  wrote in
news:c4eskb$2adq$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> William Morse wrote:

 (snip)

>> With regard to kin selection, a weakness of Hamilton's rule is in
>> getting an altruism gene established in the first place. If the gene
>> isn't at least locally widespread, the r factor will in fact be low. 
>> For the flip side - the inability for a selfish gene to spread - the
>> reverse is true, since the more a selfish gene spreads, the greater
>> the selection pressure will be against it. 
  
> This is true for the first generation, after that it depends on either
> the ability to recognise kin, or aggregation of kin.

To clarify - are you referring to kin selection, anti-selfishness 
selection, or both?

 
> Of course, for behaviour like parental care, the problems are reduced.

The above is the statement that made me think you are referring to kin 
selection.

 
>> Is the flip side actually signficant in evolution? Since it is 
>> essentially a negative effect, one cannot find examples showing it. 
 
> I think the approach would be to correlate numbers/strengths of 
> altuistic behaviours with relatedness of individuals that an
> individual interacts with.  This needs the right system to try it in -
> I'll leave the problem of finding such a system to the naturalists out
> there. 

Too bad I'm an artificialist ;-)

 
> Now, when do we start insulting each other?
 
Dang! I knew I was forgetting part of the proper etiquette of posts to a 
newsgroup.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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