William Morse  wrote:-

> Tim Tyler  wrote in news:cm9med$1fh2$1
> {at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> > Anthony Cerrato  wrote or quoted:
 
> >> AIUI, ants and bees and such use various pheromones
> >> extensively, not for just simple primitive communication and
> >> sex etc., but to also help organize their societies into
> >> various classes. Why shouldn't humans also have such an
> >> analogous genetic program/mandate?

> > It sounds rather like the plan of breeding for the trait of
> > having more than the average number of children.
> > If you could do it the mutation would sweep through the population -
> > and soon the population would be back where it started again - since
> > the fecund organisms would be forced into competition with their
> > cousins.

> WM:-
> I think it more likely that those human tribes that had individuals 
> filling a variety of roles tended to outcompete those that didn't.

JE:-
For your theory to become rigorous you have to
be able to differentiate between out-competing 
tribes and out-competing individuals on a
_refutable_ basis i.e. differentiate between 
individual and group  selection on a _scientific_ 
basis.  To be able to do this you must firstly define 
what these different selectees are, very exactly. 
If you refer to out-competing individuals then you 
have to produce a mechanism that allows "individuals 
filling a variety of roles" to become selected 
for. The only way this becomes possible
is via organism fitness mutualism (OFM) unless
you argue organism fitness altruism (OFA) via
group selection or Hamilton's selfish geneism.

OFM requires a population to absolutely expand
whereas OFA does not. OFM can only be selected
for if every Darwinian selectee per population
stands to make an absolute Darwinian fitness gain,
i.e. the mean total number of fertile forms reproduced
per parent into one population stands to _increase_.
This increase represents a testable to refutation
maximand for the science of biology. OTOH, no 
refutable maximand has been proposed for OFA by 
either group selection or Hamiltonian selfish 
geneism. OFM cannot be differentiated from OFA
unless these maximands become EXPLICIT.


Please refer to my recent posting re: slime mould 
slug formation for a classical example of OFM
documented within nature. Again I would like to 
thank Dr Guy Hoelzer for providing this wonderful example.
No OFA is required because only Darwinian individuals
(in this case individual fertile cells 
from different non related clones)
are competing and _not_ groups of them. This is because
the fitness of the cell groups are just the simple addition
of each individual cells fitness total within each 
population forcing selection to act at the individual 
cell level, firstly_. This reduces group selection
(selection between slime mould slugs)  to only
act with and not against individual selection because
when if acts against it both groups and individuals
suffer an absolute fitness loss forcing both towards
extinction.

OFM requires a population of mutually exchanging
individuals to become more and more specialised
because the Baldwin effect becomes larger, i.e.
the conspecies becomes more and more the selector
which is a selective force (not a selectee!). 
If exchange evolves to become cognitive it 
becomes trade. OFM is limited by population size.
Once the ball starts rolling it produces a positive
feedback loop for more and more OFM demanding
larger and larger mutualised groups. The larger 
the mutualised group the larger the potential gains
per Darwinian selectee because Darwinian fitness gains 
can increase on an exponential basis via group size.
Note that competition between individuals creases 
using OFM even as cooperation increases. In the slime 
mould example parental cells must also compete to become 
spore bearing cells (they do not just lie down and die 
to becomes stalk cells as OFA predicts!) but not to 
the extent that stalk cell formation is lowered
below a certain minimum because this would reduce the 
total Darwinian fitness of each parent that forms 
one mutualised population (which is one 
slime mould slug). The pleiotropic effect of a 
gene acts to make sure this cannot happen. Similar
pleiotropic effects should evolve as a safeguard
within any mutualised population because a reduction
in absolute fitness cannot be selected _for_. Within
a trading population this should produce a policing
effect or what we call a conscience. If it fails a war 
can eventuate producing  an absolute reduction in 
Darwinian fitness for all concerned via the 
disintegration of cognitive OFM (trade). The big
fault here may be the tribal group expanded to become
larger than heritable pleiotropic effects for
safeguards could now manage. Indeed, most of these
effects still "think" the tribe is about 500 and
not many millions.  Our genetically inherited systems
that evolved to safeguard our total fitness gains
has not had time to adapt and is now producing
mal-adaptive effects within oversized super tribes
which evolved much too quickly via a trade
OFM feedback loop for genetic changes to keep
up. 

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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