Guy Hoelzer  wrote:

> Mohammad Nor Syamsu wrote:
> 
> > I think we disagree on a useful meaning of the word selection. It
> > seems the standard meaning as by Darwin is like: the one (variant)
> > continues, and the other doesn't (much) continue, where I think
> > selection should be more defined like the process by which something
> > is continued or not. Variational selection would then become a subset
> > to that more broad meaning of selection.
> 
> The word you are looking for is sampling, which implies no bias.  Selection
> implies bias.
> 
> Guy

It seems to me there are increasingly inclusive kinds of processes here.
In the most general terms possible, I think of them this way.

Sampling is the broadest class. It can be biased or stochastic (the
latter being random drift). Selection is a sampling process (over traits
in a population). Sampling requires a population of individuals, but not
that they vary or have any differential bias.

Sorting is the next most restrictive class. Selection is a sorting
process, but so are non-selective biological processes (like species
sorting, which Gould, inappropriately IMO, calls species selection).
Sorting requires a differential bias, in which some items are ranked in
ways that affect their persistence. Selection is a sorting process.

But selection itself requires two further conditions - variation in
hereditable traits, and that those traits have some differential bias
that correlates with hereditability. This differential bias we call
fitness.

Another way to think of it is that you have a variable for alleles that
can take any value from one to zero for variability. Selection occurs
when it is greater than zero but less than one for a locus in a
population. You cannot non-arbitrarily draw the line anywhere in
particular, but if the variability is extreme enough we just do not call
it selection any more.

My amateur opinion.
-- 
John Wilkins
"Listen to your heart, not the voices in your head" - Marge Simpson
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