tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post7710576805106721327..comments2024-01-27T00:27:45.851+00:00Comments on race/history/evolution notes: Kinship coefficients and Ethnic Genetic Interests (JayMan embarrassing himself again)n/ahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02378473351485233448noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-90116135289573399312017-12-13T14:26:18.890+00:002017-12-13T14:26:18.890+00:00n/a
what are your thoughts on this? http://dienek...n/a<br /><br />what are your thoughts on this? http://dienekes.blogspot.com.au/2004/10/origin-of-ethnocentrism.html<br /><br />I just cannot accept it. I find it too painful to think about having my people replaced and to just pretend it all doesn't matter. I cannot in my heart or mind do that. So. What are your opinions? Similar to JayMans you think?<br />regards, Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-61111794991485844182015-08-19T22:31:24.835+01:002015-08-19T22:31:24.835+01:00"but I think he has an emotional investment i..."but I think he has an emotional investment in opposing Ethnic Genetic Interests so he's not the most rational on this topic."<br /><br />He's a cuckservative<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-80109866085576171642015-04-04T01:39:03.911+01:002015-04-04T01:39:03.911+01:00M,
No, I'm right, and your intuition is corre...M,<br /><br />No, I'm right, and your intuition is correct.<br /><br />The articles RCB brings up have little to do with the questions at hand.<br /><br />The Taylor papers, for example, seem to be intended to model insects, in one case, and plants in the other, <b>in the absence of any sort of kin recognition</b>. These are primarily of interest to people, e.g., studying the evolution of eusociality in insects (and specifically, whether or not limited dispersal in and of itself favors cooperation). Even without kin recognition, these models don't rule out the evolution of cooperation. Which is good, considering eusocial insects do exist.<br /><br />If you want to look at the evolution of ethnocentrism in humans, you create a relevant model. When <a href="http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/robert-axelrod-on-evolution-of.html" rel="nofollow">Robert Axelrod did</a>, he found:<br /><br /><i>The main result of the simulation is that the <b>ethnocentric strategy becomes common</b> even though, unlike previous models,3 favoritism toward similar others is not built into the model. In the final 100 periods of ten 2,000-period runs, <b>76 percent of the agents have the ethnocentric strategy, compared to 25 percent if selection had been neutral</b> (Table 1, row a). This result shows that <b>in-group favoritism based on simple tags and local interactions can overcome egoism and dominate a population even in the absence of reciprocity and reputation and even when "cheaters" need to be suppressed</b>. </i><br /><br />This too is good, since, in the real world ethnocentrism obviously exists.<br /><br />But even if we pretend ethnocentrism does not exist in humans, or that it's impossible for ethnocentrism to have evolved via group selection / kin selection (and, again, it's not -- RCB is fixated on an irrelevant technical discussion and Cochran simply "knows" group selection can't be an important force in humans), this still doesn't change the fact that ethnic genetic interests exist. Cochran and JayMan failed to read "On Ethnic Genetic Interests" (freely available at<br />https://archive.org/details/OnGeneticInterestsFamilyEthnicityAndHumanityInAnAgeOfMassMigration2006ByFrankKempSalter ) or even know the definition of what they were asserting didn't exist.<br /><br />Also see:<br />http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/hamilton-on-inclusive-fitness-and.html<br />http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-from-hamilton-on-kin-recognition.html<br />http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/r-fisher-on-group-selection-in-humans.html<br />n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-1716051805361976102015-03-26T21:56:48.679+00:002015-03-26T21:56:48.679+00:00Wow. I love this stuff, even though I barely under...Wow. I love this stuff, even though I barely understand it. <br /><br />I sense in my dimness that RCB and crew are technically right, but side with n/a, anyhow. I didn't want to be replaced. And it definitely "hurts" me!Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16268051898047705219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-27892596883391813842015-03-07T17:57:03.339+00:002015-03-07T17:57:03.339+00:00You're right that those Taylor models don'...You're right that those Taylor models don't allow kin recognition. I don't know much about kin recognition models, myself. I only know there has historically been some debate over the importance of kin recognition in general, and how it can work theoretically (some models support it, some don't). Found two more recent reviews, should be helpful:<br />http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982207017083<br />http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-02624-9_3#page-1<br />I can't claim any expertise here.<br /><br />The models we've discussed are still relevant because they define the scope of altruism that is adaptive. That is: if my arguments regarding the scope of competition (i.e., mostly within ethnic-group) are right, and if altruism based on kin recognition did evolve in humans, then it mostly evolved to help people distinguish close relatives (or bandmates) from others. If, say, a large, foreign, mostly endogamous population is suddenly transported into/near your neighborhood, then this evolved kin-recognition might misfire, making you think that your greatest competitors for mates (your coethnics) are actually close relatives. This would probably be maladaptive; presumably, in the long run, selection would tone down the mechanism such that you wouldn't get caught up on ethnic differences. In the meantime, of course, you'd have many generations of ethnocentrism!RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-9948038612614590532015-03-06T21:28:13.680+00:002015-03-06T21:28:13.680+00:00Continued:
The value of being able to distinguish...Continued:<br /><br /><i>The value of being able to distinguish tags can be under-<br />stood in terms of inclusive fitness theory that takes into ac-<br />count the degree of relatedness between two agents (Hamilton<br />1964; Lacy and Sherman 1983; Riolo et al. 2001). While<br />proximity alone can be an indication of relatedness, being<br />able to distinguish among heritable tags, as in the armpit<br />effect (Dawkins 1982; Hauber and Sherman 2000; Hauber et<br />al. 2000; Mateo and Johnson 2000; Isles et al. 2001), allows<br />a still better indication of relatedness, for example among<br />sessile cnidarians (Grosberg and Quinn 1989; Grafen 1990).<br /><b>The discriminatory abilities required for the armpit effect are<br />likely to be widespread. The self-recognition required for<br />multicellularity provides them from intimate contact, and the<br />need to distinguish conspecifics for mating provides them<br />more generally for animals</b>. In both cases, a hardwired com-<br />parison known as the green beard effect (Hamilton 1964;<br />Dawkins 1976; Haig 1996; Grafen 1998; Keller and Ross<br />1998) would seriously slow evolution and make speciation<br />almost impossible.<br /><br />Viscosity is ubiquitous because few populations complete-<br />ly mix from one generation to the next. Hamilton (1964)<br />believed that simple viscosity was a widespread sufficient<br />cause of fairly weak altruism, and various models have found<br />that viscosity can indeed foster cooperation (Getty 1987; Pol-<br />lock 1989; Nowak and May 1992; Nakamaru et al. 1997).<br />However, this general claim is now considered doubtful. The<br />balance between increased relatedness and increased com-<br />petition between neighbors may tilt toward or away from<br />cooperation (Taylor 1992; Wilson et al. 1992; West et al.<br />2002). Taylor and Irwin (2000) have suggested that with<br />overlapping generations, and with altruism dispensed as ben-<br />efits to fecundity, there is a tendency for population viscosity<br />to support altruism. The 15.6% cooperation found in our<br />model with one tag is on the one hand more than zero, sup-<br />porting Taylor and Irwin, but on the other hand is rather<br />limited. <b>Adding observable tags shows that proximity can<br />sustain cooperation based on contingent altruism, even if the<br />very correlation of tags and relatedness evolves</b>. By putting<br />both the matching and the altruism under explicit genetic<br />control, the model shows how altruism conditional on heri-<br />table tags can evolve despite substantial costs of cooperation.<br /><b>Thus, the present model, which combines viscosity, the arm-<br />pit effect, and endogenous use of discrimination in a genet-<br />ically explicit way, creates a very general expectation of<br />widespread, and not necessarily weak, conditional altruism<br />in nature.</b></i><br /><br />Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve<br />R Axelrod, RA Hammond, A Grafen<br />http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/72180/j.0014-3820.2004.tb00465.x.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y<br /><br />n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-3143450754708481742015-03-06T21:22:41.986+00:002015-03-06T21:22:41.986+00:00Okay, I'd read Taylor's other 1992 paper, ...Okay, I'd read Taylor's other 1992 paper, but not that one. I believe now that you're attempting to argue in good faith. Unfortunately, the models you're bringing up are still irrelevant for what you're trying to use them for (challenging the possibility that human ethnocentrism could have evolved via group selection): they do not allow for any sort of kin recognition (altruism is dispensed purely based on proximity). <br /><br />What happens when ancestry indicators are available? A relevant model:<br /><br /><i>We show with an evolutionary model how contingent altruism<br />can be sustained even when arbitrary heritable indicators of<br />relatedness, called ‘‘tags’’, coevolve with the strategies gov-<br />erning behavior. <b>Discrimination based on tags is not assumed,<br />but rather evolves endogenously in a viscous population (i.e.,<br />local reproduction and local interaction) and is selected for<br />even when phenotypic matching is very coarse-grained.</b> We<br />also show how to extend Hamilton’s rule to establish the<br />conditions under which kin recognition can support discrim-<br />inating altruism even when coevolution causes the reliability<br />of indicators of relatedness to vary with each individual’s<br />evolving social environment. <br />[. . .]<br /><b>The resulting agent-based model is based on a model<br />previously developed to study ethnocentrism in humans</b> (Ax-<br />elrod and Hammond 2003). The present model is not meant<br />to be a literal representation of biological processes. Instead,<br />our model is designed to illuminate the consequences of the<br />fact that <b>kin discrimination typically entails coevolution of<br />three things: the strategies governing behavior, the reliability<br />of the tags on which the behavior may be conditioned, and<br />the population structure that determines who interacts with<br />whom</b>.<br />[. . .]<br />The algebraic method above is the first published analysis<br />of selection for kin recognition with simultaneous variation<br />at the indicator and altruistic loci. This method helps us un-<br />derstand the conditions under which kin recognition can sup-<br />port discriminating altruism even when the reliability of in-<br />dicators of kinship depends on the individual’s social envi-<br />ronment.</i>n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-39425360112370020722015-03-06T15:31:22.760+00:002015-03-06T15:31:22.760+00:00"If you bother to read and understand the pap..."If you bother to read and understand the papers you cite"<br /><br />This is the second time you've presumed something about me that was false.<br /><br />Taylor (1992) "Altruism in viscous populations - an inclusive fitness model" is probably the most cited paper. With regard to long-range dispersal, note: "(4) Dispersal. With probability t, each female disperses to a distant patch, distant enough that she will find no relatives there."<br /><br />I've actually rederived some of these results myself, so I'm pretty sure I do understand them. As viscosity goes up, FST at the altruistic locus goes up, but altruism does not.<br /><br />The cancellation noted in Taylor's paper doesn't always happen, by the way. Sometimes viscosity can favor higher altruism among local groups, as I understand. But the point remains that FST alone (even at the locus of interest) cannot be used as an argument for increased altruism. Got to know other things. RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-11117667781286159822015-03-05T23:15:23.145+00:002015-03-05T23:15:23.145+00:00"The models I've referred to usually assu..."The models I've referred to usually assume many patches with island-like dispersal (which does allow long-distance migration)"<br /><br />As far as I know, this is wrong. If you bother to read and understand the papers you cite, I think you'll find the models in which increased competition and increased relatedness directly cancel all limit long-range migration and/or local population expansion. Obviously, neither of these limits holds for humans, and Hamilton was aware of the issue prior to his 1971 and 1975 papers.<br /><br />"in which genome-wide FST is somehow relevant to selection for altruism at a particular locus"<br /><br />You apparently fail to appreciate that "genome-wide FST" is also a statement about the expected similarity at "a particular locus".n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-43427371746543767242015-03-05T16:06:39.278+00:002015-03-05T16:06:39.278+00:00Please explain, then, exactly what model of mating...Please explain, then, exactly what model of mating and dispersal you have in mind. This would help the discussion immensely. The models I've referred to usually assume many patches with island-like dispersal (which does allow long-distance migration), in which more cooperative populations produce more dispersers than others ("hard" selection - a form of expansion by successful groups). Do you mean to imply that this is an irrelevant model for human evolutionary history?<br /><br />Your last comment sounds to me like you're suggesting that there is some case in which genome-wide FST is somehow relevant to selection for altruism at a particular locus (my main dispute throughout). If this is your argument, I emphasize my extreme skepticism, but will of course hear you out. If this is not what you're arguing, then I think we're done here.RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-88385498778701623862015-03-05T07:34:15.530+00:002015-03-05T07:34:15.530+00:00"Viscosity increases FST, but may not cause a..."Viscosity increases FST, but may not cause any increase in altruism. Need to understand the range of reproductive competition. This is my main point; it sounds like we agree here."<br /><br />Yes. And this would be relevant to the discussion if humans were subject to the sorts of constraints (like limited dispersal) under which this actually becomes an issue.<br /><br />Hamilton: <i>Social selection cannot occur in <b>completely regular 'mating systems'</b>. It may be noted here, however, that the most 'system-like' version of an 'isolation-by-distance' model, which is supposed to <b>preclude long-range migration and elastic expansion from vigorous areas</b>, is rather hostile to altruism. </i><br /><br />n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-20715133651993591812015-03-05T05:52:12.644+00:002015-03-05T05:52:12.644+00:00First: I have no ideological preferences here, and...First: I have no ideological preferences here, and I don't see any evidence that would make you believe that. Only theoretical interests. I've seen others to fling around political attacks here; that's not my style.<br /><br />As for those citations: thanks, I'll check them out. I'm skeptical (people want these things to be true, because Hamilton's rule is so compelling; strong possibility for publication bias), but I admit ignorance.<br /><br />The amount of accuracy in kinship recognition does matter, because it attenuates r. If you can only identify your brother 1/5 of the time, then r drops from 1/2 to 1/10 (or smaller, anyhow). Acting altruisically toward "possible kin" can be worse than doing nothing at all.<br /><br />And, I say misfiring under the assumption that selection will almost never favor altruism at the level of the large ethnic groups (argued before why this is usually the case). If that's true, then any altruism based on extending kin recognition mechanisms to this level will be maladaptive - hence, misfire. RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-31099972380601500482015-03-05T05:36:04.458+00:002015-03-05T05:36:04.458+00:00"And, again, nothing Queller says conflicts w..."And, again, nothing Queller says conflicts with Hamilton's insights or with anything I've said"<br /><br />Well, sort of: I'm saying that Hamilton DID mistakenly put too much stake in viscosity as a selective force for altruism (in 1964). He later figured out the problem, though. In other words, he did not originally use Hamilton's rule "as intended", ironically enough. He says as much in that paragraph you cite ("surprising conclusions").<br /><br />More generally, the stuff you cite should make clear to the readers of this blog that large FST's across groups alone cannot be used to infer selection for ethnic-level altruism. Viscosity increases FST, but may not cause any increase in altruism. Need to understand the range of reproductive competition. This is my main point; it sounds like we agree here.<br /><br />BTW, I wrote down some models investigating the evolution of endogamy in a particular population scenario (basically, when two ethnic groups "come together" into the same area). Thinking of making PDFs and distributing, to show that relatedness alone will not favor endogamy (i.e., it's not in your "genetic interests" to mate with your own kind, unless you invoke other mechanisms, e.g. lower fitness among the foreigners). Sharing would allow others to check the math and suggest changes, if folks are interested.RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-77695291384064687722015-03-05T05:28:16.397+00:002015-03-05T05:28:16.397+00:00"I don't know of any evidence that humans..."I don't know of any evidence that humans (or any other primate?) use phenotypic matching to identify close relatives with any accuracy."<br /><br />First few results from Google Scholar:<br /><br />Visual kin recognition and family resemblance in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).<br />JR Vokey, D Rendall, JM Tangen, LA Parr… - Journal of …, 2004 - psycnet.apa.org<br /><br />Social perception of facial resemblance in humans<br />LM DeBruine, BC Jones, AC Little, DI Perrett - Archives of sexual behavior, 2008 - Springer<br /><br />Facial resemblance enhances trust<br />LM DeBruine - Proceedings of the Royal Society of …, 2002 - rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org<br /><br />Father–offspring resemblance predicts paternal investment in humans<br />A Alvergne, C Faurie, M Raymond - Animal Behaviour, 2009 - Elsevier<br /><br />Where are kin recognition signals in the human face?<br />MF Dal Martello, LT Maloney - Journal of Vision, 2006 - journalofvision.org<br /><br />Human ability to recognize kin visually within primates<br />A Alvergne, E Huchard, D Caillaud… - International journal of …, 2009 - Springer<br /><br />Reactions to children's faces: Males are more affected by resemblance than females are, and so are their brains<br />SM Platek, DM Raines, GG Gallup, FB Mohamed… - … and Human behavior, 2004 - Elsevier<br /><br />Kin recognition and the perceived facial similarity of children<br />LT Maloney, MF Dal Martello - Journal of Vision, 2006 - journalofvision.org<br /><br />Recognition of neonates by facial-visual characteristics<br />RH Porter, JM Cernoch, RD Balogh - Pediatrics, 1984 - Am Acad Pediatrics<br /><br />Cross-cultural perceptions of facial resemblance between kin<br />A Alvergne, R Oda, C Faurie, A Matsumoto-Oda… - Journal of …, 2009 - journalofvision.org<br /><br /><br />And re: weaselish "with any accuracy", absolute precision is not required. Any signal of relatedness is potentially useful.<br /><br /><br />"Seems to me that there are much better cues to identifying close relatives:"<br /><br />I fully expect there are other cues as well. So did Hamilton. Again, any signal of relatedness is potentially useful, and different signals may be useful in different situations. Specific adaptations for bonding mothers to babies do not rule out other adaptations for kin recognition in other situations.<br /><br /><br />"Now, if ethnocentrism is in fact the result of misfiring kinship recognition systems"<br /><br />Accurate, not "misfiring".<br /><br /><br />"I should mention: there are alternative explanations to ethnocentrism and racism."<br /><br />Which you seem inclined to prefer for ideological reasons. <br />n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-88446337904531578192015-03-05T04:50:29.678+00:002015-03-05T04:50:29.678+00:00From Hamilton's introduction to a 1971 paper i...From Hamilton's introduction to a 1971 paper in Narrow Roads of Gene Land:<br /><br />From the positive side of my miscellany, what seems worth noting? Perhaps the most novel and useful formula is that in the first appendix, which sketches the handling of relatedness in cases where there is inbreeding (a topic soon to be expanded in the paper of Chapter 8). Care is needed with the formula, however: the inbreeding coefficients must be based at an appropriate population scale. 3 One of the most surprising conceptual points in the paper is also concerned with altruism under inbreeding and may seem even contradictory to altruism being correlated with relatedness. This is in my verbal caution that low dispersal by itself (population 'viscosity') as a way of reaching high relatedness has snags. The point is that, to be effective, altruism must put offspring into competition with non-altruists, not bunch them in a wasteful competition with their own kind. Recently this point has been treated explicitly and quantitatively with some quite surprising conclusions.3-5<br /><br /><b>If relatives cannot avoid the bunching then the group itself must expand at the expense of others. For this to work most effectively expansive groups need to replace other groups; in essence, members need and are expected to evolve a degree of xenophobia.</b> 6 This line leads on to thoughts that for the re-slanted spiritual descendants of the prim Victorians of my second introduction remain quite paralysing and I have to admit that at the time the thoughts were painful enough to me. It is hard even to feel and harder still to write in a way that runs counter to a current world view, especially a moral one, and it is all the harder when the way is re-shaping a plane of perfection to which all civilized cultures are thought to be striving. A scientist or philosopher with a programme of such heresy has to be tough if he or she is to communicate it and, while doing so and for long after, must endure the tortures of Orestes. 1 ,7 For me it was the discussion of the darker of the 'innate aptitudes' that I believed must exist in all human populations and most individual humans, and of the selection our forbears must have undergone through competition between populations, creating their warlike inclinations (including as a sideline, their relish in cruelty) that caused me most pain to write. The feelings remained acute when I had to write similarly for my next symposium contribution (Chapter 9): yet I am glad I gave the discussions I did. Theory concerning the nature of the 'beast within' was why I had been invited and I continue to believe that only from a basis of honest description can there be hope of taming what we have and may not like. <br /><br />n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-87119483689924521872015-03-05T04:40:41.551+00:002015-03-05T04:40:41.551+00:00"You should know that the viscosity argument ..."You should know that the viscosity argument mentioned in that Hamilton paper often doesn't work."<br /><br />And, again, nothing Queller says conflicts with Hamilton's insights or with anything I've said: <br /><br /><i>At first, this result may seem surprising from the standpoint of inclusive fitness theory. Taylor (1992a), following a general approach outlined by Grafen (1985), has shown that it is perfectly consistent. <b>The trick is to use Hamilton's rule as intended, but to remember to explicitly include all individuals whose fitness is affected by a behaviour. If you help a neighbour to produce more offspring, then you are ultimately hurting someone else, whose offspring are displaced by the increased competition</b>.</i>n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-64435124717056553192015-03-04T17:57:55.759+00:002015-03-04T17:57:55.759+00:00You should know that the viscosity argument mentio...You should know that the viscosity argument mentioned in that Hamilton paper often doesn't work. This was not realized until some years after those original 1964 papers. The reason, again, is that sticking close to home causes you to compete with your relatives for mates. r is measured relative to your average mate competitor, which means that for a highly endogamous ethnic group, r~0 on average - regardless of how genetically diverged any other groups are. See the Queller paper I mentioned - it goes over this in the first few paragraphs.<br /><br />I don't know of any evidence that humans (or any other primate?) use phenotypic matching to identify close relatives with any accuracy. Seems to me that there are much better cues to identifying close relatives: e.g., who you grew up with as a kid, or kinship terms. It's not clear that these mechanisms would extend to between-group variation: a stranger is a stranger, no matter what he looks like. After all, most humans do know who their close relatives are, and probably have for a long time. A phenotypic matching mechanism would probably be too error prone to contribute much beyond these other mechanisms (remember that half of the additive genetic variance occurs within full sib groups, if mating is nearly random within ethnic groups! that's a lot of room for error). I would happily be wrong about this, though, if there is good evidence.<br /><br />Now, if ethnocentrism is in fact the result of misfiring kinship recognition systems, then this would be a maladaptive outcome. I.e., it would almost certainly not be selectively favored via inclusive fitness, for reasons we've discussed. So it still wouldn't make sense to call it a matter of "genetic interests." But the result would be the same.<br /><br />I should mention: there are alternative explanations to ethnocentrism and racism. One is cultural group selection, a new-ish theory that posits that cultural transmission of behavior much more easily maintains group differences in behavior, and so could facilitate group competition on larger scales than is feasible via genetics. This would presumably lead to cultural-group favoritism. The jury is out on this, but I mention it is a plausible alternative. More generally: the fact that humans are often ethnocentric doesn't HAVE to be explained by genetic differentiation between groups.RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-18967956576113584412015-03-03T23:22:48.840+00:002015-03-03T23:22:48.840+00:00Hamilton himself in "The genetical evolution ...Hamilton himself in "The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II":<br /><br />4. Discrimination in Social Situations<br />Special case (b) of the previous paper has shown explicitly that a certain<br />social action cannot in itself be described as harmful or beneficial to inclusive<br />fitness; this depends on the relationship of the affected individuals. The selective advantage of genes which make behaviour conditional in the right sense<br />on the discrimination of factors which correlate with the relationship of the<br />individual concerned is therefore obvious. It may be for instance, that in<br />respect of a certain social action performed towards neighbours indiscriminately, an individual is only just breaking even in terms of inclusive fitness. <b>If<br />he could learn to recognize those of his neighbours who really were close<br />relatives and could devote his beneficial actions to them alone an advantage<br />to inclusive fitness would at once appear. Thus a mutation causing such<br />discriminatory behaviour itself benefits inclusive fitness and would be<br />selected</b>. In fact, the individual may not need to perform any discrimination<br />so sophisticated as we suggest here; a difference in the generosity of his<br />behaviour according to whether the situations evoking it were encountered<br />near to, or far from, his own home might occasion an advantage of a similar<br />kind. [. . .]<br /><br />Nevertheless, if any correlate of relationship is very persistent, <b>long-<br />continued weak selection could lead to the evolution of a discrimination<br />based on it even in the range of distant relationships</b>. One possible factor of<br />this kind in species with viscous populations, and one whose persistence<br />depends only on the viscosity and therefore may well be considerably older<br />than the species in question, is <b>familiarity of appearance. For in a viscous<br />population the organisms of a particular neighbourhood, being relatives,<br />must tend to look alike</b> and an individual which used the restrained symbolic<br />forms of aggressive behaviour only towards familiar-looking rivals would be<br />effecting a discrimination advantageous to inclusive fitness.n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-72795873895372115432015-03-03T16:04:20.260+00:002015-03-03T16:04:20.260+00:00"Being in my territory, competing for resourc..."Being in my territory, competing for resources and mates with me or people like me, "hurts" me."<br /><br />I misspoke: if we're using inclusive fitness accounting, then their behavior is not counted. Them moving in would have to prevent me helping those who do share my genes, relative to those who don't. If we are using a direct fitness accounting, the problem is that both foreigners and non-foreigners will compete with you for mates. (And no, a foreigner mating with you does not "hurt" you.) The REAL problem with this little model is that we're not even putting it in a context of an evolving locus. If the trait under evolution is an allele that fights foreigners who move into town, then the allele that doesn't fight is going to have higher fitness (it reaps whatever benefits the group gets from having a xenophobic allele around, without paying the cost of fighting), and will displace the xenophobia allele. Making a mathematical model would quickly clarify this.<br /><br />Citing a non-empirical paper doesn't disprove that most human competition occurs within large ethnic groups, rather than between. I'm totally open to the idea that competition between small bands (usually not strongly distinguished by identifiable phenotypic differences) could have shaped some human behavior. We see a lot of it in ethnographies. And it happens in chimpanzees too. But selection for altruism in large, genetically distinct ethnic groups? No. Hamilton wouldn't have believed it. Vast majority of competition would be within these groups.<br /><br />Make a model. You will see how hard it is for these dynamics to work out. I'm tempted to do this and post it online. Seems like there is some demand for it.RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-9022949407768699702015-03-03T07:09:35.074+00:002015-03-03T07:09:35.074+00:00"Of course, the invading foreigners would hav..."Of course, the invading foreigners would have to hurt you somehow, or prevent you from helping non-foreigners (assuming non-foreigners don't also carry the xenophobia gene in question!)."<br /><br />Being in my territory, competing for resources and mates with me or people like me, "hurts" me.<br /><br />"My point in invoking Queller's paper: if the vast majority of mating competition occurs within ethnic groups (probably almost always the case in human history),"<br /><br />And, again, your model of human history/prehistory is wrong: <a href="http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/hamilton-on-inclusive-fitness-and.html" rel="nofollow">http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/03/hamilton-on-inclusive-fitness-and.html</a>n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-30636942805345133782015-03-03T06:19:39.585+00:002015-03-03T06:19:39.585+00:00Yes, I suppose that if you reframe the example so ...Yes, I suppose that if you reframe the example so as to imply something about your own behavior, then it could affect inclusive fitness. Of course, the invading foreigners would have to hurt you somehow, or prevent you from helping non-foreigners (assuming non-foreigners don't also carry the xenophobia gene in question!).<br /><br />I doubt that humans ever evolved a kinship recognition system based on phenotypic matching to close relatives, but I could be wrong. If it doesn't exist, then it can't be extended to larger ethnic groups. I don't know this empirical literature well, though. (Of course, most of us do know, with high accuracy, who our close relatives are.)<br /><br />My point in invoking Queller's paper: if the vast majority of mating competition occurs within ethnic groups (probably almost always the case in human history), then ethnic-group-wide altruism isn't going to evolve. Doesn't matter if the ethnic groups have an FST of .99 across the genome on average. RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-24836908041478321812015-03-03T05:45:42.226+00:002015-03-03T05:45:42.226+00:00"Finally: if foreigners move into your town, ..."Finally: if foreigners move into your town, no, your inclusive fitness does not drop."<br /><br />Rephrased: by aiding members of genetically distant populations in replacing members of my own population, I would without question lower my inclusive fitness. By aiding members of my population in avoiding replacement by members genetically distant populations, I might increase my inclusive fitness (depending on the numbers, relatedness, and sacrifice involved). <br /><br /><br />"I am aware that FST between small neighboring groups can be high. That's because they are small. We are talking about ethnic-level altruism here (I thought!). Stranger-danger isn't ethnocentrism."<br /><br />Think general mechanisms for recognizing and discriminating in favor of kin, not a specific adaptation for "discriminating in favor of people of European origin".<br /><br /><br />"See the paper "Genetic relatedness in viscous populations" by David Queller (a real evolutionary theorist)."<br /><br />This paper challenges nothing I've said:<br /><br /><i>Pamilo (1984, 1989) has devised hierarchical r-statistics, analogous to F-statistics, that measure<br /><b>relatedness at different levels in subdivided populations</b>. The results of this paper give some<br />guidance in selecting among these possible measures of r and also expand the set of choices to a<br />continuum. Relatedness should usually be measured with respect to the local population, where<br />most of the competition resides. However, <b>if the investigator has reason to believe (based on<br />intuition or data) that an individual displaces a deme-mate x of the time and displaces an<br />individual in another deme 1-x of the time, these values can be used as weights to obtain<br />appropriate values of p for relatedness estimates. More generally, the message that needs to be<br />remembered is that relatedness is not just a statement about the genetic similarity of two<br />individuals, it is also a statement about who their competitors are.</b></i>n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-12226717150391228662015-03-03T03:35:00.735+00:002015-03-03T03:35:00.735+00:00See the paper "Genetic relatedness in viscous...See the paper "Genetic relatedness in viscous populations" by David Queller (a real evolutionary theorist). Or, this sentence in the abstract: "Hamilton's rule still gives the correct condition for the evolution of altruism if relatedness is measured with respect to the local competitive neighbourhood." If your main competitors are those of your own ethnic group (must be true - that's how ethnic groups are made, by well-separated mating pools), then r~0 for this group.<br /><br />I am aware that FST between small neighboring groups can be high. That's because they are small. We are talking about ethnic-level altruism here (I thought!). Stranger-danger isn't ethnocentrism.<br /><br />Finally: if foreigners move into your town, no, your inclusive fitness does not drop. Inclusive fitness removes all neighbor-modulated fitness effects. In other words, any aspect of your own fitness that is not due to your own behavior is not counted. This includes things like foreigners moving into town. See the definition in Hamilton 1964 - the original paper. Also read "How not to measure inclusive fitness" by Grafen. This is old stuff: population geneticists have known it for decades.<br /><br />Bottom-line: If there were extremely strong competition between large, genetically-distinct ethnic groups for long stretches of human history (somehow stronger than within-group competition!), then yes, ethnic-level sentiments would have evolved. AKA group selection. It's hard for this to work because selection within groups (and gene flow) quickly erodes FST for large groups *at altruistic loci under selection*. (Neutral loci throughout the genome may maintain high FST - but, to repeat, these are irrelevant).RCBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-53085180332546773872015-03-02T21:48:01.266+00:002015-03-02T21:48:01.266+00:00"As I understand them, Salter-type arguments ..."As I understand them, Salter-type arguments state that, across the genome, races can look essentially like separate families. E.g. you can see high F_ST values. This is totally true. It's also totally irrelevant to natural selection on altruistic behavior - which is the issue at stake, I presume."<br /><br />No, that was not the primary issue at stake in this thread. And, no, it's not "totally irrelevant" to selection on altruisitc behavior.<br /><br /><br />"In kin selection models, r is defined relative to the mating pool in which an allele is competing. This means that r is essentially set at ~0 for the ethnic group. Hence no altruism."<br /><br />You are confused. Relatedness both within and between groups matters in discussions of altruism.<br /><br />Also, you seem to be imagining an ancestral environment in which groups had no opportunity to compete with genetically differentiated groups, but this is almost certainly wrong. Human prehistory is likely to have featured highly inbred bands or villages in direct competition with one another. Yanomama villages show FSTs on the same order as continental races.<br /><br /><br />"Or just read Hamilton's original definition."<br /><br />Explain what about Hamilton's definition you think means I'm wrong. Hamilton expressly discusses multiple levels of selection in later papers (see "Innate social aptitudes of man").n/ahttp://racehist.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227780861638767023.post-58765580743069590092015-03-02T16:18:03.758+00:002015-03-02T16:18:03.758+00:00So what is the interest, then? Anyone can make up ...So what is the interest, then? Anyone can make up some quantity and call it "ethnic genetic interest." That doesn't mean it will predict evolutionary dynamics or actual human behavior. The quantities I've seen described here and elsewhere have this problem.RCBnoreply@blogger.com