What Do Selfish Genes, and Memes, Really Mean?

Dan Agin has boldly waved selfish genes goodbye in his report on my article with E.O. Wilson in the November 3 issue of New Scientist, which is a digest of a more comprehensive article that will appear in the December issue of Quarterly Review of Biology titled "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology." Agin´s farewell provoked a flurry of comments that raise the issue of what selfish genes, and memes, really mean.

The problem with these words is that they have both a broad and narrow meaning. Selfish genes broadly refer to all genes that evolve by natural selection, which by definition are more fit than the genes they replaced. Similarly, "selfish memes" broadly refer to all traits that spread by cultural evolution. It would be impossible to say goodbye to these definitions because, by including everything that evolves, they come perilously close to explaining nothing in the first place.

No one would care about selfish genes or memes if they didn´t imply something more specific. Selfish genes were originally regarded as a drop-dead argument against group selection, and so they are still regarded by many. Selfish memes suggest a number of specific implications; that culture can be atomized into gene-like bits, that they are encoded as something gene-like inside the head, and especially that culture can be like a virus that propagates itself without benefiting human individuals or groups. I repeat: the broad meanings of genes and memes are not restricted to these implications, but the narrow meanings give the words their power to influence the way we think about the world around us, and to which we can bid adieu.

It´s not just the general public that is confused about broad vs. narrow meanings, but the master himself, Richard Dawkins. In dozens of passages he cautions that selfish genes don´t really imply selfish individuals, and in dozens of other passages he asserts that they do. One of his most recent essays, titled "Atheists for Jesus", is a gem for revealing the limitations of his thought. He proclaims that "Natural selection is a deeply nasty process" and that "From a...Darwinian point of view, human super-niceness is just plain dumb." By human super-niceness, he means the fact that "so many people are kind, generous, helpful, compassionate, and nice." Notice that he is not referring to universal niceness, which after all is extremely rare in our species, but merely the garden variety of human niceness that goes beyond nepotism and mutual-back scratching.

Since human super-niceness is beyond Dawkins´ imagination as an adaptation (either genetic or cultural), he can explain it only as an evolutionary mistake that must be perpetuated to make the world a better place. Dawkins says:

The best I can offer is what I hope may be a catchy slogan. 'Atheists for Jesus' would grace a T-shirt... [P]erhaps the oxymoronic impact of 'Atheists for Jesus' might be just what is needed to kick start the meme of super niceness in a post-Christian society. If we play our cards right - could we lead society away from the nether regions of its Darwinian origins into kinder and more compassionate uplands of post- singularity enlightenment?

A slogan on a T-shirt is our best hope for achieving peace on earth? Sadly, Dawkins is a victim of his own limited view of memes as little bits of culture that spread like viruses. It is beyond his imagination that culture might take the form of complex systems of belief and practice that adapt entire groups to their environments, including forms of niceness that go beyond nepotism and narrow back-scratching. The broad definition of selfish genes and memes could be taken in that direction, but that is not where Dawkins takes it.

But Dawkins was not alone and was standing on the shoulders of giants who turned group selection into a pariah concept ten years before the publication of The Selfish Gene. Nor is it necessary to personify ideas; there is much to recommend the gene´s eye view, once we see the fallacy of regarding it as an argument against group selection. And culture is manifestly important, regardless of whether we use the word "meme." Saying goodbye to selfish genes and memes involves questioning everything that has been associated with these concepts and reviving what they seemed to deny: the concept society as organism.

This means regarding most people as innately disposed to function as team players in the pursuit of common goals, not just consciously but to the roots of our unconscious mental processes. It does not lead to the naive view that everything is nice, since superorganisms display the same spectrum of relationships known for individual organisms, from extreme conflict to mutualism. It does not automatically lend support to any particular political ideology, but rather explains all political systems, religious systems, and other cultural systems as roughly like species in ecosystems. Put simply, it enables human behavioral and cultural diversity to be approached in the same way that evolutionists already approach the rest of life. And it leads to more sensible recommendations for improving the human condition than slogans on a T-shirt.

Comments

[cognate]

All this fancy talk is about the question: Does anyone have the right to use the coercive power of the state to force someone else to do something that they otherwise wouldn't?

I think not.

[Squalish]

This topic is full of people who want to paint a mandatory cause-effect relationship all over culture and genetics. Shut up. You're making yourselves look foolish.

Just because you can describe a gene as selfish if it enables survival of the individual, or you can describe a gene as altruistic, if it enables survival of the group, does not mean ANYTHING BROAD ABOUT OUR SOCIAL STRUCTURE. And it does not mean that they are mutually exclusive.

We are not animals, and our social contracts preclude us from behaving like animals - it is entirely possible for ideas to permeate through culture with severe virulence without involving genes at all - we see it all the time in fads which span a tiny fraction of a generation.

I've heard psychologists make the rather obtuse argument that we are born blank slates with no instincts whatsoever, but I've never heard anyone with the balls to suggest that all our behavior is precoded for by our genes. Culture is a learned adaptation to a social environment. Simply try to keep in mind that our behavior is some combination of culture, individual learning, physical condition, and genes. Figuring out which of the above is a dominant factor in any given behavior is largely beyond us - we can only make crude generalizations and individual case studies, which are very rarely universal.

-----------------

As to the topic at hand -

Genes are not merely a human phenomenon.

My question for anyone that disbelieves in group selection entirely - how in the hell do you explain eusocial animal evolution? How can you possibly concieve of an organism which raises 99% of the young as sterile caretakers for the 1% of the fertile caste?

[mainebill]

Selfish genes are real and have existed for some 3 billion years or more. If our ancestors were especially weak (defined in an evolutionary context only as prone to dying rapidly after being conceived or reproducing offspring hardly at all)...then we wouldnt be here to author our fascinating opinions! A gene that always leads to successful suicidal impulses just prior to puberty would last...lets see....into zero generations of offspring. The same could be said of abstinence genes and shaker genes. Sure, you bilateral, coelomates possessing advanced neural nets can write poetry and attempt to obtain nirvana, etc.....however evolution suggests that in an unbroken lineage, each of your ancestors and their genes may have had to fight tooth and nail and unfortunately any lethal gene can bring down all of it's colleagues. The fact of the matter is that if our gene sets dont bring us from blastula to post-nup in relatively short order (from an evolutionary perspective of course), then there is one less set of those specefic genes and once the last of a particular gene set folds it's cards....then that instruction set goes the way of the chicken (did you get that little evolutionary joke)? So genes are selfish until at least you produce offspring. Then you can become a nun or experience menopause. The real question of course is how much independence we truly have, and whether God has somehow gotten involved in our evolutionary processes. The answers are a little and only if she wanted to.

[rmirman]

Life is a precarious balance between altruism and selfishness. Even bacteria are altruistic, as or the cells in our bodies. It is necessary for life. See discussion and references in the book
Our Almost Impossible Universe:
Why the laws of nature make the existence of humans extraordinarily unlikely
and the blog
randomabsurdities.wordpress.com

[bkelly]

Re Wilson: "This means regarding most people as innately disposed to function as team players in the pursuit of common goals, not just consciously but to the roots of our unconscious mental processes."
Watch children in elementary school, where they are just acquiring the ability to select evaluate others, and to implement their beliefs into behavior. When in cliques, young children are often the most cruel individuals on earth. They select a few to be outcasts and treat them horribly and without mercy.
While they will function as a team within their own tiny homogenous little group, they go out of their way to cause pain to others.
There is a mix here and I find it difficult to go with the concept of humans being innately disposed to be team players.

[jayrayspicer]

The concept of group selection is not required to explain the fact that humans tend to be nice to each other, even to strangers. Being nice to other people is an evolutionarily successful adaptation for the individual. That a group does well if its members tend to be nice to each other is beside the point. The individuals tend to do well. Not always, but in general. It's still just mutual back-scratching, but spread over time and encouraged by memory and prediction. Humans aren't even the only animals that do this sort of thing. This tendency is the basis of morality. We are moral creatures because morality pays off for the individual in general and in the long run. This is covered in The Selfish Gene, in the section on Tit for Tat games, though perhaps not framed exactly as I have formulated it here.

[phonyvet]

I think you're on target, veracitatus:

You are probably familiar with Leslie A. White's work on systems theory and cultural evolution. Count how many "systems" Wilson uses in the following quote:

"It does not automatically lend support to any particular political ideology, but rather explains all political systems, religious systems, and other cultural systems as roughly like species in ecosystems."

Sounds to me like Systems Theory is the way to go, and good riddance to genes, memes, and evolutionary psychology. The obfuscaters have been taken seriously for too long.

[thepopoman]

We can continue to fight each specific issue but until we actually fight the ideology/philosophy of the right wing we will never "win". It's a selfish ideology and is basically survival of the fittest where as the progressive view point is to optimize a system for the "common good". But is my point of view arbitrary? Hmmm.

Conservatives have an advantage because their thinking is so simple it's very easy to articulate and very powerful. I think progressives need to use this technique to counter the right even at times at the cost of over simplification.

How but countering "cut and run" with "stay and kill" or "stay and die". We should be beating the hell out of them with our phrases... (we can explain later that it's more complicated but for short TV sound bites we need to respond with simple minded slogans which are pointed an powerful)

How but calling them "pro-death". How about re-labeling their party name to the Hypocratic party or the Selfish party or the Guilty Party (ha ha).

How about boomerang their "we are against the troops" by telling them that their message really is that "the troops are expendable and disposable pawns" to them. How to say that in a quick slogan is tough but it's what we need to do.

Call them freeloaders because they exist in a social group but don't want to sacrifice anything for others.
Reframe every slogan they have.

Evolution unfortunately needs the irritation caused by the Conservative movement (kind of like a pebble in an oyster) to force a counter movement which forces another counter movement and so on and so on which fuels motivation which forces "progress".

Unfortunately evolution is the ultimate driving force.
I really wonder what kind of social ethics the coming intelligent machines are going to have.

[DanAgin]

Betelgeuse is a red giant star 427 light years from Earth and about 500 times the size of our Sun. It's what our Sun will be like in about 5 billion years -- a diameter beyond the orbit of Mars, the Earth all gone, incinerated.

Nature doesn't give a damn. Nature doesn't care how humans categorize reality, how they label things, whether humans call genes "selfish" or not selfish, whether they look at the evolution of life on Earth as involving only individual selection or also group selection.

A problem with the "The Selfish Gene" model was that the media turned it into a meme, an element of group memory, and also a memory with political overtones. Dawkins encouraged those overtones, especially during the first decade after the book appeared. I think that was a mistake.

Genes don't give a damn what we call them. They either thrive or get lost as biochemical entities. When I wrote the phrase "Goodbye Selfish-Gene", I was thinking of the meme and not of the gene. And I repeat, the hegemony of the meme is finished.

Dan Agin

[WBum]

I know it"s an aside but the phrase, 'Atheists for Jesus', isn't necessarily an oxymoron. I understand that eternal time and infinite matter conspired to create the world we live in today. I also believe the whether Jesus actually lived or is a fable, his teachings are no less valuable than many other spiritual, moral and philosophical leaders. If today's Christians practiced what their leader taught, they'd be very loving, generous and forgiving people. I am an Atheist and I favor many of the teachings of Jesus.

[iluvsam]

I love Richard Dawkins. Dissin' my man is unacceptable.

[Susanholmes]

The reaction against "group selection" really throws geneticists for a loop. This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the usefulness all the equipment they've been filling out University Equipment Requisition Forms for is called into question.

From a historical/anthropological point of view, group selection is a necessity to explain why some cultures - even conquered ones - thrive while groups that exemplify the "survival of the fittest" meme (hah!) do not. However, you can't make a culture of a culture (oy...) and study it under a microscope, so the "hard science" boys get their lab coats in a wad and start making t-shirts.

[unctiousprattle]

Imperfect gene replication introduces variations that respond, if the organism survives, to more environmental influences and in turn creates a more complex organism. For me, the selfishness of genes is particularly observed in the fact that for many organisms once reproduction is accomplished the death of the individual organism is hastened.

However, the introduction of complexity creates its own problems for human genes. There is now a secondary evolutionary mechanism developed by humans in group culture that responds only obliquely to the needs of genes. Lets say that group traits are those observable behaviors that develop as people come together first as reproductive units and then as extended families and larger cultures. The single traits only make sense when seen as part of the larger accretions of behaviors in a functioning culture. Just as imperfect genes will lead to extinction, we know that imperfect group behavior will lead to group choices affecting species viability.

Humans use the accumulation of knowledge to overcome restrictions on the lives of individuals imposed by genes. Humans are not dying at a rate genes expect. More humans using accumulated knowledge use more resources for being kept alive long after their ability to reproduce and, as well, are overcoming the susceptibility to disease that genes have built into our bodies to prevent overpopulation. Additional humans cause environmental degradation impacting successful gene reproduction. The question is whether our unsuccessful group traits will win out over our genes in a race to a bleak destiny.

[hontonoshijin]

It is helpful to make a distinction between a model and a theory. In science, a theory, like the theory of quantum mechanics, or the theory of evolution, has been subjected to rigorous trial, and appears to account for every instance.

A model, on the other hand, is a notion of how things might work. The model may be more or less suggestive, but it does not have the substance of a theory. Most models turn out to be inaccurate.

Just because a scientist enunciates a model that does not make the model science. Very few scientists today seem to grasp this basic principle, and so we have scientists declaring without any evidence whatsoever that the universe is just a computer and that awareness is a function of the software of the brain.

Dawkins originated a couple of highly suggestive models with the selfish gene and the notion of memes. I find the latter particularly useful in considering the intransigence of obviously incorrect ideas. Nevertheless, neither of these models have progressed to the stage of theory.

Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine what sorts of experiments we could devise that WOULD test for the accuracy of the idea of memes.

Dawkins is an original thinker, but he piles assumption on assumption without verification and has never, to my knowledge, made an original discovery that has been solidified as theory. The spectacle of someone proselytizing for atheism should be instructive enough.

[janmB]

People don't need religion to be caring creatures. Just look at the animals like dogs for one example. Some animals get depressed when losing their young.