Kin and Kind - A Fight about the Genetics of Altruism

Jonah Lehrer
New Yorker - Dept. of Science
05 March 2012

Journal of Theoretical Biology (1964) by William Hamilton
--Genes for altruism could evolve if the benefit of an action exceeded the cost ot the individual once relatedness was taken into account.
--Altruism isn't really altruism.  It's just another means of spreading our genes by saving kin instead of having sex.
--Haplodiploidy--Female insects emerged from fertilzied while males emerged from unfertilized one.  Therefore, female insects protected the queen because they were more related to her than the males which is basically genetic greed.
--Eusociality--Indiviual insects live in vast cooperative societues like wasps and ants.

E.O. Wilson (entomologist) studied ants and doesn't believe the equation works (2000)
--Tens of thousands of insects that develped haplodiploidy did not evolve eusociality--so that relationship is statistically insignificant which contracticts Hamilton's thesis.
Eusociality is rare because it requires a long list of preadaptations before it happens.
----Cohesion of the group must come first.
----The female insects might then construct a defensible nest
----Genetic adaptations for eusocialty begins to happen (feeding larvae; division of labor)
----Once this happens, natural selection takes over allowing altruistic lifestyle to reproduce fast.
The relatedness of the ant colony is a consequence of eusociality, not the cause.

Darwin's The Descent of Man
Generosity evolved as an emergent principle of the group, not the individual.
Group Selection - While costly for the individual, generosity helped sustain the group which made individuals in the group more likely to survive.
This is mostly dismissed because the tangible benefits of group generosity are are less tangible than selfishness.

E.O. Wilson
If our behaviour was driven by group selection, we'd be like automotons in an ant colony.  If indiviual selection was the only thing that mattered, then we'd be entirely selfish.  We're shaped by both forces and stuck somewhere in between.