Recently the great JayMan has been on a rampage against the concept of ethnic genetic interests. He writes:
The gist of this idea is that the presence of outsiders supposedly increases the relative relatedness between unrelated co-ethnics, since (according to the theory) relationship would be judged relative to the total genetic background involved.
The problem is that this reasoning is flawed. The normal way of assessing kinship, the coefficient of relationship, is as follows (from Wikipedia):
| Degree of relationship |
Relationship | Coefficient ofrelationship (r) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | identical twins; clones | 100% |
| 1 | parent-offspring | 50% (2−1) |
| 2 | full siblings | 50% (2−2+2−2) |
| 2 | 3/4 siblings or sibling-cousins | 37.5% (2−2+2⋅2−4) |
| 2 | grandparent-grandchild | 25% (2−2) |
| 2 | half siblings | 25% (2−2) |
| 3 | aunt/uncle-nephew/niece | 25% (2⋅2−3) |
| 4 | double first cousins | 25% (2−3+2−3) |
| 3 | great grandparent-great grandchild | 12.5% (2−3) |
| 4 | first cousins | 12.5% (2⋅2−4) |
| 6 | quadruple second cousins | 12.5% (8⋅2−6) |
| 6 | triple second cousins | 9.38% (6⋅2−6) |
| 4 | half-first cousins | 6.25% (2−4) |
| 5 | first cousins once removed | 6.25% (2⋅2−5) |
| 6 | double second cousins | 6.25% (4⋅2−6) |
| 6 | second cousins | 3.13% (2−6+2−6) |
| 8 | third cousins | 0.78% (2⋅2−8) |
| 10 | fourth cousins | 0.20% (2⋅2−10) |
As we can see, the coefficient of relationship drops to insignificance beyond second cousins. This is the probability that a given relative of an individual possesses a copy of an allele the individual possesses. This affects kin selection given by Hamilton’s rule (also from Wikipedia):
rB > C
where
r = the genetic relatedness of the recipient to the actor, often defined as the probability that a gene picked randomly from each at the same locus is identical by descent.
B = the additional reproductive benefit gained by the recipient of the altruistic act,
C = the reproductive cost to the individual performing the act.When this is inequality is true, the altruistic trait is selected for.
An altruistic allele leads to behavior that makes this inequality true will tend to increase in frequency in the population. All other altruistic alleles will decrease with time. This is the basis of kin selection…Salter’s/Harpending’s/Rushton’s idea for ethnic nepotism doesn’t work for this key reason: the presence of outsiders doesn’t alter the frequency of altruistic alleles. The payoff remains the same in both cases.
JayMan is citing Hamilton’s rule which argues that if an uncle sacrifices his life to save four of his nephews, each of whom share a quarter of his genes, it’s the equivalent of saving himself.
However after much abstract thought and concentration, Hamilton himself realized the limits of this model, which is that within a species, natural selection is relative, not absolute, so while co-ethnics are not cousins, technically speaking, they are analogous to cousins compared to the total amount of human genetic variation. If a childless Bantu sacrifices his life to save eight unrelated Bantus, he’s decreased his genetic fitness relative to other Bantus, but he’s greatly increased his genetic fitness relative to a childless British person who saves no other British people, because in the next generation, there are more alleles and combinations of alleles that resemble the childless but heroic Bantu than the childless and selfish Brit. And the Bantu who manages to save eight other Bantu without losing his own life, has increased his genetic fitness even more.
As Hamilton noted, when groups compete for resources, the greater the genetic distance between groups, the more you increase your genetic fitness by helping your group.
A few months ago, someone sent me a brilliant email (perhaps citing Hamilton himself), noting that if humans found themselves under attack by space aliens, whose genetic distance from humans could be considered infinite, all humans would be as perfectly related as genetic clones, and so a Bantu saving a British person under this scenario would be as fitness enhancing as a Bantu saving his identical twin under normal conditions.
The concept of relative selection is very difficult for even brilliant scientists to grasp because it requires you to think abstractly instead of concretely, and considering both within group fitness and between group fitness simultaneously overloads the working memory of even the greatest minds. But after much intense focus, Hamilton himself was one of the first to make the leap.
Hamilton felt that because conflicts between genetically distant humans were likely common throughout much of human evolution (i.e. modern humans vs Neanderthals), natural selection likely gave humans implicit processing systems that allowed us to mate and befriend genetically similar others, especially during times of tribal conflict.
This helps to explain the existence of civil rights martyrs who die for their people (Martin Luther King), and soldiers willing to die for their country, and Palestinian suicide bombers, none of which would make evolutionary sense if Hamilton’s rule were absolute instead of relative, because under an absolute paradigm, these acts would be too costly to have evolved.
It also explains, as Hamilton noted, why societies are not limited to extended families, why wars occur between entire countries instead of only families within countries, why humans are so good at cooperating with co-ethnics, and why, as commenter Mugabe noted, the racially homogenous nations of first world Europe have more generous government benefits than the mixed race United States, where everyone is expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
So how could ethnic altruism have evolved if the altruist allele decreases in frequency every time the altruist sacrifices his life?
Perhaps because it’s probably not determined by a single allele, but by a combination of many, many alleles, so every race, and sub-race, would have a natural level of group loyalty, that is normally distributed, with race traitors at one extreme of the bell curve, and race martyrs on the other. Thus every time a race martyr sacrifices his life for the group, the average level of racial loyalty within the group goes down maybe 0.00000000000001 standard deviation (SD) because the single race martyr has no kids, but the size of the group goes up by maybe 1%.
And since race martyrs are more likely to occur in races with a slightly higher average level of group loyalty, it would be those groups that would increase the most, thus increasing the average level of racial loyalty in the entire human species, even as it decreased slightly within groups.
Meanwhile, the opposite would happen in tribes low on race loyalty. Every time a race traitor kills members of his own group to get access to more mates and food for himself and his kids, the level of race loyalty in the group goes down maybe 0.0000000000000001 SD, because a single race traitor had a lot of kids, but the size of group he belongs to goes down by maybe 1%.
And since race traitors are more likely to occur in groups with a low average level of group loyalty, those groups would gradually get smaller, and so the average racial loyalty of the entire human species would again increase.
Pumpkin Person 
I understand the point with EGI but how could this happend in genes, how could this work ?
I saw the Rushton video conference about EGI and it seem quite impressive that pretty stupid animals like bees could be “racists”.I guess you must at least have a brain to have EGI .
There are 3 ways it can happen: kin selection, group selection & green beard effects
Not that different from how families evolve to be loyal to their family members. Races are just big families.
So, if I undertand these genes have an infinite scope ? And, because in the nature there is no limit among species, a man could have an inconscious desire to protect a chimp because of the space aliens scenario ?
Cale, excellent question.
If life on Earth were being attacked by space aliens, it would indeed enhance my genetic fitness to sacrifice my life to save a bunch of chimps, but would I do so? Would most people do so? Probably not.
This makes the key distinction between a selected trait and a genetically adaptive trait.
A lot of people confuse these two concepts and think that if a trait is genetically adaptive (i.e. good for our genes), it must have been selected for by evolution, but that’s like saying if a commodity is extremely valuable, it must sell for a high price in the market.
Just as markets are not perfectly efficient, neither is evolution, so there are many traits that are genetically adaptive, yet still have not been favoured by natural selection, just as there are many valuable products and valuable people that are not favored by the “free market” (i.e. LOTB’s value transference model).
But because I think evolution is progressive (trial and error), I believe the probability of a genetically adaptive trait being selected by evolution, tends towards 1 as evolutionary time increases.
So while there’s been enough evolutionary progress for us to exploit the genetic benefits of family altruism and ethnic altruism, or at the very least, ethnic favoritism, there probably has not been enough for us to exploit the genetic benefit of altruism at much higher taxonomic levels.
It seem to contradict the idea that these altruistic genes could have an infinite scope…What I was meaning is that the genes that favorise family altruism also favorise racial altruism, within species altruism, interspecies altruism. I dont see these differents kind of altruism as different traits but as the same trait being expressed in different ways depending of the situation. In this I understand your last paragraph, but the problem is when you talk about selection in the middle.
I understand the difference between a selected and a genetically adaptive trait but I think this doesnt apply here.
What I was meaning is that the genes that favorise family altruism also favorise racial altruism, within species altruism, interspecies altruism. I dont see these differents kind of altruism as different traits but as the same trait being expressed in different ways depending of the situation.
This is a really good point. Perhaps what evolved in humans, is a tendency to favour those who look like the people we grew up with, over those who don’t, because odds are, if someone looks more like the people you grew up with, he’s probably more related to you.
So, if your black, and another black person starts beating up a guy who looks like your cousin, you’ll jump in and save the guy who looks like your cousin. If a space alien starts beating up a white guy, you’ll jump in and save the white guy, because even though he doesn’t look like your cousin, he looks a lot more like your cousin than the space alien does.
Now if a space alien starts beating up a snake, you do nothing because both of them look so different from your cousin that it’s impossible for you to tell which is more related to you, so the mechanism breaks down at that level.
On the one hand we are all alike, and at the same time relatedness shrinks to insignificance for distant relatives, right.
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Hey how do you feel about this study?
WOOPS i meant this one
Click to access Kees-Jan-et-al.-2013.pdf
Ignorance
What’s wrong with it though.
I’ll do a whole post on the topic sometime before next week
PP did you ever go a post on that article? If not, care to say why it’s ignorance?
dee ansser iz 3…
white trash analinguist
what you think about this article
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/02/stalin-and-summary-statistics/
Also what you think that school achievement is 60% genetic?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/genes-influence-academic-ability-across-all-subjects-latest-study-shows
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150723/srep11713/full/srep11713.html
that is paper for above artiicle. How come GCTA shows such low heritabilty compared to twin studiy?
@PP – Glad to see you taking up cudgels on this issue.Valuable work!
WD Hamilton, one of the deepest thinkers on evolutionary theory, himself believed in group selection – this comes up repeatedly throughout his Narrow Roads of Gene Land. And this is a fact which people need to recognize and take seriously!
I was trained-up in the ‘group selection does not exist’/ selfish gene school of Dawkins – and the Selfish Gene was a clear explanation of some insights from GC Williams and WD Hamilton. I arrogantly regarded all group selection explanations as naive and superficial – I saw the task of modern evolutionary theory as being to find selfish gene mechanisms to explain all apparent instances of group selection.
But it was only when I read Hamilton’s Narrow Roads, that I began gradually to realize that Dawkins, and mainstream evolutionary theory, has been highly selective and indeed deceptive in its advocacy of Hamilton’s work – simply taking what it liked, and rejecting what it didn’t.
(This ignoring applies especially to Hamilton’s lifelong deep concerns over dysgenic change under modern selective, and not-selective, conditions.)
So belatedly, and much influenced by Michael A Woodley, I came around to acknowledging the validity of group selection – even when we are unsure of its mechanism.
After all, there is a mass of prima facie evidence of group selection! For more than a century, group selection was accepted by everybody (including people much smarter than ourselves) as the obvious explanation for many phenomena.
Why should we always assume that group selection can be, must be, an illusion that should be explained-away by selfish gene mechanisms? No good reason.
If we accept the validity of some of Hamilton’s selfish gene work, then it is reasonable to accept the validity of his other work in which he used group selection explanations.
Group selection should not be regarded as an explanation of last resort, used only when all possible selfish gene selection explanations have been eliminated – but as a mechanism which is relevant in some situations, and not in others. the proper question to ask is what is the most plausible selective explanation for a given situation under consideration – sometimes this will be a group mechanism, other times not
The task is not to deny group selection, but to discover the mechanisms by which it works.
Anyway -well done for increasing awareness of these matters.
Bruce, I agree 100%. Group selection might be a little less plausible in most cases than other forms of selection, but it’s very dogmatic of people to rule it out completely when it’s a perfectly logical mechanism.
Note that in Hamilton’s “Innate social aptitudes” paper, he also claims that he believes altruism declines under civilization:
I don’t know enough about this topic to reject or accept group selection, but I don’t think group selection is necessary to explain things like suicide bombing or soldiers fighting in wars.
Muslim suicide bombers believe that they’re going to heaven, so they think they’re doing it for their own individual interest. Furthermore, some Muslim suicide bombers’ immediate families get money and support from the community for the bombing, so they also do it for kin altruism.
Charismatic men who become leaders and are skilled at getting other men to kill themselves or risk their lives to fight wars can benefit enormously from the spoils and victory. They, their families, and their children tend to benefit disproportionately compared to the ordinary soldiers or warriors while at the same time they tend to risk less than the ordinary soldiers or warriors. In this case, individual selection for the ability to get other people to risk themselves and serve your interests would be driving this behavior.
Muslim suicide bombers believe that they’re going to heaven, so they think they’re doing it for their own individual interest.
But then you can ask if group selection is how susceptibility to such beliefs evolved in the first place.
Charismatic men who become leaders and are skilled at getting other men to kill themselves or risk their lives to fight wars can benefit enormously from the spoils and victory. They, their families, and their children tend to benefit disproportionately compared to the ordinary soldiers or warriors while at the same time they tend to risk less than the ordinary soldiers or warriors. In this case, individual selection for the ability to get other people to risk themselves and serve your interests would be driving this behavior.
Excellent point!
If everyone in the group were susceptible to suicide bombing, then it probably wouldn’t last. You’d have to people who were less willing or unwilling to suicide bomb benefiting from others’ suicide bombing. So there’d be individual selection for these people who avoid suicide bombing themselves but benefit from it. Suicide bombing would decrease over time unless there was also individual selection for people who avoid suicide bombing and benefit from it and are able to inspire suicide bombing in other people. Perhaps individual selection for people like Osama bin Laden or Muslim imams who are charismatic leaders and are able to give good sermons that inspire people to suicide bomb.
If everyone in the group were susceptible to suicide bombing, then it probably wouldn’t last. You’d have to people who were less willing or unwilling to suicide bomb benefiting from others’ suicide bombing.
The way it could work is that groups that are high on religiosity might produce more suicide bombers per capita (no offense to religious folks), even while 99.999% of the group were not suicide bombers, just as groups that are high in IQ might produce more Geniuses per capita, even as 99.999% of the group were not Geniuses. The nature of the bell curve is such that if the group mean is higher, the percentage of those at the high extreme goes way up.
If groups with a slightly higher per capita rate of suicide bombers saw a consequent increase in their population, then groups that averaged higher in religiosity would expand at the expense of more secular groups. So there would be group selection for more religious groups, because more religious groups benefit from more suicide bombers, even as suicide bombing is selected against within the group. In other words, the selection for a higher group mean, making high extremes more probable, would dwarf the individual selection against said extremes.
Bruce Charlton has discussed a similar theory for the spread of Genius. Creative Geniuses tend to have very few kids, and thus are selected against at the individual level, but the groups they belong to benefit enormously from their contributions:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.ca/2013/07/implications-of-group-selection-of.html
The propensity to suicide within the group would still decline over time though. Just as the level of genius would decline over time if the geniuses don’t have kids themselves and the group benefits.
The propensity to suicide within the group would still decline over time though
The number of suicide bombers would decrease as a percentage of the group, but increase as a percentage of humanity.
Suicidalness would be declining in frequency in the group. If Group A has a 10% suicidalness frequency, and Group B has a 0% frequency, and the suicidal members of Group A commit suicide bombings to vanquish Group B, the suicidalness frequency in Group A would decline. So the suicide bombing would not be selecting for suicidalness. It would be selecting for whichever other traits or tendencies that increase in frequency.
I would just say suicide is being negatively selected at the individual level, but positively selected at the group level, and if the between group selection overwhelms the within group selection, the frequency of suicide genes rise in the species as a whole.
The frequency of suicidalness goes down at the group level as it declines in Group A. So it’s being negatively selected. Something else is being positively selected. It could be that the king or leaders of Group A who didn’t commit suicide themselves in vanquishing Group B benefit from the spoils of victory and their traits go up in frequency.
The whole point of group selection is that something gets negatively selected within groups but positively selected between groups, so not sure why you think a declining within group frequency proves its not being selected
The point of group selection is that groups get positively or negatively selected. Thus where Group A vanquishes Group B, Group A is positively selected, and Group B is negatively selected. Group A is being positively selected for, but not suicidalness as it declines in frequency.
If suicide genes go from 10% of a group that’s 1% of humanity to 5% of a group that’s 50% of humanity, have they declined or increased in frequency?
If something declines in allele frequency, then it’s under negative selection. In group selection, selection operates at the level of the group. If Group A is selected over Group B, and the allele frequency of suicidalness declines within Group A, then Group A is being positively selected, and Group B and suicidalness are being negatively selected.
In group selection, selection operates at the level of the group. If Group A is selected over Group B, and the allele frequency of suicidalness declines within Group A, then Group A is being positively selected, and Group B and suicidalness are being negatively selected.
It doesn’t matter if suicidalness is being negatively selected within Group A, because we’re talking about group selection, not individual selection. The group with a higher frequency of suicidalness is being positively selected.
In group selection, groups are either positively or negatively selected, not individuals or particular genes. So Group A is selected relative to Group B. Group A is under positive selection. At the same time, individuals and genes that decline in frequency would be under negative selection. If suicidalness increases in frequency in Group A when Group A is selected for, then suicidalness would be under positive selection as well.
Well you might just being arguing semantics. The key point is that group selection could plausibly explain how a trait that is negatively selected within groups, could become more common in the species as a whole.
It is semantics. Something negatively selected is defined as declining in allele frequency. A trait can increase simply by population growth, but that doesn’t mean it’s under positive selection. If it’s declining in frequency, it would be under negative selection.
PP, please read:
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/03/27/evolutionary-reasons-for-suicide-bombings/
In this case, individual selection for the ability to get other people to risk themselves and serve your interests would be driving this behavior.
Although I should add, this would also select against people who are easily exploited, making it harder and harder to exploit people each generation
That’s true, but it would also select for people who are better at exploitation. There’d be an evolutionary arms race, which is constantly occurring in nature between predator and prey, parasite and host, etc:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_arms_race
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n/a and I had a big debate about this. If you care to read the back-and-forth, go here: http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/07/reply-to-rcb-on-evolution-and.html
In my view, the debate ended with me asserting six points, and n/a conceding them. Note: the argument was mostly built on whether Salter’s book on ethnic genetic interests is a correct use of Hamilton’s rule and evolutionary theory (it isn’t), not whether ethnocentrism exists, or human populations are genetically distinguishable (both of the latter are true). Here are the six points: (I mention English and Bantu groups to address a particularly stupid hypothesis that Salter makes in his book; you can generalize it to any large ethnic groups.)
(1) In large groups (modern day England), novel group-altruistic alleles have F_ST ~ 0. Because of this there is no positive group selection for the allele. There is only within-group selection, acting to kill the allele off. It can only spread by genetic drift, i.e. getting lucky, which is much harder in large groups.
(2) For group-altruistic alleles at high frequency (i.e., ones that got lucky), F_ST may be large enough to facilitate some generations during which the expansion of altruistic groups at the expense of non-altruistic groups causes the allele to increase in frequency globally, even though it’s decreasing within every subgroup due to within-group selection.The Price equation shows this.
(3) Unless there is some mechanism maintaining F_ST (e.g., shuffling among small groups), within-group selection necessarily pushes the group-altruistic allele toward 0 in *every* group, whether the group is growing or shrinking. Therefore the ultimate fate of such alleles under these conditions is to be replaced everywhere by non-altruistic alleles, despite the possibility of transient growth noted in (2).
(4) England and Bantu are large ethnic groups that do not undergo reshuffling. There is no current mechanism replenishing F_ST at disfavored loci for these large, stable groups. Thus, the current tendency for group-altruistic alleles is to die off faster than non-altruistic alleles – i.e., negative selection.
(5) English alleles, broadly speaking (across the genome), would indeed live longer if England were able to resist foreign invaders for longer. (This is just noting that group-beneficial behaviors benefit the group…)
(6) Given the ubiquity of ethnocentrism, and its heritability, it is quite possible that conditions favoring ethnocentric behaviors did exist in the past, and still do in smaller ethnic groups. Or, the genes may currently be favored because they provide some other benefit, in which case ethnocentrism at present would be considered a maladaptive byproduct of selection on other behaviors.
None of these difficulties are solve by assuming polygenic variation of ethnocentric behavior.
“there are more alleles and combinations of alleles that resemble the childless but heroic Bantu than the childless and selfish Brit”
The act of the childless Bantu is selfish as well as the selfish genes drove the altruistic behavior.
The act of the childless Bantu is selfish as well as the selfish genes drove the altruistic behavior
True. All behavior is selfish if you dig deep enough
Well I guess this is disproven because Europeans allowed the coronavirus to colonize their cells and spread it and presumably unlike aliens, coronavirus can’t even considered to be under the kingdom ‘alive’