The Selfish Gene

by Richard Dawkins

No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch. A body is the genes’ way of preserving the genes unaltered.

Tqbula rasa?

The same old processes of automatic selection between rival molecules by reason of their longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity still go on as blindly and as inevitably as they did in the far-off days. Genes have no foresight. They do not plan ahead. Genes just are, some genes more so than others, and that is all there is to it. But the qualities that determine a gene’s longevity and fecundity are not so simple as they were. Not by a long way.

complete copy of all 46 chromosomes. This normal cell

Just as an individual is either definitely male or definitely female, so an individual butterfly mimics either one nasty species or the other.

Is this true

I prefer to think of the body as a colony of genes, and of the cell as a convenient working unit for the chemical industries of the genes.

Other neurones have short axons, and are confined to dense concentrations of nervous tissue called ganglia, or, when they are very large, brains. Brains may be regarded as analogous in function to computers.

A notable advance was the evolutionary ‘invention’ of memory. By this device, the timing of muscle contractions could be influenced not only by events in the immediate past, but by events in the distant past as well.

I am talking about a closer analogy to human purposeful behaviour. When we watch an animal ‘searching’ for food, or for a mate, or for a lost child, we can hardly help imputing to it some of the subjective feelings we ourselves experience when we search. These may include ‘desire’ for some object, a ‘mental picture’ of the desired object, an ‘aim’ or ‘end in view’. Each one of us knows, from the evidence of our own introspection, that, at least in one modern survival machine, this purposiveness has evolved the property we call ‘consciousness’.

There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the galaxy. So much for the trivial non-solutions to the problem

Really?

But of course we do not have to think of the animals as making the calculations consciously. All we have to believe is that those individuals whose genes build brains in such a way that they tend to gamble correctly are as a direct result more likely to survive, and therefore to propagate those same genes.

And here is a list of nasty things: various sorts of pain, nausea, empty stomach, screaming child. If you should happen to do something that is followed by one of the nasty things, don’t do it again, but on the other hand repeat anything that is followed by one of the nice things.’

anorexia?asocbi?

No amount of simulation can predict exactly what will happen in reality, but a good simulation is enormously preferable to blind trial and error. Simulation could be called vicarious trial and error, a term unfortunately pre-empted long ago by rat psychologists.

Imgintion/ worry as a somulation game

Whatever the philosophical problems raised by consciousness, for the purpose of this story it can be thought of as the culmination of an evolutionary trend towards the emancipation of survival machines as executive decision-takers from their ultimate masters, the genes. Not only are brains in charge of the day-to-day running of survival-machine affairs, they have also acquired the ability to predict the future and act accordingly.

Genes are the primary policy-makers; brains are the executives.

An ESS is stable, not because it is particularly good for the individuals participating in it, but simply because it is immune to treachery from within.

A dominance hierarchy per se cannot be said to have a ‘function’ in the evolutionary sense, since it is a property of a group, not of an individual. The individual behaviour patterns that manifest themselves in the form of dominance hierarchies when viewed at the group level may be said to have functions.

believe it is possible to discern hidden group selectionist assumptions lying behind a large number of the statements that biologists make about social organization. Maynard Smith’s concept of the ESS will enable us, for the first time, to see clearly how a collection of independent selfish entities can come to resemble a single organized whole. I think this will be true not only of social organizations within species, but also of ‘ecosystems’ and ‘communities’ consisting of many species.

Genes are selected, not as ‘good’ in isolation, but as good at working against the background of the other genes in the gene pool. A good gene must be compatible with, and complementary to, the other genes with whom it has to share a long succession of bodies. A gene for plant-grinding teeth is a good gene in the gene pool of a herbivorous species, but a bad gene in the gene pool of a carnivorous species.

The coach does not realize this. All he does is shuffle his men around, giving credit points to individuals in winning boats, marking down individuals in losing boats. Now if the pool available to him just happens to be dominated by Englishmen it follows that any German who gets into a boat is likely to cause it to lose, because communications break down. Conversely, if the pool happened to be dominated by Germans, an Englishman would tend to cause any boat in which he found himself to lose. What will emerge as the overall best crew

Racism

Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps from stable plateau to stable plateau.

Like learning

What is a single selfish gene trying to do? It is trying to get more numerous in the gene pool.

Can genes try tho

Genetically speaking, an adult should devote just as much care and attention to its orphaned baby brother as it does

Why oes it have to be ayiunger brothe? Wby woyldnt apply revardless of ave?

since the sisters both receive identical replicas of the same genes from the same parents.

Do tey? I tought he saix tbey did teier

Kin selection is emphatically not a special case of group selection.* It is a special consequence of gene selection.

‘estimates’ of costs and benefits are based on past ‘experience’, just as they are in human decision-making. However, experience in this case has the special meaning of gene experience or, more precisely, conditions of past gene survival.

Hmmm.ztill deali g with nonhuman a imals i neex to stop e trapolati g to humans

anthropologists do not like this explanation.)*

Oh shut up dick

For instance, some orthodox Jews and Muslims would starve rather than break their rule against eating pork.

Id like a citation for thix

identify with individuals physically resembling oneself, and to be nasty to individuals different in appearance.

Np

the chicks would be all full brothers and sisters, a gene for giving the food twitter would spread,

Is thos true? Even give the u limihood of 2 roosters

as they might be, they would not use an important word like ‘aunt’ so uncritically.

Hut up dick they have a different perspectove than yoh

a double mistake, since the adopter not only wastes her own time; she also releases a rival female from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more quickly. It seems to me a critical example which deserves some thorough research.

Male bias ignori g la ttion and other hormones. Etc

real mother

More male bos

these figures really are typical for an average lion pride, then any gene that predisposed males to behave towards other males as if they were nearly half brothers would have positive survival value. Any gene that went too far and made males behave in a friendly way more appropriate to full brothers would on average be penalized, as would a

I dont underatnd bis ditiction btwee rothers anx balf brother's

maternal uncles should be more altruistic than ‘fathers’ since they have more grounds for confidence in their relatedness to the child.

polyanxrouz (? robt word?)ocieties

But I wish to make a distinction between bringing new individuals into the world, on the one hand, and caring for existing individuals on the other.

A decision to bear a new child is usually followed by a decision

Howych decision making does bed bieve a tuay happens

Mankind is having too many children.

Badly dTed. Developed countries re faci.gv i g Paula

For instance, if a mother has two babies, X and Y, and X drinks one pint of milk, a major part of the P.I. that this pint represents is measured in units of increased probability that Y will die because he did not drink that pint. P.I. is measured in units of decrease in life expectancy of other children, born or yet to be born.

Seems a poor example

The answer is that there is no genetic reason for a mother to have favourites.

This may not have occurred too commonly in our wild ancestors, since not many women would have lived that long anyway.

What time frame is he talking about

any gene for investing in grandchildren in preference to children would tend to prosper.

races

Odd choice of words. Isnt it breeds or species

What, at bottom, defines a female? We as mammals see the sexes defined by whole syndromes of characteristics—possession of a penis, bearing of the young, suckling by means of special milk glands, certain chromosomal features, and so on.

These are called sex-limited gene effects. A gene controlling penis-length expresses this effect only in male bodies, but it is carried about in female bodies too and may have some quite different effect on female bodies. There is no reason why a man should not inherit a tendency to develop a long penis from his mother.

A body is really a machine blindly programmed by its selfish genes.

This book is not concerned with the details of particular animal species, so I will not discuss what might predispose a species towards one form of breeding system rather than another.

But you alreaxy did di k

efficient survival machines can be regarded as a compromise between conflicting selection pressures.

Ffds

What this astonishing variety suggests is that man’s way of life is largely determined by culture rather than by genes.

Interestinf

However, it is still possible that human males in general have a tendency towards promiscuity, and females a tendency towards monogamy, as we would predict on evolutionary grounds.

I think this is wrong headed

If animals live together in groups their genes must get more benefit out of the association than they put in. A pack of hyenas can catch prey so much larger than a lone hyena can bring down that it pays each selfish individual to hunt in a pack, even though this involves sharing food.