Kin Selection Quotes

“EVOLUTION, ALTRUISM AND GENETIC SIMILARITY THEORY by J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON

The reason people give preferential treatment to genetically similar others is both simple and profound: they thereby replicate their genes more effectively. Altruism is a very interesting phenomenon, even recognized by Darwin as an anomaly for his theory. How could it evolve through his hypothesized "survival of the fittest" individual when such behavior would appear to diminish personal fitness? If the most altruistic members of a group sacrificed themselves for others, they ran the risk of leaving fewer offspring to carry forward their genes for altruistic behavior? Hence altruism would be selected out, and indeed, selfishness would be selected in. Altruistic behaviors, however, occur in many animal species, some to the point of self-sacrifice (Wilson, 1975). For example, honey bees die when they sting in the process of protecting their nests.

Darwin proposed the competition of "tribe with tribe" to explain altruism (1871, p. 179). Thus, a tribe of people willing to cooperate and, if necessary, sacrifice themselves for the common good would be victorious over tribes made up of those less willing or able. Subsequently Herbert Spencer (1892/93) extended this, suggesting that the operation of a 'code of amity' towards the members of their own group, and a 'code of enmity' toward those of out-groups prevailed in successful groups. In non-elaborated forms, some version of "group-selection" was held by most evolutionists for several decades.

A degree of polarization followed [Wynne-Edwards' advocacy of group selection] As D. S. Wilson put it, "For the next decade, group selection rivaled Lamarkianism as the most thoroughly repudiated idea in evolutionary theory" Essentially, there did not seem to exist a mechanism by which altruistic individuals would leave more genes than individuals who cheated. The solution to this paradox is one of the triumphs that led to the new synthesis of sociobiology. Following Hamilton (1964) the answer proposed was that individuals behave so as to maximize their "inclusive fitness" rather than only their individual fitness by increasing the production of successful offspring by both themselves and their relatives, a process that has become known as kin selection. This formulation provided a conceptual breakthrough, redirecting the unit of analysis from the individual organism to his or her genes, for it is these which survive and are passed on. Some of the same genes will be found in siblings, nephews and nieces, grandchildren, cousins, etc., as well as offspring. If an animal sacrifices its life for its siblings' offspring, it ensures the survival of shared genes for, by common descent, it shares 50% of its genes with each sibling and 25% with each siblings' offspring.

…the makeup of a gene pool causally affects the probability of any particular ideology being adopted, which subsequently affects relative gene frequencies. Religious, political, and other ideological battles may become as heated as they do because they have implications for genetic fitness; genotypes will thrive more in some cultures than others. … Obviously causation is complex, and it is not intended to reduce relationships between ethnic groups to a single cause. Fellow ethnics will not always stick together, nor is conflict inevitable between groups any more than it is between genetically distinct individuals. Behavioral outcomes are always mediated by multiple causes.”
― J. Philippe Rushton

“Hardin, G. (1982). "Discriminating Altruisms". Zygon. 17 (2): 163–186.

"Universalism" is altruism practiced "without discrimination" of kinship, acquaintanceship, shared values, or propinquity in time or space… To people who accept the idea of biological evolution from amoeba to man, the vision of social evolution from egoism to universalism may seem plausible. In fact, however, the last step is impossible… Let us see why.

In imagination, picture a world in which social evolution has gone no further than egoism or individualism. When familialism appears on the scene, what accounts for its persistence? It must be that the costs of the sacrifices individuals make for their relatives are more than paid for by the gains realized through family solidarity...

The argument that accounts for the step to familialism serves equally well for each succeeding step--except for the last. Why the difference? Because the One World created by universalism has--by definition--no competitive base to support it… [Universalism] cannot survive in competition with discrimination." …

"[W]e must not forget that for three billion years; biological evolution has been powered by discrimination. Even mere survival in the absence of evolutionary change depends on discrimination. If universalists now have their way, discrimination will be abandoned. Even the most modest impulse toward conservatism should cause us to question the wisdom of abandoning a principle that has worked so well for billions of years. It is a tragic irony that discrimination has produced a species (homo sapiens) that now proposes to abandon the principle responsible for its rise to greatness." It is to the advantage of non-Europeans, virtually all of whom retain their cohesion as distinctive, discriminating groups, to exploit the economic wealth and social order of the West, benefits many demonstrably cannot create for themselves. When this cohesive drive is placed in competition with self-sacrificing Western altruism, there can be only one outcome. In the near term, Europeans will be displaced by groups acting in their own self-interest. In the long run, biological destruction awaits us. Since those who displace us do not, by definition, maintain our moral standards -- for if they did, they would not be replacing us -- our flawed moral system will vanish with us.”
― Garrett Hardin

“Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev and Thomas Shultz (2013)
The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 16 (3) 7

Abstract
Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation. By tracking evolution across time, we find individual differences between evolving worlds in terms of early humanitarian competition with ethnocentrism, including early stages of humanitarian dominance. Our evidence indicates that such variation, in terms of differences between humanitarian and ethnocentric agents, is normally distributed and due to early, rather than later, stochastic differences in immigrant strategies.”
― Hartshorn, Max

“Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev and Thomas Shultz (2013)
The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 16 (3) 7

Abstract
Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation.”
― Max Hartshorne

“Page 7:
(H)e (Darwin) supposed that man, before he even emerged from apedom, was already a social being, living in small scattered communities. Evolution in his eyes was carried out mainly as a struggle between communities - team against team, tribe against tribe. Inside each team or tribe, the 'ethical cosmos' [the dual code of Amity and Enmity] was at work, forging and strengthening the social bonds which made the members of such a team a co-operative whole. … Thus, in the early stages of human evolution we find competition and co-operation as constituent elements of the evolutionary process …

Co-operation and unity give strength to a team or tribe; but why did neighboring tribes refuse so stubbornly to amalgamate? If united, they would have got rid of competition and struggle. Why do human tribes instinctively repel every thought of amalgamation, and prize above all things independence, the control of their destiny, their sovereignty? Here we have to look beneath the surface of things and formulate a theory to explain tribal behavior. How does a tribe fulfill an evolutionary purpose? A tribe is a 'corporate body,' which Nature has entrusted with an assortment of human seed or genes, the assortment differing in some degree from that entrusted to every other tribe. If the genes are to work out their evolutionary effects, then it is necessary that the tribe or corporation should maintain its integrity through an infinity of generations. If a tribe loses its integrity by a slackening of social bonds, or by disintegration of the parental instincts, or by lack of courage or of skill to defend itself from the aggression of neighboring tribes, or by free interbreeding with neighbors and thus scattering its genes, then that tribe as an evolutionary venture has come to an untimely end. For evolutionary purposes it has proved a failure.

Page 25:

Tribalism was Nature's method in bringing about the evolution of man. I have already explained what a tribe really is - a corporation of human beings entrusted with a certain capital of genes. The business of such a corporation is to nurse and develop its stock of genes - to bring them to an evolutionary fruition. To reach such an end a tribal corporation had to comply with two conditions: (1) it had to endure for a long age; (2) it had to remain intact and separate from all neighboring and competing tribes. Human nature was fashioned or evolved just to secure these two conditions - continuity through time and separation in space. Hence the duality of man's nature - the good, social, or virtuous traits serving intratribal economy; the evil, vicious, or antisocial qualities serving the intertribal economy and the policy of keeping its genes apart. Human nature is the basal part of the machinery used for the evolution of man. When you know the history of our basal mentality - one fitted for tribal life - do you wonder at the disorder and turmoil which now afflict the detribalized part of the world?”
― Arthur Keith

“Page 25:
What, then, is the explanation which the student of human evolution has to offer as a final purpose for man’s existence? It is not, as the Victorian scientists thought, to permit the individual man or woman to develop his latent potentialities; but to permit a closed society, be it tribe or nation, to develop its collective potentialities of brain and of body as an evolutionary unit. It is only when we make the assumption that evolution aims at the production of societies – not of individuals that we come by a satisfying explanation of man’s dual mentality, and the constituent elements of human nature.”
― Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics

“The Rosetta Stone of Women’s Behavior
By Old, Fat, and Bald

BRIFFAULT’S LAW:

The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.

There are a few corollaries I would add:

Past benefit provided by the male does not provide for continued or future association.

Any agreement where the male provides a current benefit in return for a promise of future association is null and void as soon as the male has provided the benefit (see corollary 1)

A promise of future benefit has limited influence on current/future association, with the influence inversely proportionate to the length of time until the benefit will be given and directly proportionate to the degree to which the female trusts the male (which is not bloody likely).

Deriving mutual benefits from a relationship is not a bad thing. Where Brokenman and the rest of us men lose the plot is when we expect past benefit provided to the woman to continue generating current or future association (see corollary 1). Loyalty, honor, gratitude, and duty are male values that we men project on women, but which very few, to no, women actually possess. We aren’t born with these values; they are drummed into us from the cradle on by society/culture, our families, and most definitely by the women in our lives (sorry, but that includes you too, Mom). Women get different indoctrination, so they have different values; mostly, for a woman, whatever is good for her and her (biological) children is what is best, full stop. So, do not expect that the woman in your life will be grateful, and sacrifice for you, when you can no longer provide for her and hers. And make no mistake, you have never been, and never will be, part of what is hers. What are hers will be first herself, then her (biological) children, then her parents, then her siblings, and then the rest of her blood relatives. The biological imperative has always been to extend her blood line. It stops there, and it always will.”
― Old, Fat, and Bald