umm… is there something a little more basic than this about the same topic? maybe i can get my feet wet reading something simple and come back to this some other day. its interesting and id love to learn about it i just dont know where to start.
For an introduction to Genes and Phenotypes read ‘The Selfish Gene (2nd edition)’, by Richard Dawkins. The two big things you’ll get out of this book are Memes and Phenotypes, plus a proper understanding of how genes evolve. If you’re up for it ‘The Extended Phenotype’ again by Richard Dawkins is worth reading. But be warned, while the Extended Phenotype is a great book, it’s a VERY heavy read if your not zoologist or biologist and this is his targeted audience. Though it’s possible to read it, it requires some effort and has glossary at the back which explains the terms unknown to most outside of his field.
‘Non-zero’, by Robert Wright is another book that’s very good. But it goes more in the direction of technology as a unifying force then discussing Gene / Phenotype Theory. But it does get into Game Theory, which is the driving force behind natural selection. But he explains it without getting into all the maths behind it. (John Nash, the nutter from ‘A Beautifully Mind’ did a lot of great work in game theory). There are tons of maths books on game theory, but all are a fairly heavy read if you’re not into maths. That’s where ‘Non-zero’ is so strong you’ll get a good idea of Game Theory with all the equations.
The order I would recommend is Selfish Gene, Non-zero, and Extended Phenotype. That should keep you busy for the second half of summer 
Its semantics, phenotypes exist as a product of genes. While the genes themselves don’t change directly under the influence of other phenotypes the gene’s own phenotype does. Therefore if the phenotype is the body, the body was constructed by the gene and the gene is still in the body, so whatever happens to the body also happens to the gene. So manipulation in this sense isn’t modification but being made to do things that could possible undermine the gene’s original goal. Therefore the gene is manipulated by proxy and only modified when it comes time to create children. Then the gene line becomes merged with the other gene line and at this point both genotypes are modified physically in the production of a new genotype in the child.
I’m afraid it’s you who are wrong. Love does make us do things for people that we mightn’t otherwise do. Love can start out as lust, a desire to have another person, but to have this person means we’ll have to do something to obtain them (the alternative is just to take what we want ending in rape, sex being the most fundamental thing to all normal creatures). To achieve sex means we need to attract this other person’s interest, i.e. create the felling of Lust or Love in them also. Love Lust is a weapon to create offspring, or restated from the Gene’s perspective, continue the gene line.
Now where’s the problem?
Yes we do feel it for another person; it’s their phenotype that is affecting ours. We are being manipulated! That’s the point of the phenotype of love, to force us to multiple. It’s to the advantage of the genes for it to be able to product something that is loveable, as the genes will get to be reincarnated (so to speak) in the form of offspring. No offspring no genes! Therefore it pays to have genes that Love and can be Loved.
Poetic licence, these are two lines from a poem I posted in the Creative Writing section. Our phenotypes are an expression of our genes, so what our phenotypes do is done by proxy for our genes. If our phenotype can hypnotise, this is only because our genes created them in the first place.
Well said! that’s my point exactly! We have the latent ability to love, but it requires somebody to bring it out of us.
Again this is what I’m saying. Love is such a powerful tool in manipulation that almost everybody has it now. It’s become a part of the common gene pool like arms, legs, ability to speak, etc. A gene’s world is just one big arms race and getting left behind means extinction for that gene line. It must keep up with the current technologies to dominate, otherwise it will be dominated and then defeated. Love is an essential part of any genes arsenal to make sure it makes it into its next existence, in the form of children.
Love is only a binder, so long as both parties love each other! If only one of the people involved is in love then the other has a very distinct advantage to manipulate the other person into doing their bidding. We’ve all seen movies where the beautiful ‘fem fatal’ gets some unsuspecting “lover†to kill her ex-husband or some other contrived plotline. So it is in the world of genes.
I’m built with two purposes in mind: Survival and Procreation! Everything from a gene’s perspective should aid in these causes. If it doesn’t or is somehow harmful then the genes involved will die out and be replaced by others that succeed at those goals. Nowadays this has evolved and it’s up to our Memes, which are in essence phenotypes, but phenotypes so important that they deserve there own categorisation and separate study.
So following this hypothesis eventually the human population will be made up of the most successful manipulators.
No it’s not!
Basically, Lamarckian is about “Use or Disuse†of some element of the body or other phenotypic expression. Meaning if an individual uses their muscles a lot before they have children then the child’s muscles will be stronger because of the fact that the parent used their muscles more, i.e. through inheritance. Likewise if the parent didn’t use their muscles the child would be weaker. That’s the fundamentals of Lamarckian theory, the phenotypes that are used get enhanced in the offspring, while those disused will deteriorate. This is wrong! and its not what I said!!!
I said the human body is an instrument of attraction! (Plus many other things, a phenotype) The phenotypic consequence is that phenotype selects another phenotype of a different gene-line to combine with. Then they mate this is a process of meiosis / mitosis and mutation, nothing Lamarckian about that, just the normal run of the mill Darwinism. Chromosomes from both parents battle it out for a locus (a position) in the new gene-line. Its up to the Phenotype to select a partner, therefore the only genes that can compete are the two gene-lines selected by each phenotype thereby the phenotype selects the gene’s that will compete during the creation of the new combined mutated gene-line.
Or for a really simple example of Phenotypes changing genes. Genetically modified foods! That’s a direct product of a Phenotype modifying a gene-line without our gene’s ever touching the plants. We simple force genetic selection to achieve a desired phenotype i.e. more fruit, greater resident to bugs, etc. That is Memes (a phenotype) modifying and selecting genes. We in effect rewrite the rules of survival of the fittest based off our own desired affect. So phenotypes can directly modified gene-lines! Thanks to the wonders of genetic science.
If you’re taking about some transcendental higher Purpose, true. Otherwise, No you’re wrong. Genes through its phenotype can come to have a purpose, but an intelligent process didn’t initial purposely select its purpose, random mutation and evolution did. Meaning, if the purpose of a gene is not to survive and reproduce then its goes extinct. Therefore by definition a gene is a type of chemical process that can only continued to exist if it is able to survive long enough to reproduce itself. If a gene doesn’t follow this purpose it will cess to exist and no longer be a gene. The very fact I can choose to purposely reply to your post tells me genes through their phenotype can select a rudimentary purpose, but can lack the grander transcendental one.
Purpose; God; are those no go words in philosophy, as they are so general as to almost lack a consistent meaning and are more like vague ideas.
Love is a human quality and to humans Love increases the chances of gene survival. Lust is the sex; Love like you said can help keep a family unit together increasing survival chances.
It’s all-relative, is 5 foot tall??? To a 4 foot person yes, to a 6 foot person no. So to people today, yes they’ll be most lightly more successful manipulators. But through new mutation better ones will come into existence. It would be like the average height changing to 8 foot and the people in the future thinking that we were all tiny! When at the time we didn’t consider ourselves to be.
What if we call the strategy capitalism? Sorry, had to do that… procede
Oh! Bingo! In America, our food is loaded full of appetite stimulants…
Dude, you put way too much emphasis into genes. I believe that love has very little to do with genes. Maybe evolution, but certainly not genes. Love is the driving force of nature. I pledge my allegiance first to the nature (and the universe), next to man (and woman). As such I try not to defy the force of love if it is true. There is a big difference between lust and love. Lust is the force of procreation. That is the big chemical wand of evolution. Love is unity. The nature of life is unity, and life expresses this in many ways. Love is one of them. Love is meant to show the beauty of unity. Those who get hurt by love are those who defy it. Separation is always painful. Love is the power of symbiosis, two organisms developing side by side and complementing the developments of one another.
Also, you take the natural selection thing to extremes. It’s really not a very solid theory. The theory is based upon random mutations caused by competition with other life forms. There is little evidence for this, and if you do the math, you know that it would’ve been impossible for the earth to develop in such a way. On top of that, most random mutations prove to be harmful rather then productive. More likely, DNA recombination, and symbiogenesis were the forces of evolution that has lead to the complex development of our global ecosystem. It is a known fact that bacteria trade genes instantly by contact. Also, when threatened they spill their DNA into their environment. Most biologists today believe that the complex ecosystem of our planet was developed from a web of bacteria who used DNA recombination as a creative source of planetary evolution. Random mutations only played a very small part in that. The development of more complex organisms is hypothesized to be the result of symbiogenesis between bacteria species to create more complex organisms. Even now, bacteria live in our bodies, spilling genetic information, trading genes with other bacteria, that we then inherit from them. This is thought to be the main source of new genes, not random mutations. Modern evidence is more and more starting to force biologists to discard the theory of natural selection through competition for one that makes better sense: natural evolution through cooperation (i.e. symbiosis)
If you look at the web of life which regulates our planet, it is not a web in which constant conflict operates it. It is a web in which constant cooperation between species operates it and makes it functional. If it were dominating other species through conflicts that decided how well a species was adapted to the environment, then if you removed all the other species it would thrive best. That of course is rediculous. If you removed all other species except one, that species would die almost instantaneously. So it is not conflict that keeps us alive, but cooperation.
That is the problem with humanity these days. We are at war with nature. We think conflict keeps us strong, while in truth it only makes us weaker. Love is a side effect of the unity of life as expressed through human emotional experience. It is not some ironic controll mechanism invented for the purpose of certain chemical messages to dominate the planet. I noticed that you tend to look at love as being forced to succumb to the will of another. If that is what you are doing, that is not love. Love is the cooperation between your will, and the will of another. If you view love as a force that is controlling you, you will always have nothing but painful experiences from it, as it will then be a force of separation rather then unity. If you look at love as a force of cooperation between you and another organism that you admire and wish to be with, you will generally have a positive experience from it, and see the beauty in it. That is the problem most people have with love. They try to fight it. If you see it as some intruding force that overcomes your will, you will never be able to have a positive experience from it.
What a pessimistic view of life! Evolution has no purpose = life is meaningless. Without evolution you wouldn’t be here. So since you are here, and you believe evolution to be meanigless, you must also think that your life is meaningless. What a terrible outlook on life! Everyone breathing on this planet is alive my friend, but not everyone truly lives. By the way, in my purpose of love thread I noticed you made the mistake of referring to me as lamarckian. The only thing that Lamarck and I agree on is the fact that evolution did form the planet. That is where the similarity ends… See above post.
I think this is where you can agree to disagree Alien. Both you and Pax have beliefs that cannot be proven(maybe in your heads). Pax’s theories are based on weak scientific evidence, and yours is based strongly on faith in your own beliefs(which I have no problem with that - can respect a human willing to stand by their principles). However, there needs to be no one saying each other is wrong hehe.
Anyways. On a side note, I do not think it is a sad thing to think that life is meaningless. There is no purpose for life, it is just a consequence of the existence of all the matter we are comprised of. On the other hand, I do agree that living your life like its meaningless is sad. I give a personal purpose to my life, although I do realize that this purpose is an illusion, it’s still a purpose that I live for, and will enjoy till I die.
The idea but forward in the ‘Selfish Gene’ is that Genes are inherently selfish but cooperate out of the fact that they can both mutually benefit at the expense of another. They are more successful together then they are apart. They are also willing to partake in reciprocal altruism, not selfless altruism. But it isn’t something they select themselves, but the process that’s used to make them all interacted. Its like they’re all in one big vat being mixed around and the big mixing instrument is Physics and Game Theory (at a logical level, to view which gene is more light to survive then another).
True, but you can’t ignore the fact your in completion with others. I’m in conflict with lots of things. When I go for a Job I’m in competition with every other applicant. But once I get the job I become a member of a team, as teams work better then individuals. That’s way many animals hunt in packs, as they have greater success rate at taking down a pray. But once the pray is down there is a pecking order of who gets what meat based off strength. They’re all equal until it comes time to take what is needed for survival then the strong oppress the weak to take what they want.
Natures at war with itself! Look at the weeds that strangle other plants to survive, the spider that makes a web to ensnare the fly. Look at the Lion that kills the Zebra. That’s war! The Zebra has no intention of becoming the next meal for a Lion. But the Lion in battle takes his prize and fills his belly. Nature is savage from a Moral perspective.
I agree conflict doesn’t keep use strong it weakens us, as we must expend energy to win the conflict. If we had no conflict we would have more energy to do other things. Yes cooperation is a better way, but we need to trust that those who we place our trust in will not stab us in the back. Look at all the corrupt politician, people placed their trust in them, yet they go and break that trust by stealing or skimming the cream off the top so to speak. If you haven’t read ‘Non-Zero’ by Robert Wright you should.
I’m sure the drug addict feels the exact same way.
Okay but Capitalism is all about money… Love doesn’t cost a thing… “The best things in life are free…” come on we all know the words!
I believe that life has a purpose. As you said, your life has a purpose. Life is not an objective experience, it is a subjective one. So your subjective purpose is more real then any objective analysis that might suggest otherwise. It is true that my theories cannot be proved. However, they are based upon many things that can be proved, and neither can they be disproved.
Okay, of course there has to be mutual benefit in order for there to be cooperation successfully. That just goes without saying.
All the people who are applying for the job are already cooperating with society and the employer before they are competing with one another. Before they can be in competition they must be in cooperation.
I wouldn’t call that war, I would call that nature. Nature put the zebra there for the lion to eat. Without the lion to kill the zebra, the zebra population would explode, and the zebra would quickly over-populate, consume all the resources, and the population would starve. So in a sense, the lions are cooperating with the zebras even though neither of them know it. It is quite typical that a species be in conflict with itself, as is the case with the pecking order with the lions. If the hierarchy becomes too unfair though, the leader will soon be removed from the population by the masses. Sounds an awful like people doesn’t it? I don’t deny that there is competition in nature, I only deny that competition is sole motivator for evolution and survival. That is what people who advocate natural selection seem to think, and it is obviously false.
Okay, I agree with you here. The problem is the people who are trustworthy and won’t skim from the top are not interested in power. This is why I advocate minimal goverment that rewards rather then punishes (not exclusively per se), encouraging the masses to do what is right and cooperate with one another. I don’t think that any big institution will ever be effective at controlling people. People just need to learn to controll themselves. The most powerful form of control is self-control.
Nope… I’ve known plenty of drug addicts. Believe me, they DO NOT feel that way. Take cigarette smokers for example. How many people do you know that smoke cigarettes, are addicted to them, and are really happy with the situation? Same goes for cocaine addicts, and heroin junkies. They aren’t cooperating with the drug, they are just being controlled by it. I really don’t see how drug addiction compares to love in any form.
Right, but what is money? Some on or off circuits in a mainframe computer=your bank account. Money is more or less imagined by us. This imagined entity is more beneficial to some then others. The ones it is most beneficial to have a way to coerce others to do what they want without using force, or without essentially losing anything. It just alters a few circuits in a mainframe computer. It only takes away from them in theory.
So you don’t believe in ‘Survival of the fittest’? What happens when famine stricks, which people will live? Those who get food, it doesn’t matter how they get their food, only that they get it and live to eat it! In this way the end justifies the means when it comes to Survival. If your goal isn’t survival you will go existent.
Okay here’s a thought experiment to prove a point about control and necessity. Lets say that Aliens land and start a war with the stated aim to wipe out the human race. What do we do? If we say okay here have it they will just kill us all and we’ll cess to be. Or we have to become savage and face them at there own level, one of hostile aggression. Yes Control is good but it’s a luxury bought by our affluence as a species. There are already so many guardians of trust built into our society that we are free to be trusting. If we loss these guardians we’ll go backwards as a moral species. Look at the dark-ages after the Roman Empire, it could happen again…
Welcome to my view on love or lust!
Yes that’s the way it is now, but before when banks were started by the Templar Knights the money or what might be more appropriately be called a guaranty of invested commodities, i.e. a piece of paper. Then they could use this piece of paper at other Templar Banks to take out some of the money they had entrusted to them. It’s only in modern times that Banks could lend more money then they have in their vaults. Meaning a bank can only led up to something like 35% more money then they have physical commodities in there direct control, or what ever your countries government dictates.
As I said, I don’t think that competition has no influence at all, but it certainly isn’t the sole motivator for evolution and survival. Do we as a species live better through cooperation, or conflict? If personal survival of the fittest is so great, why don’t you try to go live outside of society by yourself, and see how prosperous you are? See if you can do better then a society of people all working together. I can go to the store and get food. Is that survival of the fittest? How do I get money for the food at the store? By fighting people, or by becoming a part of, and cooperating with society? What if one day we could synthesize food? Then the famine situation would be obsolete. Would you still claim it’s survival of the fittest? Also, regaurdless of whether or not survival is your goal, you are still going to die.
Okay, here is a thought expiriment for YOU. What if one day we discover that there are many alien races out there with advanced, sophisticated technologies. We find that what each of these races have in common is that at one point in their history they had eliminated war and conflict. They are now peaceful species that only will attack if provoked. They come to earth, and earth being full of paranoid, suspicious, hateful people attacks them out of fear. They then, with their sophisticated technology annihilate the human race, which in their opinions was doomed to annihilate itself anyway through lack of cooperation. The dark ages were caused by a conflict between barbarians and romans. The Romans tried to establish absolute power, and were soon taken down.
okay, so your view is more like that of a drug addict then, not mine. If you remembered you said earlier that my view was the view of a drug addict.
Okay, in the past it was paper and rocks. How useful is that? It was still very superficial. It was still an idea which was just represented by certain objects of little or no use. That doesn’t make the idea any more tangible.
Is love a strategy? If so, it is a highly unpredictable strategy. People fall into unrequitted love with people who do not love them. People become the objects of unwanted love and have to actively discourage it or at least not encourage it. People find love, lose it and live the rest of their lives without it.
Love is extremely rare in my experience. It is very hard to find mutual love with someone that you truly love. Most people end up settling. If you are ever lucky enough to find true mutual love then it is an incredibly valuable and extremely rare occurance and the people involved feel so incredibly lucky and so truly blessed that they cleave to it desperately. Giving up nearly everything else in their lives they “become one”, they leave their fathers and their mothers and they cleave to their love mate as a man would cleave to the side of a clift when hanging off a mountain. Their partner becomes them and they become their partner. They merge in one mutual coupling, joined at the heart so to speak, two hearts beating as one. It is a very rare and precious thing, the loss of which cannot be taken lightly.
It is said that hate is lit match in a fireworks factory…and so is love. Love is just as exlosive and unpredictable as hate. Love is just as dangerous as hate. It takes and incredible amount of focus and energy to keep a marriage healthy and strong. The husband and wife have to actively and agressively work at nurturing and cherishing one another, or else it wanes and dies. It is very fragile and very pure, and it is easily corrupted and easily turned sour. Those who are not in successful long-term marriages underestimate dramatically how much work it takes to make a marriage successful. It is not reccomended for selfish or self-centered people. Neither money, nor physical beauty, nor intelligence, nor anything else other than just stubborn refusal to fail. It takes determined cleaving to the marriage through sickness, health, riches, poverty, and whatever life sends your way. So as a strategy it is probably the most difficult and risk ridden strategy that anyone could ever adopt.
So your strategist who sets out to use love is in for a difficult game of life.
I don’t believe in the Master Race thinking that one group of people have superior genes and that qualifies them to survive. I basically don’t accept the idea of “superior genes”. I believe all men are created equal and that happiness in life has nothing to do with what you were born with but rather has everything to do with the choices you make.
To me you sound like a truly jaded and cynical man who has had a bad experience with love, perhaps thought it should be easier than it actually is, and is searching for an explanation for his unhappiness.
I’m not saying there is a ‘Master Race’. But to use that terminology anyone who has a child would be part of it, as they have their genes live on, till its time to be passed on again. That’s all life is for a Gene, making sure it gets passed on. But not to but to fine a point on it some people are better then others, we just choose not view it that way. Some are stronger, cleverer, more beautiful, etc. To deny this is just foolhardiness.
This is very true, but born of it is the fact I know what makes me tick. I’ve learnt about Love from another angle. Not as good some would say as the way most others experience it, but that’s life each has their own journey.
I’ve been trying to view Love & Lust from a biological / gene perspective. How could such a thing come into existence and why? Lust is straightforward to explain, but Love has an affect that is difficult to explain, as people don’t like to examine Love at such a low level.
How do things look if we look backwards? Do we see a gradual buildup of more and more successful manipulators over time? Or has the level of manipulation remained about the same. Then again marriage used to be a financial affair arranged by families. Individual feeling of love or lust did not enter into the decision to marry. Now we select our own mates in part based on physical attraction. Maybe the new emphasis on individual love does have biological as well as social causes.
I can’t help thinking, isn’t there a danger in attributing motives to genes? How can a gene care? Does a blueprint care if the building gets built? Do genes have opinions and preferences? How does a gene know that it has had offspring? Isn’t being selfish a human attribute? Can we call a fish selfish? Or a bacteria? Isn’t this anthropomorphic thinking?