Fixed Cross wrote:Anyone read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene? High quality work.
He argues that it is not the organism but the genes themselves which must be seen as the agent. So you have to look at individual survival and procreation and group survival at once, which changes the logics, and gives another way of looking at "fitness".
So, the group is its own primary environment.
hahaha alright I'll do more than talk shit
in sum...
reading the mentioning of ants and dawkins in the same page is nice, since ants exemplify the idea of the selfish gene pretty well
an ant's only purpose in life is to serve the colony because the colony is them
every single one of them is the exact same genetically
except for the males of course, but not because they are something else, but because they are a reduced version of them
they're fertile, but they hatch from unfertilized eggs
they're the genetic half of what a worker ant is
they're referred to as "flying sperm" sometimes, because that's all they do
they don't even have jaws for eating
they hatch, fly out, mate, and die
it's all controlled by the queen
she deliberately withholds sperm from a small fraction of the eggs she lays so that they remain unfertilized
since they are unfertilized, these eggs contain only her gene
so basically, you get to be fertile, but only because you'll fly out and spread MY gene
anyway, that's why I say we don't act at all like ants
we're not built the same