Pavel

I'm not sure how that answers my question. I'm trying to get a better definition of "Improvement" given a specific gene. How would you be able to falsify your answer? Thanks, but it's not really a secret. It is also a mistake to think that "true" is used in our language only in the analytical sense you're referencing. I'm not trying to prove theorems here, but rather make an inference to the best explanation, something every scientist wants to be good at. What I'm trying to say is that if your claim is "it's an improvement only if turns out to be an improvement", such claim is useless. How can I falsify it or what can I do with it? So perhaps the claim needs to be unpacked to make it meaningful and useful. First, what specifically do you mean by "increased rate of reproduction"? Does it refer to an individual gene, every carrier of the entire genome in the population? Secondly, what do you mean by "improvement", specifically? And does the improvement apply to the individual, entire population, or the future populations? Then we can meaningfully evaluate the claim "increased reproduction rate is an improvement". Following Dawkins' notion of "selfish gene", in which you have to consider the population driven dynamics (as opposed to the individual), I don't see how "increased reproduction rate" is an improvement. Genes survive by making copies of themselves in the population in the most optimal way. Sometimes, in order to have more copies of itself, you actually need to reduce the reproductive rate of the individual. So we can talk about "improvement" for the genes, not the individuals, as the poster I quoted suggested. DJP

Hi Skeptic, thank you for the explanation. But if you have to evolve mechanisms to counter the rate of reproduction (causing overpopulation), then how can an increased rate of reproduction be considered an "Improvement"? We developed a mechanism to fight cancerous mutations. We do not consider such mutations as an "Improvement". A gene increasing the reproductive success might or might not be an improvement. If it's not, a counter mechanism has to be invoked. If so, how can we use this fitness principle for anything meaningful, like make a prediction? If I insert a gene that increases a speciemen's libido (and therefore amount of sex), it then increases the rate of reproduction, but can you predict whether it is an "improvement", because, as you say, it involves the survival of offsprings' offsprings? If so, how many generations, specifically? If you say as many generations as it takes for the gene to be in the population, then the fitness principle doesn't seem to say much. You then basically say "the gene is an improvement if turns out to be an improvement while being expressed in the population". That's a tautology, is it not? Thanks again. Pavel

Hi, I have a couple of questions about this - what I understand to be - central idea of the evolutionary theory. There are some cases, like cancer cells or bacteria colonies, in which excessive reproduction actually kills the population. While I don't have an example from an animal kingdom, I believe it's reasonable to consider an animal population, perhaps isolated and confined to some area, which reproduces itself to death, simply because the resources become unavailable due to the overpopulation of the species. So, introducing a gene that promotes a trait that actually decreases the reproductive success is beneficial to the population. The population thrives on. Therefore, contrary to the evolutionary thesis quoted above, a gene increasing the reproductive success is not necessarily an "Improvement". In fact, it has the opposite effect. First, am I proposing a reasonable thought experiement? Second, if so, how does the evolutionary theory adjust its principle to account for the possibilities I suggested. Thanks, Pavel.