Sociolution

[Master Lawbringer]

When discussing evolution with modern-day scientists one thing becomes apparent : Their need to view evolution as essentially a 'social' process, with 'cooperation' as its main theme.
They do mention natural selection, but then quickly de-emphasize it in favour of 'social ... social ... cooperation ... social'.

Evolution is based on natural selection because that's the rule that effectively counters entropy since it actually uses the fact that everything ends up destroyed; it is the fact that everything gets destroyed that allows natural selection to work. This is what answers the question why extremely complex organized machines like animals and humans can exist in a universe whose rules are that of increasing disorder. That's the essential observation behind the theory of evolution.

DNA is an optimization of natural selection essentially, their gibberish on 'cooperating cells' notwithstanding.

The true nature of social insects like bees and ants becomes apparent when the queen flies off and only one of the produced males gets to mate showing that the whole thing is also just another natural selection optimizing process.

So what do they mean with their incoherent rambling on 'social ... social ... cooperation'?

It turns out that their 'social ... social'-rambling isn't just a misinterpretation of evolution, but actually something even more absurd, a move against hierarchy in the workings of a machine, any machine, in general. It's a move against allowing the parts of a machine to become a functional whole. It's a move against a machine being ... a machine at all.

This is what their 'social ... social ... cooperation' really is. It is nothing but the symptom of a degenerative evolutionary state and that's why this 'social ... social'-argument coming from the present-day materialists, and all arguments based on it, are just garbage on analysis.

 

[swansont]

Who are "they" and can you give specific examples (i.e. links to where this is presented)? I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot of evolution that has nothing to do with social cooperation.

 

24 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

 DNA is an optimization of natural selection essentially, their gibberish on 'cooperating cells' notwithstanding.

The true nature of social insects like bees and ants becomes apparent when the queen flies off and only one of the produced males gets to mate showing that the whole thing is also just another natural selection optimizing process.

Yes, evolution is an optimization process, based on feedback from environmental conditions, though biologists don't describe it quite that way (that leans more toward physics/engineering terminology)

 

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Moderator Note

I will point out that your previous ramblings were sent to the trash owing to their lack of coherence, and this one is not much better. You need to back up what you say, and do a better job of explaining what you are claiming. 

Moved to speculations, at least for the moment.

 

[Strange]

9 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

When discussing evolution with modern-day scientists one thing becomes apparent : Their need to view evolution as essentially a 'social' process, with 'cooperation' as its main theme.
They do mention natural selection, but then quickly de-emphasize it in favour of 'social ... social ... cooperation ... social'.

Please provide a reference to support this claim.

Everything I have ever read about evolution says it is based on natural selection (of heritable traits that vary in the population).

There are hypotheses that social activity and cooperation, altruism, etc can be explained by evolution. 

So your statement seems to be exactly the wrong way round.

9 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

So what do they mean with their incoherent rambling on 'social ... social ... cooperation'?

Unless you can provide an example, I don't think anyone can answer that.

9 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

This is what their 'social ... social ... cooperation' really is. It is nothing but the symptom of a degenerative evolutionary state and that's why this 'social ... social'-argument coming from the present-day materialists, and all arguments based on it, are just garbage on analysis.

You are a fine one to talk about "incoherent rambling".

[Prometheus]

Simple models utilising game theory show that 'social' strategies can be a part of the optimisation strategy over an entire population. There is no reason to a priori rule it out as a viable strategy - you'd need some evidence for that.

This video explains it quite well:

 

[Master Lawbringer]

This is an example of the sort of argument I'm talking about. It seems to acknowledge natural selection as a base rule but then ... 'social ... social'.

NOT MY WORDS  :

There’s no need to suppose that humans are different from other living things in that we’ve evolved by natural selection as if we were designed to maximise our inclusive fitness (the survival of our genes in our kin as well as ourselves). Morality isn’t an exception; creating moral rules and then following and enforcing them increases (on average) each individual’s inclusive fitness because they gain the benefits of cooperation.

Cooperation for mutual benefit is central to evolutionary theory; as explained in this video. Each human is a colony of cooperating cells, and the DNA in the cells can be considered as a group of cooperating genes, but those forms of cooperation don’t require any thinking. Humans have evolved yet another version of cooperation, one which requires the ability to think through costs and benefits both for ourselves and for others, but the basic theory behind our form of cooperation is the same as for all the other evolved forms of cooperation: the extra benefit, on average, to each individual's inclusive fitness.

END NOT MY WORDS.

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

This is an example of the sort of argument I'm talking about. It seems to acknowledge natural selection as a base rule but then ... 'social ... social'.

NOT MY WORDS  :

Whose words are they? Where did you read them?

 

"Cooperating" genes and/or cells has nothing to do with social interaction.

[Master Lawbringer]

It's an excerpt from a debate on morality. He's basically claiming, and this is very common, that morality only evolved because of this 'cooperation', as if a hierarchical organisation doesn't require this.

[Strange]

1 minute ago, Master Lawbringer said:

It's an excerpt from a debate on morality. He's basically claiming, and this is very common, that morality only evolved because of this 'cooperation', as if a hierarchical organisation doesn't require this.

Who is "he"?

What is the source of this text?

[Dagl1]

30 minutes ago, Master Lawbringer said:

This is an example of the sort of argument I'm talking about. It seems to acknowledge natural selection as a base rule but then ... 'social ... social'.

NOT MY WORDS  :

There’s no need to suppose that humans are different from other living things in that we’ve evolved by natural selection as if we were designed to maximise our inclusive fitness (the survival of our genes in our kin as well as ourselves). Morality isn’t an exception; creating moral rules and then following and enforcing them increases (on average) each individual’s inclusive fitness because they gain the benefits of cooperation.

Cooperation for mutual benefit is central to evolutionary theory; as explained in this video. Each human is a colony of cooperating cells, and the DNA in the cells can be considered as a group of cooperating genes, but those forms of cooperation don’t require any thinking. Humans have evolved yet another version of cooperation, one which requires the ability to think through costs and benefits both for ourselves and for others, but the basic theory behind our form of cooperation is the same as for all the other evolved forms of cooperation: the extra benefit, on average, to each individual's inclusive fitness.

END NOT MY WORDS.

What part do you disagree with? Do you not think that social rules lead to higher fitness on average? You don't think that cooperation (multicellularness) increases fitness? I am not sure I would completely phrase it like this guy (who could be completely random and does not have to present the scientific community at large anyway), but I also don't have immediate issues with it, you do it seems, so which parts don't make sense, please explain them in detail, so we can actually debate it?

[Prometheus]

I wonder if it's Sam Harris - i've heard of him talking about morality as an optimisation process.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Master Lawbringer said:

It's an excerpt from a debate on morality. He's basically claiming, and this is very common, that morality only evolved because of this 'cooperation', as if a hierarchical organisation doesn't require this.

That's one aspect of a social species. You're trying to say this is representative of all evolution, and that's extrapolating in the wrong direction. You can't go from specific to general based on one data point. To quote from The Logician: 'All wood burns,' states Sir Bedevere. 'Therefore,' he concludes, 'all that burns is wood.' This is, of course, pure bulls**t. Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan.

IOW, all social behavior is the result of evolution, but not all of evolution deals with social interaction

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

IOW, all social behavior is the result of evolution, but not all of evolution deals with social interaction

It kinda has too, but I get your point: it's like comparing a shark's need to be social, with a wildebeest's need to be social.

Edited March 30, 2020 by dimreepr

[swansont]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

It kinda has too, but I get your point: it's like comparing a humans need to be social, with a wildebeest's need to be social.

Most of the biomass on earth is not animal. If anyone wants to explain how evolution of fungi and bacteria are driven by social interaction, I'll be fascinated to read about it.

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, swansont said:

Most of the biomass on earth is not animal. If anyone wants to explain how evolution of fungi and bacteria are driven by social interaction, I'll be fascinated to read about it.

Fair point, but IIRC a bacteria colony shows signs of co-operation.

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Fair point, but IIRC a bacteria colony shows signs of co-operation.

Is that social, or is that anthropomorphizing some other behavior? 

(The way the OP is using social, at least. I don't think biologists use it the same way, and I've not seen anything in the posts that indicate the OP really understands the terminology. At least, that's my impression.)

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

Is that social, or is that anthropomorphising some other behavior?

I don't know but it seems a stretch to anthropomorphis a microbe?