Member
This piece appeared recently in The Toronto Star (I know, I know, hardly a reputable scientific publication) but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1012319928928
Is anyone familiar with the author or any of the books he lists at the end?
Order of Kilopi
Er... that isn't how evolution works. There is no collaboration in nature (beyond individual cases of parasitism and symbiosis). The author is misinterpreting. What he sees as collaboration is simply an organism reacting to the environment, changing the environment, and forcing other organisms to adapt to the changes it causes. There is no collaboration, simply organisms reacting and adapting in their own self-interest.
This just happens to create a stable ecosystem. Not through communication, but by each individual part ensuring that it can exist along with every other part.
And then he goes into bizarre things about cells in the body communicating to replace dead cells. That just ain't so. Again, cells act individually according to their genetic instructions. There is no collaboration.
So, the article is scientifically incorrect. He just wanted to bend Darwinism to support his political views from the stance of natural law. He wants to convince us that everyone would be better off cooperating, because that's how nature works.
Unfortunately, that isn't how nature works.
Established Member
I would quibble with the above phrase in only the slightest, because I know and agree with the point you are making - just the semantics bug me (i know, being pedantic gets on others' nerves as well.) While the stable ecosystem is not designed in any way, it's not also simply happenstance. Because of the nature of the system, a stable outcome is the inevitable result, given enough time. The important distinction to remember is that reality has no preference for one stable system over another.Originally Posted by The Supreme Canuck
In other words, while the earth had an oxygen-poor environment, reality was not pining for hte day when oxygen would be 20% of the atmosphere. Such anthromorphism is easy to fall into.
Anyway, I'm done. Aside from that quibble, excellent post, TSC. I totally agree - the guy was peddling his happy little view of the world.
John
Order of Kilopi
That's a much better way to put it. I was having trouble explaining exactly what I meant. I agree completely.
Order of Kilopi
I can understand why he did it. Some of the hard hearted Social Darwinists leave folks with a sour taste in their mouths. The human body is a good example of a good organism that has to work insynch to work well. We need competition too.
At the AEI meeting on C-Span Krauss had a presentation with the quote "Science isn't fair." True enough, but I don't think I would have used those words--or the Behe = astrology concept, because some child's farmer parents might have seen that and said "Wait a minute--its Sagan that talks about star-stuff, not Behe"
...and pulls the kid out of public school and home schools them to where they never even HEAR the word Science. I think the priest and the other man debating against the "Discovery Institute" guy did a bit better job, and how that last guy wasn't really even an Intel Designer but an actuall young-earther.
Public shools have a lot of problems, and you have to at least acknowledge parents concerns--like you would do at a crisis line. So how you frame an arguement without sacrificing science while trying not to alienate taypayers you need for education is a balancing act.
Established Member
I'd like to point out that reality has no preference for stable ecosystems, either! In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a truly stable ecosystem. The world is constantly changing, and everything in it is constantly adapting to those changes. There's no real equilibrium. Sure, the more stable configurations tend to last longer, but even those change pretty quickly.
As an example, I went to California last summer, and visited a forest with some of the biggest trees I've ever seen. (Actually, it's the forest where they filmed the Ewok planet scenes for Return of the Jedi.) I remember thinking, "this place must be tens of thousands of years old." Imagine my surprise, then, when I did some reading on it later and discovered that that type of tree had only been there for a few hundred years. Even the most ancient-looking places in the world haven't been around all that long.
Heck, entire ecosystems the world over change every spring and autumn, when birds start migrating. So in many places, there's no real stability even over the course of a year!
Established Member
Yes, they do. It's one of the criterion we ecologists use to evaluate ecosystem age. Note that this is different than environmental age. "Old ecosystems" can be readily delineated by the natural selection shift from environmental-driven adaptation towards that of biological-driven adaptation. This can be evaluated by analyzing the local food web, and measured via diversity analysis.
"Old" ecosystems fit this bill. What we used to call "climax communities". Actually we still call them this. The two popular biomes are tropical coral reefs, and tropical rain forsts. The less popular one would be the deep sea benthos. I study that one!In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a truly stable ecosystem.
Ecosystems do not function in absolutes. So you are correct in stating that "truly stable" ecosystems do not exist. That would be silly. Back in the '60's there was some misconception of confusing "climax communities" in such contexts, but this has been knocked over the head for a long while. A climax community is very stable, but not the end-all.
On geological time scales, perhaps. Biologically-mediated ecosystems generally see little discernible change over time that can be observed at the environmental scale. Therefore for its inhabitants, their "world" isn't changing much at all.The world is constantly changing, and everything in it is constantly adapting to those changes. There's no real equilibrium. Sure, the more stable configurations tend to last longer, but even those change pretty quickly.
This is not to be confused with natural selection processes, however. Those are still well in force. The most spectacular lifeforms known come from "stable" ecosystems, but it takes those things a very long time to pop up. The environmental stability favors such "progressive" evolution. Ecologies dominated by physical processes typically do not get such favoring.
Order of Kilopi
Edit: nevermind, something went awry. I saw Lynn Margulis' name at the bottom and mistakenly thought she'd written the article, which left me baffled.
Order of Kilopi
Well ... cells in a multicellular organism undoubtedly communicate and collaborate, albeit under the instruction of their genetic code. Take out half someone's liver, for instance, and the remaining cells will go into a reproductive burst to replace the lost tissue, which will then stop when the liver mass has returned to normal.
"Collaborate" just means "work together" for some common end, and the evolutionary pressures on even simple multicellular organisms have led to the creation of an intricate network of cellular communications which maintain collaboration for the overall good of the organism.
Grant Hutchison
Established Member
There is no point to claim that ecosystems and society follow same rules, or that they should.
Order of Kilopi
And some things in the article are just flat wrong -- like "level of oxygen in the atmosphere has remained at 21 per cent for the last 300 million years." It varied by quite a bit over that time period, reaching as much as 30%.
Order of Kilopi
Sure, but this guy was saying that cells collaborate in the same way that you and I would if we were, say, writing a report together. That just doesn't happen.
Order of Kilopi
I guess we're just reading it differently, then. To me, he didn't seem to be making such an elaborate claim. Just what he summarizes as:To me, that's quite a neat depiction of the endless dumb interchange of information that takes place in any multicellular organism.Life, then, is a never-ending process of collaboration around dependency, purpose and self-interest as everything adjusts to everything else.
But as for his evolutionary view of collaborating organisms, he does seem to have taken Margulis' view of Gaia and ascribed some purposeful behaviour to it.For sure, that "collaboration" is just the biological equivalent of the "invisible hand" Adam Smith described in economics: everyone competes, but things level out into a stable, mutually beneficial strategy.
Grant Hutchison
Established Member
Huh... I really didn't get anything out of reading this article. I thought it would either tick me off, or make me ponder social models. Instead, it's so disinteresting, it's not even worth correcting the errors and ridiculous oversimplifications. I feel as if the author was trying to wrap her head around some epiphany, gave up, and put this yawner out to justify the work expended.
The take home message from Ms. Smith: life is more complicated than we believed of it in the 19th century. Cells can chemically communicate with each other. They're really good at it inside people.
I'm glad this has been cleared up.
Order of Kilopi
I agree with Grant. I think the article has a valid point to make. I understand the objections raised to the strong-Gaia stuff, but the article really didn't raise that too much, the point being made was simply that evolution looks very different when the environment is also a player. It is kind of the difference between a linear and a nonlinear physical theory. In a linear theory, you analyze each part, and then just fit the pieces together at the end at your leisure. That is like evolution involving competition for fixed resources in an unchanging environment. But in a nonlinear theory, you get many surprising results coming from the whole being more than the sum of what individual parts are doing. That's really what I hear this article as saying, that competition takes on very subtle and nonlinear attributes when the results of the competition itself alter the rules of the game. There are much higher rewards for cooperation when the cost of "not getting along" is the end of the game (just ask anyone with small kids!).
Established Member
I disagree, Ken G, I don't think the article was particularly insightful. It is based on misconceptions about Evolution and it equates Social Darwinism with Evolution.
This is out-and-out Social Darwinism, which has been refuted and rejected as a proper means for making decisions on human behavior. Whether or not nature is cooperative or competitive has no bearing on how human social activities are or should be carried out.I say this because Darwin's theories of natural selection have been incorporated, root and branch, into the world view of Western societies. His ideas of competition among and within species affect how business is done and how Parliament works. And they play a role in validating me-first attitudes that snub the environment and contribute to climate change.
Except that modern evolutionists don't discount that the environment is a quasi-static state that is current flux, being effected by all the interactions on the individual level. Every death or birth is a change to the gene pool. Every adaptation to one species affects their interactions with their environment - predators, prey, mates, forage, competing species. Modern evolutionists don't treat nature as a static backdrop, but look at ecology as a whole. And yet none of that invalidates the role natural selection plays in adapting and changing species. Competition for resources - be that food, shelter, mates, or being preyed upon, is the mechanism of natural selection - it is the selection.Darwin wasn't wrong about natural selection; in the light of modern science, his theories were simply incomplete. But that's no reason to continue claiming today that the primary mechanism of natural selection is direct competition between individuals for resources — in other words, that aggressive competition is the real key to evolution.
This is the purpose of the article, to push the author's utopian dream of a world of cooperation rather than competition, of selfless sharing instead of selfish greed, of group identity instead of "me-me-me". But what does this have to do with Evolution? The author is implying that our culture is based upon taking Evolution and applying it to our social behaviour. The author is blaming Evolution for the Western world's social ills, especially Global Warming. It's ridiculous.Imagine the difference if the prevailing world view mirrored the collaboration in nature, if people accepted that the way to get ahead is to pursue self-interest within the context of collaboration and co-operation.
Order of Kilopi
The article has two purposes, written in parallel. The first purpose is to create a more sophisticated understanding of the role of cooperation vs. competition in evolution. This part you have rather missed, even if it is arguably oversold. Still, at some level I would say it is incontrovertible that cooperation plays a role in natural selection, if one had to score it against competition I have no idea how it would fare, but the point is nevertheless well taken at some level.
The second purpose is to encourage humans to be more cooperative, with each other and their environment. You have argued that there is no logical connection to the way evolution has transpired and how humans should act, but the article never said that there should be. It merely said that some who made that connection used it as a way to support the dog-eat-dog competitive environment of the Western world (more and more each day from what I've seen: Enron, Big Oil, anti-democratic tactics, etc.). All you are saying is that you agree that this was a baseless connection, but for different reasons. It is true that the article then attempts to make a connection between more cooperative-based evolution and more cooperation in human society, but the way it is written, no scientific connection is claimed. It is used as a literary device, pure and simple.
It is precisely this claim that the article is attempting to refute, and therein lies its rhetorical value. It is not true that competition is selection; survival is selection. You have made the unconcious assumption that competition is survival, but the article is pointing out that often in the natural world, cooperation is survival!
I suppose that any time someone makes a suggestion they hope might better humanity, someone can ridicule them by calling it "utopian". But the word utopia carries a connotation of being impossibly naive and unachievable. What part of cooperation sounds impossible and unachievable to you? If we have really become that jaded in the West, I would say it is confirmation of the article's view.
Order of Kilopi
I don't know what the author's underlying views are but I can guess he's one of the "morals only come from god" crowd. He describes evolution as being a sort of cold every creature for him/herself free for all.
Evolution has no moral implications. It isn't good or bad. It just is. It isn't amoral that we slaughter a cow and eat it (vegan arguments aside). It isn't amoral that we built a road and killed the weeds growing in the way. That just seems silly to make some claim that anything one organism does at the expense of another organism is somehow selfish amoral whatever. It is just the way the world functions.
I don't see his opinion, comparing the human impact on climate change to evolution, caused by humans without concern for the whole as long as they, the individuals, profit, as being the least bit valid. Evolution gave us human behaviors of all kinds. Some are selfish, some are selfless, but we all evolved.
Definitely a topic worth bringing up here, BTW, CRHTO.
Order of Kilopi
I'm not seeing that from the article. It was clear that the author was talking about the Gaia hypothesis. (Anyway, take a look at the references at the bottem of the article.) From wikipedia:
Let's just say that the evidence for a strong Gaia is a bit on the weak side ...Gaia theory today is a spectrum of hypotheses, ranging from the undeniable (Weak Gaia) to the radical (Strong Gaia).
At one end is the undeniable statement that the organisms on the Earth have radically altered its composition. A stronger position is that the Earth's biosphere effectively acts as if it is a self-organizing system, which works in such a way as to keep its systems in some kind of meta-equilibrium that is broadly conducive to life.
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?
The Leif Ericson Cruiser
Order of Kilopi
I'd say that evolution is certainly amoral (operating outside the sphere of morality): we shouldn't make moral judgements on it, or draw moral conclusions from it.
However, as human we do make moral judgements about our own thoughts and actions: so we can quite sensibly argue whether it is immoral or moral for us to kill and/or eat a fellow creature. Saying "it's just evolution in action" is something of a moral escape hatch: one could use the same argument to wave off moral objections to rape or genocide.
(And please, please, please note my careful use of the impersonal pronoun "one": I have absolutely no intention of suggesting that you might do such a thing.)
Grant Hutchison
Order of Kilopi
well, genocide is ONE way of attempting to control evolution..
not that it's very nice or anything..
Order of Kilopi
The issue relates to the game-theory concept of Nash equilibrium. This is the equlibrium that nature tends to find when any deviation in strategy by a single player will worsen that player's result. Note this embeds a sense of cooperation, because other strategies by other players could reap even greater rewards for the first player if they deviate, but one must assume that none of the other players will so deviate, by the symmetry of the relationship. This relationship "symmetry" is probably the central concept of cooperation, that all players have an equal "stake" in the game and all their successes are interrelated. Note there is no requirement for conscious intent, and indeed each player is attempting to maximize their own benefit (I never disputed that idea), but maximizing one's own benefit when it is interrelated with others requires being responsive to what the others are doing. That is a loose but effective definition of cooperation. Perhaps the term "altruistic" is going too far-- that has the connotation of self-sacrifice. Altruism is an evolutionary ability that is connected to the benefit to a genome of having some of its individuals be willing to "jump on the grenade". Not a very "competitive" strategy, though! Examples would be honeybees that die when they sting. Apparently not all on this thread are aware that altruism appears as an inevitable part of "survival of the fittest". Cutthroat competition is only one aspect of the evolutionary process, this is the fundamental message of the article, and obviously from this thread it is a necessary and timely message.
Banned
One word: Nonsense.
The Nash Equilibrium has naught to do with a biological system in cooperative terms. Instead, individuals and species within an ecosystem *might change their strategy to FIT an equilibrium, not to plan it out. "The Prisoner's Dilemma" and "The Yossarian's Dilemma" examples bolster my point: one individual/species will generally always try to screw the other(s). Because plants and animals in a given ecosystem don't meet beforehand and determine who will be screwed (conditions almost invariably determine this, not species), the species involved do not care about the outcome, so long as their survival/success is assured.
How is it "effective" ? Interrelated, hardly means the same thing. It's like saying that Me shooting You & your dog is the same as the two of us "cooperating together for our mutual long lives". The author presupposed a harmonious, if not conscious equilibrium. By omitting mention of random chance and extinction, it sounds like he's just nakedly praising the forethought of nature to be so adaptive. Big deal. Hooray Toronto Sun, but it's still junk science at best.
Order of Kilopi
Who said anything about "planning it out"? Read how I edited my previous post (I decided the "two words" approach was curt, and obviously it precipitated an even more curt response.) I submit that your understanding of evolution could benefit greatly by expanding your definition of the concept of cooperation to include processes that involve no "planning".
Order of Kilopi
And yet they end up working in mutually beneficial ways. A bee is a plant's way of spreading pollen; a plant is a bee's way of getting nectar. Insects and plants have co-evolved for hundreds of millions of years, each trying to exploit the other to the hilt, and the result is a network of mutual benefit.
I think the author of the original article was merely making the March of the Penguins mistake: suggesting that we should take a moral lesson from the blind workings of nature. It was a mistake when the social darwinists did it, and it's still a mistake when it's done in the name of "cooperation."
Grant Hutchison
Banned
One example. Bees and plants don't really compete for the same resources. Plus, that is an example of rough symbiotic relationship as Supreme Canuck and I pointed out (he did so first).
I didn't consider this. I'm re-reading the article looking for a moral bent. There didn't seem to be one on the first few passes. My point was that the cooperation doesn't really occur; that's just the observation when looking at the end product. As others above have stated, one equilibrium will always eventually replace another. There's little "cooperation" involved in reaching an equilibrium, just harsh mathematics.
Order of Kilopi
OK, so you're saying that if we can apply the jargon word "symbiosis" then the vernacular term "cooperation" cannot also apply? I'm trying to follow the logic. Note that the article never said that cooperation only counts if one is competing for the same resources. But your point is well taken that in cases where groups that compete for the same resources cooperate with each other, it is especially interesting. Certainly a kind of hybrid example of this is when a subgroup cooperates in a way that makes them more efficient at competing against other subgroups. So already, we see that the terms "competition" and "cooperation" have a complex relationship, and all aspects of both must be considered when studying evolutionary forces. The complex interplay of competition and cooperation is a central theme of the Nash equilibrium as well, unfortunately that has been ruled out in this thread as an interesting way to look at biological relationships.
Order of Kilopi
Well, thousands of separately evolving examples across the plant and insect kingdom. And there are many other examples, from ants farming aphids to ant protecting the plant species on which they feed.
But just renaming any mutually beneficial interaction as "symbiosis" doesn't get you away from the fact that flat-out competitive evolution can lead to mutually beneficial results.
Grant Hutchison
Order of Kilopi
You don't need to get much beyond: "... they play a role in validating me-first attitudes that snub the environment ..." to see that the author is taking a moral stance. The whole piece is bemoaning social darwinism and suggesting that cooperation and collaboration are more productive.
Grant Hutchison
Order of Kilopi
Well put. Those bees keep coming in handy!
I agree, but in defense of this perspective, I interpret him as saying that we simply can't help but take moral lessons from nature, we are human and want to understand and resonate with our natural roots. And further, he argues that he believes many have used this, whether consciously or unconsciously, to justify Enron-type business strategies, etc. Maybe he is wrong about this, but I don't really think so. When I think of all those high school kids being taught about "survival of the fittest" and the cutthroat competition of nature (as evidenced by many of the thread participants), how can this fail to engender a certain attitude of moral justificaton? At the very least, he is saying, we should teach the full story as we now understand it, involving the cooperative elements as well as the competitive ones. Then there would really be no worry about any particular moral lessons that were ingratiating themselves. (He did oversell the positive moral lesson piece, perhaps what I'm saying is that he should have said that teaching the cooperative element would have a balancing effect. But that doesn't make the article drivel, which is how it has been read by everyone so far but you and me.)
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