Overall, it seems the reason behind minimizing genetic behavioral differences in populations is an emotional, egotistical, somewhat insistently pretentious need to have opinion override reality. A denial of what stares us in the face. Facts and life's realities often bite, and are not mandated to be comfortable to someone's preference. A cold, clear eye should be scoring this situation, despite politics, education and ego.
"The scholarship on ethnicity and diversity has been around for decades in a range of disciplines—economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, history. If Hitchens and other race-denying conservatives were unable to keep up with this important research, why did not their advisers keep them informed? The ignorance on this issue could not have been maintained without some major distortion or breakdown of communication within the conservative movement. That is yet to be explained."
I can take a crack at it: these are elite folks who move in elite circles. When they have half an opportunity to proclaim a universalist or social justice-tinged or idealistic canard, they glory in the opportunity. Even the most rigorous iconoclast still cares about status. Making these kinds of socially-approved noises makes them feel and (they believe) look good, and so they do it whenever the opportunity arises. They reserve rigor for subjects closer to their hearts. I suspect we all do this kind of thing, to some extent.
Great, observant article, but the narrative is always controlled by those in control.
"The ongoing mass immigration of non-Western people into Western countries could only be happening with the consent of leading conservatives."
And, indeed, that is the case. This applies to the UK, Western Europe, and the United States. The fallacy here is that there is a difference between conservatives and liberals, Democrats, and Republicans on issues of substance, to the Deep State, which controls both. Those in control are happy to allow and promote narratives of dissent between races, parties, or any coalitions of dissension. This obfuscates the fact that there is one controlling entity.
"The issue is whether the large numbers of newcomers can be integrated while keeping the country British. This sounds confused, but it does follow an iron logic. If we accept for argument’s sake that Hitchens is correct—that race is irrelevant to national identity—then it might be possible to retain that identity while racially transforming the population."
But Hitchens is wrong; there is a strong relationship between race and culture. One only has to compare the black civilizations and the white civilizations to understand that.
Hitchens seems to accept the link between culture and race when he implies that retaining British culture where white natives are a minority will be “extremely difficult” (esp given the British state) but then he maintains that the only moral thing to do is try . I agree that it would be extremely difficult, although I’d go a little bit further to likely impossible and I don’t see any moral imperative at all to try and indeed if culture follows race at a group level it is likely immoral to expect these groups to become British as Hitchens conceives it.
"The ongoing mass immigration of non-Western people into Western countries could only be happening with the consent of leading conservatives. After all, conservative parties enjoy frequent, sometimes lengthy, periods of government. Why have they not used these opportunities to reverse radical immigration policies?"
An excellent question. Perhaps 'conservatives' in many countries are still part of an institutional brahmin class, whose values and assumptions are even more important than satisfying voters, or even more important than political survival (look at the CDU in Germany). In any case, it doesn't seem to be a question that these people are willing to answer honestly. What does that tell you?
"An excellent question. Perhaps 'conservatives' in many countries are still part of an institutional brahmin class, whose values and assumptions are even more important than satisfying voters, or even more important than political survival (look at the CDU in Germany). In any case, it doesn't seem to be a question that these people are willing to answer honestly. What does that tell you?"
Good point. It tells me that all groups have a part in the continuation of those in control. See my reply to this article.
I remember debating someone a couple of times about ethnic/racial diversity, and he kept bringing up culture. I engaged a bit, but I kept trying to point out that it was a red herring. No one says culture doesn't matter, but race is clearly important as well.
Even when people from an unfavored ethnic group in a country convert to the dominant religion or ideology, they aren't treated the same. They also don't behave the same in other measurable ways, such as innovation, income, test scores, and crime rates. In fact I don't know of any country where people of different races act the same when they convert to some "cultural" metric used by conservatives (usually religion). If it exists, it's the exception rather than the rule.
I also mentioned to him that culture and race intersect. Oftentimes when a large portion of a new ethnicity converts to a tradition, they put their own spin on it (compare European and Latino Catholics). This can contribute to cultural innovation in a sense, but it shows conversion isn't some complete thing. Expecting it to be is silly.
AI-generated text still can't compare to the greatest and most original human writing. And if there ever comes an AI that can surpass the quality of the best human writing, it will only be because it used said writing as training data.
I agree with most of what's said in these actually. Kin selection is still real though. Its testable predictions, like the winning out of ethnocentrism, tribalism, infant preference for those of their ethnic/family group, nepotism, etc. all exist.
Lol, I also see the Zero guy blocked me so I can't respond anymore. He refused to respond to any substance of what I said or refute any of it. He kept misusing a fallacy call-outs when his reason was fallacious.
Appeal to authority isn't when you refer a confused blogger whose arguments you debunked to look into real, scholarly research. It's when you only appeal to the authority of scholar as your argument, without presenting any real arguments.... Which is ironically like the genetic fallacy he was committing with the AI thing.
Yeah, which is why I didn't, but he did. He dismissed a lot of the arguments I presented because he, as a human, must be a better source than an AI. He didn't deal with any of the substance. Then when I told him, along with more arguments, to look into the real research on the matter, he had a hissy fit and blocked me.
There is a point to scholarly research. Obviously scholars can get things wrong, but they usually have a lot more context when it comes to research findings. It's like if someone comes along and says they debunked gravity and use a misinterpretation of the necessary equations.
You might use an AI like I did to give an overview of the many areas they went wrong and what they're ignoring, and along with that tell them to look into what real physics research says and add your own arguments. That's not appeal to authority; it's calling out someone for being both wrong and unread on the subject. Am I supposed to instead tell them to look at the unsourced blogs of other gravity deniers?
That's not to say modern physics doesn't have its own problems. However, of course to determine what's true it's helpful to rely on scholarly research when possible, and from the more validated sciences as much as you can. You use the best replicated research and look for what the holes might be in interpretation.
He didn't do any of that. He dismissed all the arguments against his paper as slop.
That said, I think culture can be a useful tool to introduce discussions to the public that can improve race relations. However we can't use qualitative or vague descriptors many conservatives use, like religion. We have to use a multifaceted and quantitstive understandimg which covers all relevant metrics, which of course race relates to.
Useful policies, like tough on crime ones, which can help towards equality, do act on culture... Including on a biological level. Not bringing up the second part may be politically savvy, if necessary.
Say hereditarianism is somehow only picking up spurious correlations genetically (extremely unlikely at this point). I wonder if it even matters except when it comes to genetic technologies. If, when you include every relevant cultural variable, culture runs deep enough to act like genes... Does it even matter policy-wise? It would have the same effects when it comes to immigration and crime policy.
I don't know. I hope that made sense. Maybe how I'm using culture varies, but it does when race communists use the term too. It's an elusive and vague term, annoyingly divorced in common parlance from sociobiology in a way that makes it difficult to walk the right political lines and solve problems.
Briefly, I've always viewed culture as being spawned within a fairly tight racial/ethnic group, and after it has "solidified" parts of it can be imported or cloned by other groups.
Simply, culture is a product of personal interactions within a society. The first such cultures arose when such societies were isolated by geography, and the earliest phases were rules of conduct and shared values among units as small as families, gradually extending to clans, tribes, etc.
Because of this relative isolation, the individuals were mostly of a uniform race, so to a very large degree the practitioners of a culture were racially related.
Many of the cultural tendencies or traits may simply be based on responses to situations that any human, regardless of race, would evolve to. But there are also aspects of these cultures that are informed by hereditarian components that are tightly bound to one's race, or sub-race. The first thing I can think of would be the much higher percentage of East Asians--especially Han Chinese--who possess the ability to distinguish minute tonal differences--"pitch perfect". This could well inform the development of language and how information is communicated,which might leak over into greater cultural appreciation of all things auditory.
I agree with you about a lot of this, that people evolved both socially and biologically in different areas based on their environments. It also shows none of this is static, especially in the modern wworld as our environments as constantly changing. We just need to make sensible decisions as a society about guiding things in the right direction with incentive structures and institutions which will guide us all towards a netter future.
There is a sort of slow response to the rapid cosmopolitanization (is there such a word?) of the globe. People need to remember that most of humanity--myself included--still retains the reflexive xenophobia that informed the survival of those early isolated groups.
I think that humanity is evolving away from this "in the blood" xenophobia, but it is a work in progress and like any Gaus distribution there are individuals within each group (race) who still retain a great deal of instinctive rejection of out-of-group strangers. I also think that each race has a different degree of evolved tolerance to cosmopolitan intermixing.
I am not so certain you are correct in your analysis here. Let me explain: more ethnocentric groups still have higher birth rates. Interracial relationships are increasing, but they have lower birth rates than average. There does appear to still be an advantage to kin selection in modern times. Groups who are non-ethnocentric are pretty limited, and they tend to have low birth rates.
Even once you do have far more people who are mixed race, they may form ethnicities which is still on average ethnocentric. An example of this is Latinos, who are mainly Euro-Amerindian. They have developed a new ethnic group which has its own interests and ethnic pride. On average in studies they are significantly more ethnocentric than European Americans, though I think this is primarily a result of heavy stigmatization of European ethnocentrism.
I do think America will become more mixed over time, but I'm not certain this will decrease ethnic tensions as much as was once thought. I read an essay on the topic by DeepLeftAnalysis on here. Forgive me for not remembering, but I think it was called something like interracial marriage will increase racism. If you look up that phrase, you'll probably find it.
I'm not sure how it'll all play out honestly. I don't think anyone really knows.
Much of what I do is to simply observe and evaluate using my own life experiences, plus what I consider well-founded hypotheses of others, especially if they are supported by objective and demonstrable fact.
And at this point I create a worldview in which I need to operate, and my own values are to obtain material security and a peaceful home life.
I guess I'm just looking for a good way to get thru life, and it's worked increasing well as I've aged out to 75+.
This is important: I do not think my worldview should be used as policy. I'll modify my worldview (for optimum results, natch) but it probably this would not be satisfactory for all.
Really interesting. I tend to be taken in by the arguments of conservative leaders, despite something about their 'race doesn't matter' views sounding off key to me. After reading this I can now rationalise why these sound wrong.
I suppose you could argue the rights and wrongs of 'how humans should be' versus 'how they are' till the cows come home. Adherents to how humans should think and feel appear to want to turn us all - or at least all whites - into self-satisfied Jesus-like figures. On the other hand the 'leopard can't change its spots' faction appear quite at home with our natural low-level nepotism and mild bigotry. I'm on the latter's side since for me preferring your own kind seems preferable to a bloodless racial communism that was probably dreamed up by some sanctimonious twit who thought it was a good look.
This is excellent. Anti-white race communism is the condition for access to elite media, especially among conservatives. This is precisely to ensure they do not represent any coherent opposition to the managerial consensus. So, one must perform anti-whiteness to have a platform: either verbally, like the above examples, or through their choice of partner (if not both). That sounds ugly, but it's observable reality.
My impression as an outsider to these politics is that most conservatives are of the crude, economically reductionist sort, that believes in homo-economicus, and humans as fungible economic units.
Then there are paleo-conservatives who hold on to no institutions, no political parties, and no media. These seem the only ones who could be hereditarian.
Which are the ones deserving of the label "conservative" here? I don't know.
The viewpoint shared by the three gentlemen is why Britain is falling apart. Sub-Saharan Africans, Muslims, Pakistanis, and others don't share the core beliefs of Britain. This is proven in the way they enslave Britain's young women and groom them for sex slavery.
Blacks are more prone to violence, as are Middle Easterners.
Conservatives are indeed confused about race, and this essay did a great job explaining why.
However, the author is also confused about race, albeit in a different way. Salter believes in kin altruism, and he wrote a book, Genetic Interests, that insists that humans should try to maximize their "genetic interests" among their races. Unfortunately, his book is misguided since it's based on false concepts and premises. https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/kin-selection-theory-is-wrong.pdf
**Paper’s Claim**: Hamilton’s rule (rB > C) is flawed because:
- **Relatedness (r)** doesn’t guarantee the beneficiary shares the altruistic trait, as selection reduces altruist frequency.
- **Free rider problem**: Selfish individuals benefit from altruism without costs, outcompeting altruists.
- **Green beard mechanism**: This is implausible due to complex genetics and counter-strategies.
- **Wording issue**: The rule’s phrasing about gene frequency is incorrect, as selection maintains equilibrium.
**Response**:
- **Relatedness and Selection**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The paper’s duckling thought experiment claims that selection reduces the frequency of altruistic traits, making r an unreliable predictor of trait sharing.
- **Counterargument**: The paper misunderstands how Hamilton’s rule applies. The rule assesses the conditions under which an altruistic trait is favored by selection, not its long-term frequency. Relatedness (r) is the probability of sharing a gene identical by descent, which holds for initial conditions. If altruists die out due to high costs (C), this doesn’t invalidate the rule—it shows the trait isn’t adaptive in that context. Models (e.g., Grafen, 1985) account for selection dynamics, showing altruism can stabilize when rB > C holds consistently.
- **Empirical Support**: Studies on kin recognition (e.g., Belding’s ground squirrels; Holmes & Sherman, 1982) show animals preferentially aid kin, increasing the likelihood of helping those with shared traits, supporting r’s role.
- **Counterargument**: The free rider problem is a known challenge in evolutionary biology but doesn’t debunk kin selection. Altruism can evolve when directed toward kin, as relatedness ensures benefits accrue to those likely to carry the altruistic gene. Mechanisms like kin recognition, spatial structure (e.g., viscous populations; Queller, 1992), or punishment of defectors (e.g., in social insects; Ratnieks, 1988) mitigate free riding. Mathematical models (e.g., Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981) show altruism persists in kin-based systems despite selfish variants.
- **Empirical Support**: In cooperative breeders like meerkats, kin-directed helping persists because benefits outweigh costs, and non-kin are often excluded (Clutton-Brock, 2002).
- **Green Beard Mechanism**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The green beard hypothesis is implausible due to genetic complexity and counter-strategies (e.g., faking the signal).
- **Counterargument**: The green beard is a theoretical construct, not central to kin selection. Kin selection typically relies on relatedness through descent, not single-gene signals. While green beard scenarios are rare, they’ve been observed (e.g., fire ant social chromosomes; Wang et al., 2013), showing they’re not impossible. The paper’s dismissal ignores that kin selection doesn’t depend on this mechanism.
- **Empirical Support**: Most kin selection examples (e.g., social insects, alarm calls) rely on pedigree relatedness, not green beards, making this critique tangential.
- **Wording Issue**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The rule’s Wikipedia phrasing (“genes increase in frequency”) is incorrect, as selection often maintains equilibrium.
- **Counterargument**: This is a semantic issue, not a substantive flaw. Hamilton’s rule defines conditions for a trait to be favored, not guaranteed to dominate. Selection can stabilize allele frequencies (e.g., in polymorphic populations), as models (e.g., Maynard Smith, 1964) show. The paper’s point is valid but doesn’t undermine the rule’s logic or application.
- **Empirical Support**: Hamilton’s rule accurately predicts altruism in diverse systems (e.g., haplodiploid insects, cooperative vertebrates), regardless of whether frequencies increase or equilibrate.
**Conclusion**: The paper’s critiques of Hamilton’s rule misinterpret its application or exaggerate minor issues. Relatedness remains a valid predictor of altruism’s spread, free riders are mitigated by kin-based mechanisms, green beards are peripheral, and wording issues don’t negate the rule’s predictive power. Decades of data (e.g., West et al., 2007) confirm its robustness.
---
### 6. Alternative Explanation: Extended Phenotype and Reproductive Fitness
**Paper’s Claim**: Altruism evolves to boost parental reproductive fitness, with children as part of the parent’s extended phenotype. This explains parental and sibling altruism better than kin selection, especially in social insects.
**Response**:
- **Extended Phenotype and Kin Selection**: The paper’s extended phenotype argument (Dawkins, 1982) is compatible with kin selection. Sibling altruism, like worker sterility in bees, benefits the parent’s fitness by increasing colony reproduction, but this is precisely how kin selection operates: indirect fitness gains through kin. The paper presents this as an alternative but fails to show how it contradicts Hamilton’s rule.
- **Social Insects**: The paper cites bees and ants as exceptions requiring special explanation but doesn’t provide one (referencing an unavailable “Bees are not Social”). Kin selection explains eusociality via high relatedness and inclusive fitness (Hamilton, 1964). For example, in honeybees, workers’ sterility maximizes the queen’s reproduction, as sisters share 75% of genes (r=0.75). Studies (e.g., Crozier & Pamilo, 1996) confirm this.
- **Reproductive Fitness**: The paper’s focus on reproductive fitness aligns with kin selection, which quantifies fitness as direct (offspring) plus indirect (kin) components. The distinction it draws is semantic, not substantive.
**Conclusion**: The extended phenotype framework complements, not replaces, kin selection. The paper’s alternative explanation lacks novelty and doesn’t undermine Hamilton’s rule.
---
### 7. Overall Assessment of the Paper
- **Strengths**:
- Raises valid points about sibling rivalry and the need to explain context-dependent altruism.
- Highlights the free rider problem, a recognized challenge in evolutionary theory.
- Encourages scrutiny of Hamilton’s rule, which has faced legitimate debate (e.g., Nowak et al., 2010).
- **Weaknesses**:
- **Misrepresentation of Kin Selection**: The paper mischaracterizes kin selection as predicting universal altruism, ignoring its conditional nature.
- **Selective Evidence**: It dismisses extensive data (e.g., social insects, alarm calls, cooperative breeding) while emphasizing rivalry, committing the cherry-picking it critiques.
- **Logical Flaws**: The duckling thought experiment and Hamilton’s rule critique misunderstand selection dynamics, assuming static trait frequencies.
- **Lack of Rigor**: The paper cites no primary sources, relies on hypothetical scenarios, and makes unsupported claims (e.g., proponents’ motives). The author’s pseudonym and lack of academic affiliation raise questions about credibility.
- **Failure to Engage with Counterarguments**: It ignores defenses of kin selection (e.g., West et al., 2011; Bourke, 2011) and mathematical models supporting Hamilton’s rule.
---
### Conclusion
The paper’s attempt to debunk kin selection and Hamilton’s rule is unconvincing. It misinterprets the theory, ignores substantial empirical evidence, and proposes an alternative (extended phenotype) that aligns with kin selection. Hamilton’s rule remains a cornerstone of evolutionary biology, supported by data from social insects, vertebrates, and humans. While debates about kin selection exist, they refine, not refute, the framework (e.g., Abbot et al., 2011). The paper’s critiques are either addressed by existing literature or based on flawed assumptions about selection.
If I wanted to, I could query an LLM to generate more text to refute all the bullshit that you copied and pasted into your comments.
But that would just be a waste of time. It obviously wouldn't be as well-written or as well-thought-out as the articles that my friend and I have already written. Nevertheless, the point stands that nobody is obligated to refute AI-generated text line-by-line.
If you want anybody to take you seriously, then you have to do your own independent thinking and write your own conclusions. But you're probably not intelligent enough to do that.
I have done my own independent thinking. I used a summary by AI because I don't have will nor time to link to you tons of (real, scholarly) research right now. I am responding on my phone, and I was giving you summaries of what already existed out there because it's clear you and your friend very unfamiliar with the subject matter.
> It's clear you and your friend very unfamiliar with the subject matter.
And again, it's clear that you didn't read (or refute) any of our arguments. Unlike you, we are familiar with all the literature out there. More importantly, we understand why it's all based on fallacious reasoning and false concepts.
Anyway, it's obvious what you're trying to do here. You're claiming that I have a burden to refute all your bullshit line-by-line, even though you didn't spend any time writing (much less thinking) any of it. You're being bad-faith, hence you're deliberately ignoring everything that I wrote in my FAQs. You literally didn't ready *any* of my arguments. You want to impose an asymmetrical effort against me in this argument, but your insistence is not supported by the rules of rational argumentation. Especially since you didn't spend *any* time writing or doing independent thinking about this topic.
Meanwhile, my friend and I have already written multiple essays (he also wrote a book: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2023/11/debunking-selfish-gene.html) explaining why mainstream the literature is wrong. I could refute all your text line-by-line and point you directly to the relevant arguments in the essays which explain why the current literature and mainstream reasoning is completely false. But that would be a waste of time. I already wrote many, many well-written paragraphs which accomplish this. More importantly, I actually thought about this topic, unlike you.
If you really want to get to the bottom of this debate, then you have to read the book (https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2023/11/debunking-selfish-gene.html) and write a rebuttal against it. Once again, you have not read anything inside the book, so you cannot claim to have "debunked" it, until you actually read and understand it.
I'm not going to respond to you any further. Everybody else can read these comment threads and decide for themselves who's being more rational. It's obvious. Anybody who is being good faith can compare your AI-generated text against the arguments written in the essay links below and decide for themselves which arguments are more rational.
The author of this is confused and doesn't cite any specific sources. This doesn't inherently means they're wring, but a lot of what they say is incorrect. It goes against human history, the studies we have on ethnocentrism and familial biases, and many other lines of reasoning. There are lots of papers on different forms of kin selection out there, but I'll give you some summaries of the issues with what you and the author are saying by AI first. It may be take more than one comment.
Family preference and ethnocentrism likely have roots in human evolution, but the extent and mechanisms are debated. Here's a breakdown:
### Family Preference
- **Evolutionary Basis**: Family preference aligns with **kin selection**, a concept from evolutionary biology where organisms prioritize the survival of close relatives to pass on shared genes. This is supported by **Hamilton's rule** (rB > C), where the genetic relatedness (r), benefit to the recipient (B), and cost to the actor (C) explain altruistic behavior toward kin. For example, parents sacrificing for children or siblings cooperating increases inclusive fitness. Evidence includes widespread nepotism across cultures and species (e.g., ground squirrels risking predation to warn kin).
- **Why It’s Evolved**: Genes promoting family preference enhance the survival of shared genetic material. This is why parental care and sibling cooperation are near-universal in humans and many animals.
- **Counterarguments**: Some argue family preference is partly cultural, shaped by socialization rather than purely genetic. For instance, adoption or communal child-rearing in some societies shows flexibility in "kin-like" behavior. However, these don’t negate the evolutionary bias toward genetic kin, as cultural practices often build on innate tendencies.
### Ethnocentrism
- **Evolutionary Basis**: Ethnocentrism, favoring one’s own group (often ethnic or cultural) over others, may stem from **group selection** or **reciprocal altruism** within groups. In ancestral environments, cooperating with familiar, culturally similar individuals (who were often kin or long-term allies) improved survival against rival groups. This is supported by studies showing in-group bias in trust and resource sharing (e.g., Tajfel’s minimal group experiments). Xenophobia or out-group hostility could have protected resources or reduced disease transmission from outsiders.
- **Why It’s Evolved**: Groups with strong internal cohesion likely outcompeted less cooperative groups, reinforcing traits like in-group loyalty. Genetic markers (e.g., physical resemblance) or cultural signals (e.g., language, rituals) helped identify "safe" group members.
- **Counterarguments**: Critics argue ethnocentrism is more cultural than genetic, pointing to modern societies where education and integration reduce prejudice. Others note that group boundaries in ancestral times were fluid, not strictly ethnic, suggesting ethnocentrism is a byproduct of general in-group favoritism rather than a specific adaptation.
### Why Some Say Kin Selection Has Been Debunked
The claim that kin selection is "debunked" is misleading but stems from specific critiques:
1. **Group Selection Debate**: Some evolutionary biologists, like E.O. Wilson, argued group selection (favoring group survival over individual or kin) better explains altruism, downplaying kin selection. This sparked debate, but kin selection remains widely accepted for explaining family-based altruism. Critics of this critique (e.g., Dawkins, West) argue group selection often reduces to kin selection mathematically, as group members are often related.
2. **Misinterpretations of Inclusive Fitness**: Studies challenging kin selection, like Nowak et al. (2010), questioned whether inclusive fitness models are necessary to explain altruism, proposing alternative mechanisms like multilevel selection. However, these critiques don’t invalidate kin selection’s predictive power; they suggest complementary frameworks. Most biologists (e.g., Bourke, 2011) defend kin selection as robust.
3. **Overemphasis on Exceptions**: Cases where kin selection seems less relevant (e.g., cooperation in unrelated groups or eusocial insects with complex dynamics) are used to challenge it. But these are exceptions, not refutations. Kin selection doesn’t claim to explain all cooperation, just kin-based altruism.
4. **Pop Science Miscommunication**: Public discourse sometimes exaggerates or misrepresents academic debates, leading to claims that kin selection is "debunked" when it’s merely being refined.
### Conclusion
Family preference is strongly supported by kin selection, an evolved trait rooted in genetic survival. Ethnocentrism likely has evolutionary origins in group cohesion but is more culturally malleable. Claims that kin selection is debunked arise from academic debates over alternative models or misinterpretations, not from evidence disproving it. The theory remains a cornerstone of evolutionary biology, backed by decades of data (e.g., studies on altruism in primates, humans, and eusocial species).
No, you're confused. The author doesn't need to cite any sources. All the reasoning inside the essay stands on its own. You're just appealing to authority.
> This doesn't inherently means they're wring, but a lot of what they say is incorrect. It goes against human history.
I'm convinced that you didn't even try to read and understand the arguments in the article that I linked. You just saw that it talked about something that you're vehemently opposed to, and you had a knee-jerk reaction to uncritically defend your sacred dogmas.
> There are lots of papers on different forms of kin selection out there
Yeah, I've seen plenty of papers about kin selection. They're all bullshit, dude. The article debunking kin selection theory explains why.
I've got plenty more articles for you to read that are way better written than the sloppy AI-generated bullshit that you're rudely spamming me with.
Bottom Line: Kin altruism does not exist. Genetic tribalism does not exist. (Long-Term Sustainable) Altruism does not exist. They're all delusions.
I'm going to mute you since you're a spammer. AI-generated text is not a substitute for thinking, especially when it's filled with fallacies that have already been addressed by the articles above.
What's also funny is your own knee jerk reaction. I had said it would take more than one comment to get everything in, but I just noticed you only responded to my first one after I already posted 3 (substack's length allowance got in my way). Take a look at more of it.
If I wanted to, I could query an LLM to generate more text to refute all the bullshit that you copied and pasted into your comments.
But that would just be a waste of time. It obviously wouldn't be as well-written or as well-thought-out as the articles that my friend and I have already written. Nevertheless, the point stands that nobody is obligated to refute AI-generated text line-by-line.
If you want anybody to take you seriously, then you have to do your own independent thinking and write your own conclusions. But you're probably not intelligent enough to do that.
Dude, I don't need respond to your retarded AI-generated slop line-by-line. I already addressed it all in the articles that I linked and my FAQs page. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race
I already explained why kin selection theory is fallacious once, and I don't need to do it again. If you're not going to read the articles or my FAQs, then fuck off.
It's not riddled with fallacies. It adequately debunks the reasoning. All you're doing is linking blog posts that oppose all the existing scientific literature on the topic along many different lines of reasoning.
All you're doing is spamming retarded, verbose AI-generated text. You're not trying to understand the actual text. You didn't even read the articles that I linked.
You're not trying to understand my beliefs. How could you say that my beliefs are wrong, when you didn't read the essays to understand what they are? You just want to preach to the choir. That's why I muted you.
> That oppose all the existing scientific literature on the topic along many different lines of reasoning.
Again, you're appealing to authority. It's almost as if you're incapable of thinking for yourself.
> It adequately debunks the reasoning.
The AI-generated slop doesn't debunk shit, you fucking retard.
Society is not based on altruism at any level: global, racial, national, or even tribal. It is based on cooperation between selfish individuals. A society can act in the world as a unit because it has an internal power structure. That structure also gives it internal coherence. A society is a kind of object and a kind of subject. A race is neither.
And that is why you don’t see racial solidarity (v1). You didn’t see it in the colonization of the Americas, when European societies fought each other alongside native allies. You didn’t see it in the American Civil War. You didn’t see it in WWI. You didn’t see it in WWII. You don’t see it today in the Congo. You don’t see it in Detroit. It doesn’t exist. It never has. It never will. – Blithering Genius, “Killing the Unicorns”
Europeans fought Europeans often on the basis of ethnicity. There is a ton of research validating ethnocentrism and how ethnic fractionalization reduces social trust, as well as many other things that would be predicted by kin selection.
Also no one says race/ethnicity is the only factor in conflict. That would be retarded. Families tend to work together and favor their own, ethnicities tend to work together and favor their own, etc..
Family arguments don't disprove kin selection any more than a few tall women disprove men being taller than women. These patterns are just facts of reality in humans as well as many other species.
Dismissing something because it's AI is a genetic fallacy. What I did is not one, because I responded adequately while your only retorts were appealing to how I used AI and naming a few times where people didn't cooperate within-race.
The paper "Kin Selection Theory is Wrong" by Blithering Genius (2019) argues that kin selection and Hamilton's rule are flawed, claiming they lack empirical support and explanatory power. Below, I address its key arguments, evaluating their validity against established evolutionary biology and providing a defense of kin selection where appropriate. My response is structured to cover the paper’s main points, assess its reasoning, and highlight counterevidence.
---
### 1. Lack of Evidence for Kin Altruism in Nature
**Paper’s Claim**: The paper asserts there is little evidence of genetic altruism in nature, citing that organisms don’t act altruistically based on genetic similarity. It highlights sibling rivalry, parental bias toward children over reciprocal child-to-parent altruism, and limited examples like social insects or alarm-calling squirrels as insufficient.
**Response**:
- **Empirical Evidence for Kin Altruism**: Contrary to the paper’s claim, kin altruism is well-documented across species. Examples include:
- **Social insects**: Eusocial species like bees, ants, and termites exhibit extreme altruism (e.g., sterile workers sacrificing for the queen’s reproduction), explained by high genetic relatedness due to haplodiploidy (r=0.75 for sisters in some species). Studies (e.g., Hamilton, 1964; Wilson, 1971) show this aligns with kin selection.
- **Vertebrates**: Ground squirrels’ alarm calls (Sherman, 1977) increase predation risk for the caller but benefit nearby kin, with call frequency correlating to relatedness. Similar behaviors occur in meerkats (Clutton-Brock, 2002) and primates (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1990).
- **Humans**: Nepotism and parental investment are universal, with cross-cultural studies (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1988) showing preferential resource allocation to genetic kin.
- **Sibling Rivalry vs. Altruism**: The paper overstates sibling rivalry as evidence against kin selection. Kin selection predicts altruism when benefits to kin outweigh costs (rB > C), not universal cooperation. Sibling rivalry often arises when resources are scarce, but cooperation occurs when fitness benefits align (e.g., cooperative breeding in birds like scrub jays, where siblings help raise kin; Woolfenden & Fitzpatrick, 1984).
- **Parental Bias**: The paper’s observation that parents are more altruistic toward children than vice versa is consistent with kin selection. Parents invest heavily because their reproductive fitness depends on offspring survival. Children, however, prioritize their own reproduction over parental care, as their fitness is less tied to parents’ survival post-reproduction. This asymmetry supports, not refutes, kin selection (Trivers, 1974).
- **Cherry-Picking Critique**: The paper accuses kin selection proponents of cherry-picking data but itself selectively emphasizes rivalry over cooperation. A balanced view acknowledges both, as kin selection predicts context-dependent behavior based on costs, benefits, and relatedness.
**Conclusion**: The claim of insufficient evidence ignores extensive data from diverse taxa. Kin altruism is not universal but occurs predictably when Hamilton’s rule is satisfied, supported by decades of research.
---
### 2. Kin Selection Theory Has No Explanatory Power
**Paper’s Claim**: Kin selection predicts sibling altruism but fails to explain sibling rivalry, making data harder to explain. It accuses proponents of cherry-picking altruistic examples while ignoring competition, suggesting the theory is inductively fallacious.
**Response**:
- **Explanatory Power of Kin Selection**: Kin selection explains why altruism evolves when it enhances inclusive fitness, not that it always occurs. Hamilton’s rule (rB > C) predicts altruism only when the benefit to the recipient, weighted by relatedness, exceeds the cost to the actor. It accounts for:
- **Sibling rivalry**: When resources are limited, competition maximizes individual fitness, as the cost of altruism (C) outweighs benefits (rB). Studies on siblicide in birds (e.g., egrets; Mock, 1984) show this is adaptive when survival odds favor one offspring.
- **Context-dependent altruism**: Cooperation emerges when benefits are high, as in cooperative breeding (e.g., pied kingfishers; Reyer, 1984) or food sharing in vampire bats (Wilkinson, 1984), often among kin.
- **Mischaracterization of the Theory**: The paper misrepresents kin selection as predicting universal sibling altruism. Instead, the theory is conditional, explaining both cooperation and competition based on fitness trade-offs. For example, in social spiders (Avilés, 1993), kin cooperate in colonies but compete when resources dwindle, consistent with kin selection.
- **Inductive Fallacy Critique**: The paper’s accusation of cherry-picking is overstated. Evolutionary biology rigorously tests kin selection across species and contexts, with meta-analyses (e.g., Griffin & West, 2003) confirming its predictive power. The paper’s focus on rivalry as “evidence against” ignores that kin selection predicts both outcomes, depending on ecological conditions.
- **Motivation Critique**: The paper’s claim that proponents are “motivated by something other than truth-seeking” is speculative and lacks evidence. Kin selection has been debated (e.g., Nowak et al., 2010), but critiques are addressed through data, not ideology (e.g., Bourke, 2011; West et al., 2011).
**Conclusion**: Kin selection has strong explanatory power, predicting when altruism or competition occurs based on fitness calculations. The paper’s critique misinterprets the theory’s scope and ignores its empirical support.
---
### 3. Reproduction is About Copying the Phenotype, Not Genes
**Paper’s Claim**: Reproduction is about copying the phenotype, not genes, and natural selection favors reproductive fitness over gene perpetuation. Parental altruism is reproductively selfish, while sibling altruism is rare and requires special explanations.
**Response**:
- **Genes vs. Phenotype**: The paper’s distinction between phenotype and gene replication is a false dichotomy. Natural selection acts on phenotypes, but these are shaped by genes, which are the units of inheritance. Dawkins’ “selfish gene” (1976) clarifies that genes promoting adaptive phenotypes (e.g., parental care) increase in frequency, aligning with kin selection. The phenotype is the vehicle for gene survival.
- **Parental Altruism as Selfish**: The paper correctly notes that parental altruism is reproductively selfish, as it enhances the parent’s fitness via offspring survival. This is precisely what kin selection predicts: altruism evolves when it boosts inclusive fitness, including direct (offspring) and indirect (other kin) benefits.
- **Sibling Altruism**: The paper claims sibling altruism is rare and needs special explanations. However, kin selection provides that explanation: sibling altruism evolves when rB > C, as in social insects, cooperative breeders, or alarm-calling mammals. The paper’s “extended phenotype” argument (siblings act altruistically to boost parental fitness) is not mutually exclusive with kin selection—it’s a restatement of how kin selection operates, as siblings’ altruism indirectly perpetuates shared genes.
- **Misunderstanding Selection**: The paper’s assertion that reproduction has “no higher purpose” than creating new organisms is a strawman. Kin selection doesn’t assign purpose but explains why certain behaviors (e.g., altruism toward kin) evolve due to genetic benefits.
**Conclusion**: The paper’s focus on phenotype replication doesn’t refute kin selection, which already accounts for phenotypic traits enhancing gene survival. Its view of sibling altruism aligns with kin selection when properly framed.
---
### 4. The “Siblicide Gene” Thought Experiment
**Paper’s Claim**: A hypothetical “siblicide gene” shows that sibling rivalry is adaptive for individuals but maladaptive for parents, explaining why sibling altruism evolves to boost parental fitness, not kin altruism per se.
**Response**:
- **Thought Experiment’s Validity**: The siblicide gene scenario illustrates trade-offs in sibling competition, which kin selection already explains. Siblicide occurs when the fitness gain to the surviving sibling outweighs the loss to the parent or other kin (Mock & Parker, 1997). This is consistent with Hamilton’s rule, where the cost to the victim (B) and relatedness (r) determine whether competition or cooperation prevails.
- **Sibling Altruism as Parental Fitness**: The paper’s claim that sibling altruism evolves to boost parental fitness is not a refutation of kin selection. Kin selection includes indirect fitness benefits, where helping kin (including siblings) increases the survival of shared genes, often benefiting the parent’s lineage. For example, in naked mole-rats (Reeve et al., 1990), non-breeding siblings support the colony, enhancing the queen’s (parent’s) reproductive success, a clear case of kin selection.
- **Empirical Support**: Studies on cooperative breeding (e.g., acorn woodpeckers; Koenig & Mumme, 1987) show siblings help raise kin when it boosts inclusive fitness, not just parental fitness. The paper’s framework doesn’t negate this but rephrases it in less precise terms.
**Conclusion**: The siblicide thought experiment supports kin selection by highlighting fitness trade-offs. The paper’s explanation of sibling altruism as parental fitness is a subset of kin selection’s broader framework.
Nigel Farage has to be extremely careful about what he says. Note the quite extreme statements he feels he has to make to distance himself from Tommy Robinson.
If you consider what has happened and is happening to parties and politicians to the right of the traditional conservative party in e.g. France, Germany and Rumania, you can't fault the strategy.
Peter Hitchens is a psycho. Niall Ferguson is a pompous ignoramus on HBD. Easy pickings. You commit the naturalistic fallacy: in-group preference is good because it's an evolutionary adaptation. You also casually state that one "should" advocate for his race/ethnic group, as if we all know and agree that's a good thing. Then you make an analogical error comparing nuclear families with racial groups, ignoring the massive quantitative differences and their consequences. Race isn't a social construct but it's also not a coherent political group.
It’s very odd because race is otherwise referred to on a broad regional basis. We don’t refer to yellow people or to brown people so where and so they disappear in this taxonomy.
Overall, it seems the reason behind minimizing genetic behavioral differences in populations is an emotional, egotistical, somewhat insistently pretentious need to have opinion override reality. A denial of what stares us in the face. Facts and life's realities often bite, and are not mandated to be comfortable to someone's preference. A cold, clear eye should be scoring this situation, despite politics, education and ego.
"The scholarship on ethnicity and diversity has been around for decades in a range of disciplines—economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, history. If Hitchens and other race-denying conservatives were unable to keep up with this important research, why did not their advisers keep them informed? The ignorance on this issue could not have been maintained without some major distortion or breakdown of communication within the conservative movement. That is yet to be explained."
I can take a crack at it: these are elite folks who move in elite circles. When they have half an opportunity to proclaim a universalist or social justice-tinged or idealistic canard, they glory in the opportunity. Even the most rigorous iconoclast still cares about status. Making these kinds of socially-approved noises makes them feel and (they believe) look good, and so they do it whenever the opportunity arises. They reserve rigor for subjects closer to their hearts. I suspect we all do this kind of thing, to some extent.
Great, observant article, but the narrative is always controlled by those in control.
"The ongoing mass immigration of non-Western people into Western countries could only be happening with the consent of leading conservatives."
And, indeed, that is the case. This applies to the UK, Western Europe, and the United States. The fallacy here is that there is a difference between conservatives and liberals, Democrats, and Republicans on issues of substance, to the Deep State, which controls both. Those in control are happy to allow and promote narratives of dissent between races, parties, or any coalitions of dissension. This obfuscates the fact that there is one controlling entity.
"The issue is whether the large numbers of newcomers can be integrated while keeping the country British. This sounds confused, but it does follow an iron logic. If we accept for argument’s sake that Hitchens is correct—that race is irrelevant to national identity—then it might be possible to retain that identity while racially transforming the population."
But Hitchens is wrong; there is a strong relationship between race and culture. One only has to compare the black civilizations and the white civilizations to understand that.
Hitchens seems to accept the link between culture and race when he implies that retaining British culture where white natives are a minority will be “extremely difficult” (esp given the British state) but then he maintains that the only moral thing to do is try . I agree that it would be extremely difficult, although I’d go a little bit further to likely impossible and I don’t see any moral imperative at all to try and indeed if culture follows race at a group level it is likely immoral to expect these groups to become British as Hitchens conceives it.
"The ongoing mass immigration of non-Western people into Western countries could only be happening with the consent of leading conservatives. After all, conservative parties enjoy frequent, sometimes lengthy, periods of government. Why have they not used these opportunities to reverse radical immigration policies?"
An excellent question. Perhaps 'conservatives' in many countries are still part of an institutional brahmin class, whose values and assumptions are even more important than satisfying voters, or even more important than political survival (look at the CDU in Germany). In any case, it doesn't seem to be a question that these people are willing to answer honestly. What does that tell you?
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-low-trust-society
"An excellent question. Perhaps 'conservatives' in many countries are still part of an institutional brahmin class, whose values and assumptions are even more important than satisfying voters, or even more important than political survival (look at the CDU in Germany). In any case, it doesn't seem to be a question that these people are willing to answer honestly. What does that tell you?"
Good point. It tells me that all groups have a part in the continuation of those in control. See my reply to this article.
There are conservatives and there are "conservatives". Consider the majority of the UK Conservative Party 2010-24 as examples of the latter.
I remember debating someone a couple of times about ethnic/racial diversity, and he kept bringing up culture. I engaged a bit, but I kept trying to point out that it was a red herring. No one says culture doesn't matter, but race is clearly important as well.
Even when people from an unfavored ethnic group in a country convert to the dominant religion or ideology, they aren't treated the same. They also don't behave the same in other measurable ways, such as innovation, income, test scores, and crime rates. In fact I don't know of any country where people of different races act the same when they convert to some "cultural" metric used by conservatives (usually religion). If it exists, it's the exception rather than the rule.
I also mentioned to him that culture and race intersect. Oftentimes when a large portion of a new ethnicity converts to a tradition, they put their own spin on it (compare European and Latino Catholics). This can contribute to cultural innovation in a sense, but it shows conversion isn't some complete thing. Expecting it to be is silly.
You should try sending them this. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#cultural-hypothesis
Btw, that was all written by hand, but you should see the credits for the parts that weren't written by myself: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#credits
AI-generated text still can't compare to the greatest and most original human writing. And if there ever comes an AI that can surpass the quality of the best human writing, it will only be because it used said writing as training data.
I agree with most of what's said in these actually. Kin selection is still real though. Its testable predictions, like the winning out of ethnocentrism, tribalism, infant preference for those of their ethnic/family group, nepotism, etc. all exist.
Lol, I also see the Zero guy blocked me so I can't respond anymore. He refused to respond to any substance of what I said or refute any of it. He kept misusing a fallacy call-outs when his reason was fallacious.
Appeal to authority isn't when you refer a confused blogger whose arguments you debunked to look into real, scholarly research. It's when you only appeal to the authority of scholar as your argument, without presenting any real arguments.... Which is ironically like the genetic fallacy he was committing with the AI thing.
I always think that anyone who founds his/her premise on an appeal to authority is basically taking a leap of faith.
I don't mean that facetiously. It literally is a leap of faith.
Yeah, which is why I didn't, but he did. He dismissed a lot of the arguments I presented because he, as a human, must be a better source than an AI. He didn't deal with any of the substance. Then when I told him, along with more arguments, to look into the real research on the matter, he had a hissy fit and blocked me.
There is a point to scholarly research. Obviously scholars can get things wrong, but they usually have a lot more context when it comes to research findings. It's like if someone comes along and says they debunked gravity and use a misinterpretation of the necessary equations.
You might use an AI like I did to give an overview of the many areas they went wrong and what they're ignoring, and along with that tell them to look into what real physics research says and add your own arguments. That's not appeal to authority; it's calling out someone for being both wrong and unread on the subject. Am I supposed to instead tell them to look at the unsourced blogs of other gravity deniers?
That's not to say modern physics doesn't have its own problems. However, of course to determine what's true it's helpful to rely on scholarly research when possible, and from the more validated sciences as much as you can. You use the best replicated research and look for what the holes might be in interpretation.
He didn't do any of that. He dismissed all the arguments against his paper as slop.
That said, I think culture can be a useful tool to introduce discussions to the public that can improve race relations. However we can't use qualitative or vague descriptors many conservatives use, like religion. We have to use a multifaceted and quantitstive understandimg which covers all relevant metrics, which of course race relates to.
Useful policies, like tough on crime ones, which can help towards equality, do act on culture... Including on a biological level. Not bringing up the second part may be politically savvy, if necessary.
Say hereditarianism is somehow only picking up spurious correlations genetically (extremely unlikely at this point). I wonder if it even matters except when it comes to genetic technologies. If, when you include every relevant cultural variable, culture runs deep enough to act like genes... Does it even matter policy-wise? It would have the same effects when it comes to immigration and crime policy.
I don't know. I hope that made sense. Maybe how I'm using culture varies, but it does when race communists use the term too. It's an elusive and vague term, annoyingly divorced in common parlance from sociobiology in a way that makes it difficult to walk the right political lines and solve problems.
Briefly, I've always viewed culture as being spawned within a fairly tight racial/ethnic group, and after it has "solidified" parts of it can be imported or cloned by other groups.
Simply, culture is a product of personal interactions within a society. The first such cultures arose when such societies were isolated by geography, and the earliest phases were rules of conduct and shared values among units as small as families, gradually extending to clans, tribes, etc.
Because of this relative isolation, the individuals were mostly of a uniform race, so to a very large degree the practitioners of a culture were racially related.
Many of the cultural tendencies or traits may simply be based on responses to situations that any human, regardless of race, would evolve to. But there are also aspects of these cultures that are informed by hereditarian components that are tightly bound to one's race, or sub-race. The first thing I can think of would be the much higher percentage of East Asians--especially Han Chinese--who possess the ability to distinguish minute tonal differences--"pitch perfect". This could well inform the development of language and how information is communicated,which might leak over into greater cultural appreciation of all things auditory.
Not a good example, more of a speculation, but...
I agree with you about a lot of this, that people evolved both socially and biologically in different areas based on their environments. It also shows none of this is static, especially in the modern wworld as our environments as constantly changing. We just need to make sensible decisions as a society about guiding things in the right direction with incentive structures and institutions which will guide us all towards a netter future.
Yes.
There is a sort of slow response to the rapid cosmopolitanization (is there such a word?) of the globe. People need to remember that most of humanity--myself included--still retains the reflexive xenophobia that informed the survival of those early isolated groups.
I think that humanity is evolving away from this "in the blood" xenophobia, but it is a work in progress and like any Gaus distribution there are individuals within each group (race) who still retain a great deal of instinctive rejection of out-of-group strangers. I also think that each race has a different degree of evolved tolerance to cosmopolitan intermixing.
But all of this is just my own speculation.
I am not so certain you are correct in your analysis here. Let me explain: more ethnocentric groups still have higher birth rates. Interracial relationships are increasing, but they have lower birth rates than average. There does appear to still be an advantage to kin selection in modern times. Groups who are non-ethnocentric are pretty limited, and they tend to have low birth rates.
Even once you do have far more people who are mixed race, they may form ethnicities which is still on average ethnocentric. An example of this is Latinos, who are mainly Euro-Amerindian. They have developed a new ethnic group which has its own interests and ethnic pride. On average in studies they are significantly more ethnocentric than European Americans, though I think this is primarily a result of heavy stigmatization of European ethnocentrism.
I do think America will become more mixed over time, but I'm not certain this will decrease ethnic tensions as much as was once thought. I read an essay on the topic by DeepLeftAnalysis on here. Forgive me for not remembering, but I think it was called something like interracial marriage will increase racism. If you look up that phrase, you'll probably find it.
I'm not sure how it'll all play out honestly. I don't think anyone really knows.
Well reasoned.
Much of what I do is to simply observe and evaluate using my own life experiences, plus what I consider well-founded hypotheses of others, especially if they are supported by objective and demonstrable fact.
And at this point I create a worldview in which I need to operate, and my own values are to obtain material security and a peaceful home life.
I guess I'm just looking for a good way to get thru life, and it's worked increasing well as I've aged out to 75+.
This is important: I do not think my worldview should be used as policy. I'll modify my worldview (for optimum results, natch) but it probably this would not be satisfactory for all.
Really interesting. I tend to be taken in by the arguments of conservative leaders, despite something about their 'race doesn't matter' views sounding off key to me. After reading this I can now rationalise why these sound wrong.
I suppose you could argue the rights and wrongs of 'how humans should be' versus 'how they are' till the cows come home. Adherents to how humans should think and feel appear to want to turn us all - or at least all whites - into self-satisfied Jesus-like figures. On the other hand the 'leopard can't change its spots' faction appear quite at home with our natural low-level nepotism and mild bigotry. I'm on the latter's side since for me preferring your own kind seems preferable to a bloodless racial communism that was probably dreamed up by some sanctimonious twit who thought it was a good look.
White Jesus like figures because this world view never expects other racial groups to surrender their in group preferences
This is excellent. Anti-white race communism is the condition for access to elite media, especially among conservatives. This is precisely to ensure they do not represent any coherent opposition to the managerial consensus. So, one must perform anti-whiteness to have a platform: either verbally, like the above examples, or through their choice of partner (if not both). That sounds ugly, but it's observable reality.
My impression as an outsider to these politics is that most conservatives are of the crude, economically reductionist sort, that believes in homo-economicus, and humans as fungible economic units.
Then there are paleo-conservatives who hold on to no institutions, no political parties, and no media. These seem the only ones who could be hereditarian.
Which are the ones deserving of the label "conservative" here? I don't know.
Thanks for this. Here's my 2c. It mentions Frank Salter.
https://thejayreport.com/2020/05/17/an-article-of-mine-from-2013/
The viewpoint shared by the three gentlemen is why Britain is falling apart. Sub-Saharan Africans, Muslims, Pakistanis, and others don't share the core beliefs of Britain. This is proven in the way they enslave Britain's young women and groom them for sex slavery.
Blacks are more prone to violence, as are Middle Easterners.
Conservatives are indeed confused about race, and this essay did a great job explaining why.
However, the author is also confused about race, albeit in a different way. Salter believes in kin altruism, and he wrote a book, Genetic Interests, that insists that humans should try to maximize their "genetic interests" among their races. Unfortunately, his book is misguided since it's based on false concepts and premises. https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/kin-selection-theory-is-wrong.pdf
Part 3
### 5. Debunking Hamilton’s Rule
**Paper’s Claim**: Hamilton’s rule (rB > C) is flawed because:
- **Relatedness (r)** doesn’t guarantee the beneficiary shares the altruistic trait, as selection reduces altruist frequency.
- **Free rider problem**: Selfish individuals benefit from altruism without costs, outcompeting altruists.
- **Green beard mechanism**: This is implausible due to complex genetics and counter-strategies.
- **Wording issue**: The rule’s phrasing about gene frequency is incorrect, as selection maintains equilibrium.
**Response**:
- **Relatedness and Selection**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The paper’s duckling thought experiment claims that selection reduces the frequency of altruistic traits, making r an unreliable predictor of trait sharing.
- **Counterargument**: The paper misunderstands how Hamilton’s rule applies. The rule assesses the conditions under which an altruistic trait is favored by selection, not its long-term frequency. Relatedness (r) is the probability of sharing a gene identical by descent, which holds for initial conditions. If altruists die out due to high costs (C), this doesn’t invalidate the rule—it shows the trait isn’t adaptive in that context. Models (e.g., Grafen, 1985) account for selection dynamics, showing altruism can stabilize when rB > C holds consistently.
- **Empirical Support**: Studies on kin recognition (e.g., Belding’s ground squirrels; Holmes & Sherman, 1982) show animals preferentially aid kin, increasing the likelihood of helping those with shared traits, supporting r’s role.
- **Free Rider Problem**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: Selfish individuals exploit altruists, reducing altruism’s frequency.
- **Counterargument**: The free rider problem is a known challenge in evolutionary biology but doesn’t debunk kin selection. Altruism can evolve when directed toward kin, as relatedness ensures benefits accrue to those likely to carry the altruistic gene. Mechanisms like kin recognition, spatial structure (e.g., viscous populations; Queller, 1992), or punishment of defectors (e.g., in social insects; Ratnieks, 1988) mitigate free riding. Mathematical models (e.g., Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981) show altruism persists in kin-based systems despite selfish variants.
- **Empirical Support**: In cooperative breeders like meerkats, kin-directed helping persists because benefits outweigh costs, and non-kin are often excluded (Clutton-Brock, 2002).
- **Green Beard Mechanism**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The green beard hypothesis is implausible due to genetic complexity and counter-strategies (e.g., faking the signal).
- **Counterargument**: The green beard is a theoretical construct, not central to kin selection. Kin selection typically relies on relatedness through descent, not single-gene signals. While green beard scenarios are rare, they’ve been observed (e.g., fire ant social chromosomes; Wang et al., 2013), showing they’re not impossible. The paper’s dismissal ignores that kin selection doesn’t depend on this mechanism.
- **Empirical Support**: Most kin selection examples (e.g., social insects, alarm calls) rely on pedigree relatedness, not green beards, making this critique tangential.
- **Wording Issue**:
- **Paper’s Critique**: The rule’s Wikipedia phrasing (“genes increase in frequency”) is incorrect, as selection often maintains equilibrium.
- **Counterargument**: This is a semantic issue, not a substantive flaw. Hamilton’s rule defines conditions for a trait to be favored, not guaranteed to dominate. Selection can stabilize allele frequencies (e.g., in polymorphic populations), as models (e.g., Maynard Smith, 1964) show. The paper’s point is valid but doesn’t undermine the rule’s logic or application.
- **Empirical Support**: Hamilton’s rule accurately predicts altruism in diverse systems (e.g., haplodiploid insects, cooperative vertebrates), regardless of whether frequencies increase or equilibrate.
**Conclusion**: The paper’s critiques of Hamilton’s rule misinterpret its application or exaggerate minor issues. Relatedness remains a valid predictor of altruism’s spread, free riders are mitigated by kin-based mechanisms, green beards are peripheral, and wording issues don’t negate the rule’s predictive power. Decades of data (e.g., West et al., 2007) confirm its robustness.
---
### 6. Alternative Explanation: Extended Phenotype and Reproductive Fitness
**Paper’s Claim**: Altruism evolves to boost parental reproductive fitness, with children as part of the parent’s extended phenotype. This explains parental and sibling altruism better than kin selection, especially in social insects.
**Response**:
- **Extended Phenotype and Kin Selection**: The paper’s extended phenotype argument (Dawkins, 1982) is compatible with kin selection. Sibling altruism, like worker sterility in bees, benefits the parent’s fitness by increasing colony reproduction, but this is precisely how kin selection operates: indirect fitness gains through kin. The paper presents this as an alternative but fails to show how it contradicts Hamilton’s rule.
- **Social Insects**: The paper cites bees and ants as exceptions requiring special explanation but doesn’t provide one (referencing an unavailable “Bees are not Social”). Kin selection explains eusociality via high relatedness and inclusive fitness (Hamilton, 1964). For example, in honeybees, workers’ sterility maximizes the queen’s reproduction, as sisters share 75% of genes (r=0.75). Studies (e.g., Crozier & Pamilo, 1996) confirm this.
- **Reproductive Fitness**: The paper’s focus on reproductive fitness aligns with kin selection, which quantifies fitness as direct (offspring) plus indirect (kin) components. The distinction it draws is semantic, not substantive.
**Conclusion**: The extended phenotype framework complements, not replaces, kin selection. The paper’s alternative explanation lacks novelty and doesn’t undermine Hamilton’s rule.
---
### 7. Overall Assessment of the Paper
- **Strengths**:
- Raises valid points about sibling rivalry and the need to explain context-dependent altruism.
- Highlights the free rider problem, a recognized challenge in evolutionary theory.
- Encourages scrutiny of Hamilton’s rule, which has faced legitimate debate (e.g., Nowak et al., 2010).
- **Weaknesses**:
- **Misrepresentation of Kin Selection**: The paper mischaracterizes kin selection as predicting universal altruism, ignoring its conditional nature.
- **Selective Evidence**: It dismisses extensive data (e.g., social insects, alarm calls, cooperative breeding) while emphasizing rivalry, committing the cherry-picking it critiques.
- **Logical Flaws**: The duckling thought experiment and Hamilton’s rule critique misunderstand selection dynamics, assuming static trait frequencies.
- **Lack of Rigor**: The paper cites no primary sources, relies on hypothetical scenarios, and makes unsupported claims (e.g., proponents’ motives). The author’s pseudonym and lack of academic affiliation raise questions about credibility.
- **Failure to Engage with Counterarguments**: It ignores defenses of kin selection (e.g., West et al., 2011; Bourke, 2011) and mathematical models supporting Hamilton’s rule.
---
### Conclusion
The paper’s attempt to debunk kin selection and Hamilton’s rule is unconvincing. It misinterprets the theory, ignores substantial empirical evidence, and proposes an alternative (extended phenotype) that aligns with kin selection. Hamilton’s rule remains a cornerstone of evolutionary biology, supported by data from social insects, vertebrates, and humans. While debates about kin selection exist, they refine, not refute, the framework (e.g., Abbot et al., 2011). The paper’s critiques are either addressed by existing literature or based on flawed assumptions about selection.
If I wanted to, I could query an LLM to generate more text to refute all the bullshit that you copied and pasted into your comments.
But that would just be a waste of time. It obviously wouldn't be as well-written or as well-thought-out as the articles that my friend and I have already written. Nevertheless, the point stands that nobody is obligated to refute AI-generated text line-by-line.
If you want anybody to take you seriously, then you have to do your own independent thinking and write your own conclusions. But you're probably not intelligent enough to do that.
I have done my own independent thinking. I used a summary by AI because I don't have will nor time to link to you tons of (real, scholarly) research right now. I am responding on my phone, and I was giving you summaries of what already existed out there because it's clear you and your friend very unfamiliar with the subject matter.
> I have done my own independent thinking.
That's bullshit, and you know that it's bullshit, liar. Copying and pasting AI-generated text is not independent thinking. It's called plagiarizing.
> tons of (real, scholarly) research
Again, appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
> It's clear you and your friend very unfamiliar with the subject matter.
And again, it's clear that you didn't read (or refute) any of our arguments. Unlike you, we are familiar with all the literature out there. More importantly, we understand why it's all based on fallacious reasoning and false concepts.
Anyway, it's obvious what you're trying to do here. You're claiming that I have a burden to refute all your bullshit line-by-line, even though you didn't spend any time writing (much less thinking) any of it. You're being bad-faith, hence you're deliberately ignoring everything that I wrote in my FAQs. You literally didn't ready *any* of my arguments. You want to impose an asymmetrical effort against me in this argument, but your insistence is not supported by the rules of rational argumentation. Especially since you didn't spend *any* time writing or doing independent thinking about this topic.
Meanwhile, my friend and I have already written multiple essays (he also wrote a book: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2023/11/debunking-selfish-gene.html) explaining why mainstream the literature is wrong. I could refute all your text line-by-line and point you directly to the relevant arguments in the essays which explain why the current literature and mainstream reasoning is completely false. But that would be a waste of time. I already wrote many, many well-written paragraphs which accomplish this. More importantly, I actually thought about this topic, unlike you.
If you really want to get to the bottom of this debate, then you have to read the book (https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2023/11/debunking-selfish-gene.html) and write a rebuttal against it. Once again, you have not read anything inside the book, so you cannot claim to have "debunked" it, until you actually read and understand it.
I'm not going to respond to you any further. Everybody else can read these comment threads and decide for themselves who's being more rational. It's obvious. Anybody who is being good faith can compare your AI-generated text against the arguments written in the essay links below and decide for themselves which arguments are more rational.
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/kin-selection-theory-is-wrong.pdf
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/evolutionary-theory-and-genetic-tribalism.pdf
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/altruism-and-selfishness.pdf
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/family-and-society.pdf
https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2014/04/bees-are-not-social.html
https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#collectivism
*are very
The author of this is confused and doesn't cite any specific sources. This doesn't inherently means they're wring, but a lot of what they say is incorrect. It goes against human history, the studies we have on ethnocentrism and familial biases, and many other lines of reasoning. There are lots of papers on different forms of kin selection out there, but I'll give you some summaries of the issues with what you and the author are saying by AI first. It may be take more than one comment.
Family preference and ethnocentrism likely have roots in human evolution, but the extent and mechanisms are debated. Here's a breakdown:
### Family Preference
- **Evolutionary Basis**: Family preference aligns with **kin selection**, a concept from evolutionary biology where organisms prioritize the survival of close relatives to pass on shared genes. This is supported by **Hamilton's rule** (rB > C), where the genetic relatedness (r), benefit to the recipient (B), and cost to the actor (C) explain altruistic behavior toward kin. For example, parents sacrificing for children or siblings cooperating increases inclusive fitness. Evidence includes widespread nepotism across cultures and species (e.g., ground squirrels risking predation to warn kin).
- **Why It’s Evolved**: Genes promoting family preference enhance the survival of shared genetic material. This is why parental care and sibling cooperation are near-universal in humans and many animals.
- **Counterarguments**: Some argue family preference is partly cultural, shaped by socialization rather than purely genetic. For instance, adoption or communal child-rearing in some societies shows flexibility in "kin-like" behavior. However, these don’t negate the evolutionary bias toward genetic kin, as cultural practices often build on innate tendencies.
### Ethnocentrism
- **Evolutionary Basis**: Ethnocentrism, favoring one’s own group (often ethnic or cultural) over others, may stem from **group selection** or **reciprocal altruism** within groups. In ancestral environments, cooperating with familiar, culturally similar individuals (who were often kin or long-term allies) improved survival against rival groups. This is supported by studies showing in-group bias in trust and resource sharing (e.g., Tajfel’s minimal group experiments). Xenophobia or out-group hostility could have protected resources or reduced disease transmission from outsiders.
- **Why It’s Evolved**: Groups with strong internal cohesion likely outcompeted less cooperative groups, reinforcing traits like in-group loyalty. Genetic markers (e.g., physical resemblance) or cultural signals (e.g., language, rituals) helped identify "safe" group members.
- **Counterarguments**: Critics argue ethnocentrism is more cultural than genetic, pointing to modern societies where education and integration reduce prejudice. Others note that group boundaries in ancestral times were fluid, not strictly ethnic, suggesting ethnocentrism is a byproduct of general in-group favoritism rather than a specific adaptation.
### Why Some Say Kin Selection Has Been Debunked
The claim that kin selection is "debunked" is misleading but stems from specific critiques:
1. **Group Selection Debate**: Some evolutionary biologists, like E.O. Wilson, argued group selection (favoring group survival over individual or kin) better explains altruism, downplaying kin selection. This sparked debate, but kin selection remains widely accepted for explaining family-based altruism. Critics of this critique (e.g., Dawkins, West) argue group selection often reduces to kin selection mathematically, as group members are often related.
2. **Misinterpretations of Inclusive Fitness**: Studies challenging kin selection, like Nowak et al. (2010), questioned whether inclusive fitness models are necessary to explain altruism, proposing alternative mechanisms like multilevel selection. However, these critiques don’t invalidate kin selection’s predictive power; they suggest complementary frameworks. Most biologists (e.g., Bourke, 2011) defend kin selection as robust.
3. **Overemphasis on Exceptions**: Cases where kin selection seems less relevant (e.g., cooperation in unrelated groups or eusocial insects with complex dynamics) are used to challenge it. But these are exceptions, not refutations. Kin selection doesn’t claim to explain all cooperation, just kin-based altruism.
4. **Pop Science Miscommunication**: Public discourse sometimes exaggerates or misrepresents academic debates, leading to claims that kin selection is "debunked" when it’s merely being refined.
### Conclusion
Family preference is strongly supported by kin selection, an evolved trait rooted in genetic survival. Ethnocentrism likely has evolutionary origins in group cohesion but is more culturally malleable. Claims that kin selection is debunked arise from academic debates over alternative models or misinterpretations, not from evidence disproving it. The theory remains a cornerstone of evolutionary biology, backed by decades of data (e.g., studies on altruism in primates, humans, and eusocial species).
No, you're confused. The author doesn't need to cite any sources. All the reasoning inside the essay stands on its own. You're just appealing to authority.
> This doesn't inherently means they're wring, but a lot of what they say is incorrect. It goes against human history.
Then you're very ignorant about human history. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#shared-interests
I'm convinced that you didn't even try to read and understand the arguments in the article that I linked. You just saw that it talked about something that you're vehemently opposed to, and you had a knee-jerk reaction to uncritically defend your sacred dogmas.
> There are lots of papers on different forms of kin selection out there
Yeah, I've seen plenty of papers about kin selection. They're all bullshit, dude. The article debunking kin selection theory explains why.
I've got plenty more articles for you to read that are way better written than the sloppy AI-generated bullshit that you're rudely spamming me with.
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/evolutionary-theory-and-genetic-tribalism.pdf
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/family-and-society.pdf
https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/altruism-and-selfishness.pdf
https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2014/04/bees-are-not-social.html
https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#collectivism
https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2023/11/debunking-selfish-gene.html
Bottom Line: Kin altruism does not exist. Genetic tribalism does not exist. (Long-Term Sustainable) Altruism does not exist. They're all delusions.
I'm going to mute you since you're a spammer. AI-generated text is not a substitute for thinking, especially when it's filled with fallacies that have already been addressed by the articles above.
What's also funny is your own knee jerk reaction. I had said it would take more than one comment to get everything in, but I just noticed you only responded to my first one after I already posted 3 (substack's length allowance got in my way). Take a look at more of it.
If I wanted to, I could query an LLM to generate more text to refute all the bullshit that you copied and pasted into your comments.
But that would just be a waste of time. It obviously wouldn't be as well-written or as well-thought-out as the articles that my friend and I have already written. Nevertheless, the point stands that nobody is obligated to refute AI-generated text line-by-line.
If you want anybody to take you seriously, then you have to do your own independent thinking and write your own conclusions. But you're probably not intelligent enough to do that.
You're being super rude for no reason and refusing to engage with the arguments presented.
Most of your writing is fine but you're wrong on kin selection. The "AI slop" explained why.
Dude, I don't need respond to your retarded AI-generated slop line-by-line. I already addressed it all in the articles that I linked and my FAQs page. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race
I already explained why kin selection theory is fallacious once, and I don't need to do it again. If you're not going to read the articles or my FAQs, then fuck off.
It's not riddled with fallacies. It adequately debunks the reasoning. All you're doing is linking blog posts that oppose all the existing scientific literature on the topic along many different lines of reasoning.
> All you're doing is linking blog posts
All you're doing is spamming retarded, verbose AI-generated text. You're not trying to understand the actual text. You didn't even read the articles that I linked.
You're not trying to understand my beliefs. How could you say that my beliefs are wrong, when you didn't read the essays to understand what they are? You just want to preach to the choir. That's why I muted you.
> That oppose all the existing scientific literature on the topic along many different lines of reasoning.
Again, you're appealing to authority. It's almost as if you're incapable of thinking for yourself.
> It adequately debunks the reasoning.
The AI-generated slop doesn't debunk shit, you fucking retard.
Society is not based on altruism at any level: global, racial, national, or even tribal. It is based on cooperation between selfish individuals. A society can act in the world as a unit because it has an internal power structure. That structure also gives it internal coherence. A society is a kind of object and a kind of subject. A race is neither.
And that is why you don’t see racial solidarity (v1). You didn’t see it in the colonization of the Americas, when European societies fought each other alongside native allies. You didn’t see it in the American Civil War. You didn’t see it in WWI. You didn’t see it in WWII. You don’t see it today in the Congo. You don’t see it in Detroit. It doesn’t exist. It never has. It never will. – Blithering Genius, “Killing the Unicorns”
Europeans fought Europeans often on the basis of ethnicity. There is a ton of research validating ethnocentrism and how ethnic fractionalization reduces social trust, as well as many other things that would be predicted by kin selection.
Also no one says race/ethnicity is the only factor in conflict. That would be retarded. Families tend to work together and favor their own, ethnicities tend to work together and favor their own, etc..
Family arguments don't disprove kin selection any more than a few tall women disprove men being taller than women. These patterns are just facts of reality in humans as well as many other species.
Dismissing something because it's AI is a genetic fallacy. What I did is not one, because I responded adequately while your only retorts were appealing to how I used AI and naming a few times where people didn't cooperate within-race.
Part 2
The paper "Kin Selection Theory is Wrong" by Blithering Genius (2019) argues that kin selection and Hamilton's rule are flawed, claiming they lack empirical support and explanatory power. Below, I address its key arguments, evaluating their validity against established evolutionary biology and providing a defense of kin selection where appropriate. My response is structured to cover the paper’s main points, assess its reasoning, and highlight counterevidence.
---
### 1. Lack of Evidence for Kin Altruism in Nature
**Paper’s Claim**: The paper asserts there is little evidence of genetic altruism in nature, citing that organisms don’t act altruistically based on genetic similarity. It highlights sibling rivalry, parental bias toward children over reciprocal child-to-parent altruism, and limited examples like social insects or alarm-calling squirrels as insufficient.
**Response**:
- **Empirical Evidence for Kin Altruism**: Contrary to the paper’s claim, kin altruism is well-documented across species. Examples include:
- **Social insects**: Eusocial species like bees, ants, and termites exhibit extreme altruism (e.g., sterile workers sacrificing for the queen’s reproduction), explained by high genetic relatedness due to haplodiploidy (r=0.75 for sisters in some species). Studies (e.g., Hamilton, 1964; Wilson, 1971) show this aligns with kin selection.
- **Vertebrates**: Ground squirrels’ alarm calls (Sherman, 1977) increase predation risk for the caller but benefit nearby kin, with call frequency correlating to relatedness. Similar behaviors occur in meerkats (Clutton-Brock, 2002) and primates (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1990).
- **Humans**: Nepotism and parental investment are universal, with cross-cultural studies (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1988) showing preferential resource allocation to genetic kin.
- **Sibling Rivalry vs. Altruism**: The paper overstates sibling rivalry as evidence against kin selection. Kin selection predicts altruism when benefits to kin outweigh costs (rB > C), not universal cooperation. Sibling rivalry often arises when resources are scarce, but cooperation occurs when fitness benefits align (e.g., cooperative breeding in birds like scrub jays, where siblings help raise kin; Woolfenden & Fitzpatrick, 1984).
- **Parental Bias**: The paper’s observation that parents are more altruistic toward children than vice versa is consistent with kin selection. Parents invest heavily because their reproductive fitness depends on offspring survival. Children, however, prioritize their own reproduction over parental care, as their fitness is less tied to parents’ survival post-reproduction. This asymmetry supports, not refutes, kin selection (Trivers, 1974).
- **Cherry-Picking Critique**: The paper accuses kin selection proponents of cherry-picking data but itself selectively emphasizes rivalry over cooperation. A balanced view acknowledges both, as kin selection predicts context-dependent behavior based on costs, benefits, and relatedness.
**Conclusion**: The claim of insufficient evidence ignores extensive data from diverse taxa. Kin altruism is not universal but occurs predictably when Hamilton’s rule is satisfied, supported by decades of research.
---
### 2. Kin Selection Theory Has No Explanatory Power
**Paper’s Claim**: Kin selection predicts sibling altruism but fails to explain sibling rivalry, making data harder to explain. It accuses proponents of cherry-picking altruistic examples while ignoring competition, suggesting the theory is inductively fallacious.
**Response**:
- **Explanatory Power of Kin Selection**: Kin selection explains why altruism evolves when it enhances inclusive fitness, not that it always occurs. Hamilton’s rule (rB > C) predicts altruism only when the benefit to the recipient, weighted by relatedness, exceeds the cost to the actor. It accounts for:
- **Sibling rivalry**: When resources are limited, competition maximizes individual fitness, as the cost of altruism (C) outweighs benefits (rB). Studies on siblicide in birds (e.g., egrets; Mock, 1984) show this is adaptive when survival odds favor one offspring.
- **Context-dependent altruism**: Cooperation emerges when benefits are high, as in cooperative breeding (e.g., pied kingfishers; Reyer, 1984) or food sharing in vampire bats (Wilkinson, 1984), often among kin.
- **Mischaracterization of the Theory**: The paper misrepresents kin selection as predicting universal sibling altruism. Instead, the theory is conditional, explaining both cooperation and competition based on fitness trade-offs. For example, in social spiders (Avilés, 1993), kin cooperate in colonies but compete when resources dwindle, consistent with kin selection.
- **Inductive Fallacy Critique**: The paper’s accusation of cherry-picking is overstated. Evolutionary biology rigorously tests kin selection across species and contexts, with meta-analyses (e.g., Griffin & West, 2003) confirming its predictive power. The paper’s focus on rivalry as “evidence against” ignores that kin selection predicts both outcomes, depending on ecological conditions.
- **Motivation Critique**: The paper’s claim that proponents are “motivated by something other than truth-seeking” is speculative and lacks evidence. Kin selection has been debated (e.g., Nowak et al., 2010), but critiques are addressed through data, not ideology (e.g., Bourke, 2011; West et al., 2011).
**Conclusion**: Kin selection has strong explanatory power, predicting when altruism or competition occurs based on fitness calculations. The paper’s critique misinterprets the theory’s scope and ignores its empirical support.
---
### 3. Reproduction is About Copying the Phenotype, Not Genes
**Paper’s Claim**: Reproduction is about copying the phenotype, not genes, and natural selection favors reproductive fitness over gene perpetuation. Parental altruism is reproductively selfish, while sibling altruism is rare and requires special explanations.
**Response**:
- **Genes vs. Phenotype**: The paper’s distinction between phenotype and gene replication is a false dichotomy. Natural selection acts on phenotypes, but these are shaped by genes, which are the units of inheritance. Dawkins’ “selfish gene” (1976) clarifies that genes promoting adaptive phenotypes (e.g., parental care) increase in frequency, aligning with kin selection. The phenotype is the vehicle for gene survival.
- **Parental Altruism as Selfish**: The paper correctly notes that parental altruism is reproductively selfish, as it enhances the parent’s fitness via offspring survival. This is precisely what kin selection predicts: altruism evolves when it boosts inclusive fitness, including direct (offspring) and indirect (other kin) benefits.
- **Sibling Altruism**: The paper claims sibling altruism is rare and needs special explanations. However, kin selection provides that explanation: sibling altruism evolves when rB > C, as in social insects, cooperative breeders, or alarm-calling mammals. The paper’s “extended phenotype” argument (siblings act altruistically to boost parental fitness) is not mutually exclusive with kin selection—it’s a restatement of how kin selection operates, as siblings’ altruism indirectly perpetuates shared genes.
- **Misunderstanding Selection**: The paper’s assertion that reproduction has “no higher purpose” than creating new organisms is a strawman. Kin selection doesn’t assign purpose but explains why certain behaviors (e.g., altruism toward kin) evolve due to genetic benefits.
**Conclusion**: The paper’s focus on phenotype replication doesn’t refute kin selection, which already accounts for phenotypic traits enhancing gene survival. Its view of sibling altruism aligns with kin selection when properly framed.
---
### 4. The “Siblicide Gene” Thought Experiment
**Paper’s Claim**: A hypothetical “siblicide gene” shows that sibling rivalry is adaptive for individuals but maladaptive for parents, explaining why sibling altruism evolves to boost parental fitness, not kin altruism per se.
**Response**:
- **Thought Experiment’s Validity**: The siblicide gene scenario illustrates trade-offs in sibling competition, which kin selection already explains. Siblicide occurs when the fitness gain to the surviving sibling outweighs the loss to the parent or other kin (Mock & Parker, 1997). This is consistent with Hamilton’s rule, where the cost to the victim (B) and relatedness (r) determine whether competition or cooperation prevails.
- **Sibling Altruism as Parental Fitness**: The paper’s claim that sibling altruism evolves to boost parental fitness is not a refutation of kin selection. Kin selection includes indirect fitness benefits, where helping kin (including siblings) increases the survival of shared genes, often benefiting the parent’s lineage. For example, in naked mole-rats (Reeve et al., 1990), non-breeding siblings support the colony, enhancing the queen’s (parent’s) reproductive success, a clear case of kin selection.
- **Empirical Support**: Studies on cooperative breeding (e.g., acorn woodpeckers; Koenig & Mumme, 1987) show siblings help raise kin when it boosts inclusive fitness, not just parental fitness. The paper’s framework doesn’t negate this but rephrases it in less precise terms.
**Conclusion**: The siblicide thought experiment supports kin selection by highlighting fitness trade-offs. The paper’s explanation of sibling altruism as parental fitness is a subset of kin selection’s broader framework.
Nigel Farage has to be extremely careful about what he says. Note the quite extreme statements he feels he has to make to distance himself from Tommy Robinson.
If you consider what has happened and is happening to parties and politicians to the right of the traditional conservative party in e.g. France, Germany and Rumania, you can't fault the strategy.
Peter Hitchens is a psycho. Niall Ferguson is a pompous ignoramus on HBD. Easy pickings. You commit the naturalistic fallacy: in-group preference is good because it's an evolutionary adaptation. You also casually state that one "should" advocate for his race/ethnic group, as if we all know and agree that's a good thing. Then you make an analogical error comparing nuclear families with racial groups, ignoring the massive quantitative differences and their consequences. Race isn't a social construct but it's also not a coherent political group.
But why do we use the term 'white' and 'black'?
It’s very odd because race is otherwise referred to on a broad regional basis. We don’t refer to yellow people or to brown people so where and so they disappear in this taxonomy.