Why would you say this essay "paints us as slaves to our genes?" I didn't read it that way at all. In fact there's so much content there to discuss that I think it's really unfair to make such an unrelated generalization about the whole thing.

There is much discussion about evolutionary traits, for sure, but just because it's there as an explanation doesn't mean it's "painting us as slaves" any more than is really the case. To some extent, you must admit that people are slaves to their biological disposition. We can't, for example, stop and start our own heart at will. Admitting that for the purposes of discussion is not "painting us as slaves."

Almost seems like another round of people looking to maintain the illusion that humans are separate from animals. What was the last one we had, tool use?

It's not a uniquely human ability.

That said, what is the cutoff for determining if a behavior is instinctual or not? There's a lot of variables in play. For example, I would imagine my dog's instinct is to just jump up and snatch the treat from my hand. Does she sit, shake, lay down, roll over, high-five, whatever else I tell her to do because she knows it will get her the treat and earn favor? Couldn't this also be explained as instinct?

That is, how exactly do we determine what is "overcoming" instinct in a dog, and what is merely more complex expression of what is also instinctual behavior? We could question this equally with humans as well, except we're absolutely confident that humans have the ability of introspection, even if it's not necessarily put to good use all the time.

Edit: Let me just state I wasn't trying to be argumentative in my original response above. My "I'm on the opposite side of that" was apparently poorly-worded. I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was trying to say something orthogonal to your comment. That is, I felt like my starting assumption was that human behavior could be heritable, while the context of your comment was that some felt that is even up for debate.

I'm sorry if I'm not making this very clear, I'm frankly taken aback by the amount of furor over my comment, which I meant not as a direct response or argument to yours, but as an aside.

It pisses me off when people don't concede that they were wrong and promise to do better next time. jordan0day, admit that your simplistic argument was flawed, and vow to re-examine your assumptions.

Damn but 99% of arguments need a moderator. Startup opportunity?

In this case, we have saturn exemplifying a pure animalistic instinct of rage. You being pissed off is not an argument that helps the conversation.

Humans are not pets of society because humans are a part of society. You're trying to personalize society, in a similar way that religious freaks try to personalize the universe.

In reality, society is better understood as an emergence of many tribes working together in an economic model. Let me dumb it down:

There is a tribe of programmers. They have their own rituals, their own ceremonies, even their own drugs that they like to take (yay Mountain Dew). They are very good at controlling computers.

Then there is a tribe of people who make pizza. They are good at making pizza, really good. Well, better than most programmers anyway. They eat pizza a lot, and their life revolves around making pizza, eating pizza, talking about how different pizzas are awesome or how they suck.

Now first tribe is all like "hey, we need pizza" so they go to the second tribe and ask that tribe to make them some pizza in return for herding pizzamen's freaky computers that just get out of control all the time.

1. jordan0day was wrong and Saturn expanded on Silverstorms rebuttal in a meaningful way.

2. It would be nice if people owned up to being wrong. Especially when they're "that" wrong.

Additionally, is your second comment directed at me as well? I guess maybe you'll say it applies after what I just wrote above, but it's not like I came back and responded to these other comments wit "NO UR WRONG IM RIGHT!" I haven't been on hn for a few days, so I haven't even had a chance to respond. When I haven't made any additional comments, why is your first instinct (relevant!) to presume I'm refusing to "own up", rather than "given that jordan0day hasn't had any additional activity in this thread, perhaps they haven't read these responses yet?"

That's not unique to humans, which is fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a minute. I'd even argue that it is, in itself, an instinct.

When anything overcomes instinct, it's never just for the fun of it. Animals (and we are animals, pure and simple) will often override their instinct to attack with their instinct to survive. I won't try to seduce the wife of a man twice my size, despite my primal urge to get laid because the risk outweighs the reward. Nor will a pack animal copulate with the Alpha Males females for the same reason.

There is nothing that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans may have superior intelligence, but we don't have a monopoly on intelligence, we just have the best kind. Arguing that humans are distinct because of our mental faculties hold as much water as saying birds are superior because they can fly. If we point to our dominance in the world as a distinguishing factor, we must then concede that we rank well below insects, bacteria, viruses etc.

Humans are pretty cool animals, but we're still animals.

What is a pet? It's a subordinate part of a larger whole. I would submit that the vast majority of men meet this description, where society is the larger group. Society demands a man gets out of bed and goes to work; against his sleeping instinct, man complies.

> a pure animalistic instinct of rage

I would like to think that my annoyance that good arguments did not seem to be carrying the day is more than dumb animal rage? If you heard a group of people agreeing that 1 + 1 = 3 then surely you'd also be guilty of an instinctive opposition. Something has to be true.

The only case where society actually does demand a man to get out of bed is jail.

Usually, a man gets out of bed not because he is dragged out like a pet but because society offers something in return -- employment, company, money, food, purpose, etc. He can stay in his bed if he really wants to, or he can choose a more flexible schedule and wake up later, or wake up earlier.

It's a system of symbiosis; the man is making a fucking choice.

Regarding 1+1=3, there are several possibilities here:

a) The people are mathematicians, they redefined symbols and are playing around -- it would evoke curiosity in me.

b) The people are children and they're getting a rise out of you -- it would evoke amusement in me.

c) The people are deluded and insane -- it would evoke sympathy.

I don't see how these possibilities require anyone to get aggressive.

Why does the man find value in what work gives him in return? Because he feels he needs those things, he can still make the choice not to get them but why would have this choice in the first place, why do those things appeal to him?

The same as how a dog will choose to jump when you train him to expect treats, he could just ignore it but someone he'll do it because treats taste good. Why they taste good is I believe something that is honed by evolution. (Same as how we like things with Fat in it. Fatty stuff taste good for a reason.)

Ridiculous. A "choice" between working and eating, or not working and not eating, is no choice at all. Hey, how about you choose to give me all your money and live, or you choose to get shot with my gun and die? Wow, symbiosis!

Thanks for providing some creative explanations for why people might propose that 1+1=3 but you have entirely missed my point. My point was that some things are demonstrable, objectively false and when people state them - as did a great grandparent of this thread - and are then thoroughly demonstrated to be completely wrong, they should have the basic decency to admit it, and pledge to not waste the group's time with such nonsense in future.

There is of course one grim possibility, which is that the OP was actually category 2 - a child, knowingly stating misinformation to "get a rise" - in which case I would really like you to both leave HN; there are plenty of sites for your lulzy trolling, it's not appreciated here.

This is not true for most of other animals.

My point is this: overcoming instinct is possible because of the way our brain is organized (this however requires some training, as we actually do in order to survive into adulthood) and because it is a positive trait.

The fact that this is not more prevalent indicates that perhaps overcoming instinct is not really that positive (the limbic system with its feelings and hunches probably helps detect cheating in a more straightforward and efficient way than deep thinking about it).

All experts in this field agree that humans inherit behaviour genetically. For example, the rooting reflex.

Good thing I did, in Australia "rooting" is common parlance for sexual intercourse. Which I suppose would also qualify as an inherited instinct.

Separate in what way from animals?

That doesn't take away from your daily experience as a human. You can still do whatever you want, day to day, year to year, not giving much thought of your genetic viability and still be a happy, healthy human being.

Just because you know how a rainbow works doesn't take away from your visceral human experience of one. (double rainbow!) In fact, I'd argue that knowing how a rainbow actually works adds to your appreciation of one.

I'm not sure about this. What I mean is that I can clearly see the logic here, but I'd love to see a discussion for instance on the continual existence of evolutionary destructive traits such as homosexuality, which by all accounts has not only been around for a great deal of human existence, but also other species.

It's possible perhaps that there are evolutionary paths that, although dead-ends, are easily mutated into and thus always present in a species...

1. Homosexuals by not being inclined to reproduce may now contribute excess resources to the group well-being.

2. Homosexuals can pick up slack child-rearing duties, e.g. in cases of orphaned children, and do so without the complications and child favoring that happens very frequently when a child is adopted by someone with his own offspring.

Furhter contributing: Homosexuality is not strictly binary, it is a combination of factors, so that those who never mate will not contribute too strong of a homosexual orientation to future generations, there are those who are bisexual or "a little gay" who can keep passing the genes that will make some portion of the population homosexual. Cultural norms of course will play in here as well sometimes being more permissive, other times not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is subtle genetic idea of balance that is driving this cultural throttle to the homosexual thing.

The big thing to remember tho, is that evolution doesn't always select on individual basis, but frequently on a group basis.

NOTE: i use active words here, as if evolution has a goal, but that is just because I don't want to write like: the selection pressures sometimes result in an overal systemic balance and species or group wide advantage while at the same time resulting in some individuals with a much lower reproductive probability.

I get the bi-sexuality aspect of this, but homosexuality is much more than simply not being selective in who you have sex with. There are significant traits and brain changes in people that identify as homosexual that shouldn't be present if all homosexuality is simply the result of permissiveness in our ancestors.

While the effects of evolution can be observed on a macro scale, they are always the result of selfish genes. In other words, I'm not sure I completely buy the idea of kin selection, especially with humans. That being said it's not something I've deeply versed in.

The cornucopia of debilitating mental illnesses that we tend to suffer from implies that this is almost certainly the case, and there are a lot of things that go into this.

Regarding traits like homosexuality, it's likely that the genetic "cause" ends up so widespread because the possession of it (or of a close precursor) is not necessarily that devastating to reproductive success, and may even be beneficial when it's not expressed as homosexuality. For instance, it's pretty well established at this point that whatever predisposes people to homosexuality genetically is not the whole story, a lot of it has to do with the embryonic environment, upbringing, and possibly sheer chance, so if there are other beneficial things about that mutation (or set of mutations), then as long as they outweigh the probability that homosexuality is expressed and prevents procreation, the gene stays around.

There's a rule of thumb, "one mutation, one death", which implies that no matter how deleterious a mutation is, on average, it will cause one death (or more accurately in this case, one failure to reproduce) when it happens. Roughly speaking, this is because if it's a very mildly deleterious mutation, it will spread quite far through the population before there's enough evolutionary pressure to stamp it out, and if it's a really bad one, it will kill off the first person to have it before it spreads at all. This can be influenced by social factors, as well, i.e. eyesight problems are rectified by our building glasses, but that just reduces evolutionary pressure against bad eyesight, so we're letting it spread its (much lower) fitness penalty throughout the population.

There's an element there that I'm glossing over, which is that in a population, you have to consider the probability of recreating the deleterious mutation, too - for instance, if a trait depends on a combination of a few mutations to be present, then depending on the number and prevalence of those mutated alleles in the population, the stable percentage of people displaying that trait will change.

It may just be the case that for various social reasons, predisposition to homosexuality has not been responsible for enough of a decrease in reproduction to counterbalance the probability of randomly mixing genes in just the right way to recreate it "from scratch." This could be particularly likely if some of the involved genes are useful by themselves in other situations, and homosexuality is hitchhiking on the backs of those beneficial mutations.

It allows excess parents without having excess children. Assume your objective function is to pass along genetic material that is similar to your own. Depending on your resource constraints of your environment and how close your population is to its carrying capacity, it may be game-theoretically optimal to help raise your sibling's child, rather than produce your own. If your child lowers the resources available per child for all your immediate relatives, you would be better off trying to increase the survival rate of an existing closely-related child instead. Thus, a gene that occasionally produces non-breeders (especially if the chance is modulated by relevant environmental factors) will, when properly tuned, result in a larger number of successful children.

The bigger lesson is, look at the genetic distribution of the population, not necessarily the genetics of the individuals. Humans live in groups and interact with each other, so things that don't make sense for the individual can still work. As an analogy: doctors increase everyone's survival rate, so you want lots of doctors right? Well, no, then no one would make food and we would starve. But that doesn't mean doctors are bad, either. It means you want some percentage of the population to be doctors, and that percentage is neither 0% nor 100%.

Upon sighting a bird of prey, a meerkat will stand bolt-upright and send out a warning call to other meerkats. The meerkat that does this has a demonstrably higher risk of being eaten, but in doing so improves the odds of survival for its close family.

It's not about individual reproduction; it's about the survival of genetic material. Furthermore, genes aren't a rigid blueprint; they're highly affected by the environment and by simple chance; it's not as if "oops, this family evolved a gay gene and now all of their kids will be gay and they will all die out".

Parasites. Parasites frequently manipulate the host to change its behavior. Toxoplasma gondii, for example, is associated with a 6X increase in car crashes among human drivers. Parasites also cause variety to evolve in the host immune system and other body systems, resulting in a variety of oddball genetic variations and autoimmune disorders.

There is also an effect called frequency-dependent selection. Some gene variants are useful if you get one copy of the variant, but harmful if you get two. Evolution multiplies the useful gene in the population to the point where the good effects on reproduction balance the bad. Examples of this include sickle cell anemia (one copy protects against malaria, two copies give crippling sickle cell attacks), and the sphingolipid storage disorders (a small influence causes higher IQ, more influence causes lethal degenerative changes of the brain).

In other words, it's kind of like statistics. When I roll these two dice, I could get any combination of results. The past has no control, the future has no control. But if I take it beyond one trial, and execute many trials, I will find the system tends towards statistically predictable results.

DNA and evolution is like those statistical predictions.

Reminds me of what a friend of mine used to tell his girlfriend when she would catch him looking at other girls walking by.

"I can't fight thousands of years of evolution." :)

I am curious why people keep taking this attitude to Dawkins. And Dawkins himself was also curious why people had this reaction to his books. In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, he says:

"We can rise above our genes, indeed, we do every time we use contraceptives."

As he makes clear, several times, in the book, our evolution allows a range of behavior that allows for more than simplistic game-theory calculations.

Personally, there were 2 main things that I got from The Selfish Gene:

1.) sometimes simple experiments, with simple motivations, lead to surprising results (or sometimes game theory models have surprising conclusions). For instance, the story of the 2 pigs was surprising -- they had to push a lever on one end of the pen to get a reward at the other end of the pen, and it turned out that it was the dominant pig who had to do all the work whereas the submissive pig got to eat most of the food.

2.) evolution is too slow to react to fast changing circumstances, so behavior was "invented" to allow creatures to quickly adapt to circumstances. The word "behavior" in this sense, is meant to suggest a range of possible actions that a creature can change without having to change its genes. Dawkins devotes a lot of time to this idea, and it seems to me this idea goes directly against the interpretation that so many people want to ascribe to Dawkins: "it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism".

I suspect that a lot of people who criticize Dawkins have never actually read Dawkins.

This sentence deserves special criticism:

"How is it even possible to behave in a non-animalistic manner once you have internalised these ideas?"

Here the word "animalistic" is being used to suggest a failure of morality. There is history behind this usage, which I don't have time to get into. For now, I'll simply point out that humans are part of the animal branch of life, and therefore all human behavior is animalistic by definition.

The above sentence suggests that being an animal leads to immoral behavior. Frans B. M. de Waal has been especially good about undermining this idea:

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp...

Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals

Kindness is also a product of evolution. Our sense of decency is also a product of evolution. To be clear about this, all human behavior has been facilitated by evolution. Our genes do not control us in a rigid and deterministic way, but our genes do establish perhaps the outer limits of the possible for us. It might be best to use the word "facilitate" when describing the effect of evolution on our behavior.

When Saint Francis of Assisi gave all of his possessions to the poor, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Hitler ordered 6 million Jews killed, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When marine Jason Dunham decided to sacrifice his life to save his fellow soldiers, by diving on top of a hand grenade, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Susan Leigh Vaughan Smith killed her 2 children, her actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Adrienne Rich decided to write a book denouncing male-dominated family life, and when she came out as a lesbian, her actions were facilitated by evolution.

When George F. Gilder wrote a book denouncing feminism, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

What we are capable of has been facilitated by our history so far, all 4 billion years of it. This includes all behavior, including what some might regard as "good" and some might regard as "bad". But, while keeping all this in mind, it is also important to realize that we are still evolving today, still inventing the new, day by day. Possibly the pace is so slow that it is hard to see, but still, evolution is still happening, for every species on the planet, including humans. If we could get in a time machine and skip 100,000 years in the future, we would probably note the emergence of many new behaviors in the human line.

  converse

There is an important subtlety with social groups: a trait that decreases the likelihood of an individual's reproduction may increase the likelihood of the group's reproduction. For instance, worker ants have near zero probability of reproducing, yet they highly increase the likelihood of the group's (colony's) reproduction.

But claiming that mutation and natural selection alone explains ALL speciation and ALL behavior that we observe today is just a simplistic position, almost an article of faith. How do you know there is no other factor involved? How do you know no other process WAS involved in the past?

We don't. So far as I know, we have never observed macro evolution taking place in recorded history (although I would be happy to be shown wrong on this point), so what actually causes speciation is just speculation at this point.

Common descent is one thing. "Evolution" is a loaded term. What does it mean?

It's a bit like the people who claim that the Bing Bang Theory describes an explosion in the first seconds of the universe. Actually, the BBT just extrapolates backwards from what we observe today -- which is that the visible universe is expanding, and there is microwave radiation at its edges. How do we know there wasn't some other process earlier in the real universe, which would make our extrapolation completely erroneous? How do we know that the universe isn't infinite beyond our visible universe? Every year objects disappear further beyond the light horizon, due to the expansion of space. Who knows hoc much lies beyond that? And yet people talk about "the universe had a beginning" ... how do they KNOW?

Okay I just wanted to throw a crazy idea at the end: Maybe our universe is like a reverse black hole, with a singularity at the edges instead of its interior. Meaning that just as gravity increases as you approach the singularity in a black hole, so the universe expands faster the bigger a "sphere" you take in it.

We have observed macro evolution countless times in bacteria and viruses. It's not even difficult.

I'm not sure why you'd call Evolution a loaded term in a scientific domain. It's clearly loaded in politics these days, but it's a very clear and celebrated theory with sharp and validated predictions in scientific domains.

You're somewhat right in the statement that BBT extrapolates from data observable today, but due to the nature of the universe, data observable today provides evidence that is not fully localized in time. We believe that the universe is infinite beyond our light cone because if we make the minimal possible assumptions on the net geometry of the universe you end up with three choices, each having to do with the sum of the angles in a very large triangle. We measured this triangle (see WMAP) and found the angles to be very nearly 180 degrees corresponding to a flat, infinite universe. So long as we have no compelling reason to invent more exotic geometry (which if GR holds would require some rather incredible momentum-energy that we haven't observed --- all possible, but very, very exotic) then this is a safe prediction.

BBT theory doesn't even describe an explosion anywhere. There wasn't something to explode in to. It instead suggests that the invariant metric has been expanding throughout the lifetime of the universe making things grow further and further apart. It's unclear that there wasn't more exotic behavior in there again, but without evidence of it, the best prediction is the simplest prediction.

I could go further into how we KNOW things and why that's not really a great way to think about it, but this is already grown long. But if you want your crazy idea to be meaningful at all, please specify it formally enough so that it predicts something about the shape or behavior of the universe different from current theories and then see if that prediction holds. Without at least claiming a prediction, it's difficult to even begin to understand what a crazy idea might mean.

Regarding bacteria and viruses: that's micro-evolution, isn't it? Why is it macroevolution?

2) Regarding the BBT: so why do people think there was a "big bang" and talk about the "first few seconds of the universe" if the universe is probably infinite, and it is only the visible universe that we see expanding?

3) I don't know, I'm not a physicist... seemed like an intriguing way to think about the expansion though

Evolution doesn't claim to explain all changes, just the "force" which causes populations to grow to resemble the units of the population which are best selected for in later generations. It, for instance, doesn't explain eye color either; there isn't sufficient reproductive pressure to affect those aleles. Eye color requires understanding of DNA and the structure of our genetics to begin to make sense of.

Microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing at different (orthogonally arbitrary) scales. The appearance of a significant difference occurs under strong selective pressure or differential selective pressure leading to punctuated equilibria or genetic splitting, but really it's just a matter of sharp changes of a smooth parameter instead of actual categorical differences.

---

Because there were presumably first few seconds of the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation is a picture of these first few seconds when everything was closer together and thus interacted strongly! The resolution to this conundrum turns out to not be tied to the finiteness of the universe but instead the astounding fact that if you fix two objects in space the distance between them will still grow (very slowly) with time.

---

I'm not a physicist either, so I avoid seriously proposing strange theories of cosmology. It's gotta be pretty equivalent to having a manager ask for some new feature assuming it'll be trivial to build.

If you create a more complex model that includes more factors than mutation and natural selection and it is able to predict reality better than one that only includes those factors then you win. As it turns out, people have by using more complete understanding of the actual mechanics of human genetics, but a rough and basically accurate picture can be painted without invoking those mechanisms.

That "mostly accurate" picture is where most people stop when they argue "for evolution". It's a fantastic rule of thumb.

Isn't it the fact that our behaviors all have an evolutionary basis, including e.g. the desire for a human male to sleep after sex? Each of these gets its specially concocted rendition of the narrator's fantasy -- e.g. "so that the women could get away more often after copulating".

I find this to be completely unscientific and wonder what falsifiable predictions these theories make. I mean the ones that imply that everything can be explained simply in terms of "evolution" by mutation and natural selection.

I'm not sure of my scientific history here, but I believe one extraordinary falsifiable prediction drawn from evolution in its earlier days is that there should be some common structure of generational information between almost all living things, a prediction which the discovery of DNA clearly validated.

To be honest I didn't remember a lot of my gripes off the bat when I wrote it, but a big one is the gratuitous use of evolutionary psychology by all armchair theorists and their book writing moms these days. How is that religious? They take any sort of human behavior and start speculating evolutionary reasons for it purely in terms of reproductive fitness, because in essence they are saying it all boils down to mutation and natural selection + it must be super simple. WHY?

Science doesn't work this way. "Unless you have some truly spectacular competing theory, I'm just gonna use empty speculation to explain why people have non-advantageous trait X, because we know that mutation and natural selection take place". It works by making falsifiable predictions. What falsifiable predictions do armchair speculators about tiny human behavior make? Do they test them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv7b-KPg9hY :P

Here is one that I remember was posted by a friend of mine on facebook. Note the empty speculation at the end. Really, narrator? Just because you have a British accent we should implicitly accept that assertion?

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that all human phenotypes cannot be explained by naïve evolutionary biology but instead require more genetics and biochemistry to describe. Consider the specifics of eye color: evolution does not specify this feature, so a theory which goes above evolution (not contrary to what EGreg is asking for) is necessary to predict this phenotype. We're just more complicated than that.

This is a rebuttal to using pure evolution to model the shape of human physiology that doesn't introduce religion.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

But isn't that exactly what the author is suggesting? That the within-group variance tends to be higher in men than in women, even if the differences in averages between the groups are not significant?

We already ARE barbarians. Figuring out the cause does not suddenly make us so.

Plenty of people believe in equality but have trouble following through. Figuring out our impulses will only help us understand and control them better. (e.g. genetically-caused discrimination has been countered in many parts of the world by the brainwashing of "equality" memes)

People are not rational! This is demonstrably true. Even if they were uber-rational, they never have enough data about the world to make useful rational decisions WRT maximising gene propagation through strategic altruism.

It is very telling that this modern notion whereby every time someone acts selflessly towards another they are in fact acting with laser-precise logic in their own interests was developed by the RAND corporation at the height of 1950s/60s cold-war paranoia.

That is, our behaviors may be influenced more by our instinct than our reasoning. Our instincts are the result of a random exploration process where only certain strategies could win. Rational reasoning is not required.

As to your point, while I would not assume people are strictly rational it’s important to understand the transition points where rational behavior becomes destructive for society. Not because everyone acts in a strictly rational fashion but rather because there is a tendency for the average individual to do so. for example corruption often links to both the benefit and the risk of being corrupt and enforcement is far more important than what's in the books. IMO, the most important insight is given a large population there are usually several productive approaches that tend to balance over time.

PS: If you think about it Sociology and Psychology are considered separate disciplines for obvious reasons. But economics is plenty complex to avoid being merged with Sociology because how you exit a burning building is only peripherally related to which brand of soda you buy.

Secondly, our instincts do delegate perceptual control to our intellectual selves: e.g. if we can work out who the bad guy is, our anger is directed at that person. We can even talk ourselves into all sorts of things! Though we have no choice in having instincts, we have great influence in applying them.

That's something I don't understand.

What does a paradigm useful for understanding biological systems have in common with human society? I'm not saying that human society isn't a biological system. I'm saying that extending an abstraction suited for understanding and explaining how and why genetic evolution works, to the complex intricacies and dances of human society is like trying to use ohm's law (a very useful, proven and beautiful abstraction) to make a video game.

Sure, you can predict how the amount of current flowing per unit potential difference will change as the wires get thinner, and you can understand how transistors work to a certain point, but you won't see what that processor actually is and does. You'll miss the several layers sandwiched between this abstraction that video game. Layers built on top of each other, creating a richer set of knowledge, tools in the process.

I think that we have jumped the gun several times in this regard. Take the entire glorious soviet communism vs. Ayn Rand-ian capitalism. They are in fact different from the predecessors in the idea that they separate the producers and the consumers using something called the market, but they differ on how that market should be run. Before you launch a debate, I'm not saying that one is better than the other. It's just that both of them are economic theories talking about different ways to run a market. What on earth do they have to do with raising children? Or, our actions as human beings?

So, yes Dawkins is right and so was Price, but they explained how biological systems worked. Not how human society ought to, and must be forced to, work. If people were indeed such beings then the financial crisis wouldn't have happened. This article wouldn't have been written.

I might be wrong over here, but I really think that this born from a mistake of finding ways for humans to be perfect. I really think that this search to portray humans as rational beings, or beings that are genetic machines (note the implicit association with precise perfection we have in our mental models) is a product of human chauvinism. This is in a bizarre way the product of our quest to make ourselves special.

We aren't that special. We're flawed and it's okay, and I think that it's about time we as a species moved on.

well, actually most of "behaving like an animal" is only done by humans and such behavior can't be found in the animal kingdom. Calling it "like an animal" is a typical hypocrisy of humans.

>human beings as nothing more than meat-based mechanisms for storing and transporting DNA.

yes, like any lifeforms we know.

>This idea is dangerously embedded in society now, and it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism.

Blaming society, ideas, whatever ... instead of taking personal responsibility is a human species trait that, i think, will either have to disappear or it will take the human race down (it wasn't that important before, when Mother Nature held your personally responsible for your actions, yet with technological growth and power wielded by individuals and small groups over highly organized masses of humans it becomes an extremely dangerous trait - i think the 20th century was a nice preview of the future and the WW III is going to be an interesting exercise).

It would take quite a bit of evolution to expel those 'stabilizing' parts from Humanity, if it ever happened. Some people are genetically more likely to be generous, in certain conditions, and others are more likely to be selfish in those same conditions. Change the conditions, and change the probabilistic response. Those types of genetic probabilities keep the chaotic system stable.

The probability of action in context probably fits like a normal curve. Its a balancing act of some flitting genes moving around a median point equilibrium.

I'm making all these assertions from my intuition, of course.

This is getting new-agey, but selfish promotion of our genes would logically include helping all mankind, since we share many genes (of course, we'd have more reason to help those more closely related); then, to similar species such as apes, then to mammals, then animals in general, then plants - which we'd prefer over rocks. All based on genetic similarity, of ones own genes helping other instances of itself. Which does seem to fit in which the attitudes of most people.

1. It doesn't. 2. What's wrong with the gene-centric view of human nature?

There is a collection of book citations (rather than links, mostly, so far) in Wikipedia userspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...

I'm amazed how neglected most of the best scholarly sources are in online discussions of these issues. The linked Wikipedia user subpage has a suggestions page (its "talk" page) for suggesting further resources, which would be helpful to participants here on HN.

> The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes

The problem with your comment is that in the very first sentence it makes a huge assumption that we are not slaves to our genes. Compelling arguments may well be made otherwise but not by some attempt at an "appeal to assumed general knowledge" for want of a better description.