Ron Gunhame has the goods.

Over at Bora’s place he talks about a paper on group selection. In regards to the scientific idea and its broad relevance to evolutionary biology, I am mildly skeptical. That being said, this comment drew my attention:

While endorsing DS Wilson’s Unto Others, Richard Lewontin mentioned an unsavory aspect of group selection (NYROB, 10/22/98): namely, war is a mechanism of the differential survival and reproduction of whole groups. Out-group aggression goes hand in hand with in-group cooperation. It is very advisable to be mindful of the Naturalistic Fallacy when considering group selection.

The Naturalistic Fallacy derives from G.E. Moore’s examination of the assumption that what is “good” can be derivable from natural properties (e.g., physical pleasure sensation), and is often conflated with David Hume’s is-ought problem, the idea that what is is what ought, to be. Regardless of which meaning the commenter had in mind, I think the point was that outgroup vs. ingroup dynamics, and their somewhat nasty implications, should be kept in mind when examining the validity of group selection.

Read More

What was up with the New Orleans Saints becoming a symbol of all that is good and right in this country? As far as I’m concerned, that’s reason enough to be satisfied that they got crushed.

“Why chicks don’t dig the singularity“. The interviewee mentions that Huey Newton (of the Black Panthers) was interested in sociobiology; it’s true, he actually published an article on self-deception with Robert Trivers–read it in Natural Selection and Social Theory.

(via ALDaily)

A reader just informed me that Bob Trivers just won the Crafoord Prize in bioscience! For those who would like to become more familiar with Trivers’ work, I highly recommend Natural Selection and Social Theory. Genes in Conflict is also a good read if you want some molecular level evolutionary exposition. Finally, Trivers looms large in both Mother Nature and Defenders of the Truth. If you don’t know anyting about Trivers, I suggest this Edge Special Event.
Robert Trivers introduced concepts such as reciprocal altruism in the 1970s which revolutionized social theory, and serve as the atomic units upon which higher order explanations of animal (and human) behavior often build. In Defenders of the Truth Ullica Segerstrale chronicles how Trivers was in many ways the “mad genius” (literally, he has bipolar disorder) behind E.O. Wilson leading up the publication of Sociobiology. In many ways Trivers’ approach in evolutionary biology is that of a neoclassical economist, reductionistic, logical and couched in simplifying formalisms. Of course this has its draw backs, but, I believe it is an essential base on which other models and paradigms may be scaffolded.

Bob Trivers just won the Crafoord Prize in bioscience! For those who would like to become more familiar with Trivers’ work, I highly recommend Natural Selection and Social Theory. Genes in Conflict is also a good read if you want some molecular level evolutionary exposition. Finally, Trivers looms large in both Mother Nature and Defenders of the Truth. If you don’t know anyting about Trivers, I suggest this Edge Special Event.

If there is one trend in American life that most irks [group], it is probably [inconvenient truth]. It’s not the [inconvenient truth] itself that bothers them… It is the perception of [inconvenient truth] and, worse, the … discussion of [inconvenient truth] that is so irritating. It offends their view of [philosophy], helps justify all sorts of nefarious [disliked policies], and makes the [group adjective] agenda … appear [bad thing]. They would very much like for it not to be true. Failing that, they would like for the public not to believe that it’s true–or, at the very least, not to be sure whether it is true or not. This is where [skeptic] comes in.

[Lack of appropriate intellectual credentials of skeptic.]

[Claims made by skeptic.] In other words, [group] aren’t sure whether [inconvenient truth is true or not], and they don’t really care if it is. Their primary concern is that newspapers treat the question as a matter of dispute rather than a settled fact.

If this sounds like the conservative stance on global warming or evolution, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Like those two issues, the [inconvenient truth] is beyond dispute among academics who study it. This applies even to [group academics] with strong [group] pedigrees. ([Example]) And so the ambition of the [group] counterestablishment in these areas is not to overturn the scholarly consensus but simply to make the topic appear so complicated that laypeople and the press don’t know what to believe.

And the science of [inconvenient truth], like most sciences, is subject to complicating details. [Explain.]

That was [skeptic’s] cue to spring into action. In [skeptic’s] [group magazine] op-ed, [skeptic] lists a series of potential flaws in the [data that strongly supports inconvenient truth]. Most of the complaints are simply picayune details. [Example.] All these points are true enough. But is there any reason to think they would change the overall picture very much? Not really, unless you think [absurd scenario].

And some of [skeptic’s] critiques are simply mistaken. [Example] This sounds sensible enough, but it is wrong on several levels. [Explain]… so, even if [skeptic] were right about [Example], it would very likely make [inconvenient truth] look even worse.

But whether the [trivial problem] would make [inconvenient truth] look worse or better is really beside the point. [skeptic’s] role is merely to point out that the data is imperfect. The skeptic challenging the expert consensus must be fluent enough in the language of the experts to nibble away at their data. (The evolution skeptic can find holes in the fossil record; the global-warming skeptic can find periods of global cooling.) But he need not–indeed, he must not–be fluent enough to assimilate all the data himself into a coherent alternative explanation. His point is that the truth is unknowable.

You might suppose that somebody in [skeptic’s] position would do everything he could to mask his own ideological preferences in order to lend credibility to his research. But [skeptic] is completely up front about his beliefs, which are on display in the [frequency publications] he churns out. He is a [group] of the [philosophy] variety. [Quote], he wrote last year in a typical passage. [Quote continues] ([Witty and ironic take down of quote.])

This is not a slip-up. Introducing ideology into a debate is one of the think-tank hack’s strongest weapons. It demystifies a complicated issue, moving it from the realm of science into the realm of politics. The think-tank hack confesses he has his biases but then claims that his opponents in academia or government do, too. Evolution is the secularist science establishment’s campaign to discredit religion; global warming is being pushed by regulators who would gain enormous power from new pollution controls; et cetera.

Since the goal is not winning these debates but merely achieving symmetry, the hack’s most effective technique can be taking the accusation that would seem to apply to him and hurling it at his opponents. [Quotes accusing other side of malfeasance.] So, while you might think [skeptic] is a hack mining the data for results that would conform to his political preferences, he has already made the same charge against the other side. Who can tell who’s right?

Source material

Read More

There is now a sign up page for A Week of Science. Basically I’ll take the feeds and load them up on Justscience.net with Feedpress the day before the 5th. You can see the current list here. You can insert the sign up page with this code into you’re own site (remove the styling if you wish of course):

Read More

There is now a sign up page for A Week of Science. Basically I’ll take the feeds and load them up on Justscience.net with Feedpress the day before the 5th. You can see the current list here. You can insert the sign up page with this code into your own site (remove the styling if you wish of course):
<form action=”http://www.justscience.net/signup.php” method=”GET”>
<style>
#justScienceInputs { border:#CCCCCC thin groove; width: 250px; padding:5px;
background-color:#FFFFCC; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px;}
input {width:150px;}
</style>
<div>
<b>Sign up for Just Science 2007!</b><br/>
<input type=”text” name=”blogName” value=”” />Blog name<br/>
<input type=”text” name=”blogEmail” value=”” />Email contact<br/>
<input type=”text” name=”blogURL” value=”” />Blog URL<br/>
<input type=”text” name=”blogFeed” value=”” />Blog Feed<br/>
<input type=”submit” name-“blogSubmit” value=”Sign me up” /><br/>
Submitting this information means that you will be signed up for the aggregator
blog site Justscience.net for the week of February 5th to the 11th.
</div>
</form>