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The Selfish Gene Review

🕑 Added 2024-10-26 05:11:22 +0000 UTC

Comments

Ema Corro

Maybe I need to give Extended Phenotype a try reading instead then...

Christopher Kavanagh

You can argue for other positions, of course, but Dawkins gene centred position is basically aligned with the majority view in evolutionary biology.

Christopher Kavanagh

The problem there is that there are very limited examples of selection that works on other levels. Inclusive fitness has proven rather robust, whereas any group selection account has typically failed. Cultural selection fares better but that really only applies to humans and that doesn't dramatically take off until the past 50,000 years or so. Multilevel selection models also talk a good game but their ability to outpredict gene selection models hasn't borne much fruit and again most of the arguments focus on humans. Dawkins has a fairly robust section arguing he isn't arguing for focusing on single genes and this is spelt out further in the Extended Phenotype.

Mike Nelson

As a life long fan of Doctor Who, and a person who is disillusioned over who Dawkins is today, it did make me happy to see that Lalla "Romana II" Ward divorced him.

Ema Corro

I should also say Ive never been able to get through this book. Maybe its the writing style idk. Which makes me a bad critic... But I am kind of in a related field which is in ecology and doing a lot of work involving genetics.

Ema Corro

I dont disagree with a lot you've said. But I found it a little frustrating that your response to every criticism of the book was "I dont think he was saying that" (though its probably true in a lot of cases related to culture etc). But ultimately the main disagreement other biologists (including genetecists) tend to have with him is over genes being the central unit of evolution. I dont think saying he aknowledges lot of genes are involved in complex traits really adresses that, because at a certain point its becomes an argument against genes being the fundamental unit evolution is acting on. Like when hundreds or thousands of genes or even other molecular processes affect a trait. I also think a lot of biologists focussing on different levels find it frustrating because they can see evolution acting on those levels, from other molecular processes to whole ecosystems. Is it that Im still taking his metaphore too literally or something?

Alex H

This was good. I have the book but it's not on my immediate to-read list . Some day!

Eddy Wyn

Matt, if you have the opportunity to fit in another In-N-Out Burger, make sure the next one is Animal Style.

Robert Andrews

Thanks for educating me. I'll have a listen. But if anthropologists are branching out into these fields, what will become of the sciurology departments?

Christopher Kavanagh

Oh ye of little faith Robert. How anthrocentric for you to assume that anthropology cannot encompass non-human subjects: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/animals-and-anthropology-laura-murray.

Julie

Excellent job boys!!!

Linda Sears

I hope my comment didn't come across as looking at guru followers as idiotic. Dawkins then goes on to examine why the birds might be fooled by their cuckoo "offspring." Having been manipulated by others myself, I know that those guru-types have lots of emotional tricks up their sleeves.

Natasha Bride

I'm here for the banter more mostly 😊

Robert Andrews

Loved the podcast episode, but I must point out... and I hate to be that guy... Matt said that he had some anthropological observations of America, and one of them was about .... squirrels. If only there had been an anthropologist on the podcast, to point out that squirrels are not actually people even if they think they are. Sorry.

Jennifer Nelson

They are red. I think they are Fox squirrels

Roland Weber

Thanks, that was very entertaining, and also educational! 😃 As I have too many unread books, and bought another two this week, I'll skip this one. Something about Ethnography would be interesting!

Roland Weber

Are they red or grey, or some other colour?

Linda Sears

I’m glad ya’ll said you were doing this book because it got me to read it, and I enjoyed it. Although you cautioned against seeing the descriptions of animal behaviors as saying something about human behavior, this one passage reminded me of the dynamic between our gurus and their followers: “The cuckoo is usually much larger, in some cases grotesquely larger, than its ‘parent’. I’m looking at a photograph of an adult dunnock, so small in comparison to its monstrous foster child that it has to perch on its back in order to feed it. Here we feel less sympathy for the host. We marvel at its stupidity, its gullibility. Surely any fool should be able to see there is something wrong with a child like that.”

Protagonist Science

good one

Amy

I read this book when I was 17 and a fan of Dawkins. It was disappointing to see him get into the culture war nonsense but it’s nice to know this book still holds up.

PuffyLowe

As a Californian it is true, In and Out is great. However, squirrels are rats in cute outfits.

Erland Hvittfeldt

Thanks, should be a good listen 😊. Might even reread the book first, it's been a while. Now, if we could get just the Dominion review as audio...

Jake

Australians are always into the squirrels

Jennifer Nelson

Matt is correct, we do have the best squirrels here in the SF Bay Area. I’m glad to have his validation on that. We’re scruffier in the East Bay, so just cross a bridge and you’ll fit right in. Plus you haven’t seen a truly cute squirrel until you’ve seen a Berkeley campus squirrel, so that’s two reasons to visit the East Bay: peak scruffy and peak squirrel

Nina Davies

By the end of this, I had a very clear memory of the culture war in student bars circa 1989. What is interesting is that Dawkins can be adapted to any simplistic argument any shouty bloke wants to make. A bit like Orwell.