Group Selection Due To Differing ESSs
The problem with group selection is that for a whole group to get a single trait, it must spread through the whole group first by regular evolution. But, as J. L. Mackie suggested, when there are many different groups, each with a different Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), there is selection between the different ESSs, since some are worse than others. For example, a group where altruism arose would outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest (see, for instance, the ESSs created by Koinophilia).
Read more about this topic: Group Selection
Famous quotes containing the words group, selection, due and/or differing:
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.”
—Lawrence Durrell (1914–1991)