Thanks Stephen,
I hoped for some sort of answer like that.
If Eisenhower was the president for the Age of Collective
Reasonableness, and Reagan wa the president for the Age of Noble
Selfishness, and Trump is the president for the Age of Anarchy, what
is next? How does a complexity theorist plan his way out of this
one, baby? Inquiring geezers want to know. What do the ants have to
say? I want to say that we ants should all get together and think
this through, but that is, of course, exactly what a geezer from the
ACR would say. I do despair.
Nick
*From:*Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Stephen Guerin
*Sent:* Saturday, August 9, 2025 8:36 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor.
Nick writes:
> I moved to Santa Fe 20 years ago to confront The Enemy –
Complexity, which made nonsense of the idea making a best guess for
the future and planning for it collectively , calmly, and rationally.
Nick — you came to Santa Fe to “confront The Enemy – Complexity,” but
I’ve always admired how that move was also a reach to extend the
individual into the group. Your framing of evolution beyond the lone
actor fits naturally into complexity’s home territory: the study of
collective dynamics.
Complexity challenged the civic ideal you grew up with — that we
could make our best guess about the future, then plan together calmly
and rationally around stable facts — by showing:
* The world is nonlinear — small perturbations can cascade.
* Prediction decays fast — best guesses expire before guiding
long-horizon plans.
* Feedback loops are short — conditions shift before consensus can
form.
From the Victorian lens of the forward-propagating individual — the
gene, the photon, the solitary actor — the unit of selection is the
forward-propagator itself, competing with only a once-in-a-lifetime
reproduction as feedback, with everything else treated as downstream
consequence.
But complexity might instead be the handshake of duals — like the
mutual adjustment of fireflies flashing in unison or pendulums
entraining to a common rhythm — where coherence emerges from
continuous exchange, not solitary advance. This shift is much like
physics’ move from solid state (crystal order, replication) to
condensed matter (emergent phenomena, reproduction) — the very
distinction Eric Smith draws between systems that merely repeat and
systems that generate novel, coherent forms.
This spirit runs through the science:
* Stuart Kauffman’s autocatalytic sets — molecules persist as part
of collectively closed webs of reactions.
* Harold Morowitz & Eric Smith — life’s core metabolic cycles may
emerge as planetary-scale solutions to channel geochemical energy
flows; selection might happen at the network level, not
molecule-by-molecule.
* Afred's Hübler’s ball bearings — conductive spheres collectively
grow to dissipate massive charge gradients more effectively.
* Per Bak’s self-organized criticality — critical states are
properties of the network, not any single grain or fault.
* Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures — ordered patterns like
Bénard cells exist only through system-wide throughput of
energy/matter.
Physics offers a parallel in Feynman–Wheeler absorber theory, where
interactions are bidirectional handshakes between advanced and
retarded waves, settling into a self-consistent exchange. Carver
Mead’s Collective Electrodynamics carries this into the macroscopic:
electrons act as part of a global configuration, not as isolated
particles.
It’s the same dynamic in my favorite ant foraging model: food-seekers
diffuse “nest” pheromone outward, nest-seekers carrying food diffuse
“food” pheromone outward; each biases its walk along the other’s
field. The shortest-time path emerges from the handshake between
complementary propagations, not from any one ant “deciding” the route.
Seen this way, complexity might not be the death of rational planning
— it could be pointing us toward a different design target: the
coherent configuration. We're still on the lookout for our “Carnot”
to formalize these principles.
And for me, that search has been shaped by the voices in this group —
especially yours. Your probes have been part of the collective
dynamic here, and I’ve been heavily informed by them. For that, I’m
grateful.
-Stephen
On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM <[email protected]> wrote:
Ok, but I am not done with my infernal questions. The way you
pose your question, I cant help thinking that you know the
answer. You and I could recite fo one another the thousand ways
in which we know that humans are groupish. We know that people
can make sacrifices for the good of groups of all sorts, some of
which are incorrigibly abstract. We know that humans identify
with the fate of other humans to the extent that they will put
aside their own good fortune for that of an iconic figure. We
know the people are capable of appalling group nastiness. There
is no savagery like the modern army, sitting around in an
anonymous office bloc in New Jersey lobbing missiles at wedding
parties in Iraq.
So what is the question concerning human groupishness . What is
it beyond these facts that you need to know and what will change
when you come to know it. One question you might be asking
yourself is “Am I justified in keeping any money I earn beyond
the median income of my fellow citizens. The answer is almost
certainly, “No”. Knowing that and knowing that I am damned
well not going to give it away, what next?”
One of the hardest projects to take on is the discovery of one’s
own hankerings. Glen, Jon, and DaveW have been very good at
exposing mine. Make American Rational Again. Return to the
genteel rationalism of the Deweyan 1950’s where every town had a
town meeting and every discussion was “informed” by the “facts.”
(And we were all cheerful racists instead of the guilty racists
that we are now.) That I have grown up and helped to create a
world in which nobody knows anymore what a fact has been like
living my worst childhood nightmare. I was head of our planning
board for three years in the early 70’s where I learned that
small towns are the scariest, least rational places on the face
of the earth. When we moved in from California, marginal
hippies, the town could not rest before it was decided whether we
were Catholics or Protestants. What???!@!! Sorry, I am
ranting. I moved to Santa Fe 20 years ago to confront The Enemy
– Complexity, which made nonsense of the idea making a best guess
for the future and planning for it collectively , calmly, and
rationally. The idea that people should build businesses models
on destabilizing the present and then swooping in and pillaging
until one has established an irrevocable monopoly on the future
just seems WRONG to me. I loved the idea of American
exceptionalism. But lo and behold, we were exceptional in only
one respect. WE had discovered destabilization as a business
model. Drop by, plant a lethal virus, wait a few years and then
return (with your slaves) to a “virgin” land populated only by a
few desperate savages. Let the rape of the virgin begin. Calm
down, Nick.
These are my commitments, and I cannot escape them. What are yours?
Nick
*From:*Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Pieter
Steenekamp
*Sent:* Friday, August 8, 2025 4:21 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor.
Nick,
Too good to miss — I’m in. Lead me into the jungle of group
selection, especially the human variety.
What I’m after: a clear, simple (but not dumbed-down) take on
what group selection in humans is, and why it might explain our
behaviour better than individual selection alone.
Happy to start at the very beginning — dawn of the argument, cave
paintings, whatever you think works.
And yes, send me that Famous Great Amateur reading list. I
promise to read it with respect… and just enough suspicion to
keep it fun.
On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 17:05, Nicholas Thompson
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi, Pieter,
Let me be a George to you as you explore this topic. I will
try to respond off hand, quickly, and unself-consciously as
you think along. I think this whole topic is fascinating
both substantively, and historically. The literature seems
to track (or lead?) the Zeitgeist so precisely from post war
peace-nikery (Wynne-Edwards), to the revanchist academic
Reaganism (Williams-Dawkins), to chaos (evodevo). It's really
hard to take the whole argument seriously once one begins to
understand how complex and multi layered are the mechanisms
by which parents do and dont resemble their children. One
of the tools to thinking straight is to own up to one's
hankerings before one dives into the literature. What are
you hoping to find? Post war peace-nikery was covertly
deistic, hoping to find that there was some sort of over
arching regulatory agency that would keep the species and the
planet safe. Academic Reaganism said good luck with that!
Success is virtue. And then evodevo, the bull in the china
shop of that whole argument. I recommend reading the
biologist, Sean B. Carroll, (not the physicist), Endless
forms most beautiful, and The making of the fittest. It's
really hard to take the whole argument seriously once one
begins to understand how complex and multi layered are the
mechanisms by which parents do and dont resemble their
children. That there is any resemblance at all begins to seem
like some sort of miracle. Or perhaps just momentum. One
hankering that misleads us is naturalism, the idea that we
can find some sort of MORAL guidance in the way things are.
Is the opposite hankering, existentialism? The belief that
what makes humans special is their power to CHOOSE. You
should remember that I am not a philosopher and am, in fact,
an amateur in all things.
"Any time you want to explore this issue, I am here ready to
help. Would you like suggestions of articles to read by that
Famous Amateur, Nick Thompson? "
signed,
ChatNST
On Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 5:19 AM Pieter Steenekamp
<[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks, Nick. Just like you struggled to get your head
around entropy, I’m battling to wrap my mind around how
the basic but very powerful mechanism of evolution works
in human groups. I can easily understand individual human
selection, or even group selection in swarming insects
where only the queen has babies.
I think I’ll take a page from your book and work with
George to help guide me through this learning journey.
Every now and then, I might check in with you and others
here for a chat or to ask a question.
The only catch is that I’ve just started a really
exciting AI project, so I might not have much time for my
group-level evolution journey — but I’ll try to keep it
going.
On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 03:40, <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks Pieter,
Sorry I have taken so long to get back to you. If
FRIAM ever started a journal, it should be called
“the emperors new clothes”. We are not committed to
anything if not to the validity of an “amateur’s”
perspective. As people will be quick to tell you,
mine has always been of that sort.
If I read you carefully, the position you take is
that laid out in Dawkins The Extended Phenotype –
that the genes are the basic unit of selection. But
as Dave Wilson has been pointing out for years, Who
made that decision? For one thing, as epigenic
studies have made clear, when one looks in detail, it
is really hard to find a thing that is exactly the
gene. For another, that decision runs the risk of
confusing the the thing that is selected with the
forces that are selecting it. Whatever level you
care to calculate the impact of selection, it is
differential group success that is driving selection
or it is not group selection. And if it is
differential group success that is driving selection,
then it is group selection. I think you might quite
enjoy The Extended Phenotype. For a whild ride,
have a look at Elliott Sober and D. S. Wilson’s
Reintroducing Group Selection to the human behavioral
sciences. There is a wonderful metaphor in there
about two riders riding three horses. It was the
article that broke the tide for me. I had been
totally up Dawkins ass for the preceding 20 years.
Here is the citation, courtesy og George Patrick
Tremblay IV
Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1994). /Reintroducing
group selection to the human behavioral sciences/.
/Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17/(4), 585–608.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00036104
en.wikipedia.org+15philpapers.org+15
<https://philpapers.org/rec/WILRGS?utm_source=chatgpt.com>….
Nick
*From:*Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf
Of *Pieter Steenekamp
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 6, 2025 12:55 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor.
Nick, I'm genuinely impressed. Honestly, I feel a bit
out of my depth trying to respond meaningfully on
this topic.
So please take my reply in the same spirit I’d expect
a response from my 10-year-old grandchild when
debating computer programming with me. The gap
between your understanding of evolution and mine
feels about that wide.
That said, I’d still like to offer a response to your
group selection argument—fully aware that it may come
across as amateurish, and I'm okay with that.
Here's the question I’m grappling with:
Is the following valid?
Genes as the Unit of Selection:
Modern evolutionary theory generally views genes as
the primary unit of selection. Natural selection acts
on individuals, and the success of an individual is
ultimately determined by the genes they carry.
Group Selection as a Modifier:
Group selection can be seen as a process that
influences the expression of genes. For example, if a
group-level trait (like cooperative behavior) is
advantageous, then genes that promote that behavior
will be favored, even if those genes also have
individual-level costs.
On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 at 00:12, Prof David West
<[email protected]> wrote:
Nick,
I wish to embody the fear of being dragged away
from what you think you are supposed to be doing,
to be engaged in the topic you raise in your paper.
I have read the paper before and, as then, I find
it meritorious, well written, and reasonable in
argument. I am, basically, convinced.
However; two points:
First, your use of the concept, "metaphor," is
the way that I use the term, in a manner that
glen pointed out is inconsistent with the literal
definition of the term. I speak of metaphor when
there is some thing of which I think I know
something and I have a suspicion that some other
thing might be of the same ilk. I use what I
think I know to craft a 'model', one that
suggests particular points and particular
relations that, if my suspicion is correct, will
have direct analogs in the unknown thing. I check
them out individually and in combinations and, if
substantiated, confirm my suspicion. If
unconfirmed, the metaphor is refuted.
This seems to me to be what you are doing in the
paper, albeit it more abstractly and
academically. Please correct me if wrong.
Second, and here is the real time sink, would it
be possible to make your ideas concrete, real
groups with actual history and demonstrated
differential "success." If you were amenable to
such a conversation, I would propose the Mormons
as a test case.
One of 20 or so "religions"/"societies" to emerge
from the "Burnt Over District" of western New
York. The only one still extant.
Disproportionately successful, (in material and
social terms), to their neighbors. Smith was
living in a two-story New England style home
while down the road, Abe Lincoln, was living in a
log cabin with mud floor.
A schism immediately after Smith's death, with
the Reformed LDS barely evident while the main
group flourished. (Last time I checked, Mormonism
and Sokka Gokai, in Japan, were the two fastest
growing religions.)
In Utah there was a concerted effort to spawn
multiple small groups by sending out colonies.
Because each group was originally "seeded" with
four or five families, you get a strong
genetic/heritance component as well as "traits."
(It is still possible to identify what part of
Utah someone is from (especially females) by
their physical appearance.)
Some interesting "adaptations" at the trait
level, e.g., when Smith was alive blacks were
included in the community and held the
priesthood—something that Missourians, at the
time, could not abide. Brigham Young 'suspended'
(restored in 1978 with the admission that the
suspension was not for theological, but merely
political reasons) black priesthood membership
and gave up polygamy (de jure only) to appease
the Federal Government and avoid a second martyrdom.
davew
On Tue, Aug 5, 2025, at 1:10 PM, Nicholas
Thompson wrote:
Dear Colleagues in FRIAM,
Sometimes, if I am going to get anything
done, I just have to ignore Friam, and keep
my head down, and work at the thing I am
working at. It always seems, on that
occasion, that you-guys dangle in front of me
some enticing topic so I must scream and put
my fingers in my ears to keep focus on my
work. So it was that when I decided I must
fish or cut bait on entropy or it would take
me to my grave, that almost immediately
you-guys started not one but two
conversations close to my heart: on the
centrality of metaphor to science and on the
group selection controversy.
A couple of decades ago I brought those two
interests together in a paper called
“Shifting the Natural Selection Metaphor to
the Group Level. There are two things about
this paper that make it salient for me. The
first is that I think it is the best paper I
ever wrote. The second is that for each of
the two people whom I most hoped to reach
when I wrote it, D. S. Wilson and Elliott
Sober, it is a piece of crap. In it, I try
to show that the problem with metaphors is
not with their use in scientific thinking: on
the contrary, it is with their
ill-disciplined use. Metaphors need to be
worked in a systematic way, not simply flung
out in a gust of poetic exuberance. This
lesson I try to teach by working the natural
selection metaphor in a systematic way to
show that if it had been treated seriously in
the first place, the whole dispute about
group selection might have been avoided.
Thus the paper is not only arrogant, but
meta-arrogant.
Nothing is more pitiable than the retired
academic who would do anything to have
anybody read his moribund essays. But, alas,
I simply am such a person. So, I am attaching
a copy of the paper in the hope that it will
have some value to you within the context of
your two discussions.
Mumble,
Nick
--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[email protected]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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*Attachments:*
* Shifting the natural selection metaphor
to the group level.pdf
* Shifting the natural selection metaphor
to the group level.pdf
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--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[email protected]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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