Hi, Edward K. Ream escribió: > > > On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > wrote: > > > I believe that we > have a tendency to overweight view of the individual and his role > in the > problem solution and usually not see he as a member of a network where > the problem solution happens. > > > Clearly, both are important. We can see the vital impact that > individuals have with Leo, while recognizing that creative > contributions happen in the context of the problems a community wants > to address. > > By analogy, an intense debate is raging in evolutionary theory about > whether evolution happens primarily at the level of the individual, > the gene, or the group. The first reaction most people probably have > is that selection pressures apply to individuals. However, Richard > Dawkins makes a strong case in "The Selfish Gene" that selection can > be considered to be acting at the level of the gene. More recently, > scientists and philosophers have been debating under what > circumstances selection can be said to happen at the group level. Talking about Dawkins, recently I have recently finished the reading of Unweaving the Rainbow. I believe his argument in favor of the gene level selection. Because this genes are expressed in more complex systems, like tissues and organs, they are in an ecosystem where its survival is determined by the surrounding genes (other genes are the ecosystem of a specific one). Because of the adaptation especial for that ecosystem, selfish of the gene can be successful only specific context in company of other selfish ones, so "collaboration" emerges. In fact there is a special chapter about this: the selfish collaborator. Of course this is not to say that the reductionist explication is the valid one, because selfish in genetic level doesn't imply selfish in cultural level.
> > A cute summary: among individuals, selfishness beats cooperation, but > cooperative groups beat selfish groups. Furthermore, selection at > lower levels tends to undermine selection at higher levels. > Presumably, both these statements are oversimplifications :-) > > Happily, this group is based on cooperation--I see little or no > selfishness among the members. This bodes well for the long-term > viability of Leo and Leo's community. > In fact, another author, Axelrod, in his book The complexity of collaboration, says that selfish beats collaboration in non long term individual relationships, as the iterated prisoner dilemma showed (a modified game theory classic). So collaboration beats selfishness even at individual level if we consider iterations. Cheers, Offray --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
