Table of Contents
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins is an ambitious project that seeks to explain how and why evolution selected for the behaviors, characteristics, and ideas that are now prevalent in any society.
The gene is the basic unit of evolution. It is essential information that can exist for a very long time, which is why it is considered almost “immortal.” While you may exist for a few decades, the genes of your ancestors have ancient roots, and may continue to exist far into the future.
Evolution acts on the genes themselves (not the organism).
Organisms cannot replicate themselves, but they can replicate genes, which contains ancestral information that can be used to create different organisms (non-identical to them).
The Immortal Gene
“Genes are in a sense immortal. They pass through the generations, reshuffling themselves each time they pass from parent to offspring … Natural selection will favour those genes which build themselves a body which is most likely to succeed in handing down safely to the next generation a large number of replicas of those genes … our basic expectation on the basis of the orthodox, neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is that Genes will be ‘selfish’.”
The Meaning of Life
Dawkins argues that we have no need for superstition when it comes to the deep problems of life: Is there a meaning to life? What is man? What is our purpose? He quotes the zoologist G.G Simpson, “The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.”
Some people, even atheists, are offended by this quotation. And upon first reading, it appears intolerant and philistine, but Dawkins insists that the answers to the deep questions of existence that came before the discovery the Evolution are all irrelevant, and are only interesting as historical artifacts.
Philosophy and other humanities are still taught as if Darwin never existed, to the sheer astonishment of Dawkins. But he is confident that this will change with time.
Morality
If you were told about someone who survived in the world of Chicago gangsters, you would be able to ascertain that this person was tough, could attract loyal friends, and has a quick trigger finger. These are approximations of course, but they are likely true.
The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes.
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Dawkins argues that our genes must have ruthless selfishness as its predominant quality. And selfish genes do give rise to selfish individual behavior, but there are some cases in which a gene can achieve its selfish goals by fostering a certain kind of group behavior instead of individual behavior.
As much as we like to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species are not ideas that make much evolutionary sense.
But Dawkins insists that he is not advocating for a morality based on evolution, but that he simply describing how things evolved (a reinterpretation of Darwin’s ideas).
Self-Deception
If deceit is fundamental in animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception, and this ought in turn, to select for self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray by the subtle signs of self-knowledge the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate
images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.
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A Primordial Soup
A replicator is the first, simplest form of life on earth – it is a molecule that could copy itself. It has a competitive advantage against the other molecules in the primordial soup that could not replicate themselves. Replicators copy themselves by attracting other ‘letters’ and acting as a template for them to match up to.
But mistakes occur during this copying process.These mistakes created distinct replicators that could copy themselves faster, or gave them a distinct advantage over their ‘parent’.
Evolution occurs when there is a culture of molecules with different characteristics and an environment of limited resources.
Over time, new abilities emerged. One such ability allows the replicator to break down other replicators and use them as building blocks for replication: these were the first carnivores. Over billions of years, more complex life forms emerged, eventually culminated in the rich variety of organisms that exist today.
The Selfish Gene
A gene is considered “selfish” because it unconsciously promotes its own survival above all else. Genes exist though packages called chromosomes. But chromosomes have limited space (46 chromosomes in total for humans). So, any gene that occupies a space in the chromosomes through an allele, can only do so at the expense of other alleles.
Because the different alleles try to occupy exactly the same spot on a chromosome, any survival advantage an allele gains is automatically selfish: it decreases the survival prospects of the other alleles.
How does a Gene Survive?
Genes can have hosts (like humans), or they can exist without a host (viruses). If they can cause humans to sneeze, they can replicate successfully. Virus genes don’t need to have a body.
Those that do have a body, survive depending on the match between the body and the environment. Longer legs, for example, can help a mammal escape from predators. A bodily characteristic (longer legs) that is derived from a gene is known as the gene’s phenotype.
The survival success of a gene is dependent on its particular environment – both physical and genetic.Good camouflage for a tiger is very bad camouflage for a polar bear, because of the fundamentally different environments.
Altruism
Parents are altruistic to their children because genes are selfish (they want to replicate themselves).
Altruism is defined as exchanging one’s own benefit for the benefit of another.
Genes exist as multiple copies in multiple organisms, and they program behaviors that benefit their copies in other organisms even at the expense of their own organism.
Why would one holder of genetic information make sacrifices to another holder of similar but not identical genetic information?
Since a gene is unconscious, it does not know which organisms carry its copies, but organisms that are kin do share copies. Genes that program organisms to help their kin have a survival advantage, and lead those behaviors to survive.
In a series of repeated games, played out through evolutionary history, mutually altruistic behaviors win out against purely selfish behaviors, thus mutual altruism emerges.
Behavioral Strategies
Which type of behavior emerges results from a competition between different behavioral strategies. A gene’s success depends on its environment. A behavioral strategy’s survival depends on how organisms behave as a collective.
There are a few general strategies worth looking at.
Consider the population of birds. Doves flee if attacked. Hawks always attack and fight until near death. Retaliators act like Doves until attacked, and then become like Hawks.
If everyone was a Dove, an invading Hawk would be very successful since no one would stand up to it. But when everyone is a Hawk, the proportion of Doves go up, since Hawks get injured and die frequently. Neither Hawk nor Dove is an evolutionarily stable strategy since either population can be invaded by the other.
Retaliators are evolutionarily stable, since they are not injured through unnecessary aggression, but they do defend themselves if necessary. If everyone was a Retaliator, neither Hawks nor Doves could be successful.
Memes
What about human culture? Of the ideas and traditions that we prize so much and pass down to successive generations, why do some survive and others don’t? Dawkins explains that like genes, and evolutionary stable behaviors, cultural ideas or “memes” are also subject to evolution.
Culture can be considered as a gene pool, with the most basic unit of cultural evolution being a meme, rather than a gene. A meme can be an idea, a song, or video, or a melody, and it is transmitted through human communication. In the same way that genes cooperate to create a complex organism like a human being, memes cooperate to form complex organizations, like the United States or the Catholic Church.
As with genes, memes can only survive in the appropriate environment. This is in line with the thesis of The Medium is the Message – the success of the transmission of an idea depends largely on how it is being transmitted (TV, Youtube, or Books). Some mediums are better suited for some ideas than others.
Since Dawkins does not think that an “ought” can be derived from how things are, he thinks we can be thoughtful about how we choose to live our lives, when we know about how our genetic and memetic programming works.