The Selfish Gene

%% QSNCX3MH ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Each cleaner has his own territory', and large fish have been seen queuing up for attention like customers at a barber's shop." (p. 186 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% XSSGZDA4 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "from the utter selfishness of the Ik of Uganda, as described by Colin Turnbull, to the gentle altruism of Margaret Mead's Arapesh." (p. 189 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% MSQG6ZWR ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene." (p. 189 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% P3KEJBXC ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators." (p. 189 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% ICCZANMJ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "But is there anything that must be true of all life, wherever it is found, and whatever the basis of its chemistry? If forms of life exist whose chemistry is based on silicon rather than carbon, or ammonia rather than water, if creatures are discovered that boil to death at -100 degrees centigrade, if a form of life is found that is not based on chemistry at all but on electronic reverberating circuits, will there still be any general principle that is true of all life? Obviously I do not know but, if I had to bet, I would put my money on one fundamental principle. This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities." (p. 189 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% IPYGZXL5 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "As soon as the primeval soup provided conditions in which molecules could make copies of themselves, the replicators themselves took over. For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subservient to the old." (p. 192 | 19-10-2024) Note: memes took over from genes %%end%%

%% 624OUFRX ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Fecund" (p. 192 | 19-10-2024) Note: (a.) Fruitful in children; prolific. %%end%%

%% DD5PJP6G ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "In what sense then are memes competing with each other? Should we expect them to be 'selfish' or 'ruthless', if they have no alleles? The answer is that we might, because there is a sense in which they must indulge in a kind of competition with each other." (p. 195 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% QMBMDBTC ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Perhaps we could regard an organized church, with its architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and written tradition, as a co-adapted stable set of mutually-assisting memes." (p. 196 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 35ZBOKKO ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry." (p. 196 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% Y57JPILV ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "If a priest is a survival machine for memes, celibacy is a useful attribute to build into him. Celibacy is just a minor partner in a large complex of mutually-assisting religious memes." (p. 197 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% KVLDNQ5A ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "I conjecture that co-adapted meme-complexes evolve in the same kind of way as co-adapted gene-complexes." (p. 197 | 19-10-2024) Note: i fear this theory goes and in hand with extreme moral relativism and a purely functional view on the value of information by means of their spread in the meme pool. %%end%%

%% 42UD3VJS ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "What we have not previously considered is that a cultural trait may have evolved in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself." (p. 198 | 19-10-2024) Note: as in, a meme may continue to exist for the simple reason that it is a good replicator %%end%%

%% G6WZXBQA ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "development of the theory of memes may be, there is one serious point which I would like to emphasize once again. This is that when we look at the evolution of cultural traits and at their survival value, we must be clear whose survival we are talking about. Biologists, as we have seen, are accustomed to looking for advantages at the gene level (or the individual, the group, or the species level according to taste). What we have not previously considered is that a cultural trait may have evolved in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself. We do not have to look for conventional biological survival values of traits like religion, music, and ritual dancing, though these may also be present. Once the genes have provided their survival machines with brains that are capable of rapid imitation, the memes will automatically take over. We do not even have to posit a genetic advantage in imitation, though that would certainly help. All that is necessary is that the brain should be capable of imitation: memes will then evolve that exploit the capability to the full." (p. 198 | 19-10-2024) Note: doesnt that undermine the entire field of evolutionary psychology? %%end%%

%% JREWBRT3 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "It is possible that yet another unique quality of man is a capacity for genuine, disinterested, true altruism. I hope so, but I am not going to argue the case one way or the other, nor to speculate over its possible memic evolution." (p. 199 | 19-10-2024) Note: true altruism could evolve memetically %%end%%

%% RQJSOB2V ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The point I am making now is that, even if we look on the dark side and assume that individual man is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight-our capacity to simulate the future in imagination-could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the blind replicators. We have at least the mental equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests rather than merely our short-term selfish interests. We can see the long-term benefits of participating in a 'conspiracy of doves', and we can sit down together to discuss ways of making the conspiracy work. We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism- something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." (p. 199 | 19-10-2024) Note: a beacon of hope %%end%%

%% P7QZ4J37 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "If only . .. if only . .. if only there could be some way of reaching agreement, some way of reassuring each player that the other can be trusted not to go for the selfish jackpot, some way of policing the agreement." (p. 203 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% PQMM7DJZ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "In the simple game of Prisoner's Dilemma, there is no way of ensuring trust. Unless at least one of the players is a really saintly sucker, too good for this world, the game is doomed to end in mutual defection with its paradoxically poor result for both players. But there is another version of the game. It is called the 'Iterated' or 'Repeated' Prisoner's Dilemma. The iterated game is more complicated, and in its complication lies hope." (p. 203 | 19-10-2024) Note: repeated prisoner's dilemma %%end%%

%% 4XA6C4K7 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The birds in Chapter 10 who removed ticks from each other's feathers were playing an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game. How is this so? It is important, you remember, for a bird to pull off his own ticks, but he cannot reach the top of his own head and needs a companion to do that for him. It would seem only fair that he should return the favour later. But this service costs a bird time and energy, albeit not much. If a bird can get away with cheating-with having his own ticks removed but then refusing to reciprocate-he gains all the benefits without paying the costs. Rank the outcomes, and you'll find that indeed we have a true game of Prisoner's Dilemma." (p. 204 | 19-10-2024) Note: reciprocal altruism as repeated prisoners dilemma %%end%%

%% 35KWZ3ZS ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Unlike the simple game, which is rather predictable in that defect is the only rational strategy, the iterated version offers plenty of strategic scope. In the simple game there are only two possible strategies, cooperate and defect. Iteration, however, allows lots of conceivable strategies, and it is by no means obvious which one is best." (p. 204 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% UXOZTIV4 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Remember that the 'players' in the tournament were not humans but computer programs, preprogrammed strategies. Their human authors played the same role as genes programming bodies" (p. 206 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 3V3446EL ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "It seems pretty convincing that nice guys do well in this game." (p. 208 | 19-10-2024) Note: nice guys finish first in axelrds tournament %%end%%

%% S5FWCDUN ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "It is possible to be even more forgiving than Tit for Tat. Tit for Two Tats allows its opponents two defections in a row before it eventually retaliates. This might seem excessively saintly and magnanimous. Nevertheless Axelrod worked out that, if only somebody had submitted Tit for Two Tats, it would have won the tournament. This is because it is so good at avoiding runs of mutual recrimination." (p. 208 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% L5T73SFQ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The important characteristic of an evolutionarily stable strategy, you will remember from earlier chapters, is that it carries on doing well when it is already numerous in the population of strategies. To say that Tit for Tat, say, is an ESS, would be to say that Tit for Tat does well in a climate dominated by Tit for Tat. This could be seen as a special kind of 'robustness'. As evolutionists we are tempted to see it as the only kind of robustness that matters. Why does it matter so much? Because, in the world of Darwinism, winnings are not paid out as money; they are paid out as offspring. To a Darwinian, a successful strategy is one that has become numerous in the population of strategies. For a strategy to remain successful, it must do well specifically when it is numerous, that is in a climate dominated by copies of itself." (p. 210 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% HUOZCLUL ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Axelrod took the 63 strategies and threw them again into the computer to make 'generation 1' of an evolutionary succession. In 'generation 1', therefore, the 'climate' consisted of an equal representation of all 63 strategies. At the end of generation 1, winnings to each strategy were paid out, not as 'money' or 'points', but as offsprings identical to their (asexual) parents." (p. 211 | 19-10-2024) Note: in lifes iterated prisoners dilemma prizes are paid out in offspring not in cash %%end%%

%% HVELPBKK ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "So, although Tit for Tat may be only dubiously an ESS, it has a sort of higher-order stability. What can this mean? Surely, stable is stable. Well, here we are taking a longer view. Always Defect resists invasion for a long time. But if we wait long enough, perhaps thousands of years, Tit for Tat will eventually muster the numbers required to tip it over the knife-edge, and the population will flip. But the reverse will not happen. Always Defect, as we have seen, cannot benefit from clustering, and so does not enjoy this higher-order stability." (p. 215 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% XSLAIQZP ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "tinuing to cooperate, and treating their divorce, too, as nonzero sum. As if child welfare were not a sufficient reason, the fees of two lawyers will make a nasty dent in the family finances. So obviously a sensible and civilized couple begin by going together to see one lawyer, don't they? Well, actually no. At least in England and, until recently, in all fifty states of the USA, the law, or more strictly-and significantly-the lawyers' own professional code, doesn't allow them to. Lawyers must accept only one member of a couple as a client. The other person is turned from the door, and either has no legal advice at all or is forced to go to another lawyer. And that is when the fun begins. In separate chambers but with one voice, the two lawyers immediately start referring to 'us' and 'them'. 'Us', you understand, doesn't mean me and my wife; it means me and my lawyer against her and her lawyer. When the case comes to court, it is actually listed as 'Smith versus Smith'! It is assumed to be adversarial, whether the couple feel adversarial or not, whether or not they have specifically agreed that they want to be sensibly amicable. And who benefits from treating it as an 'I win, you lose' tussle? The chances are, only the lawyers. The hapless couple have been dragged into a zero sum game. For the lawyers, however, the case of Smith v. Smith is a nice fat nonzero sum game, with the Smiths providing the payoffs and the two professionals milking their clients' joint account in elaborately coded cooperation. One way in which they cooperate is to make proposals that they both know the other side will not accept. This prompts a counter proposal that, again, both know is unacceptable. And so it goes on. Every letter, every telephone call exchanged between the cooperating 'adversaries' adds another wad to the bill. With luck, this procedure can be dragged out for months or even years, with costs mounting in parallel. The lawyers don't get together to work all this out. On the contrary, it is ironically their scrupulous separateness that is the chief instrument of their cooperation at the expense of the clients. The lawyers may not even be aware of what they are doing. Like the vampire bats that we shall meet in a moment, they are playing to well-ritualized rules. The system works without any conscious overseeing or organizing. It is all geared to forcing us into zero sum games. Zero sum for the clients, but very much nonzero sum for the lawyers." (p. 216 | 19-10-2024) Note: divorce lawyers and zero sum games %%end%%

%% A6BH7CFU ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Many situations in real life are, as a matter of fact, equivalent to nonzero sum games. Nature often plays the role of 'banker', and individuals can therefore benefit from one another's success. They do not have to do down rivals in order to benefit themselves. Without departing from the fundamental laws of the selfish gene, we can see how cooperation and mutual assistance can flourish even in a basically selfish world. We can see how, in Axelrod's meaning of the term, nice guys may finish first." (p. 219 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% ZISWLYTY ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "-envious strategy could easily be programmed into a computer by a very nasty man. And vice versa. A strategy's niceness is recognized by its behaviour, not by its motives (for it has none) nor by the personality of its author (who has faded into the background by the time the program is running in the computer). A computer program can behave in a strategic manner, without being aware of its strategy or, indeed, of anything at all. We are, of course, entirely familiar with the idea of unconscious strategists, or at least of strategists whose consciousness, if any, is irrelevant. Unconscious strategists abound in the pages of this book. Axelrod's programs are an exellent model for the way we, throughout the book, have been thinking of animals and plants, and indeed of genes. So it is natural to ask whether his optimistic conclusions-about the success of non-envious, forgiving niceness-also apply in the world of nature. The answer is yes, of course they do. The only conditions are that nature should sometimes set up games of Prisoner's Dilemma, that the shadow of the future should be long, and that the games should be nonzero sum games. These conditions are certainly met, all round the living kingdoms." (p. 223 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 3742PSAQ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Combine this with that other Victorian myth, nature red in tooth and claw," (p. 227 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% QKX5DCXK ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The Extended Phenotype!" (p. 228 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% GPKDADXG ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The technical word Phenotype is used for the bodily manifestation of a gene, the effect that a gene, in comparison with its alleles, has on the body, via development." (p. 229 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% IIHXAHXN ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "There are such genes and they are called segregation distorters. They have a diabolical simplicity. When a segregation distorter arises by mutation, it will spread inexorably through the population at the expense of its allele. It is this that is known as meiotic drive. It will happen even if the effects on bodily welfare, and on the welfare of all the other genes in the body, are disastrous. Throughout this book we have been alert to the possibility of individual organisms 'cheating' in subtle ways against their social companions. Here we are talking about single genes cheating against the other genes with which they share a body." (p. 229 | 19-10-2024) Note: meiotic drive, genes cheating themselves %%end%%

%% SIX6EJID ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "The phenotypic effects of a gene are normally seen as all the effects that it has on the body in which it sits. This is the conventional definition. But we shall now see that the phenotypic effects of a gene need to be thought of as all the effects that it has on the world." (p. 231 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% TD66IAIJ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "All that I am going to add is that the tools may reach outside the individual body wall." (p. 231 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% P23B6WZ4 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "effects' shows that such uneasiness is misplaced. We need to accept only that the change in snail shell is a fluke adaptation. If it is, it has to have come about by Darwinian selection of fluke genes. We have demonstrated that the phenotypic effects of a gene can extend, not only to inanimate objects like stones, but to 'other' living bodies too. The story of the snails and flukes is only the beginning. Parasites of all types have long been known to exert fascinatingly insidious influences on their hosts. A species of microscopic protozoan parasite called Nosema, which infests the larvae of flour beetles, has 'discovered' how to manufacture a chemical that is very special for the beetles. Like other insects, these beetles have a hormone called the juvenile hormone which keeps larvae as larvae. The normal change from larva to adult is triggered by the larva ceasing production of juvenile hormone. The parasite Nosema has succeeded in synthesizing (a close chemical analogue of) this hormone. Millions of Nosema club together to mass-produce juvenile hormone in the beetle larva's body, thereby preventing it from turning into an adult. Instead it goes on growing, ending up as a giant larva more than twice the weight of a normal adult. No good for propagating beetle genes, but a cornucopia for Nosema parasites. Giantism in beetle larvae is an extended phenotypic effect of protozoan genes." (p. 235 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% LM5JTDNA ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "I suggest that the most important question to ask about any parasite is this. Are its genes transmitted to future generations via the same vehicles as the host's genes?" (p. 236 | 19-10-2024) Note: on motivations of parasites. Maybe this is how our bodies got to be so complex? Parasitic mergers? %%end%%

%% ZSEVZ7JK ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Our own genes cooperate with one another, not because they are our own but because they share the same outlet- sperm or egg-into the future. If any genes of an organism, such as a human, could discover a way of spreading themselves that did not depend on the conventional sperm or egg route, they would take it and be less cooperative. This is because they would stand to gain by a different set of future outcomes from the other genes in the body. We've already seen examples of genes that bias meiosis in their own favour. Perhaps there are also genes that have broken out of the sperm/egg 'proper channels' altogether and pioneered a sideways route." (p. 238 | 19-10-2024) Note: genes work together in bodies bc they dont have better ways to replicate than through the bodys eggs and sperms %%end%%

%% N35ESWCC ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "natural selection to favour their opportunism and improve it. As for the precise methods that they use, there is no reason why these should be any different from the machinations-all too predictable to a selfish gene/extended phenotype theorist-of viruses. When we have a cold or a cough, we normally think of the symptoms as annoying byproducts of the virus's activities. But in some cases it seems more probable that they are deliberately engineered by the virus to help it to travel from one host to another. Not content with simply being breathed into the atmosphere, the virus makes us sneeze or cough explosively. The rabies virus is transmitted in saliva when one animal bites another. In dogs, one of the symptoms of the disease is that normally peaceful and friendly animals become ferocious biters, foaming at the mouth. Ominously too, instead of staying within a mile or so of home like normal dogs, they turn into restless wanderers, propagating the virus far afield. It has even been suggested that the well-known hydrophobic symptom encourages the dog to shake the wet foam from its mouth-and with it the virus." (p. 239 | 19-10-2024) Note: rabies %%end%%

%% LIFCOJHV ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "dogs, they turn into restless wanderers, propagating the virus far afield. It has even been suggested that the well-known hydrophobic symptom encourages the dog to shake the wet foam from its mouth-and with it the virus. I do not know of any direct evidence that sexually transmitted diseases increase the libido of sufferers, but I conjecture that it would be worth looking into. Certainly at least one alleged aphrodisiac, Spanish Fly, is said to work by inducing an itch .. . and making people itch is just the kind of thing viruses are good at. The point of comparing rebel human DNA with invading parasitic viruses is that there really isn't any important difference between them. Viruses may well, indeed, have originated as collections of breakaway genes. If we want to erect any distinction, it should be between genes that pass from body to body via the orthodox route of sperms or eggs, and genes that pass from body to body via unorthodox, 'sideways' routes. Both classes may include genes that originated as 'own' chromosomal genes. And both classes may include genes that originated as external, invading parasites. Or perhaps all 'own' chromosomal genes should be regarded as mutually parasitic on one another." (p. 240 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 23RHNBXX ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Parasites, too, don't have to live inside their hosts; their genes can express themselves in hosts at a distance. Cuckoo nestlings don't live inside robins or reed-warblers; they don't suck their blood or devour their tissues, yet we have no hesitation in labelling them as parasites." (p. 241 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% VI2AXEDY ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Maybe selection hasn't yet had time to do its work. Perhaps cuckoos have only in recent centuries started parasitizing their present hosts, and will in a few centuries be forced to give them up and victimize other species. There is some evidence to support this theory. But I can't help feeling that there must be more to it than that. In the evolutionary 'arms race' between cuckoos and any host species, there is a sort of built-in unfairness, resulting from unequal costs of failure. Each individual cuckoo nestling is descended from a long line of ancestral cuckoo nestlings, every single one of whom must have succeeded in manipulating its foster-parent. Any cuckoo nestling that lost its hold, even momentarily, over its host would have died as a result. But each individual foster-parent is descended from a long line of ancestors many of whom never encountered a cuckoo in their lives." (p. 242 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 6ARZR4Z4 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "'The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.'" (p. 243 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 5IAJYAY7 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Actually, in a sense they are acting in their own best interests: the whole point of the life/dinner principle is that they theoretically could resist manipulation but it would be too costly to do so." (p. 243 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% 2NSDNRYP ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "My favourite character in Wilson's The Insect Societies is Monomorium santschii. This species, over evolutionary time, has lost its worker caste altogether. The host workers do everything for their parasites, even the most terrible task of all. At the behest of the invading parasite queen, they actually perform the deed of murdering their own mother. The usurper doesn't need to use her jaws. She uses mind-control. How she does it is a mystery; she probably employs a chemical, for ant nervous systems-are generally highly attuned to them. If her weapon is indeed chemical, then it is as insidious a drug as any known to science. For think what it accomplishes. It floods the brain of the worker ant, grabs the reins of her muscles, woos her from deeply ingrained duties and turns her against her own mother." (p. 244 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% AEZX7JSW ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Vehicles don't replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators. Replicators don't behave, don't perceive the world, don't catch prey or run away from predators; they make vehicles that do all those things." (p. 246 | 19-10-2024) Note: vehicles and replicators %%end%%

%% PIOCKRVS ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "would evolve to become as one flesh. We mightn't even be able to tell that there ever had been two vehicles. 'Single' individual organisms such as ourselves are the ultimate embodiment of many such mergers. The group of organisms-the flock of birds, the pack of wolves-does not merge into a single vehicle, precisely because the genes in the flock or the pack do not share a common method of leaving the present vehicle. To be sure, packs may bud off daughter packs. But the genes in the parent pack don't pass to the daughter pack in a single vessel in which all have an equal share. The genes in a pack of wolves don't all stand to gain from the same set of events in the future. A gene can foster its own future welfare by favouring its own individual wolf, at the expense of other individual wolves. An individual wolf, therefore, is a vehicle worthy of the name. A pack of wolves is not. Genetically speaking, the reason for this is that all the cells except the sex cells in a wolf's body have the same genes, while, as for the sex cells, all the genes have an equal chance of being in each one of them. But the cells in a pack of wolves do not have the same genes, nor do they have the same chance of being in the cells of sub-packs that are budded off. They have everything to gain by struggling against rivals in other wolf bodies (although the fact that a wolf-pack is likely to be a kin group will mitigate the struggle)" (p. 247 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% BYIFO2V5 ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "A bee-hive, when it swarms, appears to reproduce by broad-fronted budding, like a wolf pack. But if we look more carefully we find that, as far as the genes are concerned, their destiny is largely shared. The future of the genes in the swarm is, at least to a large extent, lodged in the ovaries of one queen. This is why-it is just another way of expressing the message of earlier chapters-the bee colony looks and behaves like a truly integrated single vehicle." (p. 248 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% B7EHPVQV ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "A gene in a splurge-weed cell stands to gain by promoting the reproduction of its cell. It does not necessarily stand to gain by promoting the reproduction of its 'individual' plant." (p. 255 | 19-10-2024) Note: bottlenecked reproduction may be the only way to create individuals %%end%%

%% H7BO2B6R ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "Indeed I suspect that the essential, defining feature of an individual organism is that it is a unit that begins and ends with a single-celled bottleneck. If life cycles become bottlenecked, living material seems bound to become boxed into discrete, unitary organisms." (p. 256 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%

%% QI7EJIQQ ts: 2024-10-19T10:49:20Z %% "With only a little imagination we can see the gene as sitting at the centre of a radiating web of extended phenotypic power. And an object in the world is the centre of a converging web of influences from many genes sitting in many organisms. The long reach of the gene knows no obvious boundaries. The whole world is criss-crossed with causal arrows joining genes to phenotypic effects, far and near." (p. 257 | 19-10-2024) %%end%%