tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post3677541799357797988..comments2024-02-28T02:22:20.886-08:00Comments on homunculus: What is selfish DNA?Philip Ballhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09986655706443117158noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-15778274681026514722016-03-02T14:05:47.802-08:002016-03-02T14:05:47.802-08:00Oh that the blogosphere were all like this....Oh that the blogosphere were all like this....Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03358818160899445049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-55906623632075861492016-01-29T06:34:49.538-08:002016-01-29T06:34:49.538-08:00Hi Phil,
I think your comments are not wrong, but...Hi Phil,<br /><br />I think your comments are not wrong, but nor are they especially game changing, to borrow a phrase I used in the piece. Taking them in turn and briefly:<br /><br />1. On whether selfish DNA was Dawkins's "discovery": well, I have not found anybody else who stated the idea before him, let alone so clearly, and either Crick or Orgel (memory not perfect) specifically told me it was The Selfish Gene that alerted him to it. The c-value paradox was largely discussed in terms of competing explanations based on function (for the organism) at the time. (Might be worth asking Sapienza.) That paradigm needed challenging. I am sure it is true, as Crick and Orgel hedge their bets by conceding, that somebody may have pre-empted Dawkins somewhere. As you know, history nearly always turns up neglected pioneers of ideas, but Dawkins was probably the first not to be neglected. A point I had to leave on the cutting room floor was the coincidence of timing of this idea and the first computer viruses.<br /><br />2. On "all genes are selfish", Dawkins and others (such as Austin Burt) have occasionally used "ultra-selfish" as a term for digital parasite elements as opposed to the notion that genes are selected to promote the survival of themselves and copies. But I made clear that selfish DNA is a parenthetical, case in terms of the whole argument, so I am not sure there is much of substance between us here. Burt's work with Wolbachia, transposons and now drive do emphasise that these things are pretty important to evolution, more so than anybody expected in 1980. My discussion of the suggested title "the Immortal Gene" surely does go to the issue your raise about the title being misleading. Incidentally, the almost visceral objection many people have to the phrases "selfish gene" and "junk DNA", as if one was somehow offending somebody by using them, is something I have never understood.<br /><br />3. Your alternative formulation of my sentence about birds and bees is not an improvement in my mind for the following reason: it implies that genes are selected to help any old "other genes", which we know to be wrong. Genes that promote the survival of their own replicas (to use the word from Dawkins's 1966 lecture notes), whether in an offspring or a relative, tend to survive at the expense of genes that don't. They may do this by causing selfish behaviour, or non-selfish (e.g. parental) behaviour. And while it is true that "allele" is usually the right way of thinking about this -- evolution is the selective survival of alleles, mostly -- it is not exclusively alleles one is talking about. Suppose my brown- or blue-eye gene (I have one of each) is literally identical to yours. And suppose in the context of my body and my lifestyle it has for some reason done a better or worse job of promoting my survival (probably by making me more or less paler skinned and so more or less susceptible to vitamin D deficiency in an ancestral early-farming society in a high latitude, say) then the competition has not been between my two alleles but between my gene and its identical allele in you. We're getting into absurdities, here, of course. but then you started it!! (this meant as a joke, not a criticism.)<br /><br />4. As for your pseudo-organism remark, well I think that's a good example of Dennett's intentional stance problem, which I raised in my piece. It's a linguistic problem as much as anything else. We just have not got the vocabulary for things that have non-random consequences without having any mind-first intentionality. I don't think the problem is better or worse if you substitute allele for gene.<br /><br />Thanks for reviewing my review of RD's reviews!!<br /><br />MattAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16222776320116874538noreply@blogger.com