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Identifying the Explanatory Weakness of Strong Altruism: The Needle in the 'Haystack Model'

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Abstract

Evolutionary theorists have encountered difficulty in explaining how altruistic behavior can evolve. I argue that these theorists have made this task more difficult than it needs to be by focusing their efforts on explaining how nature could select for a strong type of altruism that has powerful selection forces working against it. I argue that switching the focus to a weaker type of altruism renders the project of explaining how altruism can evolve significantly less difficult. I offer a model. of weak altruism that can avoid many of the difficulties that evolutionary accounts of altruism have traditionally faced.

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A model of group selection is constructed for the case of differential extinction acting on small boundary populations of a large, fixed population. Consideration is restricted to extinction operators acting at or near to carrying capacity. Under the assumption that the extinction rate is large relative to individual genetic parameters affecting gene frequencies in boundary populations, we discuss the conditions under which differential extinction is most likely to produce a significant effect. In particular, a condition for bimodality in the distribution of gene frequencies in boundary populations (population polymorphism) is that there be some critical allele frequency at which the extinction rate jumps from high to low. An extinction operator linear in allele frequency produces no qualitative effect of this kind. In consequence, we are able to make precise rather limited circumstances under which group selection is likely to have a significant effect.
Summary of: ‘Unto Others’
  • Sober
Summary of: ‘Unto Others’”, Summary of: ‘Unto Others
  • Elliott Sober
  • David Sloan