Nor would you probably agree that the particular individual qualities of our opioidergic systems have any effect whatsoever on our ability to learn or learn badly.
The only canard here is you, me duck ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
Are the irreconcilable differences between the Muslim Indonesians and the Papus genetic or social ? Are the Indonesians driving out the Papus because of genetic advantage ? Do the Indonesians dress and the Papus remain mostly nude because of their genes ?
The orbits of excited electrons around H2O, N2 and O2 molecules is an interesting thing to know, yet is not going to be very informative when trying to determine tomorrow's weather. Same for the genetics of social behaviour.
So the idea being put forward must be that the processes that direct evolution of human social behaviours are similar to those of biological evolution, despite not being carried through DNA. And that is hogwash. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
What the Wilsons argue (I think) is that wetware (hard and soft) is a product of DNA/RNA processes. I think you would accept that? And that these processes will produce different capabilities for 'manufacturing' eg hormones and semihormones (ie the ones with a neurotransmitter effect), in similar DNA individuals. The relative balance of these manufacturing systems affects 'personality'. Alcoholism is a Learned Behaviour Disorder - but alcoholics are often very good at learning. Too good, one might say. The 'thrill' of abundant noradrenalin production is another example of behaviour influenced by the 'manufacturing'.
I don't regard this as being in contention. What we are in contention about is whether this extends beyond the individual to social groups. If sufficient members of a social group share a DNA mix that produces biochemicals in a certain 'recipe', then it is possible that there are behaviour propensities that will be shared by that group - EVEN IF the behaviour that results will emerge environmentally i.e. if several social groups shared the same DNA mix, indivdual group behaviour will depend on environmental factors that can vary over time and geography and living conditions. The expression of the behaviour can thus be different from the biochemical chassis.
If we consider 'selection', then social behaviours (at a certain place in time) can lead to tribal growth or demise. Growth means the continuation of that tribal DNA mix, and the continuation of the biological propensities. Behaviour cannot pass on from generation to generation genetically, but the drivers for behaviour do.
Meanwhile.....
Game theory could save the world You can't be me, I'm taken
Soft wetware mostly, and indeed hard wetware sometimes (midwives in Europe regularly "redisigned" the cranial features of newborns, a few centuries ago) , is not a product of DNA/RNA. Our societies have been able to invent concepts such as homosexuality. Our societies have been powerful enough to destroy such a basic wetware necessity, for survival of the species, as maternal instinct : most children in urban Europe two centuries ago were sent to the countryside to be fed, nobody actually caring if they died in their first two years.
The variability of genotypes in the human species is quite weak - it's not unthinkable the whole species went through a narrow bottleneck 100 000 years ago, a short time for evolution. If you put an European child in a pre-Columbian American tribe or civilization, he'll become undistinguishable from his peers socially, if you go beyond skin and hair colour. This regularly happened when American Indians kidnapped white settlers... The DNA mix is very weakly impacted by environmental conditions, beyond skin colour, in human societies.
Human societies' mores and behaviour are very strongly determined by social pressures, which are way, way stronger than genetical hardwiring.
And that game theory piece is hogwash too. Human beings aren't rational selfish utility-maximisers, and although game theory can inform the ways we can develop institutions to design our society, game theory theorems and computations don't apply literally to human societies. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
There are two key errors: first, talking about the incorporation of elements related to social science in a mathematical model as if it were entirely unproblematic (not requiring substantial interpretation and discussion). Second, imputing radical novelty to an approach that has many antecedents. Just from my limited overview of policy analysis and political economy, related analyses have been around since the early 1990s at the latest. See e.g. Rules, Games and Common Pool Resources.
The importance of the study is also wildly overstated. I at least don't see concrete policy advice on how to use the findings to come to well-functioning global cooperation. It's just a study saying 'people may be more willing to cooperate than our previous model predicted when we incorporate factors x and y'.
It's just a study saying 'people may be more willing to cooperate than our previous model predicted when we incorporate factors x and y'.
If we look from Taleb's "Black Swan" perspective of theoretical vs empirical fallacies, the selfishness imperative is more a logical ("Platonic") conclusion of a few simplistic assumptions than an empirical truth. Simplest evolutionary models indeed predict that the world must be robustly selfish, non-altruistic - and selective evidence may "confirm" that. But examples of nasty bugs and free-riding cuckoos form a rather isolated set of malicious tricks employed by relatively few species. Nasty viruses are pretty overwhelmed by endosymbiotic bacteria; similarly, the "common good" role of insects is probably much larger than their bugging.
If evolution must make lineages so selfish, why "tragedy of commons" situations are relatively unnoticeable in the nature?! But oops... if you run yourself into a tragedy of commons, you are already a looser, apparently.
Neo-darwinists are wrong assuming that all survival is differential, that is, that doing just better than others beats anything. (Oh, how this fallacy is affecting banking, politics and much else today). Genetically, our greed can only be so much different. We have genes both for greedy and altruistic behavior or feelings. What inclination are switched on, depends on what we learned or experienced in early ages, and on cultural circumstances. What is really in human nature is the tendency to copy or follow each other - so most repeated ideologies and opinions do matter.
The force of selfishness is not to be denied - but firstly, it's effects are not immediate: "naive" altruists do not die off immediately. On the other hand, massive greed is powerful enough to eat itself in a matter of few generations. But as evolution is a game of many thousands of generations, those episodes of greed "discoveries" do their equilibrium punctuations, but eventually they are in effect handled, adopted and rerun with ever growing sophistication.
Dealing with greedy fools is a complicated problem - but solutions, be they partial, "temporarily" and complicated, do evolve. Why not?
The opiodergic system doesn't describe behaviour any more than gravity does. Stimulating the opiodergic system provokes a wish to repeat the activity. Gravity provokes a need to put a roof over our heads to protect from stuff falling, to put things down rather than up. That's not describing behaviour, that's describing conditions for behaviour. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Mozart had billions of neurons in his brain when he was born. That brain experienced 99.99 % noise at birth (or total synestheisa). How the noise turned into signal - how we all turn noise into signal - is by the connecting of those neurons into pathways and networks. How are those networks created? By hardwiring, induced by the presence of biochemicals and their interfacing with neuronal receptors. These receptors trigger different processes. In the case of endorphins, new connections are made between 'neighbouring' neurons that are firing at the time.
How much endorphins are released in response to stimulii (or are present - heroin is an external molecule that happens to fit into endorphin receptors), depends on DNA, INTERACTING with the networks already in place. Internally produced biochemicals are not limitless in supply - they have to be made. GABA, for instance, (Gamma-aminobutyric acid) powers the inhibitory neurons that regulate the 'excitability' of the mammalian CNS. GABA, a neurotransmitter) is 'manufactured' while you sleep. Sleeplessness or a genetic disruption to GABA manufacturing can lead to movement and anxiety disorders, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and addiction.
This is just one of a thousand examples of how genetic predisposition (OR behaviour like not sleeping) can alter behavioural pathways - temporarily or longterm. I am not trying to ignore the complexity of these biochemical relationships. But....
Learning CANNOT exist without biochemicals. Behaviour CANNOT exist without biochemicals. And thus, I assume, the fact that we individually have' factories' that comparatively are more efficient or less efficient at producing these biochemicals than another individual, gives them some role, yes, even in the Requiem.
Sociobiology is about whether the DNA that produces those factories might be similar enough in closely related members of a group to lead to similar behaviour = group behaviour. Obviously the sensual environment of the group (including the existing culture) would have to be very similar, and the biochemical gender and age differences taken into account. (Puberty being the biggest personality-changing trip most people ever experience). I don't think it is a subject to be dismissed by flippant remarks about Mozart, mon ami ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
Learning CANNOT exist without biochemicals. Behaviour CANNOT exist without biochemicals.
Considering the fact that we are made of biochemical components, everything we do "cannot exist without biochemicals", but this is a tautology.
There are many causality chains that converge to produce a given behaviour. Some of them are biochemical or genetic, that doesn't mean they are the main causes.
I cannot go somewhere by car without a functioning engine, that doesn't mean it's the engine that determines the destination of my trip... "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
