Hamilton's Rule: a free lunch

John Edser said:

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JE:- Exactly, but this is my argument _against_ Hamilton. You cannot have relative temperature
without an assumption of asolute temperature. Nought temperature is 0 degrees Kelvin. This point
has never been reached but provides an absolute measure of temperature. Without it, just a
relative celcius measure in is meaningless. Hamilton's rules attemptes to invalidly subsitute a
relative measure for an absolute measure.

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BOH:- No it dosn't.

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JE:- Rubbish. If selection at just Hamilton's gene level can be supposed to cause fitness altruism
at the Darwinian organism level, then gene fitness and not organism fitness is being touted as as
THE ABSOLUTE measure of fitness, isn't it?

BOH:- The absolute measure of fitness maybe, but not the measure of absolute fitness.

JE:- How is the "absolute measure of fitness" not equal to "the measure of absolute fitness" ?

The adjective is in a different place. :-)

Absolute fitness has a specific definition - it's the assymptotic growth rate (assymptotic with
density), and is equivalent to R_0 that's used in epidemiology.

It's not clear to me if an absolute measure of fitness exists. Fitness is always context dependent -
even absolute fitness depends on the environmental context. So it's difficult to see how ant measure
of fitness can be said to be absolute.

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BOH:- I agree. And as Hamilton was only trying to answer the question about relative fitness,
that's all he needed.

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JE:- "that's all he needed"!@#$%^&*! Do you also agree that any rule that only includes a general
term for relative fitness but utterly fails to include within it a general term for absolute
fitness is just an arbitrary rule?

BOH:- No.

JE:- Please provide an example that is not Hamilton's rule.

The basic population genetic equations for the change in frequency of a gene.

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JE:- The insanity of Hamilton's rule is that it does not exclude the possibility that as the
altruistic gene only relatively increases compared to the wildtype gene, _both_ genes may be
forced to become extinct.

BOH:- Why is this insane?

JE:- It is insane to suggest that just a relative inclusive fitness gain can absolutely reduce the
freq of the altruistic gene within the population such that this gene now heads towards extinction
within that population because of this relative "gain". No mechanism of just a relative fitness
gain can produce the extinction of the form being supposed to make that gain within any sane
evolutionary theory because the supposed gain was just an loss, i.e. the proposition of a fitness
gain was _refuted_.

Now can you actually provide an explanation, rather than just repeating your position. My position
may well be insane, but you need to provide an explanation of why it is so, rather than just repeat
your view.

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara

Rolf Nevanlinna Institute
P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540 Fax: +358-9-191 22 779 WWW: rni.helsinki.fi~bohOpen ↗