propagation of genes

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 22:32:45 +0000 (UTC), "Meg" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

wanted to know what the motivation behind the drive to
propagate genes
is...Can someone enlighten me?

Are you sure there is a drive to propagate genes? There
certainly is

in the propagation of genes. However, very few species of
organisms realize that genes are involved.

More seriously, are you indeed serious about your
question? About the first thing I say in my first intro
biology lecture of the term is my "Norman's Two
Fundamental Laws of Biology":
(1) All things die
(2) Life perpetuates

The whole key to biology is reproduction, a process that
involves the imperfect copying of the genetic information,
hence evolution, hence biology. Without reproduction there
is no life. If the trend to reproduce is not built into the
behavior repertoire (of animals) or the developmental
repertoire (of other things), there is no life. Hence it
really does not make sense to ask why there is a "drive" to
reproduce.

"Meg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

wanted to know what the motivation behind the drive to
propagate genes
is...Can someone enlighten me?

I assume you are talking about motivation in the
psychological sense. If you want to know about the
machinery - about how genes cause chemicals in the brain,
that cause emotions, that create motivations - then you may
not have come to the right place. But, if you want to know
why this machinery came about, then you are asking the
right group of people. The thing is, the fact that you have
come here for an answer suggests that you may have already
heard our story.

So, to make it a little more interesting, I'll start by
denying that there is any such thing as a "drive to
propagate genes". (Keep reading, there is a twist.)

But there is a drive to take care of and nurture
children. That drive varies from person to person. People
who have more of this drive, just happen to successfully
raise more children.

There is a drive to pair-bond, which also varies from person
to person.

these people raise more children than do people without
these drives. Part of the cause of these drives is genetic -
hence children of these

And these people have a lot of children. So the number of
people having these drives tends to increase, and the drives
tend to get stronger.

People have other drives that seem to vary from person to
person - for example the drive to ingest mind-altering
drugs. But people with a particularly big dose of this drive
do not necessarily have more children, so this drive does
not tend to increase.

A hundred fifty years ago, Darwin published his theory
suggesting that all of the drives that increase the number
of children that get raised to maturity can be considered
together as one big drive - a drive to propagate the genes.
(Well, OK, Darwin had actually never heard of genes, but he
had the rest of the story right.) Darwin pointed out that
other drives - such as the drive to eat and the drive to
escape from danger are also really part of this one, single,
primeval drive. Animals with a slightly larger than average
dose of this drive have a slightly larger than average
number of children - hence the drive tends to get stronger
from generation to generation.

Fourty years ago, a guy named Hamilton suggested that there
is a drive to be extra nice to close relatives that is part
of the same package. Some of us are still debating whether
that was a good idea.

Of course, all of this gene propagating didn't start with
humans, it goes way back to before it even makes sense to
talk about psychological motivations. Living things have
always contained some kind of machinery that caused them to
behave as if there were a drive to propagate their genes.
That is why we are here today.

Now, the big drive to propagate genes doesn't necessary
"really" exist. But there seem to be a whole bunch of more
specific drives (like pair bonding) that really do exist.
So, it amounts to pretty much the same thing whether you
call it one big drive or a bunch of little drives pointing
in the same direction.

But, maybe it does make a difference today. There are
people who

for nurturing by keeping cats or teaching kindergarten, or
adopting. These people are quite happy and have acted in
conformance with their inherited drives. To people like
this, the idea of a "drive to propagate the genes" seems a
little odd. They feel no such drive.

I hope this helped, though I have the nagging suspicion that
you were actually asking a slightly different question.

"Meg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

I've wanted to know what the motivation behind the drive to

Quoted message said:

propagate genes is...Can someone enlighten me?

We don't fully understand any animal behaviour, let alone
human behaviour. However evolution has made things that lead
to reproduction pleasurable and things that frustrate it
painful. For instance it is very difficult to cut yourself.
However most people find that they want to get talking to an

Ultimately there is no purpose to evolution - fitness is
just fitness to survive. Few humans consciously want to
spread their genes as far as possible, but if the human race
survives long enough then those few will eventually become a
majority and people like Richard Dawkins (who believes we
should "rebel against the tyranny of the replicators"😉 will
be weeded out.

Genes are not in themselves altruistic, they are in fact
quite selfish (although calling something which does not
think selfish is a misnomer). Your genes are essentially
immortal and they are the driving force behind the need to
propegate. Once long ago, like any of the hive insects, bees
for instance, the constituant parts of your genes decided to
work together and in this way any of the individual parts
would statistically have a better chance of procreating. So
your body is simply a vehicle for your genes. The genes are
adaptable and make you adaptable

changing themselves and thus making species change the genes
have a better chance of creating a new generation. So in
answer to your question the driving force is your genes
wanting to procreate. Two books by Richard Dawkins are quite
good at explaining this: 'The Blind Watchmaker' and 'The
Selfish Gene'

"Meg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

wanted to know what the motivation behind the drive to
propagate genes
is...Can someone enlighten me?

JE:- The propagation of just the FERTILE bodies that can
carry these genes. Darwinian forms must maximise the number
of fertile forms they reproduce into one population,
i.e. they cannot be selected, using testable Darwinian
theory, to reduce the total number of fertile forms
they reproduce into one population, for any reason.
Dawkins et al have entirely reversed this testable
proposition of causation.

Regards,

John Edser Independent Researcher

PO Box 266 Church Pt NSW 2105 Australia

[email hidden]

Hi Meg,

in article [email hidden], Meg at
[email hidden] wrote on 4/9/04 3:32 PM:

Quoted message said:

wanted to know what the motivation behind the drive to
propagate genes
is...Can someone enlighten me?

You have had a variety of answers, and I would expect that
from a question like this. As I see it, the "motivation
behind the drive" could be anything, and many different
things. For example, the motivation is very different for
humans, than it is for plants. It is the reason to be
motivated that is shared among living things. My view is
that this reason can be understood from the viewpoint of
thermodynamics. Reproduction is work, which is
thermodynamically favored, but it is more than that. It is
work that begets more work through the construction of new
working machines. I am on theoretically thin ice here, but
it seems to me that thermodynamics would favor THIS KIND of
constructive work more strongly than simply destructive work
(e.g., feeding), because it extends in time the potential
for the doing of useful work (including destructive work,
like feeding).

Quoted message said:

From a more traditional evolutionary perspective, any
mutation that causes

motivation to reproduce will tend to accumulate in a
population, and any mutation that diminishes motivation to
reproduce will tend to be lost from a population. Therefore,
we generally observe populations of organisms motivated to
reproduce.

Guy

Malcolm <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Few humans consciously want to spread their genes as far
as possible, but if the human race survives long enough
then those few will eventually become a majority and
people like Richard Dawkins (who believes we should
"rebel against the tyranny of the replicators"😉 will be
weeded out.

That's basically my argument on:
alife.co.uknietzscheanismOpen ↗

However, Bill Hamilton would probably have pointed out that
there's another possibility:

If the strategy of impregnating as many females as possible
is not regarded as socially acceptable - or as not
acceptable by the females in question - then what may be
favoured is a sort of male self-deception.

In such cases, the organism *behaves* as though it is
deliberately propagating its genes, but when you quiz it
about its motivation, it comes up with a whole bunch of "smokescreen"-
like material, about falling out of love with their aging
ex-wife and falling in love with their latest bride - that
is seen as less selfish - and more socially acceptable.

As usual, the best deceptions are made when the organism
actually believes all the garbage they are spouting.

Bill discusses the possibilites for this sort of hypocracy
in his essay on nepotism.

Society tends to favour cooperation over selfishness - and
fairness over nepotism. However, nepotism really can pay. As
Hamliton writes:

``A world where everyone else has been persuaded to be
altruistic is a good one to live in from the point of view
of pursuing our own selfish ends. This hypocracy is even
more convincing if we don't admit it even in our thoughts -
if only on our death beds, so to speak, we change our wills
back to favour the carriers of our own genes.''

- Discriminating Nepotism - as reprinted in NROGL,
v.2, p.356.

Pressure from political correctness and peer pressure
favouring hypocracy suggests that we should look to people's
deeds - not to their words and self-attributed motivations.

So - in the case of Richard Dawkins it seems that - while
his books do indeed talk about rebellion against the tyranny
of the replicators - his own personal rebellion has not been
entirely successful. The ultimate rebellion would be teenage
suicide. Dawkins doesn't fit that profile very well. Rather,
he's a successful author, has married three times, has had
at least one offspring - and further has said he wouldn't
mind doing some more reproduction via cloning:

``To be called dangerous by him can only be an honour. I'd
been asked about my daughter by another journalist. To have
answered the question by saying I wouldn't clone her would
have been tantamount to saying I didn't love her. I was
happy to say that I love my daughter enough to wish there
were two of her. But you can demonise that kind of thing. It
triggers the famous 'Yuk' reaction. 'Here's this mad
scientist trying to clone his child.'''

- stephenjaygould.orgriddell dawkins.hOpen ↗
tml

Dawkins doesn't seem to be practising what he is preaching
very effectively - and until a concrete figure for the
number of his offspring is reached, there remains a definite
possibily that he is being hypocritical - in much the same
way that Hamilton suggested might be the best strategy.
--
__________
|im |yler timtyler.orgtimtyler.orgOpen ↗ [email hidden] Remove
lock to reply.

PostA33

Quoted message said:

TT:- Society tends to favour cooperation over selfishness
- and fairness over nepotism. However, nepotism really can
pay. As Hamliton writes: ``A world where everyone else has
been persuaded to be altruistic is a good one to live in
from the point of view of pursuing our own selfish ends.
This hypocracy is even more convincing if we don't admit
it even in our thoughts - if only on our death beds, so to
speak, we change our wills back to favour the carriers of
our own genes.''
- Discriminating Nepotism - as reprinted in NROGL, v.2,
p.356.

JE:- What was and remains deleted from Hamilton et al's
costing of nepotism is the opportunity cost to the tyrant.
Nepotism, like anything else that consumes energy and
resources must cost the nepotist, _something_. When you
measure just a relative difference between strategies you
can miss the most important cost to yourself: a possible _
reduction_ in your _absolute_ worth. Many tyrants think like
the tax man. The cost of collecting many taxes exceeds the
worth of what was collected so it just ends up reducing the
business cycle. Now we all lose, including he tax man. The
government can end up working harder and harder to collect
less and less. The less they collect the harder they slug
you, the less they collect .. and so on.. This is no so much
Van Valen's "Red Queen" having to run harder and harder only
to go backwards absolutely as she only moves relatively
forwards, as just a colourless, very dull, monarch "fiddling
while Rome burns". The cost: the opportunity to produce a
mutual benefit. When a tyrant has to convince and not
dictate, he/she may find out that their absolute worth
actually increases even if their relative worth decreases,
i.e. he/she may find themselves working less to make more
and not the reverse.

Unless you stop to measure your absolute worth and not just
your relative worth, you can never know if the strategy you
are employing is actually providing an total increase for
_you_. However you may get a few hints. As you wander
through the wreckage of the street where you live you can
console yourself that compared to everybody else in your
street you have more crusts of bread then they do, and yes,
you have two filthy changes of clothing to just their one,
or none. You are indeed, "the winner". Then again, you might
recall the "bad" old days when mostly neat and clean houses
lined the streets and you had 3 good meals a day and clean
clothes to wear. In those bad times was you were a loser
because you were the poorest of the bunch. No matter, today
you are the king so you can forget those unhappy times and
raise your cracked glass of dirty water to toast your...
success......

So, what is the opportunity cost to the tyrant? This is the
cost of a totally missing, more stable, less costly MASSIVE
benefit that raised and not lowered the tyrants net worth
over however a defined time period, which could have
substantially decreased that tyrants relative worth. It is
not called altruism and it is not called being selfish.

Best Wishes,

John Edser Independent Researcher

PO Box 266 Church Pt NSW 2105 Australia

[email hidden]