Reddit reviews The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science)
We found 8 Reddit comments about The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 8 Reddit comments about The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
For people interested in the genetic origins of our sexual behaviors, read in that order:
EDIT: anyone with other suggestions on the topic?
If you know your theory on mating systems, you know that animal sexual pairing comes in basically two different flavors.
In the right corner we have polygamy, characterized by strong male competition (violence) for exclusive sexual access to all females of the group, little parental investment, strong sexual dimorphism (e.g. elephant seals, gorilla, lions, etc.). Only the strongest get to mate with all females. There are no betas, just one alpha per group (or a few, in special cases such as lions). Other males don't provide. They just masturbate if they can, or die challenging the alpha or trying to poach one of his females.
In the left corner we have monogamy, characterized by strong parental investment, little sexual dimorphism, high female infidelity (e.g. bonobos, most birds). Estrus is hidden to facilitate female infidelity. There are no alphas, only betas, only providers. Females are out trying to cheat on their partner with males with higher-quality genetic material (but these are not alpha males in the previous polygamous sense) while their beta partner desperately display strong mate-guarding behavior.
Humans are in between, we display traits of both types. We probably started as a polygamous species slowly shifting into monogamy. In this context, what sexual strategy do we choose in order to reproduce and pass on our genetic material?
My view is that there are no set Alpha men and Beta men. They are just sets of behavior traits. I believe every man has the capacity to be Alpha or Beta, depending on his environment. I see it as two different "psychological modules". And which one is activated depends on the environment, which is: sexual options.
A man can have many sexual options thanks to his good genetics, being born tall, strong and handsome. Or born wealthy or high value in a hierarchical society (e.g. the chief's son). Or a man might have early luck with women in his life, building abundance mentality as default in his teenage psyche. Preselection provides a feedback loop that maintain constant sexual options. Or maybe he has the luck of being surrounded by mostly women, due to a war decimating the male population. The high sexual options activates the "alpha module" in his psychology: high self-esteem, strong will to compete, refusal to commit, etc.
Everyone else who has little sexual options gets the "beta module" activated. In order to reproduce, he must find ONE female and propose the deal of sacrificing his time and resources to her and her only in exchange for her bearing HIS progeny. Heavy insecurity, mate-guarding behavior, ONE-itis come with the beta module. Or to put a more positive spin on it: the desire to be loved, dedication, chivalry, the desire to be a father and attend to your kids.
I think the Alpha and Beta modules and their activation predate feminism. Cultures prior to the '50s show the pussywhipped man, the cuckolded man, the poet, the white knight, the dedicated husband and father.. and alternatively the king and his courtesans, the harems, Don Juan, the Marquis de Sade... Just as hypergamy is a feature of all human females, the alpha/beta dual strategy is a feature of all human males: selecting the best strategy to pass on your genes given the environment (sexual options). If the environment changes, the active psychological module switches. e.g. the man who wins lottery and suddenly gets the attention of women is likely to all of a sudden lose his ONE-itis for his nagging wife, rationalize why all of a sudden he doesn't feel like "doing the right thing" is actually the right thing to do, despite having defended his opinion for so long, etc. All in all, our psychology automatically activates the most appropriate module for passing on our genes, given the environmental conditions. As OP suggests, beta strategy is adopted by low SMV males but this is simply because they don't have the options to do otherwise.
No module is intrinsically good or bad. On a genetic level of course, alpha strategy makes more sense as it will get more copies of your genes in the next generation, but only IF your offspring can survive to adulthood (i.e. personal wealth, or wealthy society). Beta strategy is probably a good bet otherwise such as in times of famine, crisis. On a personal happiness level however, there is no contest. Both strategies have downsides for sure. Alpha strategy implies the lack of nurturing, lack of spouse support, constant competition with other men, constant need to maintain SMV... But beta strategy implies possible cuckoldry, possible abandonment and the loss of your investment. Even if successful, mate guarding means constant anxiety. All in all a pit of sadness that makes it the short end of the stick. And then add to it the current context (unchecked hypergamy, modern divorce laws). Strive to switch your environment to be alpha.
Oh yeah, there's a ton of stuff out there about natural selection (and evolutionary theory more broadly). You might want to start with the SEP entry on natural selection, which will give you a feel for some of the issues. Beyond that, here are a few things I'd recommend reading:
That should give you some pretty solid places to start reading. I've read all of those things, and I'm pretty comfortable recommending each of them as worth your time.
If you've not read anything else by him, I say that is a great start. I think his writings on biology are way better than his writings on religion.
He's very "tangential" though, so I sometimes feel like I'm trying to keep up with his train of thought.
When you're done, assuming you haven't read it already, you should read The Extended Phenotype. I believe it's his greatest book.
Happy reading!
You're thinking of the Extended Phenotype, the topic of one of Richard Dawkins' books.
The construction of wetlands via beaver dams and peat bogs would be two examples of organisms (beavers and peat moss) dramatically affecting their own ecosystem.
Some more info here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090119081333.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658563/
Overviews of the evidence:
The greatest show on earth
Why evolution is true
Books on advanced evolution:
The selfish gene
The extended phenotype
Climbing mount improbable
The ancestors tale
It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.
I will hit one point though.
>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.
For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.
The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).
The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)
This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.
Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.
If you really want a deeper look at it, I'd recommend Richard Dawkins; The Extended Phenotype
Read this