Why is this book so important?

[Anonymous No.10206576]

Is it saying altruism is the reason for the extinction of genes? Please explain

[Anonymous No.10206597]

>>10206576
>Is it saying altruism is the reason for the extinction of genes?

[Anonymous No.10206602]

>>10206576
Genes have an interest in propagating through time by whatever means necessary. Sometimes this appears contradictory as we can observe altruism but altruism is just a manifestation of a beneficial behavior to the organism just like religion. Although the latter is not recognized by Dawkins. If there was one book in the entire world I could recommend to explain why the world is the way it is, it is this book. Based on your post you need to start by taking an intro biology course. Completely comprehending this book will change your life.

[Anonymous No.10206606]

>>10206602
How come 4 billion years of evolution didn't route out cancer?

[Anonymous No.10206609]

>>10206606
cancer is life in it's purest form, just a cute little cell wanting to go back to being unicellular and immortal, fuck your multicellular bullshit

[Anonymous No.10206610]

>>10206602
Thank you anon!

[Anonymous No.10206614]

>>10206576

The gene takes ''primacy'', not the holistic organism. something, something ant hill analogy.

[Anonymous No.10206622]

>>10206606
This is a complex question for obvious reasons but ill give it a crack. Cancer requires both genetic and environmental factors to manifest. The reason why we have a lower incidence of childhood cancers compared to adult cancer is because their is a selection pressure to eliminate the dysregulation in the child who has not yet reproduced, but not in the elderly who have already passed on their genes e.g. old man has son and later gets cancer and dies (no selection pressure so it is passed on in the sense of gene regulation of cancer environment in the body). Excluding the rare cases of inherited cancer the body generally has to deal with these cancer cells on the fly which is largely down to chance i.e. environment in which you were born into. Genes cannot predict the where when and how the damage occurs and only responds with the machinery it has available to repair damage. This sometimes does not go well and cancer develops.

[Anonymous No.10206694]

>>10206606
Because it very rarely affects people who are still young enough to procreate a lot.
The time factor is huge, but the evolutionary pressure is extremely low.

[Anonymous No.10206914]

>>10206606
because it doesn't prevent grandchildren

[Anonymous No.10206939]

>>10206576

No. The book is saying the reason why humans help other humans is because we have similar genes.

[Anonymous No.10206998]

>>10206606
Most cancers are caused by pathogens who themselves are competing for living space (inb4 this isn't true, mark my words, in decades to come you will be reading headlines like "more cancer pathogens discovered" etc.)

[Anonymous No.10207009]

Read this book instead.

[Anonymous No.10207011]

>>10206606
Same reason evolution didn't route out old age in humans. It wasn't necessary for the survival of our genes.

[Anonymous No.10207076]

>>10206606
its not heritable enough for evolution to "waste" energy on eradicating it, and you can reproduce before and during it

[Anonymous No.10207140]

>>10206998
>Most cancers are caused by pathogens

Some are, not most. Mainly viral.

[Anonymous No.10207266]

>>10207140
In two decades, we will know that 80 % of cancers are caused by infectious disease.

[Anonymous No.10207432]

>>10206576
>Why is this book so important
It's not. >>>/trash/

[Anonymous No.10207966]

>>10207009
not as good title

[Anonymous No.10208036]

>>10206602
>Genes have an interest
Please be careful not to assign intention to non-sentient beings. Language like that and the unfortunate title "selfish gene" easily confuse people.
>>10206939
The better way to think about it is that herds of animals that helped each other survived and passed on that trait whereas other herds of animals that didn't died off.

[Anonymous No.10208090]

>>10207009
why? give more details.

[Anonymous No.10208522]

>>10206606

Cancer is an inevitable process of life.

[Anonymous No.10208751]

>>10206576
>why is this book so important?
it's not. it's old science exlained to a general audience. bill nye for the new york times book review crowd.

[Anonymous No.10208812]

Richard Dawkins literally coined the term Meme and you faggots come to discredit his legacy? Fucking idiots, all of you

[Anonymous No.10208822]

>>10206576
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html
http://solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/The-Evolutionary-Dominance-of-Ethnocentric-Cooperation.pdf

[Anonymous No.10208834]

>>10206576
Natural selection operates relative to particular periods of time. Let's start at some given point in time that we can call Time Zero. Those self-prop systems that are most likely to survive (or have surviving progeny) at five years from Time Zero are those that are best suited to survive and propagate themselves (in competition6 with other self-prop systems) during the five-year period following Time Zero. These will not necessarily be the same as those self-prop systems that, in the absence of competition during the five-year period, would be best suited to survive and propagate themselves during the thirty years following Time Zero. Similarly, those systems best suited to survive competition during the first thirty years following Time Zero are not necessarily those that, in the absence of competition during the thirty-year period, would be best suited to survive and propagate themselves for two hundred years. And so forth.

For example, suppose a forested region is occupied by a number of small, rival kingdoms. Those kingdoms that clear the most land for agricultural use can plant more crops and therefore can support a larger population than other kingdoms. This gives them a military advantage over their rivals. If any kingdom restrains itself from excessive forest-clearance out of concern for the long-term consequences, then that kingdom places itself at a military disadvantage and is eliminated by the more powerful kingdoms. Thus the region comes to be dominated by kingdoms that cut down their forests recklessly. The resulting deforestation leads eventually to ecological disaster and therefore to the collapse of all the kingdoms. Here a trait that is advantageous or even indispensable for a kingdom's short-term survival-recklessness in cutting trees-leads in the long term to the demise of the same kingdom.

[Anonymous No.10208836]

>>10208834
This example illustrates the fact that, where a self-prop system exercises foresight, in the sense that concern for its own long-term survival and propagation leads it to place limitations on its efforts for short-term survival and propagation, the system puts itself at a competitive disadvantage relative to those self-prop systems that pursue short-term survival and propagation without restraint. This leads us to changes in the conditions prevailing within the supersystem, the subsystems can neither survive nor propagate themselves.

[Anonymous No.10208857]

>>10208751
>bill nye said it so its true
also
>bill nye
nigga are you serious?, At least prove it with a book or study.

[Anonymous No.10208859]

oh shit i realized that i was the nigger all along

[Anonymous No.10208869]

>>10208859

Congratulations anon.

[Anonymous No.10208876]

>>10206602
based on OP's post he exists to protect the fecundity of low fertility females
>>10206597
using a dead, bad meme to deal with brainlets is itself brainlet
>>10206939
you are a brainlet
>>10206622
checked and correct
>>10207009
horrible title and cover art, i bet its actually a good read though
>>10208859
based and niggerpilled
>>10208751
you're a dumb ass and you have no idea what you're talking about
>>10208834
>>10208836
good job
>>10207432
t. Stephen J Gould and Richard Lewontin
>>10208812
based

[Anonymous No.10209260]

>>10208812
Fuck Dawkins and his new atheism bullshit. If Dawkins had any balls he would have explicitly said that the selfish gene theory explains why we have racism and that its natural (note that I am not saying it is morally justifiable even though I don't believe an objective morality exists). His meme-shit also fails to take into consideration that they only exist in individuals insofar as people can voluntarily take on the memes which confer a survival benefit.

[Anonymous No.10209266]

>>10208876
>t. Stephen J Gould and Richard Lewontin
>Jewish atheists
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.10209270]

>>10206576
>dawkins
Into the trash it goes

[Anonymous No.10209293]

Genes don't have a mind of their own, they are sequences of base pairs that encode proteins. And then the proteins may or may not do something. I don't know how meta this process can get, not that I've read the book or anything.