Introduction
So, what am I going to tell you. That I am reading a little further into Dawkins The Selfish Gene, because I want to be sure of the point here, which defines the importance of drones in honeybee colonies. Honeybee queens are polyandrous, which means their offspring come from many fathers, which are the drones. The drones themselves are diploid, meaning they grow from unfertilised queen eggs and have only one set of chromosomes that come from the mother... which makes them more like the queen's brothers, or diploid descendants of the queen's father and mother. Female worker bees are diploid, and although they share the same mother they can have different fathers, generating genetic diversity in the workers. The up side of this is a workforce with a mixed skill set, while the downside in terms of genetic relatedness is diminishing altruism. However this is counterbalanced by the many Uncles who are equally related to all the workforce. Yadda yadda yadda.
So on with the point, which is what is Darwinian altruism? So let us skip on from origins and replicators and get straight to genes and the idea that we (all life on earth) are survival machines for our genes.
Notes from Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene
Competition
- Genotype: the genetic constitution of an individual organism.
- Phenotype: the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.
- Phenology: the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.
- Chromosome: a volume of genes. Your chromosomes are unique to your life, genes are forever.
- Dominant gene v Recessive gene.
- allele - rivals - each of two or more alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome.
- mitosis - a type of cell division that results in two daughter cells each having the same number and kind of chromosomes as the parent nucleus, typical of ordinary tissue growth.
- meiosis - a type of cell division that results in four daughter cells each with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell, as in the production of gametes and plant spores.
- Gene: A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.
- Cistron: often interchangeable with gene, a section of chromosme
Imagination is human simulation. It belongs to a different temporal reality... a multiverse.
"The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness... Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself."
Antecedent: a thing that existed before or logically precedes another. Ancestor.
Precedent: an earlier event or action that is regarded as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances.
Evolutionary Stable Strategy: ESS: a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy. Conspiracy and Treachery.