Is reproductive success the only objective measure of success?

[Mark1031]

Another possible objective measure of success along the lines that Mark1031 is thinking of is enhancing the reproductive success of other life forms that share some amount of genetic information.

Thus someone like Jonas Salk has had success of this kind way beyond his own reproductive output.

Yes, I was thinking along these lines as well. Perhaps we've come to the point where our own individual reproduction is less important than our contribution to the perpetuation of the species as a whole. However, from the point of view of our genes this type of altruism is not really a successful evolutionary strategy.

"Survival of the fittest" may improve the genetic makeup of the species, but I might have some objections if I'm the one deemed "less fit to survive".

The "laws of nature" are rules that show us how nature works, but theese are never explicit moral guidelines.Humans eventually set up the morality and in the end it remains subjective.

I was not arguing on any moral grounds which in my view are subjective. Neither was I arguing for genocide even though this is a rather effective means of achieving evolutionary success.

So the people of Niger are the most successful?

Perhaps.

 

[Gothmog]

Why do you say this type of altruism is not a successful evolutionary strategy?

Bee's do it, naked mole rats do it, IMO we do it too.

I know there is an ongoing argument about group selection in the genetics/evolution community, but from the 'selfish gene' perspective is it really a whole genome that is selfish or an individual gene? You don't share your whole genome with anyone (unless you have an identical twin... or a clone), but you share individual genes with everyone you meet.

From the gene perspective is it better to have one child, or 20 cousins?

Remember that you share roughly the same amount of genetic material with your children and your siblings. So how can it not be successful to ensure reproductive success in your siblings, when it certainly is for your children?

This idea can be extended to people with whom you share less than 50% of your genome as well. Can it not?

Note: I am using reproductive success in the 'contributing to the future genome' sense, not the 'having children' sense, between these lives the 'having children who live to reproductive age'. In this context the people in Niger are likely not the most successful in the world.

I am not a geneticist but I seem to recall that the most useful definition of reproductive success is measured at least two generations downstream.

 

[Mark1031]

Sure altruism works but only for closely related individuals. Bees are a weird case, I'm not sure of the exact genetics but in a particular group they are all clones or sibs. The problem, from a purely evolutionary point of view, with global altruism ala Salk is that you are helping increase the fitness of individuals that are much more distantly related to you equivalently to your close relatives and you are thus not gaining any selective advantage. It is a competition after all. So if you put 20 years into working in the lab and have only one kid you are putting yourself at a selective disadvantage when your breakthrough is announced to the world increasing the reproductive fitness of everyone, those individuals who have spent their time producing five or six kids will be getting much more of an advantage than you will.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Assuming the question was serious, from the Selfish Gene standpoint, it's individual genes that count, not genomes. Hence the name.

As far as sexually reproducing organisms go, genome replication only happens within the individual. One might then, of course, apply darwinist principles to variant genomes in the individual - cancers - and consider their evolutionary success. Not that "success" seems an appropriate word when the options facing a cancer are basically getting killed of by the immune system or dying by killing the individual.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Sure altruism works but only for closely related individuals. Bees are a weird case, I'm not sure of the exact genetics but in a particular group they are all clones or sibs. The problem, from a purely evolutionary point of view, with global altruism ala Salk is that you are helping increase the fitness of individuals that are much more distantly related to you equivalently to your close relatives and you are thus not gaining any selective advantage. It is a competition after all. So if you put 20 years into working in the lab and have only one kid you are putting yourself at a selective disadvantage when your breakthrough is announced to the world increasing the reproductive fitness of everyone, those individuals who have spent their time producing five or six kids will be getting much more of an advantage than you will.

That's were the subjectivity of goals come in. The lab guy is basically screwing his genes, but who's to say he should care about that?

 

[The Last Conformist]

As I suspected it comes down to a definition of success. You define success as requiring a purposeful goal set forth by a rational being (had up to look up to definition of teleology) thus precluding the notion of objective success. According to my reading of Webster you are correct however the term reproductive success is used frequently in biology and I think Webster needs to be updated.

It's not so much a separate use of the word as a POV - implicitly adopted in biological discourse - that reproductive success is the goal being pursued. It's a teleological metaphor that helps humans think of a fundamentally ateleological process.

The closest parallel, I suppose, would be the assumption, implicit or explicit, in most work on economics that people try and maximize their material benefit.

 

[Gothmog]

Altruism works but the percentages must add up. That’s why it works best in closely related individuals. Still, our genes are not just battling with other human genes for dominance, but with all life. If humanity is out competed by another life form (say a bacteria), we all lose. While this is difficult to select for in a direct manner (though who is to say that isn’t part of the selective advantage of intelligence) it certainly could be included in a definition of success in the sense you meant.

You are correct that if the advantage is spread evenly over the world then there is no selective advantage for any of your genes. Salk wasn’t a great example, though I would bet that Polio was first defeated in places where Salk shared more genes on average. Thus providing some selective advantage.

I brought up the naked mole rat because it is a mammal that displays altruism in the same way that bees do. That is they are eusocial.

Yes, the selfish gene question was rhetorical. I was pointing out that you contain many many selfish genes and what is good for one might not be good for another.

Clearly from a selfish gene perspective you are better off with 20 cousins than one child. Unless your child provides you with a lot of grandchildren… like 20.

 

[Mark1031]

That's were the subjectivity of goals come in. The lab guy is basically screwing his genes, but who's to say he should care about that?

Biology...

 

[Leonel]

I think if one can ensure their childrens and grandchildrens survival and comfortable living, that's success. Of course I'm one of those old fashioned people that strongly believe in continuing their family's bloodline into the future, so in a sense me and my ancestors will continue to live for as long as the bloodline continues.

 

[WillJ]

Biology...

But how, exactly? "Should" has two meanings, one implying probability (It should rain tomorrow.) and the other implying obligation, based on some standard of "good" and "bad" (You should not kill people. or Bush should impose more progressive tax policies.). I'm pretty sure TLC was using the word in the latter context, and I'm pretty sure neither biology nor any other science deals with morals.

You mentioned that "success" can be used in other ways besides achieving subjective goals. Although you're right that "reproductive success" is a commonly used term, that's just because reproductive success is success at reproducing. But that's nowhere near objective, all-encompassing success. Who says all there is to life, the universe, and everything is reproduction?

 

[Mark1031]

Always a problem with semantics. I am simply saying that biology follows a set of rules in the same way that math and physics follow a set of rules. Who's to say that acceleration with gravity on earth is well whatever it is I'm not going to look it up. It is simply an observable and definable rule of nature. From the biological point of view you are more successful if you transfer more of your genes into the next and future generations. It's just a simple objectively observable rule of nature. And being biological creatures it is the only objective form of success that I can think of. I can think of many things that seem subjectively more satisfying than being a reproducing machine but I can't think of any objective reasons why I should pursue them, even though I of course do.

 

[Yom]

Though reproductive success is the basis for Darwinian fitness (and therefore, I guess, "Darwinian success"), it is not an accurate measure for success (even if it is objective) because mankind has generally reduced a lot of the evolutionary factors. Those with heart conditions usually live to reproduce, which you may portray as success, but spreading their seed would actually be deleterious to the species as a whole.

 

[WillJ]

Always a problem with semantics. I am simply saying that biology follows a set of rules in the same way that math and physics follow a set of rules. Who's to say that acceleration with gravity on earth is well whatever it is I'm not going to look it up. It is simply an observable and definable rule of nature. From the biological point of view you are more successful if you transfer more of your genes into the next and future generations. It's just a simple objectively observable rule of nature. And being biological creatures it is the only objective form of success that I can think of. I can think of many things that seem subjectively more satisfying than being a reproducing machine but I can't think of any objective reasons why I should pursue them, even though I of course do.

[emphasis mine] Sorry, but I still deny that. You may be more successful at reproducing, at surviving, at furthering your species, at lots of other things, but if you leave the "at..." out and just say you're more sucessful, then you're wrong, from my understanding. And even if you leave the "at..." in, you still must face the question of why you chose that goal (and most likely you really can't, thus it's subjective).

 

[Mark1031]

You may be more successful at reproducing, at surviving, at furthering your species.

="From a biological point of view." We agree.

 

[WillJ]

="From a biological point of view." We agree.

Not really (unless I misunderstand what we're arguing about), because I'm not sure how all that and "from a biological point of view" are one and the same.

Biology certainly deals with those things (and anything else dealing with living things, such as fingernails---but does having long fingernails make you successful from a biological POV?), but AFAIK it doesn't make any value judgements about them. Reproduction, furthering your species, etc. doesn't actually equal "good" from a biological POV (which would be necessary for "success" to make any sense---again, unless you specify "at..."); it just equals "exists, and worth finding stuff out about."

 

[Perfection]

No it isn't, from the biological perspective "success" is only meant the perpetuation of oneself, it's not meant as the "success" in common usage (a positive sense). To use it in the normative sense you have to input value into the result of the positive sense, and then objectivity goes out the window.

 

[Mark1031]

@WJ
What do I mean by the statement "from a biological point of view"? Do you accept the fact that the basis for our understanding of modern biology is a combination of genetics, and evolution through natural selection? If the answer is yes then success from a biological point of view = more successful at reproducing. Having longer fingernails is not success. Even if having longer fingernails on average helps your species reproduce at a greater rate you are not a biological success until you actually do the reproducing even if you have the long fingernails. I really don't see the necessity of introducing a value judgment into the word success. But if we must I would say that it is objectively "good" to not go extinct, again from a biological point of view.

 

[betazed]

@Mark: I see that you voted yes. Then by extending your argument can we say that the Chinese are the most successfull of the world and that the Arab/Muslim world is definitely more successful than the western one - even in the strict biological sense?

I do not think so.

because even in the strict bilogical sense "fitness" is not just numbers. There is a fuzzy quality aspect to it too. For example, (say) an organism that has lower reproductive rate and longer life-span and hence can endure more drastic changes in its surroundings is probably more "fitter" and hence more successfull than one which reproduces in huge bursts and go thru population bottlenecks in the usual viccissitudes of life.

 

[Mark1031]

I would say from a strictly biological POV that the most successful individual in the world is probably some fertility clinic Dr. somewhere who is using his own sperm to inseminate women. On a country/cultural/racial level I think those societies that produce the most children that reach reproductive age are the most successful. There are not a lot of strong selective catastrophes these days (AIDS maybe) so I don’t think the fitness argument holds. And even if we incorporate this there is no reason to think that the fast reproducing populations would be less resistant to some new plague; so until this is demonstrated they are the biological winners.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing for some sort of national population race or genocidal war. Certainly we need to move more toward a sustainable planet wide pop. It’s really just a thought experiment that derives from the fact that I know a number of people that put so much energy into achieving subjective successes like $$, promotions, tenure etc. that they hit their 40s and forgot to have kids.

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

I don't think there is an objective measure. I constantly change my measure of success based upon events in my life. "What's important" tends to change with time.