David Sloane Wilson

Posts About

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  Why Do New Atheists Hate Group Selection?

  Richard Dawkins’ best-known scientific achievement is popularizing the theory of gene-level selection in his book The Selfish Gene. Gene-level selection stands apart from both traditional individual-level selection and group-level selection as an explanation for human cooperation. Steven Pinker, similarly, wrote a long article on the “false allure” of group selection . . .

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  Bootstrapping Social Cooperation

  Social cooperation is the major thing to be explained in both sociobiology and economics. From the perspective of the former, most species never achieve it at all. From the perspective of the latter, most societies never get very far along compared to the advanced Western societies of the modern world. One . . .

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  Evonomics - How About Evopolitics Too?

  David S Wilson says we need to ditch Hayek’s politics in order to save his evolutionary insights. On the contrary, the argument in The Road to Serfdom follows straightforwardly from Wilson’s own premises if you take an evolutionary perspective on politics as well as the economy. The basic problem is . . .