Karl Muller
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

You should check out the work of David Sloan Wilson, the evolutionary theorist and doyen of the researchers looking into cooperative behaviour among species and “superorganisms”.

He looked at the function of “adaptive fictions” in human evolution, including examining how certain sects’ beliefs are directly mirrored in their genetics. He chose the word “fictions” to show that the truth value of these beliefs is completely immaterial, only their survival value counts. I wrote to him many years ago saying that “fictions” seemed too biased a term, I suggested “adaptive myths”, instead, but he stuck to his guns. The basic principle is completely sound, however.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert author, is another one who stresses that utter lies and absolute fictions can be completely adaptive, especially in the current political climate.

David Sloan Wilson feels that the principle of group selection is now well established in biology. I think he is far too optimistic. The “selfish gene” twaddle is still very dominant. Consider the collective behaviour of shoals of fish in confusing and evading a predator. It is *group* behaviour that decides whether the individual survives. Take one look, and you’ll see millions of examples like this in the wild, yet biologists have no explanation as to how such group behaviour can evolve, apart from the calculations of people like Wilson.

The point is: any device, any mechanism, that enables group behaviour to kick in: stigmatising that one weird kid in the class; feeling that your religion is the true true one; choosing a team name, all create a completely arbitrary myth, that could make all the difference to survival or extinction of the group.

One thing the normal evolutionary theorists don’t grasp: evolution via group extinction is always powerful, just because it’s *entire groups* at a time that are extinguished. And this is very true in human evolution as well, these so-called evolutionists should take a proper look at this sometime. You’re spot on with this issue, it’s a big one.

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    Karl Muller

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