Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Does Kin Selection Explain Altruism?

Transcript

Does Kin Selection Explain Altruism? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry, puzzling
0:16
Speaker 1: us as always with their jibber jabber, Wait jars. That
0:20
Speaker 1: was funny. Should we say what happened? No? No? I
0:25
Speaker 1: used to be leieve it mysterious al right, like whether
0:27
Speaker 1: Jerry exists or not? Oh, she exists. You know a
0:30
Speaker 1: lot of people out there and not convinced. Yeah. Still
0:34
Speaker 1: even though she's we've shown pictures of her with her
0:36
Speaker 1: face blurred, could be a workaday actress. She's appeared at
0:42
Speaker 1: scores of live events and met people in person, same
0:45
Speaker 1: actress but with like a gig. And she even spoke
0:49
Speaker 1: on our Guatemala episodes. That was Stanley Kubrick's doing. How
0:55
Speaker 1: are you sir? Good? Good? I'm excited about this one.
0:59
Speaker 1: This is Nieto. Are you a Kins selection? I thought
1:02
Speaker 1: it was you know me, like any you bring up
1:05
Speaker 1: the name Charles Darwin and you just see my face
1:08
Speaker 1: light up. Yeah, so you know that? Um that How
1:12
Speaker 1: Stuff Works trivia event that you and longer hosted. You
1:16
Speaker 1: guys had some hard questions, but one that my team
1:20
Speaker 1: got right. It was a sixth part question, yes, and
1:24
Speaker 1: there was a couple of tough ones in there, but
1:26
Speaker 1: it was Charles Darwin or Chuck D from Public Enemy
1:31
Speaker 1: Charles D or Chuck D. And then we named off
1:34
Speaker 1: five or six things. I think it was six, and
1:38
Speaker 1: it was basically, who was it Charles D or Chuck D? Yeah, like,
1:41
Speaker 1: who's the peskytarian? You don't know? Well we did. It
1:46
Speaker 1: was Chuck D who married his first cousin, Charles Darwin.
1:50
Speaker 1: That one I definitely knew, because I remember Darwin was
1:53
Speaker 1: kind of anxious as he was learning about evolution and
1:57
Speaker 1: natural selection in genetics that he had married his first cousin.
2:01
Speaker 1: He started to get kind of worried about his kid. Yeah,
2:03
Speaker 1: he said, should I marry her? And then he said
2:05
Speaker 1: it was Jennifer Connelly. She's beautiful. Where did you pull
2:10
Speaker 1: that one from? Well? She played Darwin's wife in the
2:12
Speaker 1: Darwin movie. Oh, well that makes a lot more sense.
2:15
Speaker 1: Had I known that, I would have been like, great reference. Sorry, man,
2:19
Speaker 1: he's like, I gotta marry her? Did you see her?
2:21
Speaker 1: And uh? Who played Darwin? Paul Bettanya, Well, he was
2:24
Speaker 1: her husband already were they married. I don't know if
2:28
Speaker 1: they are not anymore, but they were for a while. Okay,
2:31
Speaker 1: whatever became of him, he was great and he's around good.
2:36
Speaker 1: Nobody's treading the bowlds. Oh yeah, I'll but he is too.
2:39
Speaker 1: It sounds like something do Uh. I didn't even get
2:44
Speaker 1: to say that Jennifer Connelly movie. I was gonna say proof. Nah,
2:49
Speaker 1: let's just move on. What was it? I can't think
2:53
Speaker 1: of the name of it. The Darren Aronofsky. Uh oh,
2:57
Speaker 1: Requiem for a Dream Yeah. Yeah, it's like I gotta
2:59
Speaker 1: marry here. Did you see her in recrect for a
3:01
Speaker 1: dream Man? That was a That was a crazy movie,
3:05
Speaker 1: great movie, but not for the faint of heart. No, no,
3:09
Speaker 1: so Chuck. We've got a whole evolution suite going on here,
3:12
Speaker 1: and this contributes to evolution natural selection. We've covered Charles Darwin,
3:17
Speaker 1: the man himself, that's right. Um, we've done evolved in
3:21
Speaker 1: isolation to put together an extinction. Yes, bam, that's probably
3:28
Speaker 1: all of them. But um, this one's kind of like
3:31
Speaker 1: a nuanced version of it of the evolution suite, of
3:35
Speaker 1: the idea of evolution, but it actually is a fulcrum
3:39
Speaker 1: or lever something on which a buttress the the the
3:42
Speaker 1: whole idea of evolution and natural selection and what drives
3:47
Speaker 1: it or if it's even real kind of swings. It's
3:51
Speaker 1: easy to overlook, but there's a real problem. Like Darwin
3:54
Speaker 1: had all this great stuff laid out with his theory
3:57
Speaker 1: of evolution by natural selection, and um, it basically goes
4:02
Speaker 1: as everybody knows, a little something like this A one
4:05
Speaker 1: and to do so, I wish we had a natural
4:08
Speaker 1: selection song we could play boom uh. Well, it goes
4:13
Speaker 1: like this. Animals need to reproduce for the species to survive,
4:18
Speaker 1: and it's hard sometimes for little eggs to survive harsh
4:21
Speaker 1: environments and seeds and things. So they make lots and
4:24
Speaker 1: lots of them. That's right, that's part one. And they
4:27
Speaker 1: make lots and lots of them because a lot of
4:29
Speaker 1: them don't survive. Like you said, um, but a lot
4:32
Speaker 1: of these things that try to reproduce don't have the
4:36
Speaker 1: good genes, right, so they fail to reproduce. They've got
4:40
Speaker 1: tough skins, not Levi's, so they're right, So the tough
4:44
Speaker 1: skins tend to die out right. Instead, the levies continue
4:50
Speaker 1: on because they've got the good genes. So therefore they
4:53
Speaker 1: are more apt to survive and reproduce and be successful
4:59
Speaker 1: than they are the tuskan counterparts. So what we have
5:02
Speaker 1: there is called survival of the fittest. You are reproductively
5:06
Speaker 1: fit if you are likely to go on and bear
5:10
Speaker 1: fruit as it were. Yeah, baby fruit. Darwin realized early
5:15
Speaker 1: on to the variation was a big key to all this. Um.
5:19
Speaker 1: You take two sets of pigs and they have baby pigs,
5:22
Speaker 1: They're not all going to be identical. Some of those
5:25
Speaker 1: pigs will have little, seemingly insignificant details about themselves. Brown
5:31
Speaker 1: spots maybe, And but it turns out that brown spots
5:35
Speaker 1: drive the lady pigs wild. It might be that easy.
5:38
Speaker 1: So this guy's mating left and right and has a
5:42
Speaker 1: bunch of kids, so his brown spots make him reproductively fit.
5:46
Speaker 1: That's right. What looks or not even looks like what
5:48
Speaker 1: could be a random variation could really lead to the
5:51
Speaker 1: survival of that pig and maybe an entire species. Yeah.
5:55
Speaker 1: I've heard this really interesting UM article on Nautilus I
5:59
Speaker 1: think recently, and it was basically the idea that the
6:03
Speaker 1: human body is just a hackathon of Well, we need
6:08
Speaker 1: to fix this problem, so let's come up with this
6:10
Speaker 1: or they humans started standing up on two legs, so
6:13
Speaker 1: we need to fix it with this um and but
6:16
Speaker 1: if you stem back and look at it, the human bodies,
6:19
Speaker 1: is this really cluji thing held together with like duct
6:22
Speaker 1: tape and bubblegum right, um like a v W you
6:25
Speaker 1: buck um and uh. The the author interviewed like I
6:29
Speaker 1: think ten different biologists and said, you know, what's something
6:33
Speaker 1: you would change about the uh, the human body to
6:36
Speaker 1: improve it. That was basically just the hack. It was
6:38
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. That's awesome. See if I can find it.
6:41
Speaker 1: Is that going to be in your best things? I've
6:42
Speaker 1: read this week post blog post. I think so maybe
6:46
Speaker 1: it should be. And you read it while you were
6:48
Speaker 1: working out on your Nautilus machine. Now I read it
6:51
Speaker 1: on Nautilus website. Got you and they have a clever website.
6:55
Speaker 1: It's and a U T I L dot us. Oh
7:01
Speaker 1: see what they do? Yeah, so it's not a lie.
7:05
Speaker 1: Dot us are not told dot us not till Yes. Okay,
7:11
Speaker 1: so you talked about fitness. The more offspring you have,
7:14
Speaker 1: the more fit you are as a parent and as
7:18
Speaker 1: a mammal or animal or whatever. You've hit the nautilus
7:21
Speaker 1: so often that you're just totally fit. If you've had
7:23
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids. That's right, because uh, as we
7:26
Speaker 1: all know, not all, not of your genetic material goes
7:31
Speaker 1: into each one of your little babies. Because you you know,
7:35
Speaker 1: you have sex with someone else, you gotta share, you
7:38
Speaker 1: share compromise. So in order to increase the chances of
7:42
Speaker 1: one of your little babies having all of your genetic material,
7:45
Speaker 1: you need just need to more and more babies. It's amazing.
7:48
Speaker 1: That's weird, um, because I always thought that the you're
7:53
Speaker 1: the amount of genes that you pass on with set
7:56
Speaker 1: like or whatever went into your kid, right, Well, yeah,
8:00
Speaker 1: but you have sex, and of these genes goes in
8:03
Speaker 1: you have sex again, another set of your genes might
8:06
Speaker 1: get picked. I've never heard it put like that. That
8:08
Speaker 1: makes sense, though. I always thought the more like the
8:11
Speaker 1: drive to keep having kids and and reproduce was two
8:16
Speaker 1: because you were going to have fifty percent of your
8:18
Speaker 1: genes out there in the world no matter what. But
8:21
Speaker 1: all those kids could like you know, bite the dust.
8:25
Speaker 1: And so the more you have, the more insurance you
8:26
Speaker 1: have that those go on. Never thought of it the
8:29
Speaker 1: way you just but the upshot of all this and
8:34
Speaker 1: by extension, the upshot of Darwin's entire theory of evolution
8:39
Speaker 1: by natural selection driven by variation is that you any
8:45
Speaker 1: any any trait that an organism has that improves its
8:52
Speaker 1: capability to reproduce or its likelihood of reproducing, is going
8:56
Speaker 1: to be selected for, and that's going to lead to
8:59
Speaker 1: the evolution of the species. Right, And that basically the
9:03
Speaker 1: whole point, this is the unspoken part, The whole point
9:06
Speaker 1: of everything is to reproduce, to pass your genes along.
9:10
Speaker 1: That was Richard dawkins contribution with the selfish gene. Right.
9:14
Speaker 1: The problem is, and Darwin saw this while he was
9:18
Speaker 1: coming up with his theory um was that there is
9:22
Speaker 1: behavior found in nature that does the exact opposite of that,
9:27
Speaker 1: where organisms choose it seems to live a life where
9:32
Speaker 1: they don't reproduce and instead help others of their kind reproduce,
9:37
Speaker 1: which is called biologically altruistic behavior. And it makes zero
9:42
Speaker 1: sense whatsoever under um Darwin's theory of evolution. And it's
9:46
Speaker 1: just been a puzzle and a challenge to the theory
9:49
Speaker 1: ever since he first noticed that. Well, I think that's
9:52
Speaker 1: a great place for a break, my friend, and we'll
9:55
Speaker 1: talk about this weird thing after we get back. So
10:16
Speaker 1: Darwin Um talked a lot about competition. That was one
10:19
Speaker 1: of the big keys to his theory working is unfortunately,
10:23
Speaker 1: in nature, it can't be like elementary school field day
10:28
Speaker 1: where everyone gets a participant ribbon. Um. There's gonna be
10:31
Speaker 1: winners and losers, and the winners will go on to
10:33
Speaker 1: survive and the losers might not. But where this wrinkle
10:37
Speaker 1: comes in is what you mentioned before the break, biological altruism. Um.
10:44
Speaker 1: It's remarkable that there are, and we'll talk about some
10:47
Speaker 1: of them, that there are species that don't even try
10:50
Speaker 1: to reproduce. So yeah, so well there's members of certain species, right, yeah,
10:55
Speaker 1: So a really good example is the b right, A
10:58
Speaker 1: drone is a female and a female that I think,
11:02
Speaker 1: and and some be species are totally sterile, so they
11:05
Speaker 1: can't reproduce anyway. But even if some of them could,
11:09
Speaker 1: they don't. Instead, they go out and collect honey, or
11:13
Speaker 1: they collect the nectar they make honey, They choose the
11:17
Speaker 1: pollen and spit it back up, and then do that
11:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, and all of a sudden you
11:21
Speaker 1: have honey, which, as everybody knows, is nothing but be
11:24
Speaker 1: vomit um. They tend to the offspring the young, they
11:32
Speaker 1: bring food to the queen, who is the only one
11:35
Speaker 1: to reproduce. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. They serve the
11:39
Speaker 1: queen because not only does that. So there's there's two
11:42
Speaker 1: things that play here that make the whole thing weird. One,
11:46
Speaker 1: if an individual organism is basically here to pass along
11:50
Speaker 1: its genes, then why would any individual organism not attempt
11:55
Speaker 1: to do that? Right? And Then secondly, and this is
11:59
Speaker 1: the real mystery, how could these traits that um that
12:04
Speaker 1: the organism is driven by to be helpful and altruistic
12:09
Speaker 1: rather than be reproductive. How could that possibly be passed
12:13
Speaker 1: on from one generation to the next If that organism
12:17
Speaker 1: isn't passing that trait along, it's a big question mark. Man,
12:22
Speaker 1: Well it was, and it's not proven. But in the
12:27
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties there was a kid in school. It would
12:31
Speaker 1: later go on to be a very famous evolutionary biologist,
12:35
Speaker 1: but he was a graduate student in the sixties named
12:37
Speaker 1: William Hamilton's. He said, you know what I got this idea.
12:40
Speaker 1: It's called inclusive fitness or kin selection k I n
12:45
Speaker 1: Jerry selection. Not like a kindall, but kin selection. Inclusive fitness. Basically, Uh,
12:54
Speaker 1: here's what's going on here. It's not random when you
12:57
Speaker 1: see in nature this altruistic behavior of a part of
13:00
Speaker 1: a species, of a member of family helping. Most times
13:05
Speaker 1: they're helping their family. Yeah, this is actually supported by
13:09
Speaker 1: some studies. Very famously, it was supported by a study
13:13
Speaker 1: of um. Well, the number of studies of Florida scrub jays,
13:16
Speaker 1: which are pretty little blue birds, and some members of
13:19
Speaker 1: the Florida scrub jays species UM don't mate when it
13:23
Speaker 1: comes time to mate during mating season, right. Instead, they
13:28
Speaker 1: help um gather food, They help defend nests and protect
13:33
Speaker 1: the eggs. They helped build their like here, let me
13:35
Speaker 1: build you a little sex room, brother, and you know,
13:39
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a tie on the hen nesto later
13:43
Speaker 1: if you're tired. But you just go in there and
13:45
Speaker 1: do your business. Hugs hugs brother deeply. He's like the
13:49
Speaker 1: whole family's proud of. But I'm gonna go out here
13:52
Speaker 1: and not have sex. I'm just gonna stay in guard
13:54
Speaker 1: and and maybe listen. That's that's the scrub jays and exactly. Uh,
14:02
Speaker 1: it's remarkable. So it doesn't make any sense, right, No,
14:06
Speaker 1: it doesn't until you investigate it through the lens of
14:08
Speaker 1: kin selection and so UM. This one study in particular
14:12
Speaker 1: UM that followed scrub jays as they didn't mate and
14:16
Speaker 1: instead carried out this altruistic helping behavior. They found that
14:21
Speaker 1: of the seventy four relationships that were observed, forty eight
14:26
Speaker 1: assisted their parents, gross uh sixteen helped their father again,
14:33
Speaker 1: Grody uh seven assisted a brother, two assisted their mother,
14:38
Speaker 1: and then one one out of all seventy four helped
14:42
Speaker 1: the stranger. And you can imagine that bird was probably
14:44
Speaker 1: just a little dim witted. Well, I was about to say,
14:46
Speaker 1: I thought it was confused maybe, but like you're my brother, right,
14:49
Speaker 1: or the researchers were confused and didn't realize that this
14:52
Speaker 1: was their close kind. But the point is this altruistic behavior.
14:56
Speaker 1: The study supports the idea that the organism, the animal,
15:01
Speaker 1: the person whoever, is helping somebody related to them, and
15:05
Speaker 1: therefore it does make sense an evolution because the person
15:09
Speaker 1: is helping ensure that some of their genes, not necessarily
15:12
Speaker 1: their specific genes they are passing down through reproduction, but
15:17
Speaker 1: some of their genes through their direct blood relative. Um,
15:21
Speaker 1: they're helping make sure that those get passed long and
15:23
Speaker 1: then then altruism starts to make sense. It's amazing. Uh
15:28
Speaker 1: you want to hear an ever evolutionary biologist joke about this? Yeah,
15:32
Speaker 1: I would gladly die for two brothers or four cousins
15:36
Speaker 1: or eight second cousins. That's that's pretty good. Yeah, that
15:41
Speaker 1: makes sense. I read that and I thought that kind
15:44
Speaker 1: of describes it perfectly. It's well, it's not very funny
15:46
Speaker 1: because it's an evolutionary biology jokes, but it does describe it. Uh.
15:51
Speaker 1: So this happened in the nineteen sixties, and like I said,
15:53
Speaker 1: Hamilton's went on to write books and he actually came
15:58
Speaker 1: up with math it, he says, proves this to be
16:02
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, because he used letters instead of numbers,
16:05
Speaker 1: So you know, it's legit. It's actually a pretty smart
16:08
Speaker 1: little equation. It's called Hamilton's rule. I like it. Do
16:11
Speaker 1: you like it? Yeah? I mean it makes sense, it's distinct.
16:15
Speaker 1: I can understand it. You can dance to it. I'm right,
16:18
Speaker 1: it's got a good beat. I'm not threatened by it.
16:21
Speaker 1: So I like it. All right, Well, should we talk
16:23
Speaker 1: about it? I know it's a little uh esoteric to
16:25
Speaker 1: talk about a math formula. Uh is easier looked at? Well,
16:30
Speaker 1: just close your eyes, everybody and imagine this. Okay, uh, well,
16:35
Speaker 1: in math terms, what we're talking about, it's an individual's
16:38
Speaker 1: relative genetic representation in the gene pool in the next
16:42
Speaker 1: in the following generation. So if you literally look at it,
16:46
Speaker 1: it's be the letter B greater than the letter C.
16:50
Speaker 1: Over are right, So in this case, the B is
16:54
Speaker 1: greater than So that's the benefit, which I guess would
16:57
Speaker 1: be the likelihood that their gene were passed down. Okay,
17:01
Speaker 1: that would be the benefit. So the benefit is greater
17:04
Speaker 1: than the cost incurred by the person or the organism
17:08
Speaker 1: not reproducing, divided by the relationship. Right, So the closer
17:14
Speaker 1: you are, the likelier it is that you're going to
17:18
Speaker 1: enjoy a benefit over the cost. Yeah, there was. There's
17:22
Speaker 1: a PhD uh, a PhD um online named Bjorn b Ms.
17:28
Speaker 1: It was much smarter than me because I had a
17:30
Speaker 1: little trouble wrapping my brain around around how this math
17:33
Speaker 1: proves it um and and we'll we'll get into the
17:37
Speaker 1: alternative theory here in a minute, proves it over the
17:38
Speaker 1: alternative theory of group success um. And he basically said
17:43
Speaker 1: the altruistics the altruist act must be at least double
17:48
Speaker 1: the receiver's fitness in order for that altruist to gain
17:51
Speaker 1: representation in the next generation. Yeah, and and and it
17:55
Speaker 1: makes sense. So here's how it makes sense. If you,
17:58
Speaker 1: um are going to have two kids. Um, if you
18:05
Speaker 1: did reproduce and you were going to have two kids,
18:07
Speaker 1: but instead of having those two kids, you helped your
18:10
Speaker 1: brother and he was able to have three. There you go. Yeah,
18:17
Speaker 1: they I saw. So I saw Hamilton's rule expressed differently
18:20
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and it made it easier for me to understand.
18:23
Speaker 1: Let's hear your version RB minus C is greater than zero.
18:26
Speaker 1: So if the relationship coefficient um times the benefit minus
18:32
Speaker 1: the cost is greater than zero, then go for it,
18:36
Speaker 1: says nature. Then it makes sense altruistically. All right, Well,
18:40
Speaker 1: let's my math brain hurts. So let's take a break.
18:42
Speaker 1: And uh, we even bragged about how we got that.
18:45
Speaker 1: I sort of get it. We'll take a break and
18:47
Speaker 1: talk more about some more animals who do this and
18:50
Speaker 1: the idea of group selection. All right, So we mentioned
19:09
Speaker 1: the scrub J, the scrubby little scrub J who likes
19:14
Speaker 1: to build sex dungeons or his family. Uh. We talked
19:20
Speaker 1: about bees. They are also ants and wasps and other insects.
19:24
Speaker 1: Who served the queen. Um these workers. It's sort of
19:29
Speaker 1: like insects socialism, almost working side by side for the
19:33
Speaker 1: benefit of the group. Forgetting my own yeah, forget my
19:37
Speaker 1: own reproduction. I want the colony to survive, and this
19:41
Speaker 1: is my job, and so I'm gonna do it well. Um.
19:44
Speaker 1: Another example is, uh, some animals have a call. They
19:48
Speaker 1: will signal out, hey, there's an intruder coming family toward
19:52
Speaker 1: the house. And I might be giving up my own
19:54
Speaker 1: life by drawing attention to myself, but I'm still going
19:57
Speaker 1: to do that now. I actually did see an explain
20:00
Speaker 1: for that that doesn't have to do with actual altruism
20:02
Speaker 1: merging selection them. Among mere cats, they have sentinels. Anytime
20:07
Speaker 1: a gang of mere cats is out hunting, one of
20:09
Speaker 1: them is just standing up, looking very cute in all directions,
20:15
Speaker 1: and when they see danger, they call out to a
20:18
Speaker 1: warning to the rest of the group. But um, this
20:21
Speaker 1: one study that included like two thousand hours of of
20:25
Speaker 1: UM watching and observing these mere cats found that not
20:29
Speaker 1: one sentinel was killed during this time. And as a
20:33
Speaker 1: matter of fact, they were the ones that get away
20:35
Speaker 1: first because they're the ones watching, so they see first
20:39
Speaker 1: and then they call but it's actually that call is
20:41
Speaker 1: not much of a cost to the individual. Well, that's
20:44
Speaker 1: a mere cat. They're super smart. What about the dumb squirrel?
20:47
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean maybe, although mere cats do
20:50
Speaker 1: very famously engage in altruistic behavior themselves. Like mere cat
20:54
Speaker 1: pups can't feed themselves, but apparently they can squeal and
20:58
Speaker 1: beg and um. Most of the time they will be fed,
21:02
Speaker 1: but the mere cat feeding them is not necessarily and
21:05
Speaker 1: in most cases isn't their biological parents. It's somebody else.
21:09
Speaker 1: And mere cats definitely have that whole village to raise
21:11
Speaker 1: a child thing going on for sure. Um, And it
21:14
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense through kin selection and not
21:17
Speaker 1: another way. It's interesting. It's hard not to think of
21:20
Speaker 1: politics when you're reading this stuff in the animal world.
21:22
Speaker 1: You know, what's a good model for It depends on
21:26
Speaker 1: what you think. Well, I mean, it's a good model
21:29
Speaker 1: to understand it, I should say, yeah, I saw. I
21:32
Speaker 1: had a this funny. I was driving home from the
21:34
Speaker 1: grocery store the other day and there was a major intersection,
21:39
Speaker 1: uh near my house where the traffic lights were out,
21:42
Speaker 1: like four four away intersection and each one had their
21:45
Speaker 1: own turn lane, and it was rush hour, and I
21:48
Speaker 1: just laughed looking around like the American political system was
21:51
Speaker 1: entirely represented. Oh yeah, man. Some people just barreled through,
21:55
Speaker 1: didn't care. Some people, uh just wouldn't go. They were
22:00
Speaker 1: just like frozen and fear. Some people are like no
22:03
Speaker 1: you go, well, no you go? Will you go? And
22:06
Speaker 1: then someone behind one Honker, was like all right, I'll go,
22:08
Speaker 1: And you could just really kind of see everything, just
22:11
Speaker 1: like it really opened my eyes. And I think, I
22:14
Speaker 1: don't know what you would call me, because I'm the
22:17
Speaker 1: by the book guy. I'm like, blinking yellow doesn't mean stop,
22:21
Speaker 1: it means proceeds slowly, cautiously. But one was red and
22:25
Speaker 1: one is yellow. Everybody was stopping because it was just
22:27
Speaker 1: so crowded, exactly. Yeah. And there's definitely people who do
22:30
Speaker 1: see it the way you do and then go ahead
22:32
Speaker 1: and do that. But it does seem like humans have
22:35
Speaker 1: recently decided like, no, if it's red, blinking red and
22:39
Speaker 1: blinking yellow, the people with the yellow are going to
22:42
Speaker 1: stop eventually and let the people with the red go
22:45
Speaker 1: altruistic act. Very interesting, all right, So let's uh we
22:50
Speaker 1: teased group uh multi level selection or group selection. This
22:55
Speaker 1: is something Darwin talked a little bit about in the
22:58
Speaker 1: descentive man, but he is main focus was on the individual,
23:03
Speaker 1: but he dabbled in it. Uh, he dabbled in group play.
23:08
Speaker 1: But this is a theory where there are these altruistic traits.
23:11
Speaker 1: No one's denying that. We see it all over the
23:13
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. But it's not necessarily toward a family. It's
23:17
Speaker 1: just for the good of the whole group. Yeah. So
23:20
Speaker 1: the the whole idea of kin selection, apparently UM has
23:23
Speaker 1: been challenged, although not widely challenged UM by the idea
23:27
Speaker 1: that if you really look at some species, the species
23:31
Speaker 1: that are closely related, some of them don't do anything altruistically,
23:36
Speaker 1: and then others that do engage in altruism don't necessarily
23:39
Speaker 1: do it for close relations UM. So if that's the case,
23:43
Speaker 1: then the whole idea of kin selection is challenged because
23:46
Speaker 1: the basis of kin selection is that these are UM
23:50
Speaker 1: organisms helping to pass on some of their related traits
23:54
Speaker 1: that their relatives are passing along through reproduction. And if
23:58
Speaker 1: that's not the case, then that's that's the question. Mark returns. Well, yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: and then there's the whole thing that there are in
24:05
Speaker 1: in groups of animals, some are related, some aren't. So
24:08
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell where one where group behavior stops
24:11
Speaker 1: and family behavior begins. So you have a lot of
24:15
Speaker 1: biologists saying this is just sort of semantical. We shouldn't
24:18
Speaker 1: be arguing about this. It's sort of the same their
24:22
Speaker 1: equivalent basically, helping the family is helping the group. Right.
24:25
Speaker 1: But then a few years back, very famous um aunt
24:29
Speaker 1: man EO. Wilson, who actually awesome guy, Like as far
24:34
Speaker 1: as scientists go, this guy should have statues erected to him.
24:37
Speaker 1: He's a very brave scientist. He's known as the father
24:40
Speaker 1: of sociobiology. Right. Um. He also, when he was a teenager,
24:44
Speaker 1: was the first to observe and um study fire ants
24:48
Speaker 1: when they just happened to be transported to South America
24:52
Speaker 1: as ballot or from South America to New Orleans as
24:55
Speaker 1: ballast in a ship. He happened to notice him for
24:58
Speaker 1: the first time fire ants in the Southeast red ants.
25:00
Speaker 1: He was there when they when they came about, and
25:03
Speaker 1: he ended up they didn't originate here, No, they were
25:06
Speaker 1: brought as like as in scoops of dirt from South
25:09
Speaker 1: America and they just took over. But he was a
25:12
Speaker 1: teenager and he was studying him. So he's a really
25:14
Speaker 1: great scientist, but he um has uh attracted the ire
25:19
Speaker 1: of his fellow scientists by saying Kin selections bunk. Yeah,
25:24
Speaker 1: he reversed his position though, right. Yeah, he was an
25:26
Speaker 1: early and longtime champion of of Kin's selection and he
25:30
Speaker 1: he apparently changed his way of thinking and now says
25:33
Speaker 1: it's group selection instead. Yeah. And Richard Dawkins, we mentioned
25:37
Speaker 1: him earlier, he's uh. He fired back at E. O.
25:40
Speaker 1: Wilson was basically, you know what, dude, you're wrong. I
25:43
Speaker 1: know you wrote a book about it. But he said,
25:45
Speaker 1: there are quote pervasive theoretical errors in your books are
25:49
Speaker 1: and Wilson's Is he still alive? I think he has.
25:51
Speaker 1: Dawkins isn't Wilson's old though, because eighty five when in
25:56
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, so he'd be no, you know, right,
26:00
Speaker 1: he maybe alive. I'm not sure if he's not or
26:03
Speaker 1: if he is. Well, Dawkins is. Dawkins is very famous
26:06
Speaker 1: for his freeloader effect too, Yeah, as part of the
26:08
Speaker 1: selfish gene. And that's the problem. I think that's one
26:11
Speaker 1: of the reasons why E. O. Wilson has attracted so
26:14
Speaker 1: much iger from the scientific community because a lot of
26:17
Speaker 1: scientists built their careers on things like Kin's selection and
26:22
Speaker 1: explaining it. Um. And they were doing so following in
26:27
Speaker 1: the wake of E. O. Wilson, who was a huge
26:30
Speaker 1: prostalytizer for it, and then all of a sudden, this
26:33
Speaker 1: prophet like turns around on him towards the end of
26:35
Speaker 1: his life and after his own career, you know, um,
26:39
Speaker 1: and he a lot of people were ticked off by it,
26:41
Speaker 1: But it makes sense the group selection doesn't. Basically, it's saying,
26:46
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of people are like, this
26:48
Speaker 1: is just semantics, we shouldn't be arguing about it. But
26:50
Speaker 1: group selection says it's not the relatives that these organisms
26:55
Speaker 1: are looking out for. It's their group, it's their species.
26:58
Speaker 1: They're making sure their species continue along, and that's enough
27:01
Speaker 1: for an altruistic act to exist. Yeah. And so, like
27:06
Speaker 1: I said, Um, with all these other scientists that were
27:09
Speaker 1: upset by this, Dawkins is included. And one reason Dawkins
27:13
Speaker 1: would be upset about that is because he wrote the
27:15
Speaker 1: Selfish gene, which helps explain kin selection. Yeah. Uh and
27:20
Speaker 1: altruism and uh yeah. He was taking shots at E. O.
27:23
Speaker 1: Wilson and the press over the whole thing. Yeah, and
27:26
Speaker 1: his freeloader effect, which I mentioned a few minutes ago,
27:28
Speaker 1: was basically he said, you know what um you get,
27:33
Speaker 1: you call it a mutant freeloader. One of these freeloaders
27:35
Speaker 1: can take it down, take down this altruistic society or
27:38
Speaker 1: species because they're just lazing about and they have more
27:42
Speaker 1: time to have sex and reproduce, and they can reproduce faster.
27:45
Speaker 1: So everyone else is out there working for everybody altruistically.
27:49
Speaker 1: His freeloaders just having sex and having babies. So that's
27:52
Speaker 1: gonna be the gene that gets carried down the most. Which, yeah,
27:58
Speaker 1: I guess that supports can selection. I don't know. I'm
28:03
Speaker 1: not sure either. I don't have to read the selfish
28:05
Speaker 1: gene and find out. Yeah, I just thought it was interesting.
28:07
Speaker 1: Yeah I do too. But then also chuck um with
28:10
Speaker 1: the whole idea as well of whether kin selection or
28:14
Speaker 1: group selection explains anything. If you are helping somebody, If
28:18
Speaker 1: an organism helps UH related or just a group organism reproduce,
28:25
Speaker 1: and that organism who gave up reproducing was going to
28:28
Speaker 1: have two kids but only helps that other organism have one,
28:32
Speaker 1: then isn't that a net loss for the species or
28:34
Speaker 1: the family. Well, yeah, but I think that's what that
28:36
Speaker 1: math formula was aught about all about, is as it
28:39
Speaker 1: has to be double or else it's not gonna keep happening.
28:43
Speaker 1: I got so. I wonder then if there's been study
28:46
Speaker 1: that shows, yes, it's typically double. I think that's what
28:51
Speaker 1: he said. The math proved crazy stuff, biologists going nuts
28:56
Speaker 1: on one another and we're just sitting on the sidelines,
28:59
Speaker 1: and even pop coin talking about it. If you want
29:03
Speaker 1: to know more about sociobiology and other stuff like that,
29:06
Speaker 1: including kin selection or group selection, you could type in
29:09
Speaker 1: kin k I N into the search part how stuff
29:12
Speaker 1: works dot com and it will bring up a pretty
29:14
Speaker 1: interesting article. Since I said, Ken, it's time for listener mail,
29:21
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this companion to the previous listener Maile
29:24
Speaker 1: Finland rules, and I'm gonna call this Sweden rules. Starting
29:29
Speaker 1: some static on more crazy Scandinavians. Hey, guys, a long
29:33
Speaker 1: time listener, just finish with the dark money and want
29:35
Speaker 1: to give me some insight about our socialist paradise of Sweden. Yes,
29:40
Speaker 1: we do pay quite a bit of tax. A regular
29:43
Speaker 1: Joe pays about of his or her income as tax.
29:47
Speaker 1: If you earn more, you pay more tax. There's also
29:50
Speaker 1: a VAT tax and everything between six percent on food
29:53
Speaker 1: to on everything else. So yes, we never stopped paying
29:57
Speaker 1: the man. So what do we get, Well, we're guaranteed healthcare.
30:00
Speaker 1: There's a small fee about ten dollars for a medical situation,
30:03
Speaker 1: but after that it's all free X rays, cancer treatments,
30:07
Speaker 1: it's all free. Also, you can, if you have enough
30:10
Speaker 1: visits to the hospital. I guess you get a punch card.
30:14
Speaker 1: You get a free card, which means you don't even
30:16
Speaker 1: have to pay that ten dollars or pay for medicine.
30:19
Speaker 1: Sweet deal, he says. Uh, school is naturally totally free.
30:23
Speaker 1: We actually even get a salary for attending university about
30:26
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars a month is a stipend, all for free.
30:29
Speaker 1: We can also take out a student loan with very
30:31
Speaker 1: affordable payment plans that don't kick in until after you graduated.
30:34
Speaker 1: Uh makes it common. Uh, that makes it so it's
30:38
Speaker 1: common for all people of all ages to go to university.
30:41
Speaker 1: And lastly, we have kids. When you have kids, the
30:44
Speaker 1: parents can take out four hundred and eighty days of
30:47
Speaker 1: paid to pattorney leave. Oh yeah, the US is so
30:49
Speaker 1: far behind other industrialized nation. Yeah, they're like two weeks
30:53
Speaker 1: and then good luck, get back to work, and we
30:55
Speaker 1: need you responding to emails the whole time too. Uh
30:58
Speaker 1: if they must say, our company had a more generously
31:01
Speaker 1: than that, So I'm talking about us even for dad's Yeah, um,
31:05
Speaker 1: if they take an equal amount, they get a bonus payment. Um.
31:09
Speaker 1: After that, there's a system of kindergartens that takes care
31:12
Speaker 1: of the kids until they reach school age. Again free.
31:16
Speaker 1: We do have some problems, of course. A lot of
31:18
Speaker 1: the health care has been privatized in recent years, which
31:21
Speaker 1: hasn't been all great. Also, there's a movement of xenophobia
31:24
Speaker 1: sweeping the nation, fueled by the terrible refuge refugee situation
31:28
Speaker 1: in Europe. The third largest political party has its roots
31:31
Speaker 1: and far right, anti democratic, even Nazi movements, is what
31:36
Speaker 1: he says. That's really surprising because usually they point to
31:39
Speaker 1: the rise of things like that as the result of
31:42
Speaker 1: economic woes. Yeah, it doesn't sound like Sweden has too
31:46
Speaker 1: many economic woes, so I mean, what accounts for that?
31:50
Speaker 1: I don't know. Follow up, he says, on the whole,
31:53
Speaker 1: it's great place to live. Thanks for the show. Entertainment
31:56
Speaker 1: at its very fineness, and that is from a gurn
32:00
Speaker 1: Dextrom great name, g B. He said. If I can
32:04
Speaker 1: pronounce his name, I get a prize. Canna send you
32:09
Speaker 1: as the film because you got it right. That'd be great.
32:12
Speaker 1: Thanks Garen, I'd like your other film. If you want
32:17
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
32:21
Speaker 1: us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
32:23
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
32:26
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff podcast the house.
32:28
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com has always joined us at our
32:30
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com
32:38
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
32:40
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com