Listen to this video about how religion evolved through group selection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x3zK119faw&feature=share …
and follow my friend @diegocaleiro. He's a very bold and sharp thinker on this topic and many other complex topics.
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It's a good article, but again, Pinker demonstrates his lack of understanding of ergodicity, confusing success in one generation with success over time. He also doesn't realize that innovators are tinkerers who leverage randomness.
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But he is right about the genes and that a lot of the metaphors aren't logically rigorous. He's right about the biological mechanisms, but he misses the mathematical patterns and game theory dynamics at different levels.
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It seems like Pinker is mostly attacking the communist assumptions of naive cooperation and human eusocial behaviors, and he's correct here. My Talebian/Girardian take is that the mob sacrificing the scapegoat during a catastrophe is still group selection.
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The group selection isn't necessarily conscious or even "good intentioned." And we might not be able to explain the cause&effect, but what we observe is that in the non-ergodic long run, certain behavioral algorithms contribute to genetic survival.
End of conversation
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