IQ Selfish Gene
Genes are competing directly with their alleles for survival, since the alleles in the gene pool are rivals for their slot on the chromosomes of future generations. Any gene that behaves in such a way as to increase its own survival chances in the gene pool at the expense of its alleles will, by definition, tautologously, tend to survive.
The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.Richard Dawkins, 2QQ91
Richard Dawkins’s stated mission is to reject that any organism could have evolved to be altruistic, or that group selection is a viable evolutionary mechanism.2 In The Selfish Gene, originally published in 1976, the British ethologist and evolutionary biologist argues that the process of biological evolution ensures that all organisms, on an individual basis, are inherently selfish. Dawkins fully realizes that his research could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of life. Moreover, he does not shy away from articulating the full ramifications of his vision for human beings, culture, and society. He is open about the repercussions of his argument:
Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior.3
Although quick to disclaim that he is not “advocating selfishness as a principle by which we should live,” Dawkins still conveys a consistent message that no biological agent is naturally selfless.4 He boldly states that “much as we might
1 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1989^2009), 33, 36.
2 See ibid., 1-11.
3 Ibid., [1976]/2QQ9, 2.
4 Ibid., 267, added in final edition.
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wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.”[594] Aware he was putting forth a vision of the nature of life itself, perhaps equivalent to that of epic proportions, he recalls, working alongside the British theoretical evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith and the American sociobiologist Robert Trivers, that 1975 “was one of those mysterious periods in which new ideas are hovering in the air.”[595] Although not directly acknowledged, the new ideas were those of game theory.[596] Dawkins views his work as part of a movement that offers “a change of vision... [that can] achieve something loftier than a theory.” Specifically, “It can usher in a whole climate of thinking... [a]nd a new way of seeing.”[597] Dawkins notes that he “wrote The Selfish Gene in something resembling a fever of excitement.”[598]
It becomes clear in assessing Dawkins’s expression of evolutionary game theory that its rendition of “Darwinian social theory” has had the effect of seamlessly linking human society with primordial evolution.[599] Dawkins himself reports that some of his readers rue the day they read The Selfish Gene because it led them to adopt nihilistic pessimism.[600] [601] He does not flinch from the “tendency to shoot the messenger... displayed by other critics who have objected to what they see as the disagreeable social, political or economic implications of The Selfish Gene.”12 Dawkins’s derivation of the self-sustaining property of narrow self-interest is a consequence of his reliance on the game theoretic Nash equilibrium of mutual best reply. The goal of this chapter is to understand the change in vision Dawkins introduced, and its close relationship to noncooperative game theory and its central logical problematic, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It is straightforward to observe that Dawkins’s biological agents seem comparable to the individuals deemed to populate capitalism: “Each gene is seen as pursuing its own self-interested agenda against the background of the other genes in the gene pool.”13 As in noncooperative game theory, every individual maximizes gain of a scarce fungible resource in competition with other like actors without constraint.