Open Thread June 2010, Part 4

Will_Newsome

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

This thread brought to you by quantum immortality.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

This thread brought to you by quantum immortality.

From the LWwiki:

To the best of this editor's knowledge, no definite example of a group-level adaptation has ever been observed in a mammalian species. Ever.

So, can you point to one of these observations? (and if so, update the wiki!)

I can point to observations of groups being eliminated, and in some of these cases, it seems obvious that elimination was attributable to a behavior, a biological phenotype, or a social phenotype. For instance, there was a group of related tribes in South America, described IIRC in "Life among the Yanomamo", who were very aggressive and kept killing and raping members of neighboring tribes. Eventually, the neighboring tribes got together and killed every last man of the aggressive tribe that they could find. The book "Black Robe" fic... (read more)