Fly2 comments on Is Morality Given? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 July 2008 08:12AM

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Comment author: Fly2 08 July 2008 04:17:00AM 0 points [-]

Terren Suydam: "So genetics is not the whole story, and that's what I mean by group selection."

I use the term "multilevel selection" for what you are describing. I agree it has been important.

E.g., there has been selection between different species. Species with genomes that supported rapid adaptation to changing environments and that supported quick diversification when expanding into new niches spread far and wide. (Beetles have been extremely successful with around 350,000 known species.) Other specie branches died out. The genetic mechanisms and the animal body plans that persist to the present are the winners of a long between specie selection process.

My intuition is that selection operating at the individual level, whether genetic or cultural, suffices to produce cooperation and moral behavior. Multilevel selection probably played a supporting role.