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DataPacRat comments on Open thread, Aug. 03 - Aug. 09, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think I once heard of a variant of this, only using degrees of kinship instead of social connections. Eg, direct offspring and full siblings are discounted to 50%, grandchildren to 25%, and so forth.
I was just struck by a thought, which could combine the two approaches, by applying some sort of probability measure to one's acquaintances about how likely they are to become a blood relative of one's descendants. The idea probably needs tweaking, but I don't think I've come across a system quite like it before... Well, at least, not formally. It seems plausible that a number of social systems have ended up applying something like such a heuristic through informal social-evolutionary adaptation, which could provide some fodder for contrasting the Bayesian version against the historically-evolved versions.
Anyone have any suggestions on elaborations?
Sounds somewhat like the 'gay uncle' theory, where having 4 of your siblings kids pass on their genes is equivalent to having 2 of your own pass on their genes, but with future pairings included, which is interesting.
Stephen Baxter wrote a couple of novels that explored the first theory a bit Destiny's Children series, where gur pbybal riraghnyyl ribyirq vagb n uvir, jvgu rirelbar fhccbegvat n tebhc bs dhrraf gung gurl jrer eryngrq gb.
The addition of future contributors to the bloodline as part of your utility function could make this really interesting if set in a society that has arranged marriages and/or engagement contracts, as one arranged marriage could completely change the outcome of some deal. Though I guess this is how a ton of history played out anyway, just not quite as explicitly.