The Cure and the Disease
July 24, 2020 9:58 PM Subscribe
Great to see a fresh new internet magazine (The Drift). Long reads and ultra-short reviews. Very nice. Good article linked here, too.
posted by kozad at 7:34 AM on July 25, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by kozad at 7:34 AM on July 25, 2020 [2 favorites]
As the career of Bill Hamilton and sociobiology itself illustrates, a doctorate and a lab coat do not bestow unmediated access to truth, or to moral integrity.
This was a good article.
Bill Hamilton sounds like a genuine evil genius scientist. I was talking about this the other day with a friend - some people are really smart and you expect because they're so smart they'll also be, you know - emotionally and morally smart. And they turn out to be fucking dicks. And because they are smart they cause much more chaos than regular assholes...
people are difficult at times.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:20 AM on July 25, 2020 [7 favorites]
This was a good article.
Bill Hamilton sounds like a genuine evil genius scientist. I was talking about this the other day with a friend - some people are really smart and you expect because they're so smart they'll also be, you know - emotionally and morally smart. And they turn out to be fucking dicks. And because they are smart they cause much more chaos than regular assholes...
people are difficult at times.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:20 AM on July 25, 2020 [7 favorites]
On the contrary, Hamilton became increasingly convinced that contemporary civilization, and especially the successes of modern medicine, had halted the process of natural selection, with disastrous consequences.
It's funny with people like this, who think in systems, how everything is the result of some natural (and therefore "appropriate") process, except for the things they don't like.
posted by chavenet at 10:56 AM on July 25, 2020 [24 favorites]
It's funny with people like this, who think in systems, how everything is the result of some natural (and therefore "appropriate") process, except for the things they don't like.
posted by chavenet at 10:56 AM on July 25, 2020 [24 favorites]
"Best of all worlds" and that. "If I have power, this must be the best of all worlds."
posted by eustatic at 11:03 AM on July 25, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by eustatic at 11:03 AM on July 25, 2020 [5 favorites]
> It's funny with people like this, who think in systems, how everything is the result of some natural (and therefore "appropriate") process, except for the things they don't like.
And also how they presume they would have survived all processes of natural selection that civilization had interfered with.
posted by at by at 12:00 PM on July 25, 2020 [20 favorites]
And also how they presume they would have survived all processes of natural selection that civilization had interfered with.
posted by at by at 12:00 PM on July 25, 2020 [20 favorites]
I can't comment on William Hamilton's social-Darwinist views, but my subjective impression is that it's common for biologists to be pessimistic about the future, and to think that human overpopulation is a major problem. (For example, in biology there's the concept of "switching predators," which - unlike more specialized predators - are capable of wiping out entire prey populations. Humans and rats are two examples. In economics, the corresponding concept is called "substitution," and is generally regarded as a good thing.)
My understanding is that Hamilton is a big name in biology. Anyone in the field who can comment?
NYT obituary: William Hamilton, 63, Dies; An Evolutionary Biologist.
My understanding is that Hamilton is a big name in biology. Anyone in the field who can comment?
NYT obituary: William Hamilton, 63, Dies; An Evolutionary Biologist.
William Donald Hamilton, one of the towering figures of modern biology and the man who helped to unify Darwin's principles of natural selection with a rigorous understanding of Mendelian genetics, died on Tuesday in Oxford, England. He was 63.posted by russilwvong at 12:16 PM on July 25, 2020 [4 favorites]
... Dr. Hamilton, a professor at Oxford University since 1984, burst into the field of evolution while still a graduate student at Cambridge University. In 1963 and 1964, he published two papers based on his doctoral work that have proved so seminal to evolutionary biology that it is virtually impossible to read a contemporary study in the discipline without encountering his name and the term he coined, inclusive fitness, also known as kin selection.
... Through the model of inclusive fitness, Dr. Hamilton proposed an elegant and mathematically sophisticated way of understanding altruistic behavior, a problem that had baffled naturalists from Darwin onward. If organisms are inherently selfish, and supposedly devoted to personal survival and reproduction, why, scientists wondered, do so many species display seemingly self-sacrificial behavior
... Dr. Hamilton thus recast the concept of fitness, that is, an individual's success in reproducing, to incorporate the survival and reproductive success of the creature's close relatives -- hence the term inclusive fitness. In so doing, he merged Darwin's focus on individual animals competing for the privilege of siring the next generation with Mendel's studies of how distinct genetic traits are transmitted over time.
... The idea can be roughly understood by [Haldane's remark] that he would ''gladly die for two brothers, four cousins or eight second cousins.''
If your response to having your theory disproven by evidence, especially evidence gathered by multiple different groups, is to claim that there is a conspiracy against you and your ideas, I dare say that you aren't mentally fit to be a scientist. Moreover, it calls into question any other ideas you may have had, given that it shows a major defect in your ability to reason.
That's not to say that conspiracies never happen; small conspiracies are depressingly common. Even big ones on occasion. Invoking conspiracy when the only evidence of that conspiracy is your idea being proven incorrect, however, is a clear example of disordered thinking. It almost seems like unfounded paranoia is becoming more celebrated lately, and even encouraged in some circles.
posted by wierdo at 6:34 AM on July 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
That's not to say that conspiracies never happen; small conspiracies are depressingly common. Even big ones on occasion. Invoking conspiracy when the only evidence of that conspiracy is your idea being proven incorrect, however, is a clear example of disordered thinking. It almost seems like unfounded paranoia is becoming more celebrated lately, and even encouraged in some circles.
posted by wierdo at 6:34 AM on July 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
If your response to having your theory disproven by evidence, especially evidence gathered by multiple different groups, is to claim that there is a conspiracy against you and your ideas, I dare say that you aren't mentally fit to be a scientist.
Are you talking about Hooper's reaction to the Royal Society meeting? Hooper was a journalist, not a scientist. Hamilton had already died by then.
Moreover, it calls into question any other ideas you may have had, given that it shows a major defect in your ability to reason.
This seems like an example of the genetic fallacy. There's plenty of examples of scientists who have made major contributions being completely wrong about other things (Newton's alchemy and occult studies, Einstein's rejection of quantum mechanics), and Planck's principle ("science progresses one funeral at a time") suggests that scientists aren't particularly good at changing their minds.
posted by russilwvong at 4:19 PM on July 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Are you talking about Hooper's reaction to the Royal Society meeting? Hooper was a journalist, not a scientist. Hamilton had already died by then.
Moreover, it calls into question any other ideas you may have had, given that it shows a major defect in your ability to reason.
This seems like an example of the genetic fallacy. There's plenty of examples of scientists who have made major contributions being completely wrong about other things (Newton's alchemy and occult studies, Einstein's rejection of quantum mechanics), and Planck's principle ("science progresses one funeral at a time") suggests that scientists aren't particularly good at changing their minds.
posted by russilwvong at 4:19 PM on July 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Interesting read - something I had never heard of before. The bit about the Sierra Club's past opinion on immigration was new to me too.
posted by msbutah at 6:18 PM on July 27, 2020
posted by msbutah at 6:18 PM on July 27, 2020
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It’ll be useful to have in the arsenal for trying to insert cracks into the “vaccines = evil, globalist, genocidal conspiracy” worldview. Though it’s not a catchy facebook post or 5 min youtube video so I don’t know how digestible it will be to someone who gets their “info” that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Balthamos at 12:56 AM on July 25, 2020 [6 favorites]