Charlie Rose

Gelles  04/11/2012 08:21 AM Report

Choices like this are NOT subject to empirical test

Damn this no-edit software -- at least Watson uses Amazon's even as he enjoys Rose's scope and actual interviews.

Gelles  04/11/2012 08:18 AM Report

Dear Watson,

"Survival of the 'fittest'", versus "survival of the 'more cooperative'", for laymen, is quite enough. They can reject the boost for cooperation against eating each other for lunch on whatever grounds you like. Choices like this are subject to empirical test. Arguments are confined literary criticism's scope, science never enters the picture.

You have started people thinking where you're posting. But have you changed their appetites. If they are still lunching on each other, you and they are the losers.

E O Wilson may be spouting poetry not science. But the spout is wholesome -- not the poison nature provides along with all those snakes and scorpions.

My focus is money reform -- not exactly a hard science. But if you and others would listen to me, you could leave this home for cannibals and move on to the promised land.

Dr_Paul_J_Watson  04/10/2012 10:23 PM Report

I have pasted here my review of the book from Amazon, where it has elicited an ongoing conversation. Go there to see more. Just search to the book (e.g., keywords "Wilson conquest") and look at the growing stream of customer comments...

11 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars

In the name of perspective..., April 7, 2012

By Dr. Paul J. Watson (Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Social Conquest of Earth.

Wilson offers articulate sober insights into the human condition. As a species, we will have to digest these observations about ourselves, pan-culturally, to the point where we are actually empowered by the self-knowledge to do something about them; this seems our only hope for avoiding further and greater calamity for our civilizations and the biosphere.

However, Wilson's "revolutionary" views on how we evolved into our current condition are very suspect. This matters: not accurately understanding the basis of our condition in terms of its historical (evolutionary) causes may lessen our ability to navigate toward a real solution.

Therefore, anyone reading this book who is interested in its purported "revolutionary" scientific content, specifically, Wilson's claims that we are better off abandoning William Hamilton's inclusive fitness theory as an important basis for understanding the design of the human psyche, should have easy access to the responses of Dr. Wilson's peers. So, here you go. There are five pieces in the journal Nature, collected under the heading, "Brief Communications Arising,"

Nature v471, issue 7339, pp. E1-E9 (24 March 2011).

These articles are brief and very readable. These pages also include a response by Wilson and his coauthors that, as far as I can see, just ignores all the specific criticisms.

Nature Publishing Group should make the full text of these comments freely available to the public in electronic form, via Nature.com, in my opinion. (I would put up links to the full pdf's myself, but Amazon would probably have to tear them down due to the copyright violation. My server would probably crash too.)

Additional evaluations of Wilson's argument (actually, that of Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson, 2010, Nature 466, 1057-1062, plus much "Supplementary Information") were also published in Nature:

Nature v467, issue 7316, pp. 653-655 (7 October 2010);

Nature v467, issue 7316, p. 661 (7 October 2010, several short pieces of correspondence on this page);

Nature v471, issue 7338, pp. 294-295 (17 March 2011).

I tried putting up the direct Nature.com URL's to all this, but Amazon does not allow external links.

Charlie Rose, whom I've watched quasi-religiously for years, except when he has those sports people on, did a terrible job interviewing Wilson several days ago concerning this book's main idea. The adoration quotient was just way too high. Rose should have other practicing evolutionary biologists on his program to provide a balanced perspective on this "revolution," the general topic of the evolution of altruism, and to highlight the wonderful contributions of other key scientists to, what is aptly termed, "The Second Darwinian Revolution" of the 1960's and 70's. That's when naturalists and organismal biologists en masse finally began to deeply understand Darwin's ideas and their heavy awesome implications. Wilson certainly wasted no effort in the Charlie Rose interview, or in the current book, to mention them or accurately characterize their great labors. For example, William Hamilton, who of course Wilson has to mention a lot, was as great and passionate a naturalist as Wilson, not some ecologically naive theoretician. Hamilton understood natural selection in all respects. Moreover, Hamilton did not stop developing inclusive fitness theory with his 1964 papers, as reading or listening to Wilson might lead one to believe; get hold of the first volume of, "The Narrow Roads of Gene Land." Others, far more so than Wilson, who were actually responsible for the core ideas that gave us the aforementioned revolution of the 60's and 70's, all of whom Wilson sees fit to completely or largely ignore - one has to, with sadness, wonder why - include George Williams, George Price, Robert Trivers, John Maynard-Smith, and Richard Alexander, not to mention a large group of theoretically savvy ace empiricists.

Wilson should be using his not wholly undeserved position as one of the most popular and powerful organismal biologists on earth to make the public MORE aware of these human treasures. Hey Mr. Rose, Robert Trivers recently had a book come out! Too scary? Did I miss that interview?

Whatever his motivations, Wilson seems to be trying to create some turbulence in the profession, which is always good in science. However, the general public must be helped to access perspectives that conflict with Wilson's and to appreciate more fully the hard work and genius of biologists other than himself, whom he now seems happy to dismiss, as on the Charlie Rose interview, as all being "stuck in a box."

My actual rating of the book is 2.5 stars, but I rounded up.

Dr. Paul J. Watson

Department of Biology

University of New Mexico

7 April 2012

arrive2_net  04/06/2012 11:48 PM Report

No doubt Dr. Wilson has brilliant ideas. I didn't like the maze analogy for evouluton since a maze implies some path existed before it the species got there.

It seems obvious that social behavior evolved from parent- offspring behavior. The original species would have to be biologically programmable to perform parent and offspring behavior. In order for the evolution to proceed on that line, a parent trait of caring for offspring must be heritable, enable the survival of the progeny, and members of the species who lack the trait would have to be under pressure toward dying out. Parent care of offspring would enable/require some form of offspring tolerance trait for parent, and where appropriate offspring would have to have tolerance for the parent and for one another. Roots of society would begin with offspring remaining with parents long term, each tolerting the other, and the environment would have to favor increasing cooperation, and growth of the group to include prior/subsequent year offspring and in some species aunt, uncles, and the presence of their mates. Inclusion of "unrelated individuals" would be a "society".

Social behavior would take time to evolve because it requires opposite and incompatible behavior. Social beings have to nurture friendlies and attack or kill enemies, as ants in one colony attack ants from other colonies but not ants of their own colony.

So social creatures have to be altuistic or murderous by turns, which it strikes me would be very tough to program using genes. No wonder it took a long time. Would all colonies in a species have to bud off of one original colony, or would the trait be carried to existing related colonies by drones? I thought it was a terrific and thought provoking guest, subject, and program.

Bart Schuster

OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com

Twitter.com/arrive2_net

Gelles  04/06/2012 10:19 AM Report

Dear Topaz ~

You and I have said the same, in plain English, that parents cannot eat their children and expect the human race to survive. We, here, all owe our lives to the brave Americans who give their lives for our nation -- and we owe our lives, as well, to our children and to theirs.

The human race is generations old and will generations more if we act with common sense and common decency. Scientific evidence and proof may not establish that raw selfishness is worse than generosity -- especially when we see a food chain in the ocean that suggests we eat and not be eaten.

But we see more than food chains. We see time moves in one direction. One generation plans and hopes to pass on to another greater generosity and less offensive evil than it found when it began.

Not every individual will score higher in generosity than their parent; but every generation will have to try to reach that goal if possible.

REMant sees the scientific possibility of decline, decay and disappearance of individuals and species. If he sees it, he concludes, E.O. Wilson ought to rank both possibilities equal, as a matter of fact. Yet our species is not yet extinct, and Wilson sees a pattern over time of species learning to cooperate -- if very slowly.

Logically, REMant seems right. When dinosaurs went extinct REMant proved a point empirically.

But there is more than logical empiricism; there are shared human feelings. These argue in our favor. And we dismiss REMant for offering answers to a question not fit ponder: Can we not be selfish the day before the end ? It's not fit because to answer "yes" for that day might allow a yes for any day. Let him answer "yes" for all time. We answer "no" with confidence that we care about the now and may never know an end.

topazgirl  04/06/2012 05:54 AM Report

To Gelles, I say, "Wow!"... I wish I could say things as articulately as you!...

topazgirl  04/06/2012 05:32 AM Report

I do not believe REMant's high-falutin words... He/she would throw his/her self in front of a train to save his/her child. True? And my next question to REMant would be, why? REMant may not be able to answer that any more than a bee could... It just "feels" right! Altruism and self-sacrifice are those of the most evolved, whether they be instilled through instinct or reason.

And regarding Ellen's opening question about voting Democrat, I say probably... Republicans just seem meaner than Democratics... To me, that seems to way in the Dem's favor on the evolutionary scale...

marino813  04/05/2012 12:03 PM Report

Great interview, thanks for posting. He is very lucid and just a joy to listen to. Also, he just joined facebook! https://www.facebook.com/edowilson

Gelles  04/05/2012 08:34 AM Report

Admiral Rickover was asked if the human race might go extinct inside a cloud of dust left over from nuclear war. He said YES.

He was asked if that was not a prohibition of taking on this risk forever and a day. He replied that if our species went extinct, a better one might follow.

In my opinion, the risk of nuclear war makes E O Wilson right and all his opponents foolish, nutty and disgusting. Why get excited? Because when you add Rickover to Wilson you get empathy and determination to protect our posterity with our lives and minds the winner. The pleasure of neutrality in this matter, whereby our species decides that the power of chance trumps the opportunity of choice, is gone.

We must chose Wilson and empathy to enforce the Golden Rule. If the masochists among us triumph, the Golden Rule calls for murder that amounts to suicide.

If the Wilson's among us triumph, it will be over the dead bodies of suicide bombers and the natural decline and ordinary death of their friends and defenders.

The US Constitution, Golden Rule, and Scientific attitude toward evidence and belief, are none of them suicide pacts.

ShalomFreedman  04/05/2012 06:19 AM Report

With all great respect to E.O. Wilson there seems something quite simplistic in supposing human social behavior through the generations can be explained in terms of one all- embracing concept. Moreover the examples of the opposite of 'altruism' in inter-communal relations are everywhere present. I would think that the fundamental error of so many these days is that reductionism in which all aspects of human behavior are subsumed to be a branch of 'evolutionary psychology'. I don't think we will understand Joyce Kafka or Proust by studying their genes or the genes of anyone else for that matter.

anne4444  04/04/2012 04:46 PM Report

Great work. Thank you for sharing.

The question is... how to build a sustainable society?

Catherine_Daw  04/04/2012 03:57 PM Report

It is sad to see that giants in the field of biology are resorting to personal attacks. Wilson, whom I've greatly admired, claimed that Dawkins did not publish scientific papers. He neglected to mention that his latest paper was probably accepted only because of the fame of two of the authors, and because it would provoke a huge controversy. Have the authors responded to the specific counterarguments in Nature? No, they just reiterated their assertions.

tabs  04/04/2012 03:30 PM Report

One thinks that Mr Wilson should keep his day job and leave being a Dramatist to Shakespeare.Further one always thought it was the process of making Beer that was at the foundation of Human Civilization. Maybe it was the social groups that drank Beer that were more altruistic than those that did not? As such the Beer drinking altruistic societies thrived while their more stoic and sober societies were naturally selected out of existence. So didja ever think that is why an altruistic society thrives is that everyone looks so handsome or beautiful when they have a load on at 2AM?

Ellen_Dibble  04/04/2012 01:13 PM Report

So it seems we will eventually go extinct unless we vote Democrat? If it's peer-reviewed and proven that rugged individualism -- greed and deceit -- loses out in terms of a species' continuing and continuing to thrive, loses out to an approach based on collaboration and empathy, altruism, can we vote for our own demise? We could actually vote for a scientifically proven failing mode of competition for survival? (Am I mixing this up with Pinker's interview? I think not.) Let's say there ought to be real choice of candidates, not the suicidal versus the other. This reeks of a one-party system. As EO Wilson says, many many times species will select the wrong path. Gee, thanks.

Davyh  04/04/2012 12:43 PM Report

REMant,

If humans have no significant social component, how can social be an anthropmorphic concept.

REMant  04/04/2012 11:58 AM Report

By all sensible definitions humans either have no significant social component, or bees and ants, etc, have none, differentiable from, say, bacteria. Fact is, that "social" is a bogus concept, anthropomorphic, and designed, as it is being used by pseudo-conservatives like our Mr Brooks, and apparently The New Yorker, for purely polemical purposes. All we have are statistics to prove anything at all about group behavior. And we have no proof of "selection," natural or otherwise. Nature's changes have little or nothing to do with anyone's or any thing's choice. The idea would seem particularly Lamarckian, like Huxley, Social Darwinist. More to the point altruism means specifically self-sacrificial behavior, so what we have here is not only an attempt to read Whiggish evangelicalism into the world at large, but also to justify it therefore in humans. My guess would be that in fact greed and envy are about as social as altruism. Prof Wilson, IMHO, is like Gould and Dawkins, one of those pseudo-intellectuals who've done immense, but hopefully not irreparable, damage to science.

Davyh  04/04/2012 11:29 AM Report

I started reading Mr. Wilson more than 35 years ago. He seems to have every talent, brilliance as an observational scientist in his work with insects, brilliance as a theorizer in his work on sociobiology and brilliance as a writer. (I also liked his tie: very colorful.) On top of this, he appears to be a man of character, not afraid to propose new and unpopular views for which he has received, and continues to receive, considerable calumny. (He also has a tart tongue, as in his recent comment that Stephen J. Gould was a charlatan, and comment last night that Richard Dawkins is confused.) Glad to hear this interview.