My thoughts on - Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy's lecture on "Selfish genes"

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is a (rare) Pakistani scientist and activist. He has created an institute called Black Hole and there he has a track for talks on science. There he gave a talk on Dr. Richard Dawkin's book "Selfish genes". Below are my thoughts on good Dr's talk as well as on the original book title.

BTW it is an excellent talk and in general I find his talks are very balanced and just the right amount in-depth. It also helps me improve my Urdu language understanding over and above what I have learned from Bollywood movies and songs.

Some of the commentary below indirectly addresses the kinds of questions the audience asked or the way in which they interpreted the talk. It is an abject lesson in how scientists need to be careful in using the English words and using the metaphors to describe the scientific ideas. It will make sense once you watch the talk in full. Some of this I have said in the blog posts before.

The effect of biological evolution on human species has long since become less important, once humans acquired the brains capable of abstract thinking and the ability to control the environment. Since then the effect of cultural and social evolution has, at ever increasing speed, exceeded (by orders of magnitude) the effect of biological evolution on human species. Sure, the very slow biological evolution continues in humans over generations (at glacial evolutionary time scales), but in fact is rendered confused by ever changing environment in which humans live. People from warm places move to cold places and vice versa. They adapt to the new environment using human made warm clothes and air-conditioners respectively. After all, the biological evolution operates on "natural" selection, but humans no longer live in a "natural" environment. Our modern societies are based on technology, which even though natural to humans, is controlled by humans and in some sense is not "natural". I mean, generally speaking we use the word "natural" to mean controlled by nature. Therefore, it is no wonder as to why the biological evolution has been completely subsumed by cultural evolution.

Secondly, IMO there is an issue with the word "selfish". Even though in some sense it does tell us that, genes that happen to build the bodies that propagate themselves better, get more frequent in the gene pool. This, in a sense, is a vague "selfish" behavior. It is almost trivial and tautological. But, it is not due to an active agency that can be ascribed to the genes, but rather is the statistical effect of suitability of the bodies that result from those genes, to the environment(s) they live in . So in that sense it is the after effect of what environment does to the populations of organisms. In fact, the example of white and black moths on the barks of trees demonstrates this very well. The environment changed (previously, naturally white) tree barks turned black due to soot cover - disrupting the camouflage of white moths - and thus resulted in the genes that made white moths, however "selfish", to become less frequent in the moth population. What I mean is that genes are there to build a certain phenotype in the body. There are other genes, equally "selfish", that build an opposite or different phenotypes in the bodies. But in the end it is the environment that decides which genes succeed. It is not because of some active action taken by the genes. Genes are not active agency-laden entities. So in that sense the agency implying word "selfish" is a misfit. A more accurate term would have been bespoke genes, meaning that the genes have built into them an ability to build a organism with specific phenotype. And in fact, an organism may contain within itself competing genes. Some succeed and some do not succeed, depending on the environment. And if the environment changes, which genes will succeed and become more populace can change over time as well.

IMO, there is an also an issue with the connotations associated with the word "selfish". As we all know it has negative connotations. It is interpreted by lay people to mean that science is giving an excuse or permission for "selfish" human behavior. However, that is a mistake. In fact, as I have mentioned in first paragraph, as humanity evolved and is now affected mostly by cultural evolution, we have broken ourselves out of the grips of biological evolution with a (arguably) superior culture and society. And with rational and cooperative thinking we can build more fair societies for most humans to thrive in.

And lastly because the "Selfish Gene" is a scientific book and theory, and the word "selfish" has bad connotation, people blame science. For this reason, I feel that it is very important that scientists choose the right word for their theories and books. The use of title "God particle" for a book on Higgs boson, has played a similar mischief in the popular

culture. In fact the author of the book was against the use of that title. "Dark" matter and "Dark" energy also have a similar branding issue. Another example is the change of the meaning of the word nothing in Lawrence Krauss's book titled Something from Nothing.