LOLant on group selection

May 20, 2011 • 1:31 pm

by Matthew Cobb

Jerry’s back in town so I really shouldn’t be posting here without his OK, but I couldn’t resist this LOLant that Myrmecos has just posted and tweeted… My guess is Jerry might twitch his lip, too… I note that LOLants (or this one anyway) can spell better than wot our kittehs kan.

17 thoughts on “LOLant on group selection”

  3. And I thought “Ants are deaf” (the funniest title of an article I can remember, as a blunt response to a previous article, “Analysis of acoustic communication by ants”).

  4. Ants would mis-spell their captions if they were fuzzier, I think. But insects have a certain robotic precision that makes correct grammar more appropriate.

      1. What did the Pink Panther say when he saw the dead ant?

        [MANCINI] Dead ant, dead ant, deadant deadant deadant … [/MANCINI]

  6. yeah, gettin’ pretty weary of this.

    there is no “battle between kin and group selection”

    when the group selectionists can show that group selection functions in more than just models and very constrained circumstances, THEN there will be significant debate.

    If you’re actually an evolutionary biologist, this is a “nottroversy”.

    I think the only reason it ever got any traction at all is:

    -there ARE *some* very good theoretical modellers that can show multi-level selection works.

    -Wilson (the elder) signed on.

    both are irrelevant, frankly.

    1. Well, the recent Nowak/Wilson thing was never about group selection. It was against kin selection.

      I think you are thinking about David Sloan Wilson?

      1. no, it’s all related; all the published papers on the subject of multi-level hypotheses explaining things better than inclusive fitness are coming from Nowak/Sloan Wilson and related cohorts, and have been for years now, with nothing from them indicating they have EVER noticed the massive criticisms of the application of their theses or models.

        EO Wilson DID himself sign on to a couple of these papers, if you go back and look at the authors list.

        1. …and EO Wilson actually has had a misunderstanding of inclusive fitness theory that goes back at least two decades now.

          Just ask Dawkins; it’s a pet peeve of his.

  7. What is Wilson’s mis-take on inclusive fitness? Someone tried to explain it to me but I’m a bit thick and didn’t get it. Wonkipedia is no help to me either.

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