What does evolutionary science say about economics?
A special issue of the Journal of Economics and Organization Behavior
that was produced with the Evolution Institute addresses important issues
that impact how we understand economics and daily life.
Click here: here for the articles for a limited time.
Several of the talks relate to the topic of this blog: memes and cultural evolution.
Hi. I'm Tim Tyler, and this is a review of this book:
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society by David Sloan Wilson
This is a relatively early book by a scientist looking at religion. Religion is a messy subject, which only a few scientists have attempted to deal with. Wilson's thesis is that religion is functional, and that its associated benefits accrue to groups of humans. He compares religious communities to beehives - on the grounds that their members cooperate with each other much as members of a bee hive do.
What are we to make of David's thesis? Bees in hives cooperate because they are extremely close relatives - since they are all daughters of the same queen. However most humans in religious communities are not anywhere near as closely related. So, in terms of DNA genes, the relationship between religious communities and bee hives is pretty far fetched. However, religious communities also share their memes, and a reasonable fraction of their memes is shared between community members. In particular the memes associated with their religion are often present in the form of near-identical copies in different members of the same religious community. Cultural relatedness does not necessarily lead towards altruism between the hosts involved, but it can do so. Much depends on the nature of memes in question and the strength of the host's memetic immune system. Memes don't have a free ride in manipulating the behaviour of their host - since they must compete with the other memes in the host and the host's own DNA genes. However with large coadapted meme complexes many memes can gang up together in an attempt to influence their host by force of numbers. That's exactly what religious memes do - and they evidently do have considerable success in influencing their host's behaviour. So, a comparison with bees may have something to it - though memetic relatedness between humans from the same religious group is probably not as high as genetic relatedness between bees within hives.
Another of the ideas David advocates is that religion is "functional" - by which he seems to mean adaptive to humans or groups of humans. He contrasts this position with "religion as a byproduct" hypotheses, economic theories involving religion as a form of transaction with alleged supernatural agents and the idea of religion as selfish memes. I think most consider religion to frequently be adaptive to its hosts. Religious people typically have more kids than secularists, often quite a lot more. One of the insights into the subject from cultural evolution is that when talking about the adaptive function of some aspect of religion, the DNA genes of the hosts are not the only possible beneficiary - religious traditions may be treated as cultural symbionts which have adaptations that benefit themselves. Wilson acknowledges the possible viability of such hypotheses, but categorises them in such a way that they compete with his own preferred explanation. He categorises adaptive theories of religion into those that invoke benefits to individuals, those that invoke benefits to groups, and those that treat religion as a cultural parasite that often evolves at the expense of individuals and groups. However, real religions vary considerably in the extent to which the interests of their memes is aligned with the the interests of the DNA genes of their hosts. Those religions which are transmitted primarily vertically down the generations can be expected to have evolved to have interests aligned with those of their hosts. Cultural and organic evolution pulling in the same direction explains the cases where religious groups typically have many children. By contrast, evangelical religions depend less on vertical transmission with respect to their hosts, and spread virally even between unrelated hosts. Such religions can be expected to be less in tune with the interests of their host's DNA genes, and more inclined towards redirecting host reproductive resources into meme propagation via evangelism. They will tend to be nastier religions.
David's correctly identifies kin selection at work - though he classifies it as group selection. Since group selection and kin selection are now widely thought to be equivalent, this is a valid perspective. However he doesn't really identify it as a cultural phenomenon. Indeed he seems to identify cultural evolution with the idea of "demonic memes" that act as parasites on humans - and then largely ignores it. Instead he proposes human groups as the beneficiaries of selection on religions. This seems like a muddled way of looking at the situation to me. Instead, the humans genes are weakly kin-selected, the religious memes are strongly kin selected - and the genes and the memes coevolve in a symbiosis. The interests of the memes and genes are somewhat aligned - largely due to the component of vertical transmission of religious beliefs. I felt that David's treatment of the topic muddled together cultural and organic evolution.
It is possible to ask whether religion is adaptive without distinguishing between cultural and organic evolution. I compare this approach to asking whether smallpox is adaptive. Through much of human history, smallpox helped groups of humans with smallpox to obliterate other tribes of humans who lacked it. Evidently smallpox is an adaptive trait at the group level. While partly accurate, this analysis is unorthodox - and misses out much of interest about the relationship between the smallpox virus and its human hosts. David's explanation of religion is like this. He just says it is adaptive at the group level - without teasing apart the relationship between the cultural and organic components of the system involved.
David does display some understanding of cultural evolution in this book. He invokes Calvin and Plotkin's idea of "Darwin Machines", uses it to explain how the brain evolves in a Darwinian fashion and then goes on to explain that human culture evolves. The section near the start of the book about cultural evolution is quite reasonable - as far as it goes.
Memetics isn't the only rival theory which I felt David treated unsympathetically. He also contrasts his approach with the idea of religion as a by-product. While functional explanations and "by-product" explanations can be seen as being opposed, it is pretty evident that the various "by-product" theories of religion have a lot going for them. The "Hyperactive Agent Detection Device" idea, is correct, for example. "By-product" hypotheses explain quite a few aspects of religion. Also, some of the traits which religion is thought to be a "by-product" of are themselves adaptive traits - so "by-product" hardly means the same as "non-adaptive". I think we should accept many of the "by-product" hypotheses concerning religion - without necessarily granting them everything.
It would be nice to have a scientific understanding of religion, not least so we can build new and better religions that draw from the best parts of their historical practices while missing out their toxic elements. However to do that we need to understand which bits of religion are desirable and which are not. Some things are obvious: yoga and meditation are good while hellfire and the oppression of women are not. However with other practices, things are not so clear. Just saying that religions are adaptive doesn't really help to identify which are the useful practices.
At the end of the book, David explains that a grant from the Templeton foundation helped to finance the book. The Templeton foundation is famous for paying scientists to say nice things about religion. I expect this funding source will turn off some readers.
Studying religion seems like a dirty job for a scientist - but someone has to do it. David Sloane Wilson seems to be OK with the topic. However back in 2002, he seemed to be rather hampered by his preference for explanations based on group selection and his reluctance to conceptually separate out cultural and organic evolution. Also, alas, this book isn't terribly readable. I found the long section analysing Calvinism in the middle to be especially tedious. I recommend that those interested in David's work should read Evolution for Everyone first.
As it stands, memetics is an approach to culture that is problematic in two respects. First, it is atomistic, and second, it is mentalist.
I Pörn (2002) says:
When atomism is transferred to the social sciences, individualism results. In cultural studies atomism appears as the presupposition of “memes”—that is, a cultural object or belief that can be replicated, passed on, and evolve, and which seems to have a life of its own.
The name atom comes from the Greek (atomos, "indivisible"). It means "uncuttable", something that cannot be further divided.
Words are memes. Words can be subdivided into syllables or letters. It is pretty obvious that some memes are divisible in this way. Similarly genes may be divided into nucleotides. Neither genes or memes are "atomistic".
Of course, no meme enthusiasts ever characterised memes as "atomistic" in the first place.
Instead, "atomism" is a term that has been applied to memetics by critics. This approach is known as a straw-man attack. Such attacks involve projecting undesirable traits onto the object of criticism and then making out that they actually belong to it. Straw man attacks are a well known form of fallacious arugmentation.
Memes are reductionistic, not atomistic - and reductionism is wonderful - one of the foundation stones of the scientific method.
The article is a good illustration of one of my gripes about cultural group selection. Proponents often muddle together genetic and cultural groups - along the lines of the fallacy of the extended genotype.
Human DNA is influenced by kin selection. Similarly, memes which are influenced by cultural kin selection. Some like to describe kin selection in terms of group selection.
However, to apply cultural group selection to groups of humans - it's a conceptual muddling together of the cultural and organic realms. It is usually best to keep these realms separate - applying organic group selection to genes in the organic realm and cultural group selection to memes in the cultural realm.
This is not to say that the two systems don't interact, rather that attempting to mix separate systems - with independent gene pools - when discussing kin or group selection doesn't make much sense - and just leads to muddle and confusion.
Compare with smallpox. Guns wiped out many native Americans, and smallpox germs wiped out many more. If the gun memes are adaptive on the level of "groups", should we similarly say that smallpox is adaptive on the level of "groups"? The conventional response is to say that this is a wrong question. If we look at the features of the smallpox virus, they are adaptive mainly at the level of the smallpox virus itself. The fact that the virus acts to wipe out groups of humans is an irrelevant epiphenomenon - as far as the adaptive features of the smallpox virus goes.
It's best to look at culture the same way. Culture is adaptive for itself first and foremost.
Now, it is possible to have adaptations in one species that benefit another one. We see this in domestic crops, for instance. Maize's strange cobs are there to benefit the maize plant - but there's also a sense in which they are there to benefit humans. It is a legitimate question whether Maize cobs benefit humans or human groups - and George Price's methodology for approaching this question could be applied if you had a specific breakdown of humans into groups in mind. But surely it is pretty dubious to say that maize cobs are there primarily to benefit humans. Maize cobs are primarily adaptive to maize genes. They've just found a way of manipulating humans into planting maize seeds.
Many memes have a much more negative effect on the fertility of their hosts than maize cobs do. If you think meme adaptations are primarily there for humans then you lose the ability to explain phenomena such as the inverted J-shaped curve of meme adoption and the demographic transition in Japan. Memes do not exist primarily for the benefit of humans - or for the benefit of human groups. They exist for their own sake.
Cultural evolution from about 6 minutes in. Memes are about 8 minutes in. It's a poor framing of memes. Memes are best employed as a useful concept - not as dud science.
It will be held at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and will be hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences. It will take place April 26-28 at the J.C. Penney Building/Conference Center on UMSL’s North Campus.
Not great sound, but here David Sloane Wilson discusses the significance of cultural evolution for three minutes and then goes on to describe his efforts to apply evolutionary theory locally.
I didn't wind up on anything llike the same page as Wilson, though I do feel as though I understand his position a bit more clearly.
This post will offer one specific criticism. David Sloan Wilson says:
If a trait is locally disadvantageous wherever it occurs, there is only one way for it to evolve in the total population - by being advantageous at a larger scale. Groups of individuals displaying social adaptations must survive and reproduce better than other groups, to counterbalance the disadvantage of the same adaptations within groups. All evolutionary theories of social behavior embody this logic.
I don't think this is quite right. Sneezing is a locally disadvantageous trait to the humans that engage in it. It evolves not by offering group level benefits to humans, but by offering benefits to a symbiote - in this case a flu virus.
Wilson makes the same point repeatedly. Here he is again:
How can a behavior evolve in the total population when it is selectively disadvantageous within each and every group? Only if it is selectively advantageous at a larger scale.
This isn't right. Coughing is disadvantageous in every group of humans - but it simply isn't selectively advantageous at a larger scale.
Cooperation among humans is partly caused by a broadly similar phenomenon. Rather than looking for benefits to high-level entities (groups) another hypothesis is that the organisms are being manipulated, to act against their own interests.
Many agents can perform manipulation - but in this case, cultural entities (based on memes) are important candidates to consider. Memes push humans into contact with one another for the simple reason that their reproduction depends on it. Memes often favour human contact - the more prolonged and frequent the better - because they need such contact in order to reproduce themselves.
This is the "symbiosis theory of altruism". Symbionts create a web of ecological interactions which pulls their associated communities together into tighter social groups. This is symbiology - not group selection.
With symbionts (disease agents or memes) in the picture, one can't just observe traits that are deleterious to the individuals that exhibit them - and then jump to the hypothesis that "group selection did it". That is not a legitimate move.
One could argue that these traits are beneficial sometimes - though not to the humans that exhibit them - they are beneficial to the memes whose extended phenotype they are part of. However, for some reason or another, it seems to be easy for people to accidentally leave memes out of their accounting scheme.
There are a few other ideas that can also help to explain the existence of apparently-deleterious traits:
They are closely linked to advantageous traits;
They are pleiotropic side effects of other traits;
Edward O. Wilson has a new book coming out on the topic of social behaviour: The Social Conquest of Earth. It seems to focus on human social behaviour.
The Wilsons seems to have got hold of the idea that eusociality involves group selection. In a sense it does, but group selection doesn't have a monopoly on viewing colonies as individuals. Social insect colonies can also be seen as the product of kin selection and manipulation (by queens and/or workers). David Sloane Wilson delights in claiming that kin selection is a special case of group selection. However, models of the two ideas are equivalent. However, shared genes and differential reproductive success of groups still seem to be pretty different explanations for why cooperation takes place - and kin selection between close relatives seems to account for most of the observed effect, while distantly-related group members are relatively insignificant.
Quietly muddling together kin selection and group selection seems to be a common problem. In Unto Others, David Sloane Wilson claims the evolution of virality to be one of the best documented cases of group selection - yet this heavily involves kin selection. The other example given there - female-biased populations - also seem to have been convincingly explained as cases of kin selection between close kin. The usual examples that are trotted out - slime molds, social insects, chickens, multicellularity - all seem to be better explained as cases of kin selection acting between close kin. There do not seem to be any examples of group selection in nature that are not better explained as cases of kin selection acting on close kin.
If you give group selection credit for kin selection's moves, then no wonder group selection looks as though it is important. The real issue here is surely whether a theory of group selection adds anyhing - after kin selection acting on close relatives is taken into account.
The blurb for the new book says:
Refashioning the story of human evolution in a work that is certain to generate headlines, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution.
The "primary driving force of human evolution"? What's that, then? Human culture, perhaps?
Kin selection is a proven and important theory, explaining important phenomena such as parental care - while group selection is still a fringe theory that has hardly been proven to be responsible for anything. Unless of course you redefine the term "group selection" - to refer to kin selection, reciprocal altruism, virtue signalling, manipulation - and a bunch of other things - in the manner that David Sloane Wilson advocates - in which case this turns into more of a fight over terminology than one over facts.
Looking at the paper with Nowak, it looks as though Wilson is not doing much more than claiming that multi-level selection theory is more general than kin selection - which is usually regarded as not being correct. More usually the "new" group selection and kin selection are regarded as being broadly equivalent.
I have mixed feelings about Wilson's work in this area. Some of the "group selection" points seem correct, other ones seem more dubious. The group selection controversy is interesting material. However, I am inclined to side with Stuart West (2009) on this whole issue: the "new" group selection is already covered by the math of conventional inclusive fitness theory.
Update 2012-04-02: The book is now out. Here it is on Google Books.
I looked at the section devoted to kin selection:
Wilson starts off with what appears to be a misquotation from Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter (2002):
Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reproductive gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfsh motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism.
Of course, such patterns could be explained by cultural kin selection. Or the theory that kin selection could have given us these instincts while our ancestors were in small tribes. These folk also have a relavant explanation of why humans are so generous, even in one-shot interactions: The evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters by Andrew W. Delton, Max M. Krasnow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby.
Wilson then goes on to say:
Kin selection, as I have pointed out, cannot be the solution to this paradox. It might be thought to have worked in the bands of the early hunter-gatherers, where because of small numbers, kinship of the members was close. But mathematical analysis has revealed that kin selection of itself is inoperable as an evolutionary dynamical force. When closely related individuals come together such that cooperators are more likely to meet other genetic cooperators, the result will not, by itself promote the origin of cooperation. Only group selection, with groups containing more cooperators pitted against groups containing fewer cooperators, will result in a shift at the level of the species towards greater and wider instinctive cooperation.
So, it seems that Wilson is relying on "mathematical analysis" - and apparently from an unspecified source - for his critique of kin selection. OK - so: which mathematical analysis.
In fact, I think - even without seeing the analysis - that it is pretty clear that Wilson's claim that "kin selection of itself is inoperable as an evolutionary dynamical force" is false. As is the claim that "Kin selection is wrong." For example, it really does make a difference if you find out that someone is a relative.
One remaining question is whether being spectacularly wrong is a good way of selling a lot of books.
Wilson's position on the topic of kin selection looks very shaky to me in this interview. It appears as though he is stuck in a bit of an intellectual bubble. He probably shouldn't be criticising Richard Dawkins like that - Richard is really just stating the conventional position here.
I'm going to be a little bit strong worded about the 40 years - the four decades that we have laboured and spun our wheels with kin selection theory - and I'm guilty of that too because in my first books on sociobiology I adopted it as a good genetic expanation - and those words are:
We now have got to clear the wreckage of kin selection off the road so we can move ahead. Now that that's being done what I have now written here will be much more likely to come to pass.
This is just nonsense. Wilson doesn't seem to know what he is talking about. The critique offered in the FORA TV is revealing. Wilson just doesn't understand the issue. My assessment is that group selection enthusiasts are rather unfortunate to have Wilson, Novak and Tarnita on their side.
David Sloane Wilson criticises the "religion as virus" application of memetics - 39:40 into this video. He says:
The meme concept, of course, has a number of meanings, and the
most general definition of "memes" is just newspeak for culture.
Use the word culture, take it out, and put in the word "meme".
and so the broad usage, that broad usage of "memes",
"cultural evolution", of course applies not just to parasitic memes,
"memeplexes", the group level, just
about all of the different evolutionary hypotheses can be given a
meme formulation when "meme" is used in that general formulation.
There's more from him on the subject of memes 13:10 minutes in.
David Sloane Wilson's position on this is not unreasonable - and I agree with him.
Here's his main talk:
David Sloan Wilson at Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0
I've dragged myself into the group selection debate a little recently - because of the scale of the level of interest in cultural group selection among other scientists in the field of cultural evolution.
I think cultural group selection is probably mostly irrelevant fluff that distracts people from what is actually going on. I have no argument with multi-level selection theory. However, the problem is the old one - the conditions under which the idea can generate group-level adaptations are rather rare in sexual species - due to migration and breeding. However, I do think that cultural group selection is almost certainly one of the most interesting attempts to revive group selection for quite a while.
Today, I was amused to find a video of Richard Dawkins on the topic of the group selection revival - from 2010:
Dawkins says of E. O. Wilson and D. S. Wilson (20 munites in):
I think they are just confused
...and...
The so-called "new group selection" is just kin selection or in some cases reciprocal altruism under another name. For reasons best known to himself (which I can't understand) D. S. Wilson thinks it's helpful to rephrase it in terms of group selection. How it can be helpful when he's reviving a word which has been debunked and is simply grafting that word onto the very thing that did the debunking - namely kin selection and reciprocal altruism and various other things - it seems to me be to be utterly unhelpful, to be totally misleading to students and it's deeply regrettable that E. O. Wilson should have teamed up with him in this way.
Hah! I think D. S. Wilson may be getting this response because he regards kin selection and reciprocal altruism as being a special case of his form of group selection.
These papers appear to be mainly about ordinary group selection - not Wilson's "trait group selection". These papers are very confused, incidentally. I'm not sure where to begin with them - but the Ed Wilson material seems to be missing the concepts of parental manipulation and offspring manipulation as alternative mechanisms to group selection for creating eusociality.
The second paper invokes group selection caused by cultural effects - saying:
Group selection is an important force in human evolution partly because cultural processes can create variation between groups, even when they are composed of large numbers of unrelated individuals. A new cultural “mutation” can quickly spread within a group, causing it to be very different from other groups and providing a decisive edge in direct or indirect between-group competition.
Cultural group selection is not vulnerable to the criticism Dawkins gives. That is a straight-forwards revival of Wynn-Edwards-style group selection - though possibly applying the idea to cultural symbionts. It is definitely not genetic kin selection or reciprocal altruism dressed up in misleading clothing.
Dawkins winds up saying (at 26:40):
Everything in Darwinism is gene selection - and it's just unhelpful and confusing for somebody as influential as Ed Wilson to suddenly turn around and say he's started thinking about group selection again. What was he thinking of - confusing the issue like this?
That looks like a kind-of fatal statement to me. Sureley nobody who understands multi-level selection would dream of making a statement as strong as that.
Group selection could be illustrated by finding genes that are deleterious to the individuals possessing them but good for the groups they are in - or by finding adaptations caused by genes like that. Group selection does not contradict gene selection. The idea that gene selection and group selection are mutually exclusive is just a simple fallacy.
One thing that critics of Richard Dawkins have repeatedly identified as problematical is the notion of "selfishness".
Some - OK, Mary Midgely - just didn't get the metaphor:
Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.
Others apparently propose that these concepts should be ditched. Here is David Sloan Wilson:
Saying goodbye to selfish genes and memes involves questioning everything that has been associated with these concepts and reviving what they seemed to deny: the concept society as organism.
I think the concept of "selfishness" is just fine in this context:
The term "selfishness" means promoting your interests without concern for the interests of others. So: "selfish genes" refers to genes promoting their own interests without concern for the interests of other genes - and "selfish memes" refers to memes promoting their own interests without concern for the interests of other memes. If you don't think genes have "interests", recall that referring to "gene interests" is just a shorthand for referring to the propensity of genes to catalyse their own reproduction. Similarly if you don't think that genes can be "concerned" about the interests of other memes, recall that that is just shorthand for actually promoting them.
This raises the issue of to what extent genes and memes are actually selfish. Some genes and memes fail to promote their own interests. Those aren't selfish because they aren't even active - so not all genes and memes are selfish. Most of the mechanisms promoting altruism to others don't apply to genes. Looking at the list of viable explanations for why humans-cooperate most of them don't apply to such entities. Genes and memes could potentially be manipulated into being nice to others of their kind - but it is not easy to come up with cases where this actually happens.
So, is looks as though most selectively-maintained genes and memes are indeed selfish. We could engineer genes or memes that promoted the interests of other genes or memes at their own expense. They could arise by chance mutations. However, such genes and memes are rare. So: the concept of selfishness in this context seems to be both clear and useful.
Neither Dan Agin nor David Sloan Wilson seem to have much of a handle on what it means for genes or memes to be "selfish". This is despite David Sloan Wilson's article purporting to unravel the mystery of "What Do Selfish Genes, and Memes, Really Mean?"
Richard Dawkins' idea is fine. David Sloan Wilson fails to articulate a coherent case against the concept - apparently through not groking its intended meaning.
David Sloan Wilson wants to link the concept to group selection. If genes benefitted groups at their own expense they would be behaving less than 100% selfishly. Wilson promotes the idea that group selection is common or important - and so apparently thinks not all genes are 100% selfish. I don't think that was ever the claim in the first place, though. Unselfish genes can arise from mutations - or through the environment changing unexpectedly. The idea is that selfishness is common, not that every single gene is selfish. Anyway, this certainly doesn't a reason for ditching the concept of gene-level selfishness.
It is worth noting that group selection simply doesn't tend to result in "unselfish" genes. While one can imagine genes that are good for groups rather than themselves, group selection would produce genes that are good for themselves that also happen to promote the interests of groups. The crusade against selfish genes in the name of group selection appears to be simply misguided.
Lastly, here is Peter Godfrey-Smith. Peter is the author of a book-length rant against Darwinian agenthood: "Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection". He says "selfish genes" are a "paranoid narrative":
Agential description of evolution can accompany real theoretical progress. This language can be used to quickly express contrasts between theories and models that can then be described more precisely. It can be used to steer the listener away from one family of models and explanations, to another. I don't deny its communicative role, and perhaps a heuristic role in exploring options quickly. In the mid to late 20th century, a change in the application of agential terms to evolution accompanied shifts in evolutionary thinking that were important. Some mid 20th century biology had seen an uncritical treatment of high-level entities, such as groups, species, and ecosystems, as evolutionary units. The reaction against that tendency featured close attention to evolutionary change at the level of individual genes (Hamilton 1964, Williams 1966). Genes became new objects of agential description – tiny and invisible strategists. Two kinds of agential narrative have a special psychological potency. The first is a paternalist schema. Here we posit a benevolent agent, often a large one, who intends that all is for the best. This category includes various Gods, the Hegelian "World Spirit" in philosophy, and stronger forms of the "Gaia" hypothesis, according to which the whole earth is a living organism. The second schema is a paranoid one. Now we posit hidden agents, often small, pursuing agendas that cross-cut or oppose our own interests. Examples include demonic possession narratives, the sub-personal creatures of Freud's psychology (superego, ego, id), and selfish genes and memes. And while it is true that sometimes there are large and kind agents or small and nefarious ones at work, the psychological appeal of these ideas means that we tend to take up such stories too readily and run with them too far. The account of evolution in terms of "selfish genes" (Dawkins 1976) is a paranoid narrative of this kind. It relegates other entities in evolution, such as whole organisms, to the role of mere "vehicles."
I must say that I am rarely struck by a novel enough idea that my first reaction is “wow.” This is one of those instances. There is something profoundly intellectually satisfactory in suddenly seeing disparate phenomena like Augustine’s god and Dawkins’ memes as different aspects of an all-too human tendency to project agency where there is none.
Alas, many philosophers seem to delight in persistently misundersanding this idea.
In manipulation, parasites and memetic symbionts manipulate their hosts for their own ends. Since symbiont reproduction requires contact between hosts, making the hosts be nice to other hosts helps the symbionts to reproduce.
In overgeneralisation, resource-limited cognition results in organisms being nice to one another - because that is what usually pays.
As with other group selection theorists, Wilson may also be over-estimating the actual incidence of altruistic acts. For example, many forms of altruism act as a form of virtue signalling - and show how nice you are.
The Evolution Institute has made a bunch of videos about evolutionary economics:
In 
David Sloan Wilson has an outlandish article out, titled: 
It's listed on 
As part of my recent "group selection" explorations, I got around to reading 
Edward O. Wilson has a new book coming out on the topic of social behaviour: 
One thing that critics of Richard Dawkins have repeatedly identified as problematical is the notion of "selfishness".
I don't really object to multi-level selection theory - but it does seem to be frequently over used.
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