The Social Genome

Die, selfish gene, die
For decades, the selfish gene metaphor let us view evolution with new clarity. Is it now blinding us?
David Dobbs

"... If faced with clues that food might be scarce, such as hunger or crowding, certain grasshopper species can transform within days or even hours from their solitudinous hopper states to become part of a maniacally social locust scourge. They can also return quickly to their original form."

"...This raises a question: if merely reading a genome differently can change organisms so wildly, why bother rewriting the genome to evolve? How vital, really, are actual changes in the genetic code? Do we always need DNA changes to adapt to new environments? Are there other ways to get the job done? Is the importance of the gene as the driver of evolution being overplayed?"

"...Perhaps better then to speak not of genes but the genome — all your genes together. And not the genome as a unitary actor, but the genome in conversation with itself, with other genomes, and with the outside environment. If grasshoppers becoming locusts, sweet bees becoming killers, and genetic assimilation are to be believed it’s those conversations that define the organism and drive the evolution of new traits and species. It’s not a selfish gene or a solitary genome. It’s a social genome."

http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-its-time-to-lay-the-selfish-gene-to-rest/?fb_ref=Default

Less is more

"...For many years, Hans Kuhn, a German chemist from Gottingen, has championed a related line of thought applied to biological systems. In an attempt to understand the origins and evolution of life, he has focussed on the discarding of information along the way. According to Kuhn, biological evolution consists of a series of choices where an organism relates to its surroundings. These surroundings subject it to pressure, and it must choose to act in order to survive. Its genes contain experience in survival-otherwise there would be no organism, and no genes.

The more the organism survives, the more it experiences. And the more valuable its genes become. So the interesting thing is not how many genes it has-i.e., how long its DNA is. The interesting thing is the wealth of experience deposited in its genes.

The information an organism contains in its genes has a value that is proportional to the mass of experiences compressed there. What's interesting is not the face value of the information-i.e., the size of the genes-but rather the information discarded. "This quality constitutes knowledge, where 'knowledge' is measured by the total number of bits to be discarded," Kuhn wrote. Biological knowledge, then, is defined simply as discarded information.

This also disposes of a problem that bothered many scientists when it was discovered. Lilies have far more DNA than human beings. They are beautiful, yes, but surely they are not wiser?"

Chapter 4: The Depth of Complexity. Part 1: Computation
from the book -
‘The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness down to Size’
Tor Norretranders Translated by Jonathan Sydenham

Schizophrenia & the Limits of Rational Thought

"Many people have noticed that schizophrenics seem to appear in successful and intelligent families. People with a mild version of the disorder, as noted earlier, these are sometimes called "schizotypal" people - are often unusually brilliant, self-assured, and focused.

...One absurdly precise study estimates that 28 percent of prominent scientists, 60 percent of composers, 73 percent of painters, 77 percent of novelists, and an astonishing 87 percent of poets have shown some degree of mental disturbance.

As John Nash, the Princeton mathematician, said after recovering from 30 years of schizophrenia and accepting a Nobel Prize for his work on game theory, the interludes of rationality between his psychotic episodes were not welcome at all. "Rational thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos."

The psychiatrist Randolph Nesse of Michigan speculates that schizophrenia may be an example of an evolutionary "cliff effect", in which the mutations in different genes are all beneficial, except when they all come together in one person, or evolve just too far, at which point they suddenly combine to produce a disaster.

Perhaps schizophrenia is the result of too much of a good thing: too many genetic and environmental factors that are usually good for brain function all coming together in one individual. This would explain why the genes predisposing people to schizophrenia do not die out; so long as they do not combine, they each benefit the survival of the carrier."

Page 122, 'The Agile Gene, How Nature turns on Nurture' by Matt Ridley, author of 'Genome'