Talk:Social selection

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Peer Reviews

Although being well written and organized, the tone could be made more appropriate to general audiences by providing simple definitions for terms such as template multiplicity and cooperative game theory. In addition, a distinct lead section is necessary for the format of a Wikipedia article. In class, there was discussion about the argument over the existence of social selection between Roughgarden and other scientists. That would be an interesting facet of social selection to include in the article. I appreciated how the sources were well documented and dispersed evenly throughout the article. Syntax and grammar were good overall. Bf255 (talk) 03:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I added a section on criticism for me to go into later and relayed out the page. I might place more complete definition of confusing terms undersomething like "development of the theory."

WenCOB (talk) 17:59, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

The page should make it obvious that the concept isn't meant to replace sexual selection but to be explain things it can't. This is a common misconception and a likely cause for a large percentage of the criticism social selection receives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.85.121.233 (talk • contribs)

I understand it the same way, but note that at least some critics claim that the conventional model can explain these things after all. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:25, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A fringe theory, and on the origin of this article

This is a fringe theory, as explained at Talk:Gender#Yes, Roughgarden's views are fringe and Joan Roughgarden#Criticism of sexual selection. The section on "Alternate uses of the term" seems very suspect - if these sources are not about Roughgarden's concept, and just about independent coinages of the term, then they do not belong here as though those scientists do support Roughgarden's ideas. This article was created by a WP:Student editor and moved into mainspace by that same editor; see the guideline page I linked to see that those often have problems. The so-called peer-review above is just by another student. This article should probably be merged into Joan Roughgarden per WP:GEVAL and WP:FRINGE. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:10, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Crossroads: While I am sympathetic to the criticism that you've cited of what Joan Roughgarden calls "social selection," I must strongly disagree with your assessment of the usage of the term by Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Randolph M. Nesse summarized in the "Alternate uses of the term" section. Nesse acknowledges in Good Reasons for Bad Feelings (2019; pp. 164–176) that his usage (whom he cites West-Eberhard as the originator of) is not ideal because of its alternative uses, but that West-Eberhard's conception is a preferable explanation for altruism and the creation of human culture observed among human non-kin not explained by reciprocal altruism (especially as an alternative to group selection).

Instead, West-Eberhard and Nesse are defending and further extending the theory of sexual selection in a manner consistent with W. D. Hamilton's research about inclusive fitness that is part of the body of research about the evolution of human intelligence initiated by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides published in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (1992) about the Wason selection task, the prisoner's dilemma, and social exchange, by David Buss about sexual jealousy and human mating preferences, by Geoffrey Miller about altruism, mate choice, and the evolution of human intelligence, and by David F. Bjorklund and Judith Rich Harris about peer groups, socialization, and cognitive and personality development.

Or, to put it differently, Nesse and West-Eberhard, in point of fact, do not agree with Roughgarden contrary to what you said in your previous post and their usage of "social selection" is perfectly consistent with mainstream evolutionary theory in biology and psychology (which shouldn't be "suspect", considering that Nesse and Hamilton were colleagues at the University of Michigan for decades as per Nesse's interview with Richard Dawkins for The Genius of Charles Darwin (2008) and Nesse was also a longtime collaborator of George C. Williams in the development of evolutionary medicine). However, as I am currently at work, I cannot continue this discussion at present but I am more than willing to continue discussing this topic after 20:30 UTC today. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 14:00, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

CommonKnowledgeCreator I don’t if one of us is misreading something but the article says that social selection is an alternative to sexual selection.CycoMa (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@CycoMa: In the lede. The opening sentence defines "social selection" as Roughgarden defines it. Roughgarden is not the only person who uses this term, and other people who do in fact define it differently and in a way that is not inconsistent with mainstream evolutionary theory. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:14, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Crossroads: As a side-note, neither of the two references Nesse cites on page 173 of Good Reasons when noting that social selection has different meanings to different researchers are to a publication authored by Roughgarden, but are instead authored by Christopher Boehm and Ronald Noë & Peter Hammerstein. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:27, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks for the explanation. It sounds to me like there are two separate strands of academic thought that both have the same name but are otherwise basically independent of each other - the one you described above, and Roughgarden's proposal to overturn Darwinian sexual selection. If you would like to trim and reframe this article as about those other ideas and cut out the Roughgarden stuff, you are welcome to do so. As it is, though, it is very heavily framed around Roughgarden, and it makes it seem like her and the other researchers are talking about basically the same concept, or are compatible, and they are not. That needs to be fixed. Do we agree on this? Crossroads ^-talk- 03:47, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Crossroads: Completely. I wouldn't mind providing assistance in trimming and reframing the article around the West-Eberhard and Nesse definition, but I don't have access to a copy of Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind (2015; ISBN 978-1138990845) or the 2007 Biological Theory article where Nesse articulates the case for it. I'm checking all of the West-Eberhard references for access (at least 2 are JSTOR refs). I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I was also going to try expand the Group selection article's Criticism section with brief summaries of Adaptation and Natural Selection along with some other references since the current version seems to me to be too short and insufficiently explanatory of why many if not most evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists aren't sympathetic to it. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:42, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Crossroads: Looked over Boehm's bibliography; it appears to me that his work is likewise an extension of Hamiltonian inclusive fitness as well and properly should be included here as well. I was also going to add sections to the Digital media use and mental health and Educational research articles, cleaning up the New Deal coalition article, and adding sections to the Greater Boston, Greater New York City, and Coastal California articles about historical housing discrimination and contemporary zoning and gentrification, but this seems more important right now. It occurs to me that until there can be common knowledge among at least scientifically-literate people in the English-speaking world about Social selection, it might actually get easier to do the others since I may find more helpful people afterwards who might be willing to help me read the dozens of books and hundreds of articles about these topics that I am compiling lists of and that I expect to have to read and summarize myself if there is to be such common knowledge that may actually cause shifts in the public discourse about ~~certain~~ these topics and motivate institutional policy change. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:02, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Folks, I'm an evolutionary biologist. To my mind this really should be focused around West-Eberhard's concept of social selection, which I find very useful and includes sexual selection (as Darwin used it) as a subset. It's unfortunate that Roughgarden used the same name for her idea, since they're quite distinct. Here's a good source 10.1098/rstb.2011.0280

Imantodes (talk) 22:32, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have been planning on restructuring the article with that article in mind. Just haven't gotten to it yet. Apologies. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 12:18, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]