Un post mio en la entrada Dawkins Net Is A Disgrace del sci-bio-evolution:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.bio.evolution/browse_thread/thread/ea6cb92232f2e69c#

Just two points: First, a separation between mutual investment and altruism is non scientific, because it implies somehow a belief about the organism intentions. Both belief and intention are non scientific terms that have a at most a metaphoric meaning. Just like when I say that a group of genes "want" to do something in an animal. If you and me keep close to the facts, evolution is about correlation, not causation or intention. Living beings stay alive because there are a good correlations between the environment and their inherited/learned responses codified by fortunate gene sequences. The internal states of the animals, their internal beliefs, and ours, are part of these strategies. I don´t favor at all to use terms as selfish or altruist or even mutual investment except as a shortcut for something more abstract. The neutral term to be used would be to call all of them "strategies with more or less delayed returns" without regard of the essentialist qualifications, that add nothing but introducing political agendas in the core of the science. I love politics, but not at the core facts. I know that this is common sense, but in a day to day basis it is ignored and not carried out to the extreme consequences. Altruism has no definition that does not implies some form of belief in the observer or the observed. But beliefs and moral colorations obscure the search for explanations. First, because they are human specie specific. second, because we are masters at lying ourselves about our "true" altruism. We are biased towards thinking that we are altruists because this self image has "selfish" rewards, as Evolutionary Psychology proves. There is a coming book of Robert Trivers about the subject. The second point is about the misery of NeoDarwinism. I agree with you that it is a oversimplification., The multilevel selection theory is far more complete. I bet of this theory. http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/resources/publications_resources/Rethinking%20sociobiology.pdf There are greath research in the mathematics of multilevel selection theory, for example, http://eebweb.arizona.edu/Michod/