Oh,and…. The Erics, S and C, as people who have exposed my own illicit commitments to me. Sorry, guys, to forget you on the first pass.
Nick From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Santafe Sent: Saturday, August 9, 2025 5:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Cc: David Eric Smith <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor. This is the place where the way Glen and I talk can really be used to help thinking, if one is not ideologically committed to rejecting it. It’s also a kind of morality play about what monists turn the world into. I think Smith in The Matrix must have been a monist. English has a very nice word, which ordinary people still use: Reproduction. Scientists once used that word too. Some toxic mix of hurry, neglect, obscurantism, and vanity, a kind of meme carried on people like Crick, Watson, Dawkins, and others who wish they could have a cult following, has led to the uptake of a neologism that serves as a kind of mantra to shut down blood flow to the medial pre-frontal cortex: replication. It’s not the word’s fault. Replication is a formal construct. One can even call it an a-semantic formal construct. Its _user_ has responsibility for deciding when, in what respect, and how much, it deserves to be bound to various phenomena (Nick’s point about genes’ not being that stable; Manfred Laubichler had nice talks and maybe some papers a few years ago about what a category-mess people have made of the word “gene”; Manfred was able to walk happily through this minefield and had no trouble, just because he is willing to think carefully and with some category-awareness. I don’t have all those references in my bib, but I believe there probably is an archive. He was active at Woods Hole at the time, in addition to ASU.) The token terms that confer the formal meaning of “replication” are: 1) some notion of a lifecycle structure; equivalent positions in successive cycles can be used to mark “generations"; 2) some notion of a type system where some variations (the allelic ones) are among tokens that maintain their type, and other tokens (the “gene” roles) distinguish types; 3) an operation that defines some kind of “literal” “copying” of tokens that, in its unmarked mode, respects all of their variations (meaning: the “marked” variants are flagged by expressions like “copying with mutation”, where lots further information has to be given to say _which_ of the mutations it was, or “crossover” in the genic case, which one then has to define w.r.t. the whole gene-type system, etc.) ANYWAY…, with all that, we can say what a “replicator” is: it is a kind of typed token that is a) continuously present through lifecycles; b) has a count number that changes only through the events of copying or of elimination Here I would now make a category distinction: Replication is a _mechanism_ — meaning: a particular architecture for sequences of events — that can subsume part of the event-organization in reproductive processes. Reproduction is a class of object-generation processes, any one of them employing events jointly carried out within many interacting architectures, and realizable by many differently-organized overall processes. The two words are not substitutes for one another. Note some things: 1. The replicator formalism entails within it a quite narrow and strong notion of “parentage”, whereby any token in the population has a unique and identifiable partent-token. One parent can have many offspring, but any offspring only-ever has one parent. This is enormously important as a constraint on population-genetic modeling, because it _brings into existence_ a very specific definition of _FITNESS AS A SUMMARY STATISTIC_, in the form of offspring-counts partitioned by parents’ types, that was central to R.A. Fisher’s construction of statistics. These summary-statistic-fitnesses can be attached as attributes to the parent types without respect to what any other tokens in the population do. 2. A summary statistic is a quantity that can be computed from each realized instance of some population process — WITHOUT REFERENCE TO ANY CAUSAL MODEL FOR THE PROCESS, AND FOR EACH TYPE WITHOUT REFERENCE TO ANY OF THE OTHER TYPES. The mess of not getting these categories straight has led to a standard language among selectionists that distinguishes “realized fitness” (meaning, the summary statistic) from “the propensity interpretation” (meaning a set of parameters in an imputed generating model) — truly, only biologists would treat these two terms as two versions of the same idea, and the mess that results has made all other conversation intractable. Recognizing the distinction gets us out of the silly morass of people who wonder if “selection” is a tautology: “fit are the fit”; they are not distinguishing “fit” as a summary statistic for outcomes from “having heritable properties now that are predictive of your offspring’s roles later”, which is an inferred generating-model parameter. 3. We can note lots of little consequences: To some approximation, asexual organisms qualify as replicators, which admit summary-statistic fitnesses for however many generations there isn’t important genic crossover; obligately sexual organisms never admit this summary statistic. 4. If you demand a summary statistic for a class of organisms that don’t admit fitness as a proper one, what will you do? (Madly squeeze a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe.) You will compute regression coefficients over the population to characterize your transmission between generations, as Fisher did. That regression coefficient is a summary statistic for _the whole population state_, and you need it to attribute characteristics that you then treat as if they were attributes of particular parents. I should not need to go on at length about why this ends up in messes. But since Fisher just referred to them two instances of fitness — though he himself had no difficulty recognizing their difference in statistics; but he was a practical man wanting to hack through to productive answers by whatever means — the downstream community seems to have not noticed that the two situations are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT statistical constructions with different meanings and different limitations. Then they go round and round in circles, seemingly forever. 5. The point of this stanza, to attach back to one of Nick’s comments in an earlier post: “parentage” is no more unitary a notion than “reproduction”. In type it is vastly diverse. So, fine; doesn’t take a genius to see that, and we just recognize we will have a suite of distinct notions that have to be formalized case-by-case. A NOTE: My snark above is poorly chosen by me. I know fully well that a lot of these people are plenty smart, and most of them are better statisticians than I am (by a lot). So it’s not as if they don’t perfectly well understand these distinctions. I know they do, and people like Queller get through arguments without any nonsense. But why then is the field still such a mess? My only GUESS about why is that scientists just generally don’t think being careful about categories matters enough to put any effort into it. One just hacks one’s way forward, like Conan the Barbarian, and figures prissy people can come clean up the mess later if they want to. But they never seem to, somehow. Now, what things could any child see easily if the child doesn’t get inducted into one or another thoughtlessness cult? 1. Direct copying is about the most local, most immediate, and smallest-scale mechanism you can get to carry a variation-preserving reproductive lifecycle. It demands far less coordination among decoupled components to execute successfully than more complicated choreographies. This is why Watson and Crick understood that they were looking at an important mechanism: it projects many information-management problems down onto matter-management mechanisms. 2. It’s not a bad coarse-grained, approximate description for what happens to a large majority of a certain class of contiguous DNA or RNA regions over many generations, between events where various complicating events (mutation, crossover, etc.) happen. A physicist would model those complicating events as a “dilute gas” within the dominant background of faithful copying. So it’s perfectly fine to talk about the part of reproductive lifecycles that replicators conduct. 3. If some replication mechanism exists, we would certainly expect that any hierarchy of nested reproductive cycles (and non-cycles, which aren’t strictly “re-productive”, but can still be “productive”) to make use of the replication mechanism to aid the robustness of the whole tower, and simplify its demands on information-retaining control systems. — NOTE: Point 3 is big in my world: being an entropy-kind-of-guy, one of my premises is that things that aren’t _easy enough_ and _robust enough_ to do, to enable you to mostly complete them in a world of noise, disruption, and interruption, end up not characterizing the world we live in. There is way more causal understanding to be extracted from quantifying the robustness-conferring roles of these things at the small scale, as the source of our observed phenomena, than we have yet made use of; so lots of areas for good work yet to be done. 4. The replicator abstraction presumes an enormous amount of structured context that it does not itself in any way give an account for. The abstraction isn’t even set up to provide such accounts, so to speak of its “failing” to do so is close to a non-sequitur; it isn’t even “about” that context. 5. So to think you are going to have a “theory of evolution” — meaning: some encompassing theory of whatever variety of causation it is that we want to call distinctively “evolutionary” and not already subsumed in one of our previously-formalized notions of cause” — built just out of the abstraction of replicators, is to be so negligent about categories as to be almost silly. Let me say this in a little more everyday way that people seem to think must not matter because it is so anodyne. Corn plants and people reproduce. Neither of them replicates. (I will let you find the place online where one of my colleagues stood on a stage and said that she can’t replicate by herself, she needs her husband’s help to do that.) Yet when corn plants reproduce, they make new corn plants; and people produce new people. There is no “gene for being a corn-plant” or “gene for being a person”. Nor any allelic variation that can cause offspring, stochastically, to sometimes come out as corn plants and sometimes as people. Even scientists have not been so demented as to claim or imply such possibilities. So if you want to do evolutionary biology, you need concept terms and good categories for whatever it is that generates all these higher-order “types” (corn-plants, people, etc.) which are plenty stable and identifiable, even if they have odd variations in the tails of their distributions, and toward which the concept of replicator is simply irrelevant; its work is elsewhere in the event architecture. And then, if you want to look at other kinds of patterns —including but not limited to “groups” thought of as collectives of “objects”; though I would say that the pattern of relations and stereotyped events is every bit as much an attribute of the group as its object-membership — you can ask what kinds of categories you need to talk about their cascades of production. Being a little analogistic, just as the cycles of reproduction can make use of replication within the architectures to tidy up much of the organization, the cascades of ongoing “production” (a.k.a. open-ended evolution) can make heavy use of the stereotyped re-production within lifecycles as a robust central tendency to carry and maintain much of its order. It’s not one kind of thing. It’s as rich as the whole biosphere. There can be recurring motifs that we see at work, and they are good to recognize. But there is also room for enormous novelty across cases, because the combinatorics is very large and leaves room for many different versions to survive and matter. Eric On Aug 9, 2025, at 23:39, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Hi Dave What you propose is a highly structured metaphor of btw biological change and cultural change. That I Have ever rejected it out of hand seems very surprising to me. I might have cast doubt on it On the ground, that memes don’t have the integrity of genes. Recently, however, it seems to me that genes don’t have integrity either. As for substance, I need to get to my laptop to mount a serious reply. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson&c=E,1,j4S9FEJk6aATa6oimFy7rUA4OSx45hbSxzA40HqE7DnBH9ZZjGoNwQcg675BvX_O9sJrqB02uB8zY-Ms0E-KfmJRxtI7OFNMmidc_Yol9YMSgRkj&typo=1> On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 10:21 AM Prof David West <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Just to be obtuse (maybe belligerent); Perhaps biologists have little, if anything, useful to say about human "group selection" or "social evolution." I tried to make this kind of argument to Nick, years ago at physical FRIAM at St. Johns and he refused to give any credence to the idea. Nevertheless: biological evolution 1- the environment changes — creating "hostility" or "opportunity" 2- organisms adapt in order to avoid elimination or to thrive in new context 3- this adaptation is biological, and often/usually requires multiple generations to take effect. 4- although the actual adaptation is instantiated in individuals, might there be forces that allow individuals in one identifiable subgroup to adapt easier/faster/in fewer generations than individuals in another identifiable subgroup? a- coyotes, as individuals and as a group, are far more successful in their adaption to human environmental change than wolves. Are there species level traits (omnivorous/carnivorous, scavenger/predator) that might account for this? b- adaptations in fruit flies occur much easier than in elephants, simply because of differential reproduction rate—but is that an individual or a group "force?" cultural evolution 1- a radical alternative to biological evolution emerges as soon as a species acquires the ability to use tools and to communicate between/among individuals. 2- tool use and communication ability provide a means/mechanism for adaption (instead of growing fur it is borrowed from a passing bear), far faster than multi-generational genetic adaptation, and very amenable to expansion and elaboration. 3- call this force/means/mechanism "culture." 4- Since the advent of culture, 99% (?) of human evolution—adaption to rapidly changing environments, often our our own creation—has been cultural, not biological. 5- only by understanding culture and cultural traits can we account for differential "success" among human groups. davew On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, at 11:49 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: Nick, thanks for the document, I have downloaded it and will read it. Next point, you do ask a lot of questions, Nick — and not the easy kind either. But fine, let’s dance. "What is your hankering?" I’m a simple creature. I just want to get a grip on what “group selection” really means for humans — simple enough to explain without a headache, but not so simple that it’s wrong. And, ideally, I’d like a reason to actually believe it exists. "Where do you hope this will all come out?" Same answer, really. I trust my brain enough to think I can untangle complicated stuff… eventually. My hope is just to reach that magical “ohhh, that’s what it means” moment. "What would group selection look like in human beings?" Now you’re hitting the nerve. I can’t answer that — which is exactly why I’m here poking at the question. Right now, it feels at odds with the simple elegance of evolution, which (as ChatGPT put it) goes like this: Evolution is the gradual change of replicators — things that make copies of themselves — over time. Sometimes the replicator exists inside a temporary form (like an organism, idea, or machine) that competes with others. Variations that help it succeed in making more copies become more common, shaping the system over time. And here’s my snag: I see humans as one big messy group, not a bunch of smaller competing groups. So where’s the competition? Clearly I’m missing a big chunk of the story — and I want to find it. "Would you approve or disapprove?" I’m not here to pass moral verdicts. I just want to figure it out before deciding whether to even have an opinion. "What is a group? Is a species a group? Is a race a group? Is a village a group?" And there’s the heart of my confusion. Right now, my brain says: “Well, all humans are one group, right?” — which doesn’t fit neatly with my current picture of evolution. So the plan is simple: swap ignorance for understanding, and hopefully keep the coffee hot while I do it. On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 23:52, <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Great Peiter, But you didnpt answer my question. I know it’s the hardest kind of question to answer, but give it a go. What is your hankering? Where do you hope this will all come out? What would group selection look like in human beings? Would you approve of it or disapprove of it? What is a group, after all? Is a species a group? Is a race a group? Is a village a group? Etc. DS Wilson I think lost interest in the question that most interested me (what are the elemental forces that led to the evolution of complex organisms) and became more interested in in the forces that lead to human groupish behavior. To me human groupishness seems wildly overdetermined. Its like asking why is the pope a Christian. But that’s a wildly unsatisfying answer to some one who is genuinely surprized to find that the pope is indeed a Christian. Lets go back and forth like this for a few more exchanges. Meantime, I enclose a short article in BBS that reprises a much larger article by W and S. I have a pdf of the larger article on my hard drive and will send it to you when I figure out how to bypass friam’s restrictions on large files. But please don’t let that get in the way of you taking a shot at answers to the questions I posed. Nick . From: Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp Sent: Friday, August 8, 2025 4:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor. Nick, Too good to miss — I’m in. Lead me into the jungle of group selection, especially the human variety. What I’m after: a clear, simple (but not dumbed-down) take on what group selection in humans is, and why it might explain our behaviour better than individual selection alone. Happy to start at the very beginning — dawn of the argument, cave paintings, whatever you think works. And yes, send me that Famous Great Amateur reading list. I promise to read it with respect… and just enough suspicion to keep it fun. On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 17:05, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Hi, Pieter, Let me be a George to you as you explore this topic. I will try to respond off hand, quickly, and unself-consciously as you think along. I think this whole topic is fascinating both substantively, and historically. The literature seems to track (or lead?) the Zeitgeist so precisely from post war peace-nikery (Wynne-Edwards), to the revanchist academic Reaganism (Williams-Dawkins), to chaos (evodevo). It's really hard to take the whole argument seriously once one begins to understand how complex and multi layered are the mechanisms by which parents do and dont resemble their children. One of the tools to thinking straight is to own up to one's hankerings before one dives into the literature. What are you hoping to find? Post war peace-nikery was covertly deistic, hoping to find that there was some sort of over arching regulatory agency that would keep the species and the planet safe. Academic Reaganism said good luck with that! Success is virtue. And then evodevo, the bull in the china shop of that whole argument. I recommend reading the biologist, Sean B. Carroll, (not the physicist), Endless forms most beautiful, and The making of the fittest. It's really hard to take the whole argument seriously once one begins to understand how complex and multi layered are the mechanisms by which parents do and dont resemble their children. That there is any resemblance at all begins to seem like some sort of miracle. Or perhaps just momentum. One hankering that misleads us is naturalism, the idea that we can find some sort of MORAL guidance in the way things are. Is the opposite hankering, existentialism? The belief that what makes humans special is their power to CHOOSE. You should remember that I am not a philosopher and am, in fact, an amateur in all things. "Any time you want to explore this issue, I am here ready to help. Would you like suggestions of articles to read by that Famous Amateur, Nick Thompson? " signed, ChatNST On Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 5:19 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Thanks, Nick. Just like you struggled to get your head around entropy, I’m battling to wrap my mind around how the basic but very powerful mechanism of evolution works in human groups. I can easily understand individual human selection, or even group selection in swarming insects where only the queen has babies. I think I’ll take a page from your book and work with George to help guide me through this learning journey. Every now and then, I might check in with you and others here for a chat or to ask a question. The only catch is that I’ve just started a really exciting AI project, so I might not have much time for my group-level evolution journey — but I’ll try to keep it going. On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 03:40, <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Thanks Pieter, Sorry I have taken so long to get back to you. If FRIAM ever started a journal, it should be called “the emperors new clothes”. We are not committed to anything if not to the validity of an “amateur’s” perspective. As people will be quick to tell you, mine has always been of that sort. If I read you carefully, the position you take is that laid out in Dawkins The Extended Phenotype – that the genes are the basic unit of selection. But as Dave Wilson has been pointing out for years, Who made that decision? For one thing, as epigenic studies have made clear, when one looks in detail, it is really hard to find a thing that is exactly the gene. For another, that decision runs the risk of confusing the the thing that is selected with the forces that are selecting it. Whatever level you care to calculate the impact of selection, it is differential group success that is driving selection or it is not group selection. And if it is differential group success that is driving selection, then it is group selection. I think you might quite enjoy The Extended Phenotype. For a whild ride, have a look at Elliott Sober and D. S. Wilson’s Reintroducing Group Selection to the human behavioral sciences. There is a wonderful metaphor in there about two riders riding three horses. It was the article that broke the tide for me. I had been totally up Dawkins ass for the preceding 20 years. Here is the citation, courtesy og George Patrick Tremblay IV Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1994). Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17(4), 585–608. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00036104 <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fdoi.org%2f10.1017%2fS0140525X00036104&c=E,1,QdFdkrENduTWql1ZWdP48xNk7whU3hWWDfMDmqefqhwQA8jZ61IrTy9WCwOApzqqVjXKCIJLF0V-U4lbgiiWr1wi2BE7oRtQprphbYeHDX5cv7dB&typo=1> en.wikipedia.org+15philpapers.org+15 <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fphilpapers.org%2frec%2fWILRGS%3futm_source%3dchatgpt.com&c=E,1,RfIYYXxEX2F4l6oTpLYI2piuiBW_kYUWdCv7jsWZLBW92-AiDE8r9HLzIwC_jNNiGdcP4TRepfSiFzgUAeYUAzb0aZ0irMdYAOv2ZYPboFY,&typo=1> …. Nick From: Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp Sent: Wednesday, August 6, 2025 12:55 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor. Nick, I'm genuinely impressed. Honestly, I feel a bit out of my depth trying to respond meaningfully on this topic. So please take my reply in the same spirit I’d expect a response from my 10-year-old grandchild when debating computer programming with me. The gap between your understanding of evolution and mine feels about that wide. That said, I’d still like to offer a response to your group selection argument—fully aware that it may come across as amateurish, and I'm okay with that. Here's the question I’m grappling with: Is the following valid? Genes as the Unit of Selection: Modern evolutionary theory generally views genes as the primary unit of selection. Natural selection acts on individuals, and the success of an individual is ultimately determined by the genes they carry. Group Selection as a Modifier: Group selection can be seen as a process that influences the expression of genes. For example, if a group-level trait (like cooperative behavior) is advantageous, then genes that promote that behavior will be favored, even if those genes also have individual-level costs. On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 at 00:12, Prof David West <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Nick, I wish to embody the fear of being dragged away from what you think you are supposed to be doing, to be engaged in the topic you raise in your paper. I have read the paper before and, as then, I find it meritorious, well written, and reasonable in argument. I am, basically, convinced. However; two points: First, your use of the concept, "metaphor," is the way that I use the term, in a manner that glen pointed out is inconsistent with the literal definition of the term. I speak of metaphor when there is some thing of which I think I know something and I have a suspicion that some other thing might be of the same ilk. I use what I think I know to craft a 'model', one that suggests particular points and particular relations that, if my suspicion is correct, will have direct analogs in the unknown thing. I check them out individually and in combinations and, if substantiated, confirm my suspicion. If unconfirmed, the metaphor is refuted. This seems to me to be what you are doing in the paper, albeit it more abstractly and academically. Please correct me if wrong. Second, and here is the real time sink, would it be possible to make your ideas concrete, real groups with actual history and demonstrated differential "success." If you were amenable to such a conversation, I would propose the Mormons as a test case. One of 20 or so "religions"/"societies" to emerge from the "Burnt Over District" of western New York. The only one still extant. Disproportionately successful, (in material and social terms), to their neighbors. Smith was living in a two-story New England style home while down the road, Abe Lincoln, was living in a log cabin with mud floor. A schism immediately after Smith's death, with the Reformed LDS barely evident while the main group flourished. (Last time I checked, Mormonism and Sokka Gokai, in Japan, were the two fastest growing religions.) In Utah there was a concerted effort to spawn multiple small groups by sending out colonies. Because each group was originally "seeded" with four or five families, you get a strong genetic/heritance component as well as "traits." (It is still possible to identify what part of Utah someone is from (especially females) by their physical appearance.) Some interesting "adaptations" at the trait level, e.g., when Smith was alive blacks were included in the community and held the priesthood—something that Missourians, at the time, could not abide. Brigham Young 'suspended' (restored in 1978 with the admission that the suspension was not for theological, but merely political reasons) black priesthood membership and gave up polygamy (de jure only) to appease the Federal Government and avoid a second martyrdom. davew On Tue, Aug 5, 2025, at 1:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Dear Colleagues in FRIAM, Sometimes, if I am going to get anything done, I just have to ignore Friam, and keep my head down, and work at the thing I am working at. It always seems, on that occasion, that you-guys dangle in front of me some enticing topic so I must scream and put my fingers in my ears to keep focus on my work. So it was that when I decided I must fish or cut bait on entropy or it would take me to my grave, that almost immediately you-guys started not one but two conversations close to my heart: on the centrality of metaphor to science and on the group selection controversy. A couple of decades ago I brought those two interests together in a paper called “Shifting the Natural Selection Metaphor to the Group Level. There are two things about this paper that make it salient for me. The first is that I think it is the best paper I ever wrote. The second is that for each of the two people whom I most hoped to reach when I wrote it, D. S. Wilson and Elliott Sober, it is a piece of crap. In it, I try to show that the problem with metaphors is not with their use in scientific thinking: on the contrary, it is with their ill-disciplined use. Metaphors need to be worked in a systematic way, not simply flung out in a gust of poetic exuberance. This lesson I try to teach by working the natural selection metaphor in a systematic way to show that if it had been treated seriously in the first place, the whole dispute about group selection might have been avoided. Thus the paper is not only arrogant, but meta-arrogant. Nothing is more pitiable than the retired academic who would do anything to have anybody read his moribund essays. But, alas, I simply am such a person. So, I am attaching a copy of the paper in the hope that it will have some value to you within the context of your two discussions. Mumble, Nick -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson&c=E,1,qYwf4Snxv6LCckg1F8zTDwoOeVU2qsNz1BT95XKoFqtGlKewMlzvmVDzrp6aJrqdgGEGTHbQ9VTPEXgRD-3PQY7aDN2JTCDHUAX84EcmAMwR&typo=1> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,g-c0BxFZjqow5O6q2lHK5E0tBtExz5IN02sXBBZ5hAo8lMT9oSjrhUm1EGpaRGwxq8ALP5pBdP4kkvslvHh_kEqx7q8QreKhQAgETmL3lS09BIn0IB5v3tzkpHc,&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,HbozYQ4uXu_NqB4W-Q0KXcXjoMRJXhNtBXuKo8Y7YYLV54GoONsB8yz_bjNhOu_NTIzCQZSDrvAKN6Tbppok5Fi-pzHGynyHQCGHViqnSSFP6jz4tzpwlg,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,x29m5bxj2ju79XvQgKYSGrwr-LSOEVB6gZUbuN74rLvJdbX8z2Jq8887mRYhQHC0rAm7iNgyz3Wp3DMWijteuNXb0YdfBHuHbssYC-JMDjPipyyClgy5UkMz6Q,,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,2w001aqBOg9UhfnjTDs-LjUUHCdJIpSRxaVx8sqcQOmM23TNh7rCyXyp6bs6f8p3YW_L3tjCOEs5AOmUnq_TXewnxtbyVZjUihyJiAiX6zxivrQ,&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ Attachments: * Shifting the natural selection metaphor to the group level.pdf * Shifting the natural selection metaphor to the group level.pdf .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,MxX343EIun3LdvHF6KQcMt5AHVYGmphRLejRGxuxBvmU1Vprn1IRCtQoQUVmzqVApl6BriLmJ69GwP2IYioQlT_zjilUmkewGR7D6ystqgO-Se5Gfg,,&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,KagxxlV5lXhMoYHm9Yn9PJisvWW83d4M62Mu4p_attfl8vFUHvjbECJ0ulqpCcSsYmHMvXXtOtV42w3_3K7YTh75gmL-Z7qKbksCgTChB9bBNWJJ7g,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,i1hDWn4BDDfb6ZFMJfpkQ54Y-kB39LZMmqyIxAWi6_vGS3SWQ61wYLtsidVX_V-qcaLpzs8KRJG7g-5zjDqd_AntV8ymFpGZzRYmuBttRQ,,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,V7gDqAMX8HLnjm_Vkjgp-Dnqk-k3eRHw1W__HBIZJzTbY_9I9ZbPATDiAbD6zLZiOzp9C49bTx4Gc_Cd4xJHevxgU4ExYr6mdKbr-LQpF2Sc&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,dQNPZ4aH5PNit9mgrV6JJo5aaF3OGG9QRYIk0pFfvwcuha15lLU3E7uqSW8-GJT1_voTRMFqkXltpkNoWhLKVS1UVBZGUBmssq-bIR8VFkhD&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,Sd6raPdUogolxz31VV0x-lLmY3p9Jk-NmmPkT5nut_Z8OD85nQYvyUCawCDzjzEQZ1ZAZOU_j7_hROsYeOvlRWI4AIdqLgNfZSKfw8DpEJi5HUYSS16d4D5b6A,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,RwS7v5EC_fPmCeIFbtlyLDbvVuZcEUEj8oBuh4p-0hWNW7TrocqJcdvsS1FdtGpUsmCNCukhTTKhl75JI6pMMhFwwysjF6E7AK78PtdHUbZfgqxXTf6q&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,1O7tIVF5UV26uJTDGICZtlKunpH25vlfFm9S6sxFghmCmgFHDrslNcXWGuvHmC9E3y_MPVzGqeqejfZ3BYAEtIojlDPm5Hlw6xNvYqUYj8_uB3Xs&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,pTxxiwszusDd53AEiMJP6_9wnx-ReHpNcex_iFRBhmBXdKmAOPQ6ml6ezaCxMpAmBFYWr5pEFCroA6ui-Xj7YwIVPtVrWVdARPxedTqAHN5rqLM0VXWBKl7UW2M,&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,X2plbynjqhJTFq50Sgd2d7sDfeP3Hc2070VotC621XnVVsqwyJ66LEDik6CD5JYYk-BypNfrxlek9flfyEalmS9aZgPPQDGJopIf_lf91EM,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,lWLKIFhgrX2H7LBS3K4T_g2jGu4-Iz2o4YsFTlL3qRsXi9lXKQ7wQ5ngThzPCqnQiaEoBweVvbG9-ekDcCljc3teCyjiCm0-XEtXiqrdgmCt_DG-25N4DgG7&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,7yyj3uFm41V0VC60OamrWizOdnMY0Np8V4ZjV5ZSPPaG615dZGpxHfoAELoU8tqzs8NHyDbeNdudlBKpIpoADryGEbVVcY6SGhQwuSRJ-nnF&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson&c=E,1,9gwQjNowFYFXgyxGCOroJc39F9JmBeL3mJu3f0q-le4X9ax0TNJtgJqjbYqpSU0u3XKy8kviI86qQs6Adzecy80l_58LdsV72BEVZcIXiqU,&typo=1> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,QiAbgDcf00WB_Wk1EfErAqKNI03xnGvU9WnwR3MeVGL-vYPTOxn8lPgz5a8RceToEyQCCSXb12nxv40GET0V4KRcvSbf1Z91KReFDx0He9k,&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,Tplda-94V0LtTedMSvLb_oWVwnJNCyy2W4EhnJtkVQgQnWh1oIHOQOtWGNEDWLoek4okX7RMJR7LZtKmgXXQlk11HPIN_SXBqWsynWE5kzw5sGiqEvib0RO0pA,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,UemB6F6X67g-5VY0H78PFDkuzIbL37zcNX632tCORCOPPNys1G-P2TVB87wfmdzGR3-cO9coPCZdYHtBPS2wIgoZZmfXRFNvewfrCvhhm1A,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,ZbfwSWjAZb2jfqkC01U0PzWd40VCuoAbGZNJINeuqHjRRQDBp7O35hnulXFMz2Zzm1SJxwHEY52rz8zox2KP6pqdTsjnbNn2S6D2urV2GM6kT9mWjw,,&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,PfAHVTz3tNdiieVVhYCvFVGsyU2X8SSkvo-RI0qcUjRkkMwACxYOhoCDosJKSBxbM6VSUUhHHzKoam9jJu1B5QPI_mBMgb0jCdohbKYeWg,,&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,nzRTdUg2tArHEYnVOrkhrVeI8NXlQ6VqTBoj003NdG4f3r3WidXzlNgrsKGytJbXQyZpvpmkfBiEcuEKz4exirhps3FeHMh8ypgAgmL2LA,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,Wpq4MciN9OAxKHDJoExG9YQbYPtHwn9I4tMLVDN8p0qt5_NWG2aDc6SgKK8IETRVzVLFM-VWSvI3-_2dVRyWJnRNRYgI2VAcczWs5M8lia3UuY72NtMIYQ,,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,2aNoije7FadxpObkNoa_SI7D6CREla9CzGqghE3jf6y8iGstuk7HJhyreNi9sn7aeQQElG1Ty0Rt5VQDlbPTA3ESdLDNhl04UoyseSJmTB53TA,,&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,S4fuhpmdAMh-7JiJcYZg2MJBFK93CwtTEGtkPdsdOnR-ntAsjY_q0wIObDu0YPerB0P9v_5ju2btYhG5YWJzVbE85--nZIFloxOO2ZS6ja2tAQDrU-Ho&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,70dFrRwEwbT3TDSsigmNiTMANMCcQmJPyMNvdJlWFFamYxuNLsvFRko0-o1HANqWs6lYSyZgqrjg3ZFnwPMeu3HKwhBDq0TVlyqpabCYYoa93DN0SDI-LkrgGKVS&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,vcnXvjjfbrgY1oj7BRbOgxg_Nw6ICdovcMzmu4RzZNs3Xo7TA2vXkJ0U-FAdADR3mVdLH1P8IylDPXmqB1URarlX5im-ziCo0dq6iTmsCA,,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,KM8-EeUvLtm6Jl_mgSo4i88YLsjL-gnDofyShLYIbBHlv_3mxOxtiOARdgj6TwRL9zr8w_dSIe0EuZZZ3jjs8zBnl2vjIIAOvutK4Xwwlg,,&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,D4cB3X9rkfzmOiDxeiequ3YLZmJ5HuPUQ-3MNi9tw0U9gocxJjg8DZ-XAGDHwKqhpWKYCK84kBqNGZRfsxFeGdzTO7X_yxXkPcnf4zyx_WPy&typo=1> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,fQlxa9ZbTvIGlynswePzXmi9D_tehDLuyrQRGeDjTTpu6kGbqROEQKQWdtAjfC-9R2CeYQGmZsz4Rv5hXIEyI-xd3ZgWiXhh6Uoj9xoQ-kVNGA,,&typo=1> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,-2H4jL7BDpiDJwXlYTj3HT0xPoABpPPWliLlAF2LmzXMwlRymxl9QaWi4poXIeotkoUoMgxNWCVKB4rXXg8F3FP03_qc5S32Q67KZD99iK_KEUDe3aF6Kxk,&typo=1> archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,SncBUAG3r9Ol4ZobgQczKBcZv-TF5KF6wf2vvU-sjLJBdRAKGrwaU6GdoF53Gm143lQh083Hil4DbNSY5_hmXIXTxAHa-mB-NlakhnAN-g1Fhw,,&typo=1> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,b8eW8niFLus78XHcq9uMMf-BcfRl0Ay9nW2pEt-mSPAgjOQwbq9d_n8jqgJ4Yn4szfib7gHBRMeV3xlIsKkmEyzf0lMwuhJg5sw-M2THFRZ5iJ8N4dtXejYo21I,&typo=1> &c=E,1,b8eW8niFLus78XHcq9uMMf-BcfRl0Ay9nW2pEt-mSPAgjOQwbq9d_n8jqgJ4Yn4szfib7gHBRMeV3xlIsKkmEyzf0lMwuhJg5sw-M2THFRZ5iJ8N4dtXejYo21I,&typo=1 to (un)subscribe https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,WjjO8wVHRLDql3SPmC7Pj-6eGlinDP-xjlq0h-BVfMdoF0DmR4Vo2Z3jyh1sLVlbcPiTVu7n7f6cHHVN1S1Vf9cS4_Gmng7vjvXGRZ-Lc0MdxPnKbYXP&typo=1> &c=E,1,WjjO8wVHRLDql3SPmC7Pj-6eGlinDP-xjlq0h-BVfMdoF0DmR4Vo2Z3jyh1sLVlbcPiTVu7n7f6cHHVN1S1Vf9cS4_Gmng7vjvXGRZ-Lc0MdxPnKbYXP&typo=1 FRIAM-COMIC https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,4ef979zk5v-wJx9joALnNKM0XJ3RdUHL7_Jd2BTTJOFKsOavuQ4reBbVpM6nqeBlXQdwHKVj2nvpl2l-ybUgc7D2oyWKM9hvWPHSiEFbchPSpXaQsU1N&typo=1> &c=E,1,4ef979zk5v-wJx9joALnNKM0XJ3RdUHL7_Jd2BTTJOFKsOavuQ4reBbVpM6nqeBlXQdwHKVj2nvpl2l-ybUgc7D2oyWKM9hvWPHSiEFbchPSpXaQsU1N&typo=1 archives: 5/2017 thru present https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,xasmsA3p43pB_hB28Wz9R5hIici_lub6uoNe5b6_Dj8wBHl7GyTW_Aese6Tc09hHhF0vn0FlEJfGJqBrzwsUjX_Y5cdoKEtZEQaVg1m-&typo=1> &c=E,1,xasmsA3p43pB_hB28Wz9R5hIici_lub6uoNe5b6_Dj8wBHl7GyTW_Aese6Tc09hHhF0vn0FlEJfGJqBrzwsUjX_Y5cdoKEtZEQaVg1m-&typo=1 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
