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Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by arturh on Thursday July 12, 2018 @10:37AM (#17515010)
The gene is the unit of selection.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by folli on Thursday July 12, 2018 @10:44AM (#17515095)
The current fashion is subgenes (domains): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3258039/
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by phkahler on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:10AM (#17515390)
No, the collection of genes is. There are exactly zero individual genes roaming around replicating in isolation.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by marcosdumay on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:45AM (#17515710)
Sexual reproduction uncorrelates the selective pressures over each gene, and each small set of them (with larger sets being possible the larger a population the species has).

The gene is the unit of selection is perfectly right. It's missing a finer point in that groups of genes are unities of selection too, but it's correct.

Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by rjbwork on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:57AM (#17515819)
Not according to modern understandings of gene theory. The Selfish Gene by Dawkins is perhaps the seminal work on this topic for the popular audience.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by lisper on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:48AM (#17515734)
This is a common misconception. The collection is the unit of replication, but the gene is nonetheless the unit of selection. This argument was laid out in excruciating detail by Dawkins, but the TL;DR is that reproductive fitness can only ever be measured relative to some environment, and all the other genes in a replicative unit are (part of) the environment for a gene and its alleles.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by phkahler on Saturday July 14, 2018 @09:35AM (#17530279)
Collection, chromosome, Gene, base pair. Selection happens at all these levels.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by lisper on Saturday July 14, 2018 @11:46AM (#17530768)
Nope. Selection can only happen at the level of something that has an effect on the phenotype. That's the definition of a gene.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by danharaj on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:13AM (#17515407)
Actually, it's chemical enviromments.
Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by folli on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:53AM (#17521196)
How does a chemical environment replicate and mutate?