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Re:Let Teenagers Sleep In by IC4RUS on Sunday September 23, 2018 @11:33AM (#18051521)
This sounds like of a 'just so' story, as evolution is not usually considered to act at the group level, but instead at the individual level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection

And some evolutionary biologists, like Dawkins, argues that it really acts on genes rather than the individual.

So, I might be missing some of the claim, but I find it unlikely that teenagers would stay up later to be away from adults and drive the tribe out of its ruts.

Re:Let Teenagers Sleep In by lamontcg on Sunday September 23, 2018 @12:22PM (#18051776)
You've misunderstood Dawkins.

You can still get completely unselfish individual traits out of selfish gene selection (like the entire chapter on runt gene selection). It looks like group selection, Dawkins only argues that the mechanism is selfish genes.

Even he seems to have forgotten he wrote about that though.

Re:Let Teenagers Sleep In by IC4RUS on Monday September 24, 2018 @12:59AM (#18055139)
That's true, I just meant to express (over-simplistically) that he argued that the mechanism is at the gene-level, which is even farther away from group-selection mechanisms.

The sections about emergent group-level behavior are really fascinating too.

Re:Let Teenagers Sleep In by Aeolun on Sunday September 23, 2018 @12:04PM (#18051674)
Maybe so. But if it happens in all cultures across the globe (which is verifiable), then there must be ‘some’ cause. Even if we don’t know it.
Re:Let Teenagers Sleep In by IC4RUS on Monday September 24, 2018 @01:02AM (#18055148)
That's true, but the core explanation is not likely to be what the original poster described.