IMO, it’s more like assuming that cars should only be capable of spinning in place, since that’s what the rotors and axes and wheels do.

I should have learned something from The Selfish Gene… be careful with your titles because far too many people will read things by title only.

I wish I had figured that out when I was fifteen.

But yes, misconstruing kin selection is a pretty sure sign that one can tune out a speaker without missing anything important. Accusations of “reductionism” are also good, while using “scientism” as an insult is even better.

“To assume that because genetic sequences are “selfish” in this way implies that organisms are also selfish is just like assuming the purpose of a car is to light cigarettes.”

Aside from Dennett’s critique of “qualia”, I’d have that Dawkins’ gene-selectionism is probably the most often misconstrued idea in the science world. Everytime I hear someone repeat the “OMG DENNETT SAYS CONSIOUSNESS DOESN’T EXIST LOL WHAT A RE-RE!!!1″ canard, I typically decide that value of continuing to read/listen to the person expounding it approaches zero.

Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

The fuckwittery, it burns. I suppose Richard Dawkins should be pleased that people extend The Selfish Gene the same compliment they do to the Bible, i.e., tipping their hat in its direction without reading it. As has been explained countless times, the whole point of kin selection is to explain how social phenomena like cooperation and self-sacrifice can emerge from genetic replicators which are “selfish” in a narrow, behavioristic sense. To assume that because genetic sequences are “selfish” in this way implies that organisms are also selfish is just like assuming the purpose of a car is to light cigarettes. Indeed, the study of such phenomena begins with the observation that living things exhibit these behaviors (cooperation, reproductive restraint, even self-sacrifice); with the observations in hand, we then seek explanations, but those explanations, couched in the language of genetics, do not obviate the original data any more than the discovery that atoms are mostly empty space obviates the pain I feel when I slam my head into my desk, repeatedly, upon reading the latest iteration of this pseudo-intellectual canard.

One would hope this point would eventually sink in: as Russell Blackford observed, the book is not called The Selfishness Gene. Yet it has been continually evoked: the names of Midgley and Roughgarden spring to mind, and now we can add Brooks to the list.

I really do need to write that book. Maybe I can make it my November writing project: The Next Creationism — drum roll please!