Telegraph: Scientists discover the point of sex
Now researchers have discovered that animals reproduce together, rather than simply cloning themselves, because it helps them to ward off parasites.The findings support the evolutionary theory that blending of two animals' genomes creates an offspring with a new genetic code which may make it more resistant to attack, experts said.Cross-fertilisation helps creatures stay a step ahead in the continuous "arms race" with parasites, which are forever evolving to try and infect them.Biologists have described the situation as "Running with the Red Queen" in reference to the character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
Interesting article. Now how do we apply this knowledge to economics and finance to evade economic and financial parasites infecting our body politic?
10 comments:
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Certainly not by repressing evolution and bailing out inferior members of the corporate kingdom.
I'm certainly not going to have sex with them! If that's what you are implying!
;) Resp
This hypothesis has been around for decades.
@ Anti
From the article:
Despite the popularity of the theory, there has until now been little solid evidence to support it.
But experts at the University of Indiana may have provided the best evidence yet after engineering two types of worms, some which could only reproduce by mating with each other and some could only clone themselves....
Hmmm, so if we all fool around more, the financial sector (and the debt/rents/blood they extract) will disappear?
A complete win-win situation.
This is known in biology, evolutionary science, social science, political science, and philosophy as the "free rider" problem. It is a pervasive challenge stemming from the organism itself and affecting groups as well. Failure to deal with it successfully results in the death of individuals, the extinction of species and the destruction of groups and societies. It also appears in economics as negative externality.
David Sloan Wilson posted a 13 part series entitled, Evolution and economics as different paradigms that examines such issues from an evolutionary perspective.
Tom,
I read those DSW articles and he made it clear to me at least that he does not think very highly of the mainstream of the economics academia...
Resp,
Matt, the major criticsm that DSW makes is that most economists neither read outside their field or even look out the window. They are absorbed in econometric models that are based on assumptions that are not only non-empirical, but many have been shown to be false in other disciplines.
His major point is that the evolutionary paradigm extends across disciplines in the biological and social sciences. Ignoring this is to miss what is actually happening in complex natural processes and human beings are a part of Nature. Mainstream economics is therefore out in the la-la land of ideology.
@Tom
Amen Brother...and Brother Galbraith agrees with you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yOdicriZ4k
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