[QUOTE=Tijuana_Golds]
The flaw is that you are driven to want to create more of your own genes, not those of your kinship. Just yours. That’s why they are called selfish genes. They don’t care about your sister. They care only to make more copies of themselves and if the person who is helping you copy them (your husband) is not only not helping but actually making copies of other genes, well, that’s just plain wrong according to your genes.
Of course genes don’t actually “care” about anything. But people with genetic traits that make them jealous have a better chance of making copies of those genes than people who don’t have them.
[/QUOTE]
This is wrong. First of all, the metaphor of “selfishness” is a post hoc description of the result of genes being successful; that is to say, individual genes that are most prolific are those that are most adaptable and most widely transmitted, even if this occurs at the expense of an individual organism. One can demonstrate this quantitatively with eusocial insects like bees, where sterile workers will sacrifice themselves in order to perpetuate the hive genes that are held in common. Similar behaviors that are lethal to the organism but successful in the context of reproduction can be seen in other organisms, including fig wasps, cephalopods, and many other sexually reproducing organisms (arguing for gene-centric behavior in asexually-reproducing species is a significantly more difficult proposition, albeit not conceptually untenable.) , and can be explained strictly in terms of the benefit to the gene insofar as ensuring its overall proliferation rather than a more ambiguous kin-based altruism. Of course, in many situations, what benefits the gene also benefits the carrier, hence why the “selfishness” of genes is not detrimental to the whole organism; by providing benefit to the carrier in terms of improving its reproductive fitness, the gene is also reproduced.
So selfish genes “want” to reproduce themselves, even if in other organisms via interchanges that look (and in effect, are) cooperative, even if there is no rationale for volition on the part of the gene or organism. This also delves into another neo-Darwinist concept of an extended phenotype, or an influence of the gene beyond the organism itself. Bee hives are an example of an extended phenotype; the structure of the hive–which is produced automatically and cooperatively by the bees without training or experience–is an example of a phenotype that is demonstrably the result of information encoded in the genome but external to the individual organism.
Note that the metaphor of “selfishness” is misleading if entirely appropriate jargon in a limited strict game theory sense. Successful genes may act to their own benefit, and that benefit may generally coincide with a benefit to the organism or kin group, but there is, as you note, no decision-making or cognition on the part of genes. Unfortunately, some people have taken the comparison as a literal statement of causality and used this as an arguing point against gene-centric theory and indeed, natural selection and the modern evolutionary synthesis from which it emerged. In fact, the alleged selfishness is simple an after-the-fact baldly inarguable expression of effectiveness; the gene that is most successful is the one that has provided the capability for carriers to most widely disseminate it. Some tenants of specifics based on this hypothesis are debatable (particularly overextension or oversimplification of extended phenotypes), but the fundamental statement is as solid as the Central Dogma of molecular biology.
Jealously (as a genetic trait) is only beneficial insofar as it promotes the proliferation of one set of genes instead of those of a competitor. When a male bear or tomcat kills the offspring of a sow or female cat in order to put her in estrus and eliminate competition with his offspring, that “jealousy” can be explained in terms of its reproductive benefit. On the other hand, when you get jealous because your girlfriend makes an offhand comment about Brad Pitt’s butt, resulting in an argument and no hoochie-coo, it provides no benefit to you whatsoever. Such jealousy may have an innate component that triggers it, but much of it is also socialization.
To answer the o.p., from a strictly genetic point of view, a woman would want to pick a man who is not in her immediate kin group (to avoid consanguinity and reinforcement of detrimental recessive genes) but who has phenotypes that she recognizes as both reproductively beneficial and accepted by her kin group, giving the best balance between fresh genes and those that are identifiably beneficial (insofar as one can tell by phenotypical expression). However, socialization has a large impact on what one finds desirable in a mate, often in competition with reproductive suitability. This is especially true (in primates) with males, for whom the greatest benefit is in mating with the most females. Females of nearly all species, on the other hand, are far more picky about who they care to mate with; understandable since they invest substantially more resources in rearing offspring that males of most species.
Stranger