First, evolution doesn’t proceed by “logic.” Species don’t collect data on reproductive success and then formulate new and improved strategies based on that data. If evolution proceeded by logic, then the logicians who you suggest formulated the Taker way would have rejected it on that very basis.

Second, the rule you cite, “Above all else, make sure you reproduce so that your genes are passed to the next generation” is a rule that is felt and followed by individuals, not by groups (or species). In other words, new strategies emerge when they give individuals reproductive advantages. (See chapter one of Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene.) Individuals living the Taker way have no reproductive advantage over individuals living the Leaver way.

Here’s another way of saying it: Takers have no advantage over the Leavers on the biological level. Their advantage occurs at the level of social and military organization. Takers have always and will always defeat any Leaver people they care to defeat.

The emergence of the Taker way is not an instance of biological evolution. The proof of this (if more is needed) can be found in the fact that Takers and Leavers are genetically indistinguishable.

ID: 382
updated: 13 Jan 1999