The Black Queen Hypothesis decodified
How can you obtain the best from a scientific theory
The image you see above is from the Red Queen Hypothesis, the one that says:
“Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”.
Dear Alice, if you were a corporate woman in the ongoing business world you would feel it definitely. I mean, if you only become better as your obstacles become harder, you will feel that you are the same, no matter what. As you get more deep into the science behind it you end up very quickly in the codified aspects understandable only by scientists, like this paper from J. Maynard Smith.
You see, dear reader, this the way to decodify science into the “real world” meaning - the one outside academia. I will take this opportunity to say something to academia:
You have to go out of your tower, seriously, none or little benefit society are getting form your effort, at least compared to the benefit you can actually deliver.
Let’s leave it to other time and focus in how to get the best from a scientific theory.
STEP 1
- Find a scientist who can spend 1 to 2 hours reading about the topic you are interested in. It would help if he or she is familiar with the topic.
STEP 2
- Let him or her find anotherhalf an hour to sit down with you to explain with metaphors and all sort of comparisons what he or she was reading about the topic.
STEP 3
- Find the right mind state to get all those notions right back from the beginning, ’cause, you see, science can get tuff once in a while (that is its beauty and simultaneously one of its problems).
Having together these 3 steps isnearly impossible because:
- Scientists are very busy people, who is not busy these days…
- It’s not an easy task to find a scientist with the storytelling gift, which is as bad as telling a story to your kid before going to bed when you suck at it.
- And finally, we have to be honest, to catch the best from something new you have to have the right mindset to learn, to be there, focused and to pay attention, and this is a very difficult task, and in my opinion, an underrated issue in learning.
So, in resume, you are f**** if you want to learn more about that scientific stuff that you found interesting.
(NOTE: my posts will be all about that, so, this is one reason to stay tuned. Other reasons may appear, I believe).
About the Black Queen Hypothesis (BQH)
I was reading this paper from J. Jeffrey Morris et al., other day and …
(this is the way to mention scientific work — papers, I mean, results that scientists put through evaluation by other scientists in the same field and then publish in science magazines, called journals. This process is called peer-review)
… I felt how difficult could it be to understand all that content without having a scientific background. Thus, I threw myself to this challenge.
Conclusion of BQH
« This BCH predicts that the loss of a costly, leaky funcion is selectively favoured at the individual level and will proceed until the production of public goods is just suffcient to support the equilibrium community; at that point, the benefit of any further loss would be offset by the cost. Evolution in accordance with the BQH thus generates “beneficiaries” of reduces genomic content that are dependent on leaky “helpers”…»
Remember that, as any good scientist, the ones whom author this paper put limits to the theory and define their landscape, restricting it to the evolution experienced by some microorganisms (things like pathogenic bacteria, bakimg yeast and so). But it can be extrapolated outside the science boundaries, because:
« it presents a scenario whereby individual-level selection creates a division of labor in microbial communities that, like organizations in humans and other social animals, is often to the advantage of all. »
Forget the selection concept, because it is worthy of another article. The point is that:
« the relationships between the ones who help and the ones who benefit arise due to the fact that beneficiaries can simply stop perfoming a costly function that is provided by the leaky helper. »
Final message, don’t forget to excuse those that benefit from your help, you know, they might loose somehow and somewhere the ability to perform that costly activity. This fact may not be ‘correct’ nor even ethical, but it may explain how this relationship acts to balance our life in community.
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