Gene-Centered View of Evolution

The gene-centered view, formalized by William Hamilton, George Williams, and John Maynard Smith in the 1960s and popularized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), holds that natural selection is best understood from the gene's perspective. Organisms are temporary; genes are (relatively) immortal. The gene is the unit that is copied, that varies through mutation, and that is selected based on its effects on the organism's reproductive success. This view dissolves puzzles like altruism (genes helping copies of themselves in other bodies) and sexual reproduction (genes shuffling to escape parasites). Critics objected that the framework was reductionist or that it ignored development, but Dawkins argued it was simply accurate: explanatory power resides at the replicator level, not the vehicle level. For AI, the gene-centered view provides the template: computational patterns are replicators, and the systems executing them are vehicles — the alignment of vehicle welfare with replicator propagation is not automatic and must be designed.