Simulating the Evolution of Sacrificing for Family 

See y'all again in a year.

You can really tell he's spent this time learning about Hamilton's rule to correct his mistake, very honourable compared to the "oops sorry anyways" we get from a lot of content creators

"HONEY I'M BREAKING UP!" "why?" "OUR SON SACRIFICED HIMSELF BUT WE BOTH HAVE THE COWARD GENE, YOU HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO" Guys what the fuck it's a crappy joke no need to start a war

The blob smiling everytime he succeeds is so cute

"Now let's make it more interesting by adding sexual reproduction" Remember guys, *context can be very important!*

I hope that at the end of the series he combines everything together into a huge simulation.

"after that they go home and reproduce" "siblings always stay together" something tells me that there is something wrong here...

4:52 i actually felt insanely bad for that poor little blob that was left in the dark without a home to go to ;-; poor little blop

"There's nothing wrong with understanding something in hindsight, as long as you test that understanding in new situations to make sure it holds up." Thanks for a new quote for my quote wall, and some unsolicited life advice!! :)

I really respect how well he responded to making a mistake, even when almost none of his viewers even recognized the mistake.

Can we all take a second to appreciate the fact that all of his videos are in dark mode so we can enjoy them at night

"It can sometimes take surprisingly long for random events to even out, which is my favorite excuse whenever I'm getting my butt kicked in a board game" Got me rolling

Blob: "Hey that's a nice piece of fruit growing up there. Wonder how good-" Plant predator: *Bonjour*

3:20 Primer: thats good for the blob but not so good for our prediction. Maybe the blob its just getting lucky Blob: *gets two 6 in a row*

Watching the single blob play the game and the graph getting marked was far more fun Than it should be.

6:13 Primer : because these blobs Subtitles : *BOMBS YOU SAY?*

Being a subscriber of Primer and Code Bullet is a constant cycle of being super happy when they upload then slowly forgetting they exist until the next upload and the cycle repeats :D

I think it would be interesting to introduce the mechanic of friendship. Like two blobs eat on the same tree and survive, they happen to be acquaintances. If that happens again, they become friends, increasing the chance to save each other after approaching a predator.

“You gotta try to prove yourself wrong” something a lot of people (me included) should do more often

I wish i knew how to set up simulations like this, would solve a lot of my "i wonder" scenarios. I love how you break everything down in your videos. Each one is very informative and thorough. Best randomly suggested creator I've gotten from RU-vid since they started doing that 😂

"It can sometimes take surprisingly long for random events to even out" story of my life.

I'm stealing the "It can sometimes take surprisingly long for random events to even out" excuse next time I'm losing in a game.

You should combine all of these simulations together into one, massive, super sim and see what happens

I'm a biologist and I simply love your videos. They are really informative and easy to understand! I've used them in class when I was working as a teacher and my students also loved them.

i like how the blob is just throwing the dice and not rolling it

The diploid genetics would show a more realistic and varied simulation as well as more types of alleles, I would really like that!

bro love your video. As a computer engineer with massive interest in observing wildlife, these videos are just gems. Please don't stop.

It's funny, I had a totally different expectation as to how the simulation would fail to meet expectations. A similar idea, but based in the logic of the simulation, not the underlying math. See, within a puddle, an altruistic blob will kill themselves to save the rest of their group, while a cowardly blob becomes sole survivor. This means that every time a puddle encounters a predator, either: 1. an altruist dies, and altruists survive or 2. an altruist dies, and a mixed group survives or 3. an altruist dies, and cowards survive or 4. cowards die, and a coward survives My hypothesis was that, since the only time a coward dies is when there are no altruists in the group at all, the coward population has better odds of propagation. Every time an altruist pairs with a coward, but all three offspring are also cowards, the coward population surges up in the next generation, whether that group encounters a predator or not. However, this explanation is also incomplete, since I neglected the fact that every pure puddle pairing results in either one altruist death or four coward deaths, a huge disparate number. It turns out that there's an extreme level of variance in the simulation's output for early generations, which results in the broad range of outputs in the video. In a simulation where the first generation mostly pairs like with like, the bias _should_ favor altruists from then on out, as the second gen altruists have a much higher survival rate. By contrast, if the early generations of the simulation mostly form mixed couple puddles, there should be more altruist deaths than coward deaths overall, unless we see a disproportionately low amount of one altruist four coward puddles. Due to the swingy nature of the early generation's impact on the whole, and the complex series of circumstances that need to happen for either gene to eclipse the other, I'd be really interested to see what this simulation looks like with much larger starting populations. It would be also be worth experimenting with a bias for altruists to pick altruist partners and cowards to pick coward partners, or to enforce that blobs pair off to reproduce at a fixed rate relative their share of the total population, rather than leaving it to pure chance. If trying to represent a large population, either the puddle families are split geographically and more likely to mingle with their own kind purely based on relative location, or the gene is spread more evenly, and a fixed ratio would do better to estimate whole populations dramatically larger than the sample size.

I would love a website where you can just run all of the simulations made by Primer, and you could also change the modifiers and stuff

Primer’s simulations, animations, and evidence is strong. But not as strong as family

These videos are so inspiring when it comes to teaching and learning. Thanks for making these. No matter how long they take, I'll always look forward to watching them.

You're great at explaining complex terms. When I start your video in the middle I completely don't know what you're talking about. But when I start at the beginning and listen closely it's sooo easy to follow.

“Now let’s add sexual reproduction to make it more interesting” is a god-tier line

As a scientist myself, I appreciate you not only showing your mistakes, but explaining your analysis of your mistake. Such an important part of the scientific process.

I love the blobs! they so cute and having them finally react to what your saying as if they are hearing you is great! Also I'm just really curious about this topic so please keep it up.

This was really well executed and explained! I did figure out beforehand the alleles would be evenly matched, but my explanation for it was kind of off and your explanation was much clearer, with the "not identical by descent" chance not having an effect. It made sense after thinking about it for a couple of minutes. Interesting how a somewhat complicated set of variables condenses into such a tidy rule.

"Simulating the Evolution of Sacrificing for Family" *Dom's smiles in the distance*

Primer makes a mistake. Most would ignore it and move on. Primer shows he’s a responsible educator by apologizing and explaining his mistake, promising to do better. The few respectable you tubers would end there. Primer dedicates himself to mastering this area he made a mistake in and then proceeds to start teaching advanced courses in that area. MY MAN!

When I was watching the blob throw the dice while you were calculating the probability, I had this imagery of the blob in the box throwing the dice and being happy when it got six, and then looking over to see its dad/creator off to the side writing down numbers on a massive whiteboard. I don't know why the image of that is so cute to me, but it is.

I don’t like math, but the way you explain it just soothes the soul. Love it man

This channel has taught me more about evolution than all of my biology classes combined

I LOVE that you kept a mistake in, and used it as a fantastic tool for teaching instead of a failure. It really helped me understand this

Looking forward to the next video, these are just so extremely fascinating!

I love your content! Its such a cool thing to listen to during a homework session.

3:33 legend has it the original blob has never gotten a 5 to this day…

WELCOME BACK ❤️

Thank you so much for going into such detail so even a layman can understand. Great to share with friends!

Reminder: The idea that 'a gene' can map to a 'behavior' as nebulous and one dimensional as 'sacrificing' (or any other term) is essentially impossible. It's impossible not just because we don't understand biology fully or neuropsychology, it's impossible because we have extremely poor frameworks for even describing behavior at a macro level that are internally consistent. This is a fun concept, but don't take it too seriously, as we can't apply this to reality and still claim to know what we're talking about.

When a factual video starts off with a disclaimer reflecting on how they could’ve done better on their research, and what parts of the discussion aren’t covered by their research, you know it’s gonna be a good ass video

"Which allele do you think will win?" "Cowardly." "Remember that siblings stick together." "ALTRUISM I CHANGE MY MIND"

i literally just found this channel today and i’m love with the blobs they’re so cute 😭😭😭

I can't wait to see the next part of this series. I find these videos really interesting

"My reasoning is flawless. I never do a mistake. Let allone put it on youtube" nice self shading. Also the blob's yelling animation is cute as all heck

It's been a while, excited for this one! It's hard to find content like yours on RU-vid.

This is literally teaching me more in 20 minutes than my teachers did in 11 years. Tysm! This is so interesting.

not big on wathcing these school type things but some how this was on my feed and its honestly soothing in a way ur voice and way of explaing is great!

I misread the title as "Sacrificing the family" and I was worried the evolution simulation was going a bit too far

Since we saw cowardice and altruism, I would be curious to see the breakdown for the blobs fighting against the predators, some who survive and some who are physically capable of overwhelming it, or even defeating the predator through teamwork

I've been getting this recommendation for a year or so and finally, i said yes to see it darn it. It was worth it 😅

These videos are so well made and interesting! Can’t wait to see more!:D

Whenever you see this thing "+" in a probability calculation, make sure to triple check your work

Primer: "on a fair die..." Me: _looks at the graph_ "yeah, sure"

Id love to see some simulations surrounding the idea of social capital, I know it would be difficult to figure out how but as a sociologist it would be incredible to see. Something like different groups (societies?) of blobs having a social capital score with a chance each increment for a blob group to gain or loose social capital (representing social change), the social capital score would increase the likelihood each individual blob would sacrifice itself for the fellow blobs in its group/society, and demonstrate how this effects these blob societies over time.

Simulations makes these so much more understandable and real to me!

When he asked if the viewer could figure out the flaw, the first thing that came to my mind was: You forgot about the cowards, who are going to let possible altruistic blobs die.

I'm kinda curious, are you a behavioral scientist with a hobby for programming, or a programmer with a hobby for behavioral science? Because either way I'm completely impressed. Keep up the good work, mate.

This dudes channel got me to pass my biology class… Love it!!!!

I don't mind admitting that this is the first of your videos that lost me. I totally need to rewatch it and probably a few times!

An interesting thing to look into would be cases where saving others also end up saving harmful genes that objectively lower the chance of survival, knowingly or otherwise. Morality and ethics aside, it would be an interesting experiment.

*The Blobs Are Amazing.*

this is the second vid I gave a like to in my 3 and a half years of watching yt vids :) hope u keep making great vids :)

These videos demonstrate high causal density and how it quickly goes from basic understanding to spinning you wheels in the mud even at the most basic levels.

It might also be interesting to introduce the possibility of recognizing relatives. As far as I know this happens a lot of different ways in the wild, but in humans we get a little more complicated due to "psuedokinship" where we consider people who aren't blood relatives as brothers or sisters.

When the world needed him the most, he returned.

this blob business is getting addictive, I binge your videos.

Very clever simulation. Great for understanding

I'd like to explore the diploid situation with the question of what effects having both alleles would have considering things like trait dominance or co-dominance.

Wanted to see the balanced run of the "95% death chance", where the others have the same chance to survive, if they aren't warned.

When i dont even know anything, I still like this content. Keep It Up!

The sacrificing blob sure seems to be too happy while yelling for someone who is about to die

Actually, alerting others and getting eaten is more similar to screams victim makes before getting eaten. Not intentional altruism but systemic altruism nonetheless. In such sense, the result where altruism dominates cowardice almost completely is true because people would normally scream when meeting a danger, excepting special occasion where one is trained not to.

3:30 that blob didn’t roll 5 a single time in 25 roles which has slightly less than a 1.05% chance of happening.

10:50 I truly love that blobs enthusiasm. He’s really getting into it. 10:56pm NZST 9 September 2022

13:25 It honestly took me over half an hour trying to understand what I missed until I remembered you allowed us to point hindsights xD I think the hindsight here is that this formula only defines the probability for a single instance of a reward when the reward out of this action varies from 0 to 2 (both siblings inherit from non-orange parent / both siblings inherit from blue parent) Basing from the probable results of being altruistic, it's a coin flip so the graph should maintain balance. I got it somewhat right :D

"We just finished conquering the galaxy using the newly discovered warp drive device!" *I sleep* "Primer uploaded a new video" *REAL SHIT*

One thing that strikes me when I try to link this simulation to actual nature, is that organisms that display this kind of behaviour irl have tons of offspring and live in large groups, like rabbits or meerkats (meerkats actually yelp and rabbits pound the ground with their feet). This would give the "sacrifice" behaviour a higher expected payout than the blobs, who only produce 3 offspring at a time.

His ideas make a great game concept

first 10 min i bearly keept up, then went out had a joint, When i came back i totaly got you!

Primer: “Today we’ll look into that with Hamilton’s Rule” *Intense Vietnam flashbacks*

A breakdown on how you program the simulations in Unity would be pretty cool

I know these videos take a while to make but I need more in my life please

9:35 when both the siblings go back to the same house

Imagine he combines them all into one godly life simulator, here's some ideas: 1. Starts out with the blobs fighting for food and evolving, landscapes will change how much food places have, some blobs will help the other get food or save them from danger with a chance to get hurt and when no food is left they fight or split it, ones working together could help fight off attackers. 2. After there's a dominate species in all the 'regions' they build houses and civilizations with leaders, still fighting over food in areas with less blobs. Some open shops and maybe fight over land and resources. Maybe some leaders/civilizations could have different economic laws that change how many businesses there are, how much they make, and how they feel about the leader. Perhaps add in rebellions? 3. Stops when everyone dies or one country rules all. Yeah that got kinda complicated but imagine how cool it'd be! Feel free to add some in replys or correct something.

If this man was a university teacher every student would pass with an A+, the only downside is they'd be over 100 by the time 1 semester's worth of content is finished Edit: Woah that's a lot of likes

What I find very interesting is the high fluctuation in the population. Goes to show that even if you think nobody around you is being altruistic, you can have “faith” in the long run of altruism. Makes you hopeful

You should add all behaviors established to this point every so often to truly make it as complex and realistic as possible

With only Altruistic Allele, everyone eventually gets stuck in a ”No, you first” loop.

"I know all about sacrificing for Family." - Dom Toretto

I ended up blurting out loud "Damn, altruism's putting up a FIGHT!" - very good and entertaining explanations all around (coming from someone for whom Biology never really clicked as a subject).