genes and success

From Richard Dawkins' "River Out of Eden"

"It is not success that makes good genes. It is good genes that make success, and nothing an individual does during its lifetime has any effect whatever upon its genes."

This is a profound and very disappointing fact! The first time I read this (over a decade ago), it hit me like a ton of bricks. Dawkins, who is also the author of "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", explains:

"It is tempting to think that when ancestors did successful things, the genes they passed on to their children were, as a result, upgraded relative to the genes they had received from their parents. Something about their success rubbed off on their genes, and that is why their descendants are so good at swimming, flying, courting. Wrong, utterly wrong! Genes do not improve in the using, they are just passed on, unchanged except for very rare random errors."

The errors he is referring to are mutations, majority of which are harmful. A tiny minority can introduce a new advantage for a gene, and these improvements get naturally selected: the process of "evolution".

Now, there may be something a crooked individual can do to improve his genes: expose himself to a lot of radiation, and hope one of those mutations happens to be an improvement ;)