Quetzal - you brought up fitness as some kind of acid test for genecentrism, now you are saying that it is a essentially an arbitrary metric. I'm sure I'm missing something here, what is it?
I have no intention of re-hashing the gene/individual debate here. So two points only:
1. I never said - nor do I believe - that the fitness measure outlined here and in the previous thread is in any way "arbitrary". Or, at least, it is no more arbitrary than any other metric. Is a meter arbitrary? I suppose in a very trivial sense it might be so considered. After all, it is simply a standardized unit of distance whose length has been developed and adopted by concensus among those who need to measure such things. There have been other metrics of distance in the past - some of which are still in use today. I don't see "fitness" as being any different, although it is a bit fuzzier around the edges, and is still in the process of evolving. For those who need to measure such things, the concept is a practical one - just like a meter.
2. The use of fitness in the previous thread was not intended as some kind of "acid test" of genecentrism. It was, even if I didn't perhaps express myself as well as I could have, intended as an
example of a type of question genecentrism doesn't appear to address well. Although you attempted to address the issue by postulating a different metric - number of times an allele replicates in a particular time frame (which is probably sufficient if what you're trying to measure is simply the relative fitness of a given allele, which undoubtedly has utility in some contexts) - I would still contend that this doesn't help us to understand higher-level outcomes such as genotype/phenotype contribution, etc, which is what fitness as defined is trying to do.
Feel free to continue misrepresenting my position on this. Some day perhaps you'll explain why you've taken this approach to me on this subject.