A reader picks a Dawkinsian nit with that David Brooks piece: Derb -- A quick quibble with Brooks' article. He wrote: 'Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.' There's no 'instead'. The fairness/empathy/attachment gene (or more to the point, its sophisticated 'exoskeleton') continues on in the gene pool, if fairness/empathy/attachment turns out to be a good or better survival behavior than not acting that way. The blind, selfish gene is paramount. Always. No matter how much it doesn't look that way here on the outside.[Me] Just so. Those 'deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment' are all susceptible to explanations in terms of 'cold' survival strategies on the part of our selfish genes. That those explanations are correct has not, so far as I know, been proved beyond doubt; but they do not contradict anything we know about how organisms survive and evolve, and are the best naturalistic explanations we have for fairness, empathy, etc.