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4. For Dawkins the devil isn’t in the details, but in straying too far from them. He over-extrapolates from incomplete categories, and commits a “fallacy of composition.” Those involve extending properties of parts inappropriately to wholes. An absurd example is: Each atom in a teacup is invisible, therefore the teacup is invisible. Similarly, projecting a “selfish” zero-sum property of genes onto everything built by genes, to conclude everything that has “evolved ... should be selfish” is mistaken (if, using Dawkins’s definition, selfish gain is at the expense of others). - bigthink.com