This is really sloppy. Altruism is also the basis for Altruistic Punishment which can promote some of the most vicious behavior that humans are capable of. Social systems are much more complex than this simplistic reductionism.
But if you can convince people that there's just one simple way to be (instead of reacting to the situation at hand) then you can sell more self help books / appeal to a simplistic view of emotions where some are 'positive' and others 'negative.'
In 'The God Delusion' Richard Dawkins mentions a few ways altruism and compassion etc could've evolved in humans (by way of selfish genes).
I remember one fascinating example about Arabian babblers which use altruism to assert dominance. They seek out increasingly dangerous positions to alert the herd of potential predetors. And by feeding others as a way to say 'look at me I am so superior to you I can afford to feed you'. Of course, they are rewarded by getting all the mates.
there's an excellent blog post i read recently that builds on the model of arabian babblers to describe how altruistic 'prestige economies' can evolve from self-interested motives in really compelling way: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-...
Feels like there is a type mismatch error in the title. Survival of the fittest covers all fitness functions, so we can't contrast it with kindness. Something like "survival of the cruelest" or the "strongest" would be more correct though it doesn't read as well.
The title does not infer contrast between fitness and kindness, it infers that (were one to write a fitness function that was made up of a conglomerate of every human personality trait) kindness is the prime mover in what separates the fittest from the least fit.
I also think you might misunderstand what the word kindness means, as you refer to cruelty and strength as some measure of adequate relation to what would be deemed fit in some similar function.
I think it's a fairly cogent statement, as great and influential persons are, by and large, incredibly kind. Of course, if one thinks that power equates with influence, or that fitness is best represented by wealth, I would posit that there is a huge correlation between wealth, kindness, and authority. For instance, President Obama is quite obviously an incredibly kind man. William Gates, Jr., a philanthropist (read: about as far away from unkind as you can get), Her Majesty the Queen of England, the titular head of an Empire, leads a family that donates a huge amount of their wealth to the citizenry of the United Kingdom, and is as sunny as anyone in her position could possibly be (have you ever once seen her upset in public, because I haven't), these instances alone give clear indication that kindness is, indeed, perhaps an indisputable barometer of what is meant by being fit for survival.
By contrast, who do you know who is sought by society for capital punishment? The unkind, that's who. Those who are cruel are brought up before magistrates, tribunals, and high courts and told in no uncertain terms that their survival is undesirable by the masses.
Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile (in the French sense, though Christ is an inordinately germane example of kindness too) behavior.
> The title does not infer contrast between fitness and kindness
The titel "Forget X, it's Y that matters" is pretty close to the definition of a contrast.
Regarding your other thoughts: it'd be great if it were that easy, and I even agree that the sort of kindness Bill Gates and Barack Obama exhibit is probably a useful trait.
But the causality isn't quite clear. My impression is that these success stories are the result of combining (a) extreme intelligence and (b) extreme happiness, and that kindness is the natural result if, for example, they have absolute confidence in themselves and no longer feel any kind of threat from competition.
But I'd say the "Big 5" model provides a more complete set of traits that have become more and more relevant over time:
There's also absolutely no doubt that aggression, the desire to punish wrongdoing by others and other violent traits have at some point been important for survival of the individual and the group, and probably still are, at a diminished level.
> Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile...
Let's not forget the immune system. It's one of many "magic" inventions that made larger societies possible.
The title is inferring that in modern society, the more successful are those who are kind instead of those who are ostensibly (like, say, a pro athlete) faster/stronger/more dexterous. In other words, if you socialize better, you're more likely to find a partner. That's essentially the gist. The contrast, if you wanna characterize it as that, is to give credence to the people who do well by helping society thrive instead of browbeating it into submission.
The Big 5 model is incredibly limiting and is only successful _because_ of its brevity, not because it is sufficiently explanatory of the kaleidoscope of human traits. Its reductionism at it's most hubristic, and let's keep it real here, no five personality traits are adequate enough to span the dynamism of human emotive.
I believe in a thing called cosmic consciousness, and that is (albeit somewhat challenging to explain) what drives my defense of why kindness is such a pivotal factor in human social interaction. There is a line in Gladiator "what we do in life echoes in infinity" and because that resonance exists, the kindness we exhibit is important enough to outweigh other traits, and actually points to a larger issue of whether or not our judgmental, rather vindictive mindset of late is ultimately counterproductive to the existential state of civilization. In other words, when we are kind to one another, we facilitate a happier, healthier world, thus insuring the survival of those who promote that non-violent, what I would call, state of Grace.
>Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile (in the French sense, though Christ is an inordinately germane example of kindness too) behavior.
There are at least 2 levels of fitness/survival - an individual inside its group/society and a group/society among other groups/societies. While the "symbiotic, cohesive, gentile" may do well inside its own society, would the society consisting of only such individuals do well when pitted against another society? Or would having some amount of the non-"symbiotic, cohesive, gentile" individuals in the mix help the survival of that society?
I believe the article is indeed trying to educate that the phrase re."fittest" is a poor framing, and further that
survival of the best fitted to their environment does not automatically degenerate into survival of the strongest and/or most ruthless.
You're getting a lot of downvotes but no-one is helping you understand why.
> "kindness" in the human world is similar to kindness in the animal world. It translates to weakness, which is why evolution naturally weeds it out of most animals.
Kindness among kin groups translates to stronger groups, so There's a reason that humans are naturally altruistic and punish crimes against their in-group so vigorously: A solitary human outside of civilisation will struggle and probably die. A bunch of humans working together rules the planet.
Kindness is a poor word choice, except in its most literal sense. Care is much more apt. Mammals' key evolutionary advantage over reptiles is that they care for each other, forming social groups which enable greater fitness. Likewise with primates > mammals, and humans > apes.
(One could argue that intelligence and brain size have more to do with evolutionary fitness, but I would speculate that intelligence is a result of increased care, not the other way around. Give a thing more time, space, and resources to grow, and it will.)
As a species, the more we collectively care for each other--through actions, not feelings--, the greater chance we have for survival and growth.
Well, I would rather call it organization rather than just care. While the highest level of animal organization is called eusociality, humans are not hardwired to be eusocial but can display very advanced division of labor.
Now, I would not really say advantage or disadvantage. Each species have a specific role in the ecosystem and sometimes they're related in very unexpected ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
We are 'responsible' for one another, but in far more than just 'caring' ways. We take out the trash, we try to get along, we do all sorts of things every day that really fall into the category of 'acting responsibly' that in some ways could be described as 'caring' in a more general sense, but it wouldn't be apt.
There is a thoughtful book on this topic called "Love is the Killer App" that makes the argument that in a commodity based economy the most ruthless prevail (think 20th century steel industry), but in an information based community the most altruistic prevail (the internet). I didn't agree with all of it but it was a good read and a helpful counterpoint to the widely held view that being ruthless is good for business.
Perhaps I'm completely cynical at this point, but I think recently I have seen altruism used in the sense of "please contribute large amounts of free work to this project I'm heavily invested in."
That said, kindness, in the sense of, willing to make an attempt to understand, and take into account others views / opinions / needs, definitely makes for nicer people to be around.
Walking down the street and experiencing hospitable conditions could be considered a project we're all heavily invested in, yet none of us expect a monetary reward.
"Survival of the fittest" can be interpreted in the same manner. Or, from a different perspective, a willingness to step over one's mother to achieve their goals.
> Perhaps I'm completely cynical at this point, but I think recently I have seen altruism used in the sense of "please contribute large amounts of free work to this project I'm heavily invested in."
A bit cynical in a way you put it, maybe, but what you saw is true. But it's just what comes out when you consider helping someone and actually getting an effect over helping to just get warm feelings in your belly about how good you are. It so happens that in a technological civilization, spending our time as specialists to earn money and giving it to different specialists is a better way to help than trying to help directly in areas we're not specialized in. It's how professional specialization works.
This is in line with recent game theory studies. In iterated prisoner's dilemma, the introduction of kindness wipes out always-defect strategies in the long run, and is competitive with tit-for-tat.
One way I might do that is, occasionally throw in a 'cooperate' independent of whatever other strategy I've got.
Doing that will tend to convert tit-for-tatters and might flip other strategies into cooperating. If you grade by the total number of cooperate moves in the group, the group wins by 'kindness' flipping a variety of strategies into cooperate mode. It'll tend to expand pockets of cooperation. No immediate personal benefit, but tends to make the environment better which may seem like a benefit.
I don't think 'survival of the fittest' has to mean 'kneecap all your opponents and rent-seek', but that's the popular interpretation in Western capitalism :)
I'm not sure exactly what the OP is referring to, but there was an article recently on HN that talked about what I assume is related research and includes references: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13210681.
When I was working on evolutionary dynamics in the late 90s, a group of us from across the world were trying to build an evolutionary model that showed the emergence of altruistic behaviour.
It was really really difficult. Even knowing exactly the kind of behaviour we wanted to show, it wasn't trivial to stack the dice enough to roll that outcome.
I have since read a lot of arguments, a lot of post-hoc reasoning that justifies why altruism might be a positive contributor to fitness. It is no coincidence they are almost all hand-waving, narrative arguments.
I don't buy them. Show me the math.
Evolution is a perfect subject for handwaving and post hoc rationalisations. I do not think all of evolutionary psychology is bunkum, like some have claimed, but I do think a lot is unfalsifiable, motivated reasoning. My advice would be, unless it comes with good predictions of evidence from the historical biological record, or good experimental evidence from mathematical models of evolution, it was too easily come by to be considered knowledge.
Dogs are a good example of symbiotic relationships in relation to altruism. If you give an animal free stuff, they may return you a favor. Humans, though arguably more complicated, have a long history of group hunting and enslaving eachother. While under an alpha, a system naturally develops. However, if that alpha dies or another human wants to rise up, being kind is a way to gain allies.
Additionally, when at large scale war, often you can trust your cultural bretheran better than the enemy. As a result, its important to have as many healthy and proud people as possible inorder to go to war. A culture of kindness and giving can support that.
Additionally, this is all about genetics. While there is always an argument that your genes are the best genes, cultural agreement can give faith that the best will rise and flourish. Treating your neighbor as you would yourself reinforces the hope that even in failure of the individual, the group can still succeed.
I don't know if it counts for alturism, but wasn't cooperation-by-default famously shown the best strategy by the tit-for-tat program in the early 80'ies?
Robert Sapolsky covers this in one of his courses on evolutionary biology. I found the content to be approachable and the man charming, I highly recommend the course. (I am not a biologist!)
Yes, it is the most effective strategy in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, which seems to most closely match social interactions. Better strategies were recently found, but they are highly convoluted and involve knowing your opponents strategy and manipulating it into doing what you want.
Do you have anything to say about Nowak's work on evolutionary dynamics? I have a book in my shelf in which I have only glanced the pictures, and as of yet my understanding of altriusm in nature is pretty much limited to readings of Axelrod and his tit-for-tat and also Dawkins' further musings around the subject.
Maybe you can find an answer in game theory!? If you know the other part will cooperate, outcome will most of the time be better for both. If you know the other part will defect, outcome will most of the time be bad for both.
> When I was working on evolutionary dynamics in the late 90s, a group of us from across the world were trying to build an evolutionary model that showed the emergence of altruistic behaviour.
OK, math.
There are 200 people in Group A. Each has the choice of taking 1 point for themselves or giving 2 points to the group. If everyone gives 2 points then everyone gets 2 points. If everyone keeps the 1 point then no one gets anything from the group and everyone has only the 1 point. But if you keep your 1 point and everyone else gives 2 points then you get 1 + 1.99 points = 2.99 points. You can obviously see how everyone might end up defecting here.
But there are also groups B and C who are all under the same rules. After each iteration everyone in the group with the lowest average dies, is ineligible to receive points in any future iteration, and is replaced in the next iteration with a new group that behaves randomly. Each individual gets to accumulate points for 100 iterations before being replaced, unless their group dies first.
Good example but in most real world cases choice will be to keep one point to themselves and give away between zero to one point to the group out of that one point.
Now selfish behaviour kicks in as every individual wants to give as little as possible. But survivial of the group becomes crucial in face of an adversory. In that case everyone will contribute towards maximising group's strength. So in my understanding nature and wars (to a lesser degree) shaped altruism. But mostly nature. There's no way monkeys can survive without taking care of each other and group dynamics are strongest amongst them.
well altruism is an emotional response, if the brain has evolved to exhibit altruism it would be because the behaviors most likely to be exhibited by altruism were rewarded with survival and possibilities for procreation, as well as helping with the survival of those carrying your genetic material.
Sure, but just "feeling good" for helping others could be viewed as selfish as well. But at that point it's just semantics. I think we need to call altruism altruism for the actions, regardless of your return net effects. Is charity not altruism because you happen to benefit from it 50 years later in societal growth?
It totally is. I think the selfless aspects are highlighted more as they are for long term benefit. It also about definition of self from that point onwards..
Wrote my post before I saw this one. This is in line with what I was thinking, an act of altruism to make yourself feel good is not pure altruism.
I also agree that it is about the actions more than what you gain by doing so.
Charity is a good example of how altruism helps yourself, I donate to charity every now and then and of course it makes me feel good about donating, thus the act has an emotional gain for me.
I actually struggle with this idea myself. I consider myself a good person, and I enjoy helping others. Sometimes with a fair bit of cost to myself.
But I don't consider it "altruistic". I help them because I want to help them and enjoy having done so, and not out of some innate sense of ethics or of what needs to be done.
I think people doing altruistic things do enjoy them, but they don't do them because they enjoy them. They do them because they need to be done, and the enjoyment is a side effect.
Of course, this distinction makes it incredibly difficult to know if someone is actually being altruistic or not.
At that point, does it particularly matter if it's altruistic or not if the person is helping others for their own selfish gain, or for the benefit of others?
For example, a restaurant owner might serve food for free for homeless people for increasing their own reputation and social wellbeing, vs the owner who does it entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. The net result is the same, so why worry so much about the motivation behind it? I'd say they're both equally good people, in this example.
Being able to be generous and therefore altruistic is also a decent signal to the rest of your group you're fit and healthy.
> I think people doing altruistic things do enjoy them, but they don't do them because they enjoy them. They do them because they need to be done, and the enjoyment is a side effect.
What is the difference between the two conditions? The only one I can think of is that removing the side effect does not change the behavior, but removing the main motivator does. How is this significant though? Is it easier to lose enjoyment from altruistic activities than to lose a sense of responsibility? Is pleasure more fickle than duty?
That distinction, IMHO, also makes the definition of altruism so narrow as to be useless.
Good point, if it is altruism out of self-interest it is not altruistic in the pure sense.
I think that I might go as extreme as to say it is only altruistic if it makes you feel bad or puts you in a clearly bad position.
Let's say that out of an act of altruism you help a person achieve some goal of theirs. Now you do not have a material gain from this, but doing so will make you feel good, hence you did it to make yourself feel good?
I think the thread has gotten way off topic. The article is about kindness, not altruism. Kindness is, in my experience, doing something that makes someone else feel good, regardless of how it makes you feel. You do something, in kind, as it reciprocates the emotive intent to be helpful. You don't do something, in kind, as it creates a lack (for either party) as a result of that act. Self sacrifice and kindness are completely unrelated. Self sacrifice should not, and must not, be a deciding factor in what determines kindness as it confuses the moral agent motivating the act.
just as ascribing intentions to evolution is frowned upon, the evolutionary successful behaviour doesn't have to be intentional, does it? This's no direct dispproval of the selfishnes, however, just semantics.
Try it. With actual evolving populations with inherited strategies, and without hard-coding group selection.
Without hard-coding the groups as separate evolving units, you'll have a hard time.
In general, it is easy to show the group behaviors you want if you can treat the group as atomic for the purpose of the model. But you've just moved the goalposts, your 'individuals' are not the unit of evolution any more, and you've simply set the required behavior in the fitness function.
But... under his conditions it is clear that everyone in the group with the least altruists dies. There also seems to be no particular benefit for an individual of getting more points than anyone else. No point trying anything, it is clear prima facie.
Whether this has any relevance to the real world is the debatable matter. I would argue that it does, there are many examples where strong communities have grown as a result of general goodwill and altruistic behaviours, and these communities prosper compared to those where exploitative behaviour is common. There is of course another element which a simplified model neglects - communities, once formed, exert a strong pressure on its members to conform to the norm, be it good or bad. This pressure has the effect that the individuals who depart from community norms are "evolved out" so to speak. In case of altruistic communities, this protects the group from infiltration by exploitative individuals. In case of exploitative communities, unfortunately, this perpetuates the communal problems. Eventually, if the two communities come into a conflict, the exploitative community will be eliminated.
Unless you're disputing the existence of group selection in real systems, what does hard coding it change vs. a given system where it is an emergent property?
You have a model with 3 demes, with the deme having the lowest proportion of A-individuals being killed. This is no different from a model with 3 individuals with the individual with the lowest number of A-alleles being killed.
You can, of course, give a narrative argument on why you feel it is justified to exclude the interplay between these levels. But if you, at some point, try to show it is justified, by removing the assumption from your model, you'll struggle, I predict.
Evolving systems are very complex, it is an unwise assumption that you can chunk their dynamics into levels of abstraction and expect those dynamics to function independently or predictably when combined.
When in history have completely random samples of complete strangers been thrown together in life-or-death situations with no ability to communicate with each other and discuss their options?
Artificial studies like this have practically no bearing on actual behavior of real populations in real situations. Try the same study with a family, or a football team or the employees of a company or a military unit and then see what result you get. That's what reality is like. Real people don't live in randomly selected study groups, they live in communities.
But in this arrangement there is no reason for an individual need more points. You inserted your own assumption that "more imaginary points is better for itself" to define altruism.
Maybe an additional rule where the 20% with less points of the population of the groups with more points also dies. So there is actually an incentive for the individual that keep the points.
The rules you create are completely artificial, and IRL, people will rarely perceive "If everyone gives 2 points then everyone gets 2 points", even in the case it's true. They will see what they loose. Then you will have the ones abusing the system in some clever way. Then you will have people trying to scare others, or rule others, or both. Sub group will forms. Situation will changes, some old resource will become scare, some new resource will become in demand. Power play will come in. And Ego.
We are not ants.
Now in emergency situations, my experience is that we ARE hardwire to help each others. It works almost automatically, and is quite magical.
But as son as the immediate threats wears off, all the stuff I mentioned come into play.
If I understand the nature of the math correctly, altruism should be "beneficial" (from evolutionary perspective), if the number of people multiplied by closeness factor of their genes to yours ultimately translates to a larger portion of your genes propagating to later generations, than if you have expended those resources on yourself.
E.g. suppose I have a loaf of lembas. I can eat it myself, and it increases my chance of surviving and reproducing merely by 10%, because, while I'm starving, I'm healthy. But I have three siblings who share 50% of their genes with me, and who are starving and sick. If I give all my lembas to them, their chances of surviving and reproducing increase twofold, and become same as my current chance. In that case, it makes sense for me (or rather my genes) to evolve the behavior whereby I give away the lembas, because these three survivors will spread the genes that we share more efficiently than I alone.
Now, obviously, the math here has to add up in real-world scenarios - is that what you mean by "it wasn't trivial to stack the dice"? It just feels like it shouldn't be hard to come up with many cases where all the coefficients line up...
Evolutionary instinct is to create your own offspring, not your sister's/brother's. Why would there be an evolutionary reason to help your brother reproduce but not your friend.?
Because your brother shares around 50% of your genes. Helping your brother reproduce therefore helps to propagate some of your genes.
The principle behind this is that evolution operates at the level of genes, rather than individuals. I recommend Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller explanation.
J.B.S. Haldane, when asked if he would give his life to save a drowning brother, replied
"No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins."
As you share on average half your alleles with a brother and one-eighth with a cousin, Haldane was giving the number of relatives one would have to save to "break even".
As quoted in Mathematical Models of Social Evolution : A Guide for the Perplexed (2007) by Richard McElreath and Robert Boyd, p. 82;
There is no such thing as "evolutionary instinct".
There are instincts that become ingrained as part of evolutionary process, and they are those instincts that correlate with genes that propagate more.
Thus, the genes that you inherited from your parents may activate an instinct that will make you sacrifice yourself (or at least reduce your chances to reproduce in the future), so long as that results in a larger portion of those inherited genes in the gene pool down the line - e.g. because some of your siblings, or even more distant relatives, survived to carry them on.
It's one other reason why "survival of the fittest" is really a very misleading way to put it - it's about "survival" of a particular package of genetic traits, not about survival of the species, much less individual specimen.
Evolution is a game of information propagation, in which actual living beings are heavily parallelized delivery channels, information transmitted is the configuration of channels, and there's non-random noise (environment) affecting signal propagation through those channels. The "winning" configuration is likely to involve some channels that do not transmit data directly, but are dedicated to performing error correction etc for other channels, that do transmit information about the entire configuration.
In fact, over time, you may even end up with a configuration that can dynamically allocate channels for error correction, if and when the noise becomes noticeable enough (i.e. environment gets more hostile), so as to not waste valuable bandwidth when it's not necessary. And then we call such things "altruism", "heroic sacrifice" etc.
That's not entirely fair as an example, as most ants will not breed and only a select few do.
If you had a queen ant risking herself or the drones to save the colony, that's a different story.
It's actually similar, it's just that the moment of choice here - whether to sacrifice yourself for the good of the genetic line - happens before birth for those ants that will not reproduce, and is made for them by other ants. Same thing for bee workers etc. But the genes that enable this type of behavior should arise in a similar manner as part of the evolutionary process.
It's a hedge. In the ancestral environment, times may get tough and you might not get laid. A wildebeest could gore you when you are out on the hunt, or a disease or famine break out and greatly reduce the pool of reproductive-age women. By helping a sibling make it to the reproductive stage of their lives, you ensure that at least some of your genes get passed on.
Altruism is a way to bequeath a competitive advantage to another who is not your immediate offspring but is part of your gene pool.
Altruism is one of the most pervasive forms of interaction in life on Earth because it is the mechanism by which multi-cellular life functions at a basic level.
This is a bit surprising to me. Based on my gut I assumed that if a group has a sufficient probability of producing individuals with "broken selfishness" then the group has a higher fitness to survive, especially if some evolutionary pressure requires these "different" individuals. But this is probably not this simple.
Imagine a game you play with someone where you have 40 units and you need to divide it between the two of you. The other person has the choice of accepting the deal or refusing the deal. If they refuse, both of you get nothing. How do you divide the 40 units so that the other person accepts the deal?
Naive economics points that even if you offer the other only 1 unit, the other should take it because if they refuse the deal, they wouldn't have even that unit. In practice however, people down't work like that. If people feel they are being treated wrong, they tend to go for lose-lose. And so, in these kind of games, most people go for a fair split 20-20.
Now, imagine the same game but with a twist. You have a bunch of instances of these games and your objective is to have the highest score across all the instances. The trick is that the other player has to chose you to play with. What strategy would you adopt so that you maximize the score?
In this game, a 25-15 split is better. You lose the small game BUT more players want to play with you and so, you win the BIG game. Altruistic players are better at playing the BIG game, the long term game.
You're essentially saying that "bread and circuses" counts as an altruistic action. If you're expecting a payout, isn't that by definition not altruism?
The payout is the problem with the definition "altruism", you can always find a reason for which the person did it, even if it was just because she felt better due to helping others.
If you ask this question, you either have to have one example where there is no payout at all (note this should be an example most people agree on) or you accept there is no altruism, at least not following your definition of the word.
While I agree with your general sentiment, here is an anectode that might be considered as evolutionary "softening".
Assyrian empire was extremely brutal to people it conquered, Persians who took its place was more "humane" to their conquered subjects as a policy. Resulting in a relatively more stable land and subjects were submitting "willingly". From that point on, it was their main selling point.
I agree that there are doubts about some of the models, e.g. evolutionary game theory is not a model of evolution. My problem with these kinds of evolutionary arguments is different, though.
It seems to me that their interpreters often assume that identifying some behavior as evolutionary advantageous to an individual or group is somehow correlated with the goodness or desirability of that behavior. That's a fallacy. Whether the behavior is commendable, good, desirable, etc. is not related to its capability of increasing the long-term survival and spreading of someone's genes. (I'm not claiming everyone makes this association, but some seem to make it.)
Moreover, there seem to be countless examples of behavior that we are perfectly capable of and whose effect is difficult if not impossible to explain with evolutionary arguments. Some of them are considered commendable, other not. Random examples:
- spending your life in almost solitary confinement to solve some math problem
- deciding not to have children
- waging wars
- not passing your wealth on to your useless son and instead give everything to a charity
- being gay or asexual
- writing a novel without getting paid for it and that also doesn't increase your mating chances
The list could go on and on. Of course, evolutionary explanations may be constructed for any of them, but it's kind of doubtful that all human activities fit into this scheme. So my two points are:
a.) Whether altruistic behavior is good/desirable or not has nothing to do with its contribution to evolutionary fitness.
b.) Within some limits, we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us.
Finally, evolutionary models of social behavior that are not based on the genetic transmission of behavior simply do not have anything to do with real evolution. I've often seen real evolution being deliberately mixed up with ideas about the spreading on information contained in books, web pages, speech, etc. but I fail to see how the spreading of this information could be even remotely related to the way genes spread. Once you hear about a social fitness function or the fitness of a meme, you can in my opinion safely assume that the author pulled that concept out of his ass or copied it from others who did so.
Behaviours that groups exhibit will definitely be passed on from individual to individual and definitely have an effect on the ability of the group to survive.
And - whether something is passed on socially or through genes, it doesn't matter. 'Evolution' is not just a function of genes, obviously.
Your list of 'behaviours' is easy to describe, and I'll do it in context of your 'a' and 'b' positions.
From 'b' - "we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us" - obviously. But who cares? The species that takes up the best behaviours for it's environment will persist beyond those that do not.
From 'a' - Whether altruistic behavior is good/desirable or not has nothing to do with its contribution to evolutionary fitness. Yes it does. Run a little evolutionary simulation a a computer program. Create little 'bits' that evolve over time, and interact with one another - you'll see the bugs with the best social behaviours win - the others dissapear.
- " spending your life in almost solitary confinement to solve some math problem"
First off - this did not happen until way, way into human social development. Once we have complex social functions, it makes evolutionary sense to allocate some members of society towards 'very long term' thinking. 'The guy in the cave' is the same thing as a PhD today: someone who'd dedicated their life to something probably trivial or irrelevant, but which may have huge impact, possibly in the future.
- 'war' - war is perfectly understandable as selfish behaviour in the short run: a social group can 'get ahead' quickly by taking stuff of others.
- 'not passing on stuff to kids'. From a social perspective, it doesn't matter that much if the money goes to one's kids, or the neighbors kids. Both will contribute to group survival.
"I've often seen real evolution being deliberately mixed up with ideas about the spreading on information contained in books, web pages, speech, etc. but I fail to see how the spreading of this information could be even remotely related to the way genes spread"
It's very simple: an organism that learns how to read and write, and to pass down it's knowledge from generation to generation will 'out survive' ones that don't - and their genes are much more likely to be passed on.
And - whether something is passed on socially or through genes, it doesn't matter. 'Evolution' is not just a function of genes, obviously.
That's not obvious at all and it matters a lot. The idea that there is e.g. an 'evolution of ideas' is ill-conceived and misleading for many reasons. The same can be said about similar ideas like 'evolution of social systems', 'evolution of memes', etc.
In order to show that there is an evolutionary process that goes beyond of what is transmitted by genes you first have to show empirically that the respective information is transmitted non-genetically, then find a good model of how exactly it is transmitted and to which individuals and groups it is transmitted, and then develop and show that a concept of fitness applies to the process that is sufficiently similar to biological fitness to even be able to talk about evolution in a meaningful, non-contrived way. Then you can attempt to build an evolutionary model, and then you'd need to evaluate that model by looking at predictions. Unless the information is spread exactly like genes are spread, that model will look very different from biological evolution and each and every aspect of the model needs to be justified, in the same vein as you have to justify any analytical model.
I don't claim to be an expert in this field but have to reiterate that from what I've inferred from many talks and conversations with colleagues who work in such areas (like EGT, social dynamics, etc.), that there is no widespread consensus on such a justification. Most models of non-genetic, nonbiological 'evolution' seem to be fairly ad hoc. They just stipulate certain information transmission mechanisms and come up with fitness criteria as it suits them, without much of an empirical basis. It's Lamarck's giraffes in fine modern mathematical clothing.
From 'b' - "we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us" - obviously. But who cares? The species that takes up the best behaviors for it's environment will persist beyond those that do not.
In my experience, everybody cares about what's good and what's bad, even those who think they don't. Not caring about it and placing evolution higher in your value system is a bit like saying "Hey, let's blow up the earth, that's more consistent with the laws of thermodynamics anyway."
Run a little evolutionary simulation a a computer program.
With arbitrary parameters, fitness function, and information transmission mechanism, I can certainly write seemingly convincing little computer programs to show of any behavior whatsoever that it is evolutionary advantageous or disadvantageous. That's because if I can choose all parameters and the transmission mechanism as I like, I simply redefine what 'evolution' means each time, disregarding how biological evolution works. But just because you make a dynamic model with some sort of fitness function, many individuals, and some starting state doesn't mean you model evolution.
It's very simple: an organism that learns how to read and write, and to pass down it's knowledge from generation to generation will 'out survive' ones that don't - and their genes are much more likely to be passed on.
I'd like to see evidence for that. But in any case that would only explain how reading and writing evolves, not any evolution about what's written - which is what I was criticizing. The written information is not transmitted by genes, hence not subject to biological evolution. If the written information is somehow subject to some evolutionary selection process, then you may try to find an analytical model for that. I'm not saying that all of these models are wrong for some principle reason, just that many of them are fishy, based on sometimes flawed analogy to biological evolution, and in need o...
"In order to show that there is an evolutionary process that goes beyond of what is transmitted by genes you first have to show empirically that the respective information is transmitted non-genetically, "
Where did you learn to speak English?
Where did you learn to read and write?
Where did you learn Math?
Where did you learn how to eat, run, catch a ball?
You learned those things from your social environment - those are bit of knowledge that are handed down from generation to generation and 100% affect your ability to survive and thrive in your environment.
You're a living example of how 'information is passed non-genetically' - there's no need to do an experiment to show how that is done, it'd be like doing an experiment to see if the sun rises tommorow.
Social information is absolutely passed down from generation to generation, and this affects how species adapt to their environment and thus which genes are passed. This is obvious, there's no way to contend that, really.
> Moreover, there seem to be countless examples of behavior that we are perfectly capable of and whose effect is difficult if not impossible to explain with evolutionary arguments.
Even if we acknowledge that some of those examples can't be explained by evolution, evolution permits aberrations. It's in the very core of the model.
It's also worth noting that nearly all of these examples are extremely rare. Homosexuality is the most common one, and as current research suggests a genetic component it seems likely that with further information it will ultimately make sense, if not as an adaptive trait, at least as a consequence of adaptive traits.
The others are indeed examples of memes overpowering genes, and an evolutionary model (of memes) can help to explain them as well. It's not a well-developed field to be sure, but it's a worthwhile perspective. A cartoony example is religions that ban sex vs religions that ban contraception - given that religious memes are strongly conserved in offspring, which meme would you expect to spread better? How does that compare to what we actually see?
> Homosexuality is the most common one, and as current research suggests a genetic component it seems likely that with further information it will ultimately make sense, if not as an adaptive trait, at least as a consequence of adaptive traits.
Given homosexuality is prevalent in the animal kingdom as well, that's pretty much assured.
What about Nash equilibria? People here may well have asked this already in a different way; I haven't checked all the questions to see if they actually are describing Nash equilibria.
If in your simulation individuals could improve themselves as well as their group fit, I'd expect group dynamics to only have any relevance when the number of individuals is very big. Individual improvement leads to faster responses, so you'll need a big amount of diversity to let group improvement make any difference.
That said, I do expect it to be hard. Nature created cooperating species more than once, but not that many times¹. And it had half a billion years of a simulation that was certainly much larger than yours.
1 - Counting placentarial mammals only once, what is very likely correct.
I think that this was easier explained in "The Selfish Gene". Individual altruism is an emergent characteristic of a selfish gene.
I risk my live 10 times to save others until I die without off-spring. It is altruistic for me, but the gene has saved 10 people that are probably related to me. That means that the gene has a probability over 10% to be in that other individuals it is a win for the gene.
From my point of view it sucks, I don't have offspring. But the gene survives and prospers. This is still more extreme in species like bumblebees where sisters share 75% of their genes.
For monozygotic twins there is a similar case. From the gene perspective is irrelevant if one survives or the other, even that it is really important for the individuals.
- It's easier to find a significant other with whom to produce offspring if you exhibit kindness and charity to others.
- Generosity is often reciprocated.
- Giving implies EQ so altruistic person also likely takes care of family.
That's the issue with statistical models with finite decisions and states, they don't include enough parameters and interactions to capture anything relating to real life.
Like imagine a prehistoric human feeds a weak stranger, later that month the stranger warns them of danger. It's so obvious how kindness could be beneficial gene.
Altruism generates a sense of community. The most successful among us learn to generate an appearance of altruism while keeping the majority of the resources for themselves.
It's really more about deception than anything else.
That competition for survival and reproduction is the main factor which outweight everything else. Family and social bonds are also among the most powerful forces, but it is the selfish aspect of favoring and protecting one's relatives what matters.
Altruism and kindness are also minor factors, but the weakest ones, and, obviously, cannot be thought as replacement for the general laws of ecosystems based on survival and reproduction, which basically means lifetime ongoing competition for everything that is related to passing of the genes to another generation.
Reframing of evolutionary forces to be more humanistic is, of course, bullshit.
Austruism and kindness might be beneficial at a tribal level as you will likely meet the person again and they or their family may pay back the favour. Even if that isn't a conscious thought by the person being nice.
Nowadays this is less obviously beneficial in our big cities and jet set lifestyles.
And as you said kindness is part of a bigger set of factors and perhaps a lesser one.
Whenever conflict arises at work, I usually just take a pause and buy the other person a drink and get to know each other on a more personal level. Its fun doing this and usually it ends up with me understanding my coworker on a more human level and we come to an agreement and work better together. A few years ago I would have fought to have my way and as satisfying as it was to win (occasionally), the attitude is very divisive and alienating for both parties involved.
Work is an especially odd situation as "your way" is not necessarily to benefit you. Oftentimes, you both have the same goal ("what's best for the company"), but you disagree on how to reach that ("A is best" vs "B is best"). Once you realise and agree on that, conflicts become easier to resolve.
I'm doing Polyamory for the better part of my adult life and I learned much about conflict resolution. Because when you have multiple partners and they also have multiple partners you just end up with problems more often. If you take too long to fix these, the whole thing isn't viable anymore.
This also helped me in my career. I stopped thinking about "relationships" from a monogamous romantical point of view, but in a more generalized way.
I have feelings for every person I meet in life, some I love, some I like, some I find sexually attractive, some I find intellectual inspiring etc.
I want to be on good terms with all of those who I consider to be in my life for longer time, so I can't work with secrecy, fighting or passive aggressive behaviour.
One quarter of people in Asia has Chengis Khan's genes. He is probably the most genetically successfull male in the recent millenia. I am not sure he got there by altruism alone.
Except Ghengis was around Millenia ago, if we all lived like him now, then we would be in pretty bad shape.
It seems taking more than our fair share has caused some pretty bad situations with regards to the environment, we can't keep operating just for ourselves for much longer.
This whole discussion sounds so academic and methodical, as though there's some formula or algorithm that, if we can just figure it out, will give us some kind of 'ah, there it is' moment.
Man is clearly dynamic, and has a spiritual side that can't be measured. One minute I'm altruistic, and the next I want the last seat on the bus. One day I'm giving away my old TV, the next I'm duking it out with some old lady at Walmart on Boxing day to get a new one.
I don't know how much kindness counts, but while survival of the fittest still exists, what doesn't exist is the things that come to mind when you hear sirvival of the fittest. Usually you think of like a half monkey with a spear. Point being wake the fuck up people pull your head a out of your asses and, evolve, whatever "evolving" looks like in 2017. Hint, it's not trying to be a flamboyant faggot either.
In modern society, this is so obvious that it seems not worth writing about. Most successful people I know are kind and considerate while people I have known who are not so successful in life tend to not consider other people. OK, I am making a generalization, but one that is usually true.
Or, the less you give to others, the more problems you'll have.
In my experience (and I'm speaking very much from personal experience of having suffered from - or been punished by - this phenomenon), the causality is not exclusively in either direction.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. "Rich people tend to be happier, more carefree and donate more money. Therefore they are rich because of those characteristics."
Consider that people are mostly not in charge of how "successful" they become (I'm assuming this is more financial success than self actualized success), and are trying their best to react to whatever hand life dealt them.
You said it: you are generalizing based solely on your own experience.
It was never survival of the fittest- it is survival of the most adapted to a situation. If the situation rewards kindness- survival of the kindest- if the situation rewards being a heartless, survival of the heartless. If the situation is constantly fluctuating, survival of the system swinging between the both, by adapting to environmental clues.
Can we please let go of 1930 evolution papers wording and thinking and move on?
It's one of the meanings, and presumably the one that was in mind when the term was coined.
But an awful lot of people seem to take it to mean the other sense - "in good health, especially because of regular physical exercise", and extrapolate that out to mean that it's always the strongest/fastest etc that survive.
139 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadBit of a misnomer that, surely, as reductionism is all about simplifying things into digestable components.
Also this is an interview piece, its not going to go in depth.
Humans are literally Jekyll and Hyde.
I remember one fascinating example about Arabian babblers which use altruism to assert dominance. They seek out increasingly dangerous positions to alert the herd of potential predetors. And by feeding others as a way to say 'look at me I am so superior to you I can afford to feed you'. Of course, they are rewarded by getting all the mates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_babbler#Behaviour - interesting
(a bit long, but very worth it)
I also think you might misunderstand what the word kindness means, as you refer to cruelty and strength as some measure of adequate relation to what would be deemed fit in some similar function.
I think it's a fairly cogent statement, as great and influential persons are, by and large, incredibly kind. Of course, if one thinks that power equates with influence, or that fitness is best represented by wealth, I would posit that there is a huge correlation between wealth, kindness, and authority. For instance, President Obama is quite obviously an incredibly kind man. William Gates, Jr., a philanthropist (read: about as far away from unkind as you can get), Her Majesty the Queen of England, the titular head of an Empire, leads a family that donates a huge amount of their wealth to the citizenry of the United Kingdom, and is as sunny as anyone in her position could possibly be (have you ever once seen her upset in public, because I haven't), these instances alone give clear indication that kindness is, indeed, perhaps an indisputable barometer of what is meant by being fit for survival.
By contrast, who do you know who is sought by society for capital punishment? The unkind, that's who. Those who are cruel are brought up before magistrates, tribunals, and high courts and told in no uncertain terms that their survival is undesirable by the masses.
Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile (in the French sense, though Christ is an inordinately germane example of kindness too) behavior.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/12/reflecting-o...
The titel "Forget X, it's Y that matters" is pretty close to the definition of a contrast.
Regarding your other thoughts: it'd be great if it were that easy, and I even agree that the sort of kindness Bill Gates and Barack Obama exhibit is probably a useful trait.
But the causality isn't quite clear. My impression is that these success stories are the result of combining (a) extreme intelligence and (b) extreme happiness, and that kindness is the natural result if, for example, they have absolute confidence in themselves and no longer feel any kind of threat from competition.
But I'd say the "Big 5" model provides a more complete set of traits that have become more and more relevant over time:
- Openness to experience - Conscientiousness - Extraversion - Agreeableness - (Lack of) Neuroticism
There's also absolutely no doubt that aggression, the desire to punish wrongdoing by others and other violent traits have at some point been important for survival of the individual and the group, and probably still are, at a diminished level.
> Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile...
Let's not forget the immune system. It's one of many "magic" inventions that made larger societies possible.
The Big 5 model is incredibly limiting and is only successful _because_ of its brevity, not because it is sufficiently explanatory of the kaleidoscope of human traits. Its reductionism at it's most hubristic, and let's keep it real here, no five personality traits are adequate enough to span the dynamism of human emotive.
I believe in a thing called cosmic consciousness, and that is (albeit somewhat challenging to explain) what drives my defense of why kindness is such a pivotal factor in human social interaction. There is a line in Gladiator "what we do in life echoes in infinity" and because that resonance exists, the kindness we exhibit is important enough to outweigh other traits, and actually points to a larger issue of whether or not our judgmental, rather vindictive mindset of late is ultimately counterproductive to the existential state of civilization. In other words, when we are kind to one another, we facilitate a happier, healthier world, thus insuring the survival of those who promote that non-violent, what I would call, state of Grace.
There are at least 2 levels of fitness/survival - an individual inside its group/society and a group/society among other groups/societies. While the "symbiotic, cohesive, gentile" may do well inside its own society, would the society consisting of only such individuals do well when pitted against another society? Or would having some amount of the non-"symbiotic, cohesive, gentile" individuals in the mix help the survival of that society?
> "kindness" in the human world is similar to kindness in the animal world. It translates to weakness, which is why evolution naturally weeds it out of most animals.
Kindness among kin groups translates to stronger groups, so There's a reason that humans are naturally altruistic and punish crimes against their in-group so vigorously: A solitary human outside of civilisation will struggle and probably die. A bunch of humans working together rules the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/born-to-be-good-the-sci...
(One could argue that intelligence and brain size have more to do with evolutionary fitness, but I would speculate that intelligence is a result of increased care, not the other way around. Give a thing more time, space, and resources to grow, and it will.)
As a species, the more we collectively care for each other--through actions, not feelings--, the greater chance we have for survival and growth.
Now, I would not really say advantage or disadvantage. Each species have a specific role in the ecosystem and sometimes they're related in very unexpected ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
We are 'responsible' for one another, but in far more than just 'caring' ways. We take out the trash, we try to get along, we do all sorts of things every day that really fall into the category of 'acting responsibly' that in some ways could be described as 'caring' in a more general sense, but it wouldn't be apt.
'Conscientiousness' could be an even better word.
That said, kindness, in the sense of, willing to make an attempt to understand, and take into account others views / opinions / needs, definitely makes for nicer people to be around.
"Survival of the fittest" can be interpreted in the same manner. Or, from a different perspective, a willingness to step over one's mother to achieve their goals.
Life is better when we respect eachother.
A bit cynical in a way you put it, maybe, but what you saw is true. But it's just what comes out when you consider helping someone and actually getting an effect over helping to just get warm feelings in your belly about how good you are. It so happens that in a technological civilization, spending our time as specialists to earn money and giving it to different specialists is a better way to help than trying to help directly in areas we're not specialized in. It's how professional specialization works.
Doing that will tend to convert tit-for-tatters and might flip other strategies into cooperating. If you grade by the total number of cooperate moves in the group, the group wins by 'kindness' flipping a variety of strategies into cooperate mode. It'll tend to expand pockets of cooperation. No immediate personal benefit, but tends to make the environment better which may seem like a benefit.
I don't think 'survival of the fittest' has to mean 'kneecap all your opponents and rent-seek', but that's the popular interpretation in Western capitalism :)
It was really really difficult. Even knowing exactly the kind of behaviour we wanted to show, it wasn't trivial to stack the dice enough to roll that outcome.
I have since read a lot of arguments, a lot of post-hoc reasoning that justifies why altruism might be a positive contributor to fitness. It is no coincidence they are almost all hand-waving, narrative arguments.
I don't buy them. Show me the math.
Evolution is a perfect subject for handwaving and post hoc rationalisations. I do not think all of evolutionary psychology is bunkum, like some have claimed, but I do think a lot is unfalsifiable, motivated reasoning. My advice would be, unless it comes with good predictions of evidence from the historical biological record, or good experimental evidence from mathematical models of evolution, it was too easily come by to be considered knowledge.
Additionally, when at large scale war, often you can trust your cultural bretheran better than the enemy. As a result, its important to have as many healthy and proud people as possible inorder to go to war. A culture of kindness and giving can support that.
Additionally, this is all about genetics. While there is always an argument that your genes are the best genes, cultural agreement can give faith that the best will rise and flourish. Treating your neighbor as you would yourself reinforces the hope that even in failure of the individual, the group can still succeed.
Im sure theres more
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/behavioral-evolution.html
OK, math.
There are 200 people in Group A. Each has the choice of taking 1 point for themselves or giving 2 points to the group. If everyone gives 2 points then everyone gets 2 points. If everyone keeps the 1 point then no one gets anything from the group and everyone has only the 1 point. But if you keep your 1 point and everyone else gives 2 points then you get 1 + 1.99 points = 2.99 points. You can obviously see how everyone might end up defecting here.
But there are also groups B and C who are all under the same rules. After each iteration everyone in the group with the lowest average dies, is ineligible to receive points in any future iteration, and is replaced in the next iteration with a new group that behaves randomly. Each individual gets to accumulate points for 100 iterations before being replaced, unless their group dies first.
Now what happens?
Now selfish behaviour kicks in as every individual wants to give as little as possible. But survivial of the group becomes crucial in face of an adversory. In that case everyone will contribute towards maximising group's strength. So in my understanding nature and wars (to a lesser degree) shaped altruism. But mostly nature. There's no way monkeys can survive without taking care of each other and group dynamics are strongest amongst them.
Altruism is completely practical.
I also agree that it is about the actions more than what you gain by doing so.
Charity is a good example of how altruism helps yourself, I donate to charity every now and then and of course it makes me feel good about donating, thus the act has an emotional gain for me.
But I don't consider it "altruistic". I help them because I want to help them and enjoy having done so, and not out of some innate sense of ethics or of what needs to be done.
I think people doing altruistic things do enjoy them, but they don't do them because they enjoy them. They do them because they need to be done, and the enjoyment is a side effect.
Of course, this distinction makes it incredibly difficult to know if someone is actually being altruistic or not.
For example, a restaurant owner might serve food for free for homeless people for increasing their own reputation and social wellbeing, vs the owner who does it entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. The net result is the same, so why worry so much about the motivation behind it? I'd say they're both equally good people, in this example.
Being able to be generous and therefore altruistic is also a decent signal to the rest of your group you're fit and healthy.
What is the difference between the two conditions? The only one I can think of is that removing the side effect does not change the behavior, but removing the main motivator does. How is this significant though? Is it easier to lose enjoyment from altruistic activities than to lose a sense of responsibility? Is pleasure more fickle than duty?
That distinction, IMHO, also makes the definition of altruism so narrow as to be useless.
I think that I might go as extreme as to say it is only altruistic if it makes you feel bad or puts you in a clearly bad position.
Let's say that out of an act of altruism you help a person achieve some goal of theirs. Now you do not have a material gain from this, but doing so will make you feel good, hence you did it to make yourself feel good?
What you described there is in nature called symbiosis [1]. Like a cat or dogs lives with a human, or an ant with a fig tree.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis
* Divide the big group into smaller groups (where they are giving each other inside the group only).
Now individuals in the group where many give to each other get an advantage over individuals in other groups.
Individuals that keep for themselves while staying in a group that gives also keep the better advantage on cost of their group.
* Allow the group to punish those who keep for themselves.
Without hard-coding the groups as separate evolving units, you'll have a hard time.
In general, it is easy to show the group behaviors you want if you can treat the group as atomic for the purpose of the model. But you've just moved the goalposts, your 'individuals' are not the unit of evolution any more, and you've simply set the required behavior in the fitness function.
So try it and see.
Whether this has any relevance to the real world is the debatable matter. I would argue that it does, there are many examples where strong communities have grown as a result of general goodwill and altruistic behaviours, and these communities prosper compared to those where exploitative behaviour is common. There is of course another element which a simplified model neglects - communities, once formed, exert a strong pressure on its members to conform to the norm, be it good or bad. This pressure has the effect that the individuals who depart from community norms are "evolved out" so to speak. In case of altruistic communities, this protects the group from infiltration by exploitative individuals. In case of exploitative communities, unfortunately, this perpetuates the communal problems. Eventually, if the two communities come into a conflict, the exploitative community will be eliminated.
Are you saying the simulation is not valid unless collaboration between individuals arises as an emergent behavior?
Unless you're disputing the existence of group selection in real systems, what does hard coding it change vs. a given system where it is an emergent property?
You can, of course, give a narrative argument on why you feel it is justified to exclude the interplay between these levels. But if you, at some point, try to show it is justified, by removing the assumption from your model, you'll struggle, I predict.
Evolving systems are very complex, it is an unwise assumption that you can chunk their dynamics into levels of abstraction and expect those dynamics to function independently or predictably when combined.
Artificial studies like this have practically no bearing on actual behavior of real populations in real situations. Try the same study with a family, or a football team or the employees of a company or a military unit and then see what result you get. That's what reality is like. Real people don't live in randomly selected study groups, they live in communities.
Maybe an additional rule where the 20% with less points of the population of the groups with more points also dies. So there is actually an incentive for the individual that keep the points.
We are not ants.
Now in emergency situations, my experience is that we ARE hardwire to help each others. It works almost automatically, and is quite magical.
But as son as the immediate threats wears off, all the stuff I mentioned come into play.
E.g. suppose I have a loaf of lembas. I can eat it myself, and it increases my chance of surviving and reproducing merely by 10%, because, while I'm starving, I'm healthy. But I have three siblings who share 50% of their genes with me, and who are starving and sick. If I give all my lembas to them, their chances of surviving and reproducing increase twofold, and become same as my current chance. In that case, it makes sense for me (or rather my genes) to evolve the behavior whereby I give away the lembas, because these three survivors will spread the genes that we share more efficiently than I alone.
Now, obviously, the math here has to add up in real-world scenarios - is that what you mean by "it wasn't trivial to stack the dice"? It just feels like it shouldn't be hard to come up with many cases where all the coefficients line up...
The principle behind this is that evolution operates at the level of genes, rather than individuals. I recommend Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller explanation.
"No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins."
As you share on average half your alleles with a brother and one-eighth with a cousin, Haldane was giving the number of relatives one would have to save to "break even".
As quoted in Mathematical Models of Social Evolution : A Guide for the Perplexed (2007) by Richard McElreath and Robert Boyd, p. 82;
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane
This is in relation to the idea of kin selection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
There are instincts that become ingrained as part of evolutionary process, and they are those instincts that correlate with genes that propagate more.
Thus, the genes that you inherited from your parents may activate an instinct that will make you sacrifice yourself (or at least reduce your chances to reproduce in the future), so long as that results in a larger portion of those inherited genes in the gene pool down the line - e.g. because some of your siblings, or even more distant relatives, survived to carry them on.
It's one other reason why "survival of the fittest" is really a very misleading way to put it - it's about "survival" of a particular package of genetic traits, not about survival of the species, much less individual specimen.
Evolution is a game of information propagation, in which actual living beings are heavily parallelized delivery channels, information transmitted is the configuration of channels, and there's non-random noise (environment) affecting signal propagation through those channels. The "winning" configuration is likely to involve some channels that do not transmit data directly, but are dedicated to performing error correction etc for other channels, that do transmit information about the entire configuration.
In fact, over time, you may even end up with a configuration that can dynamically allocate channels for error correction, if and when the noise becomes noticeable enough (i.e. environment gets more hostile), so as to not waste valuable bandwidth when it's not necessary. And then we call such things "altruism", "heroic sacrifice" etc.
Altruism is one of the most pervasive forms of interaction in life on Earth because it is the mechanism by which multi-cellular life functions at a basic level.
Imagine a game you play with someone where you have 40 units and you need to divide it between the two of you. The other person has the choice of accepting the deal or refusing the deal. If they refuse, both of you get nothing. How do you divide the 40 units so that the other person accepts the deal?
Naive economics points that even if you offer the other only 1 unit, the other should take it because if they refuse the deal, they wouldn't have even that unit. In practice however, people down't work like that. If people feel they are being treated wrong, they tend to go for lose-lose. And so, in these kind of games, most people go for a fair split 20-20.
Now, imagine the same game but with a twist. You have a bunch of instances of these games and your objective is to have the highest score across all the instances. The trick is that the other player has to chose you to play with. What strategy would you adopt so that you maximize the score?
In this game, a 25-15 split is better. You lose the small game BUT more players want to play with you and so, you win the BIG game. Altruistic players are better at playing the BIG game, the long term game.
If you ask this question, you either have to have one example where there is no payout at all (note this should be an example most people agree on) or you accept there is no altruism, at least not following your definition of the word.
Assyrian empire was extremely brutal to people it conquered, Persians who took its place was more "humane" to their conquered subjects as a policy. Resulting in a relatively more stable land and subjects were submitting "willingly". From that point on, it was their main selling point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation#A...
It seems to me that their interpreters often assume that identifying some behavior as evolutionary advantageous to an individual or group is somehow correlated with the goodness or desirability of that behavior. That's a fallacy. Whether the behavior is commendable, good, desirable, etc. is not related to its capability of increasing the long-term survival and spreading of someone's genes. (I'm not claiming everyone makes this association, but some seem to make it.)
Moreover, there seem to be countless examples of behavior that we are perfectly capable of and whose effect is difficult if not impossible to explain with evolutionary arguments. Some of them are considered commendable, other not. Random examples:
- spending your life in almost solitary confinement to solve some math problem
- deciding not to have children
- waging wars
- not passing your wealth on to your useless son and instead give everything to a charity
- being gay or asexual
- writing a novel without getting paid for it and that also doesn't increase your mating chances
The list could go on and on. Of course, evolutionary explanations may be constructed for any of them, but it's kind of doubtful that all human activities fit into this scheme. So my two points are:
a.) Whether altruistic behavior is good/desirable or not has nothing to do with its contribution to evolutionary fitness.
b.) Within some limits, we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us.
Finally, evolutionary models of social behavior that are not based on the genetic transmission of behavior simply do not have anything to do with real evolution. I've often seen real evolution being deliberately mixed up with ideas about the spreading on information contained in books, web pages, speech, etc. but I fail to see how the spreading of this information could be even remotely related to the way genes spread. Once you hear about a social fitness function or the fitness of a meme, you can in my opinion safely assume that the author pulled that concept out of his ass or copied it from others who did so.
Behaviours that groups exhibit will definitely be passed on from individual to individual and definitely have an effect on the ability of the group to survive.
And - whether something is passed on socially or through genes, it doesn't matter. 'Evolution' is not just a function of genes, obviously.
Your list of 'behaviours' is easy to describe, and I'll do it in context of your 'a' and 'b' positions.
From 'b' - "we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us" - obviously. But who cares? The species that takes up the best behaviours for it's environment will persist beyond those that do not.
From 'a' - Whether altruistic behavior is good/desirable or not has nothing to do with its contribution to evolutionary fitness. Yes it does. Run a little evolutionary simulation a a computer program. Create little 'bits' that evolve over time, and interact with one another - you'll see the bugs with the best social behaviours win - the others dissapear.
- " spending your life in almost solitary confinement to solve some math problem"
First off - this did not happen until way, way into human social development. Once we have complex social functions, it makes evolutionary sense to allocate some members of society towards 'very long term' thinking. 'The guy in the cave' is the same thing as a PhD today: someone who'd dedicated their life to something probably trivial or irrelevant, but which may have huge impact, possibly in the future.
- 'war' - war is perfectly understandable as selfish behaviour in the short run: a social group can 'get ahead' quickly by taking stuff of others.
- 'not passing on stuff to kids'. From a social perspective, it doesn't matter that much if the money goes to one's kids, or the neighbors kids. Both will contribute to group survival.
"I've often seen real evolution being deliberately mixed up with ideas about the spreading on information contained in books, web pages, speech, etc. but I fail to see how the spreading of this information could be even remotely related to the way genes spread"
It's very simple: an organism that learns how to read and write, and to pass down it's knowledge from generation to generation will 'out survive' ones that don't - and their genes are much more likely to be passed on.
That's not obvious at all and it matters a lot. The idea that there is e.g. an 'evolution of ideas' is ill-conceived and misleading for many reasons. The same can be said about similar ideas like 'evolution of social systems', 'evolution of memes', etc.
In order to show that there is an evolutionary process that goes beyond of what is transmitted by genes you first have to show empirically that the respective information is transmitted non-genetically, then find a good model of how exactly it is transmitted and to which individuals and groups it is transmitted, and then develop and show that a concept of fitness applies to the process that is sufficiently similar to biological fitness to even be able to talk about evolution in a meaningful, non-contrived way. Then you can attempt to build an evolutionary model, and then you'd need to evaluate that model by looking at predictions. Unless the information is spread exactly like genes are spread, that model will look very different from biological evolution and each and every aspect of the model needs to be justified, in the same vein as you have to justify any analytical model.
I don't claim to be an expert in this field but have to reiterate that from what I've inferred from many talks and conversations with colleagues who work in such areas (like EGT, social dynamics, etc.), that there is no widespread consensus on such a justification. Most models of non-genetic, nonbiological 'evolution' seem to be fairly ad hoc. They just stipulate certain information transmission mechanisms and come up with fitness criteria as it suits them, without much of an empirical basis. It's Lamarck's giraffes in fine modern mathematical clothing.
From 'b' - "we are perfectly capable of behaving in ways that are not evolutionary advantageous to us" - obviously. But who cares? The species that takes up the best behaviors for it's environment will persist beyond those that do not.
In my experience, everybody cares about what's good and what's bad, even those who think they don't. Not caring about it and placing evolution higher in your value system is a bit like saying "Hey, let's blow up the earth, that's more consistent with the laws of thermodynamics anyway."
Run a little evolutionary simulation a a computer program.
With arbitrary parameters, fitness function, and information transmission mechanism, I can certainly write seemingly convincing little computer programs to show of any behavior whatsoever that it is evolutionary advantageous or disadvantageous. That's because if I can choose all parameters and the transmission mechanism as I like, I simply redefine what 'evolution' means each time, disregarding how biological evolution works. But just because you make a dynamic model with some sort of fitness function, many individuals, and some starting state doesn't mean you model evolution.
It's very simple: an organism that learns how to read and write, and to pass down it's knowledge from generation to generation will 'out survive' ones that don't - and their genes are much more likely to be passed on.
I'd like to see evidence for that. But in any case that would only explain how reading and writing evolves, not any evolution about what's written - which is what I was criticizing. The written information is not transmitted by genes, hence not subject to biological evolution. If the written information is somehow subject to some evolutionary selection process, then you may try to find an analytical model for that. I'm not saying that all of these models are wrong for some principle reason, just that many of them are fishy, based on sometimes flawed analogy to biological evolution, and in need o...
Where did you learn to speak English?
Where did you learn to read and write?
Where did you learn Math?
Where did you learn how to eat, run, catch a ball?
You learned those things from your social environment - those are bit of knowledge that are handed down from generation to generation and 100% affect your ability to survive and thrive in your environment.
You're a living example of how 'information is passed non-genetically' - there's no need to do an experiment to show how that is done, it'd be like doing an experiment to see if the sun rises tommorow.
Social information is absolutely passed down from generation to generation, and this affects how species adapt to their environment and thus which genes are passed. This is obvious, there's no way to contend that, really.
Even if we acknowledge that some of those examples can't be explained by evolution, evolution permits aberrations. It's in the very core of the model.
The others are indeed examples of memes overpowering genes, and an evolutionary model (of memes) can help to explain them as well. It's not a well-developed field to be sure, but it's a worthwhile perspective. A cartoony example is religions that ban sex vs religions that ban contraception - given that religious memes are strongly conserved in offspring, which meme would you expect to spread better? How does that compare to what we actually see?
Given homosexuality is prevalent in the animal kingdom as well, that's pretty much assured.
When I see how much investment we take in people these days, it comes naturally to me that we have to look after each other.
People are expensive to produce and maintain and experience doesn't grow on trees.
That said, I do expect it to be hard. Nature created cooperating species more than once, but not that many times¹. And it had half a billion years of a simulation that was certainly much larger than yours.
1 - Counting placentarial mammals only once, what is very likely correct.
I think that this was easier explained in "The Selfish Gene". Individual altruism is an emergent characteristic of a selfish gene.
I risk my live 10 times to save others until I die without off-spring. It is altruistic for me, but the gene has saved 10 people that are probably related to me. That means that the gene has a probability over 10% to be in that other individuals it is a win for the gene.
From my point of view it sucks, I don't have offspring. But the gene survives and prospers. This is still more extreme in species like bumblebees where sisters share 75% of their genes.
For monozygotic twins there is a similar case. From the gene perspective is irrelevant if one survives or the other, even that it is really important for the individuals.
- It's easier to find a significant other with whom to produce offspring if you exhibit kindness and charity to others.
- Generosity is often reciprocated.
- Giving implies EQ so altruistic person also likely takes care of family.
That's the issue with statistical models with finite decisions and states, they don't include enough parameters and interactions to capture anything relating to real life.
Like imagine a prehistoric human feeds a weak stranger, later that month the stranger warns them of danger. It's so obvious how kindness could be beneficial gene.
It's really more about deception than anything else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation
How does kindness fits into population genetics?
Altruism and kindness are also minor factors, but the weakest ones, and, obviously, cannot be thought as replacement for the general laws of ecosystems based on survival and reproduction, which basically means lifetime ongoing competition for everything that is related to passing of the genes to another generation.
Reframing of evolutionary forces to be more humanistic is, of course, bullshit.
Austruism and kindness might be beneficial at a tribal level as you will likely meet the person again and they or their family may pay back the favour. Even if that isn't a conscious thought by the person being nice.
Nowadays this is less obviously beneficial in our big cities and jet set lifestyles.
And as you said kindness is part of a bigger set of factors and perhaps a lesser one.
This also helped me in my career. I stopped thinking about "relationships" from a monogamous romantical point of view, but in a more generalized way.
I have feelings for every person I meet in life, some I love, some I like, some I find sexually attractive, some I find intellectual inspiring etc.
I want to be on good terms with all of those who I consider to be in my life for longer time, so I can't work with secrecy, fighting or passive aggressive behaviour.
It seems taking more than our fair share has caused some pretty bad situations with regards to the environment, we can't keep operating just for ourselves for much longer.
Man is clearly dynamic, and has a spiritual side that can't be measured. One minute I'm altruistic, and the next I want the last seat on the bus. One day I'm giving away my old TV, the next I'm duking it out with some old lady at Walmart on Boxing day to get a new one.
Go figure.
Even if you make a mistake and damage your reputation, you can still move to a different city/country and start over with a clean slate.
There are lots of safe strategies that one can use to make sure that no one ever finds out about your double dealings.
Successful people know how to lie and cheat effectively; but they know where to draw the line.
I guarantee you that practically every financially successful person ever has used lying and manipulation to get what they wanted.
The ones who didn't cheat or lie and still managed to succeed just got extremely lucky.
In my experience (and I'm speaking very much from personal experience of having suffered from - or been punished by - this phenomenon), the causality is not exclusively in either direction.
Rather, it's a self-perpetuating cycle.
Consider that people are mostly not in charge of how "successful" they become (I'm assuming this is more financial success than self actualized success), and are trying their best to react to whatever hand life dealt them.
You said it: you are generalizing based solely on your own experience.
Isn't that exactly what "fittest" means? First definition from Oxford: "of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose."
But an awful lot of people seem to take it to mean the other sense - "in good health, especially because of regular physical exercise", and extrapolate that out to mean that it's always the strongest/fastest etc that survive.
BTW Jordan Peterson's latest podcast goes deep on this issue. His podcast is here: http://jordanbpeterson.com/2016/12/podcast/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...
Full book: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341