fuckin server goes down every time I go to reply!!
Altruism is a product of the selfish gene when exhibited by wild animals and humans with their wild instincts intact (getting rare). But not every creature has the gene (or genes) for altruism. It is a strategy in game theory - whether to be altruistic or exploitative. Some creatures, both as a species or within a species do not have the gene for altruism and they are in the perfect postition to behave exploitatively. In humans such people are psychopathic.
a gene for altruism? Personally I don't believe in that any more than a gene for religion or a gene for hating black people, or a gene for fighting valiantly for one's own nation.
I don't know if you have any evidence that some people are innately incapable of altruism, or innately disposed to it, in other words, that if two such opposite people were raised in the other's environment (maybe one loved and educated and taught to express themselves, the other beaten and molested and uneducated locked up in a room with nothing to entertain themselves with but plucking the wings off flies) they would actually grow up to express the same conduct, as if their social environment wasn't from whence they learned how to behave---what traits which they're capable of to actual use as if to their survival advantage.
if the other person is their offspring, there is no need for reciprocity since it is reward enough that they carry the parent's genes and should hopefully keep the lineage going.
evolutionarily speaking. but a parent does these (extremely scare quoted) "selfless things" for their child (the child they selfishly wanted for themselves in the fuckin first place) because they essentially need to. Hell I'll "selflessly" invest more money in an investment hoping for it not to go under, since I've invested so much that a little more sacrifice is worth it, because I don't want to feel the great loss to myself---my selfish interest motivating the behavior---if I do lose. There's nothing selfless about that, any more than you'd call me selfless for buying hot girls alcoholic drinks, it's just something I might need to spend money on to get what I want.
I take the point about a suicide bomber who believes he will gain virgins in a future life. But I am sure there are brave people who absolutely do not believe in any afterlife but would attack an enemy in the knowledge of certain death, to save other people they care about. I hope I am one of them.
I agree, but that is why I employ a different concept to "reproductive success" for the considerations of our behavior. I dont think if I went to war I would be singing "Don't care if I die, I die for the crowds" (Thronar - Grimnor Valora, great song), I'd be saying 'I'm fighting, I'm hoping not to die, I'm working this soldier job because I need money to survive, I am good at this, I enjoy this more than being a manwhore or butler, and if I don't, I might not be able to enjoy all the luxuries of the society my economic success affords me'. If I became a cop it would be not because I'm puting myself aside for the good of others, but because I can do what's good for me, both in having a safe society, being able to protect myself, having colleagues and friends I could trust, and economically of course. You could praise me as a soldier or cop for leading a selfless life, for risking my own reproduction toward the benefit of others, but I can tell you as an individual those are not the motives I am aware of. What you say may be true of you, but it would be a lie if I claimed to be doing such things selflessly, and I doubt I'm missing a gene which would have me do it biologically rather than cognitively, and I do doubt that if you do such things and deny self-beneficial motives, or put it in the context of "I must be doing it because my body wants me to" it is because you have some gene which is more active in you than it is in me, that causal rather than motive explanation just doesn't fly with me.
In many species a mother will take on impossible odds to defend her offspring and this should be common in humans also.
indeed, and if I had invested my life, if all I cared about was my artwork, I might risk my life to protect it from being destroyed, some 'gene' which has me risk my own survival/reproduction doesn't account for this, and that is why I see it as a poor model.
