Evolution does not favor selfishness

[Moonbeam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23529849

This study throws a different light on typical selfishness thinking. Did you always know it is true? Does it change anything about what you feel?

 

[OinkBoink]

Didn't read the article in a peruse manner, but I think the notion that altruism can arise out of selfishness is widely accepted. (?) The "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" principle.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Didn't read the article in a peruse manner, but I think the notion that altruism can arise out of selfishness is widely accepted. (?) The "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" principle.

That's not altruism as I understand it. You are describing a quid pro quo. My concept is that a decision is made that another needs help and so you do it simply because it seems right with no expection of return. "When giving do not let your left hand know what the right is doing" pretty eliminates that.

 

[Anarchist420]

That's not altruism as I understand it.

That's what I was thinking too because Ayn Rand said something like that if men want to be free then it is the morality of altruism that must be rejected.

 

[Craig234]

Ayn Rand was a disturbed, evil sociopath.

There's a reason she was fawning over a serial killer, praising his uncaring about victims.

 

[Anarchist420]

Ayn Rand was a disturbed, evil sociopath. There's a reason she was fawning over a serial killer, praising his uncaring about victims.

Selfishness is not the ultimate virtue, the non-aggression principle is as close to the ultimate virtue as we've got.

That said, she probably turned quite a few people away from libertarianism by doing stuff like you mentioned.

 

[Craig234]

Selfishness is not the ultimate virtue, the non-aggression principle is as close to the ultimate virtue as we've got.

That said, she probably turned quite a few people away from libertarianism by doing stuff like you mentioned.

Very fair of you to acknowledge her flaw on that, but I'd say it had little effect sadly.

Those who would be turned off by that were likely already turned off to libertarianism's rationalizations for callousness to human needs.

And those who were attracted to that system could turn a blind eye to her flaws.

I'm not sure anyone changed their position to oppose Libertarianism over her flaws.

Nor should they, really. If a proponent for a good set of principles is a bit of a monster, then that doesn't really invalidate the principles.

Communism's flaws aren't bad because Karl Marx neglected his family terribly.

Fascim isn't a bad system because of personal flaws of Mussolini or Hitler or Franco. It's because of flaws in the system.

It's more simply to not hold Rand up as someone really to admire and listen to personally as far as that goes and to recognize some connection between her flaws and the system, just as Nazism was in no small part connected with some of Hitler's personal flaws, Libertarianism is to too much of an extent a rationalization for sociopathic polices.

Which suits sociopathic interests like the ultra-wealthy's selfish interests and corporate power just fine.

At the end of the day, Libertarianism is highly anti- American to the extent that Americanism involves a sense of common societal interests and obligations and democratic principles, the artifical equality of 'one man one vote' to counter the concentrating effects of wealth disparities resulting in a few having all the power, to the extent that Americanism follows principles such as the saying you can judge a society by how it cares for the least in it.

America was founded as opposition to excessive privilige of wealth and power, an elite class of few who took from the many for their own benefit.

Here's the basic flaw of Libertarniasm as it relates to Americanism IMO:

The problems with a few telling the many, 'you're going to give excessive of amounts to us for us to use for our benefit, and you have no say', are countered by the idea of saying 'no, the many each are entitles to one equal vote to everyone else, and the policies of the society - what wealth is taken for whom - requires the consent of the people, poor or rich'.

In the case of the United States, wealth and power were combined in the government of England. Those with the money also had the political power. One and the same.

The United Stated made a different kind of government - one intended to be selected by the people and to serve the people more than the one made of the wealthy.

The flaw in Libertarniasm on this is to pretend that the elected government of the United States is just as bad for the people as the one of England - while it ignores the power of wealth. So Libertarniasm generally seeks to recreate the abuse of the concentrated power of few England had, with blind support for the wealthy, while making the elected government intended to serve and prtect the people into something that's evil and the threat to the people, crippling the power of the power to elect a government that can protect it from the wealthy class.

In other words, Libertarianism would recreate the tyranny American was created to prevent.

Now, Libertarianism says lots of things to try to claim they disagree with the above and claim no, it's great for the poor person, it gives them lots of rights to get rich, and the law will give them all kinds of protections to sue the powerful who violate their rights, but it's a lot of nonsense and would merely enable plutocracy and tyranny if allowed.

Libertarniam twists American principles, twists nuggets of truth, into lies by exaggeration and misapplying. The healthy concerns about excessive governmental powers that America was founded on are twisted into hyper-opposition to the government's powers to protect the people from the contentrated wealth and power of the few - who resemble the old English rulers.

Libertarianism is filled with creating a system that would harm most people and blame them for it.

America and Democracy too often fall short on these things - wealth corrupting our elections and government, corporations being legally turned into people allowed to misuse their massive wealth to defeat the will of the people, for example - but at least they're flaws, not the core principles as with Libertarianism.

There's a reason why figures like the Kochs, who are all in favor of plutocracy, are so drawn to Libertarianism - duping poor saps into following it with promises of freedom.

Save234

 

[nehalem256]

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.

Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of "the prisoner's dilemma", a scenario of game theory - the study of strategic decision-making.

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that being able to cooperate with others is beneficial.

Cooperation though is often an act of selfishness not altruism.

 

[woolfe9998]

That's not altruism as I understand it. You are describing a quid pro quo. My concept is that a decision is made that another needs help and so you do it simply because it seems right with no expection of return. "When giving do not let your left hand know what the right is doing" pretty eliminates that.

Right, in evolutionary terms there is no "quid pro quo." If we're talking about "altruism" in that sense, it's actually instinctive to compromise one's own survival in order to ensure group survival. This instinct has an obvious reproductive and therefore adaptive advantage for species. Your description of it is more or less the socialized version.

 

[Agent11]

well, in a modern setting it does.

Living off of social assistance fathering 20+ children to various women without providing any support to any of them?

Great job as far as evolution is concerned. If half those children are male and follow in daddies footsteps those genes will spread well.

 

[Moonbeam]

The notion of Social Darwinism, I think repudiated by this study, has been relied on often extensively in Right Wing thinking, it seems to me. Sadly, new information seldom undoes political beliefs that have taken root and become a part of culture and that are motivated by unconscious needs to avoid unwelcome feelings. No racial bigot, for example, likes to admit to evidence that shows the similarity of all people. Anybody growing up in a bigot culture that shows racial tolerance will be profoundly humiliated or even expelled. No child can deal with that without succumbing to becoming a bigot himself, just to survive.

 

[Caravaggio]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23529849

This study throws a different light on typical selfishness thinking. Did you always know it is true? Does it change anything about what you feel?

I followed the link with interest but there was little new there. In fact, the BBC science department has been making programmes about the distinction between, co-operation, reciprocity, reciprocal altruism and delayed reciprocal altruism in humans and animals since Richard Dawkins published the second edition of his book "the Selfish Gene" in 1979. There have also been excellent hour-long documentaries on the Prisoners' Dilemma game, such as Horizon's "Nice Guys Finish First".

Selfish narcissistic psychopaths do exist, but they have few friends. (They probably don't want any). But for every selfish person there are many more nice kind people who like to help others. Some of these nice folks act generously because they like to be acknowledged as "good" ; they might also hope that others will reciprocate the kindness shown. This is a useful social lubricant, but as Hyabusa has said to Oink, this is not true altruism.
Real altruism has two main grades, low cost (such as blood donation) and high cost (eg kidney donation to an unknown recipient). That last is the real deal as there is no family involvement or cross benefit genetically.

Gerald Wilkinson studied female vampire bats in South America. They live in female harems guarded by a dominant male. They survive by sucking blood from mammals at night. Lucky hunters were seen to share their blood meal with unsuccessful roost mates (other females). They favoured kin but would also give "blood donations" to 'friends'.

Humans give to relatives and fiends but also charities who favour third world recipients the givers will never see. We get a buzz by doing good.

The nearest we get to the selfish narcissist mode is in crowded public transport in venues we shall never revisit. Here all possibility of reciprocity is lost and anxiety makes us look to our own needs. We avoid eye-contact and try to assume the mask of the self-sufficient tough guy.

But we spend a lot of our social and work time in groups of familiar figures so there we need to express an entirely different aspect of personality.

In short, we move between modes of sociability.

 

[fskimospy]

That's not altruism as I understand it. You are describing a quid pro quo. My concept is that a decision is made that another needs help and so you do it simply because it seems right with no expection of return. "When giving do not let your left hand know what the right is doing" pretty eliminates that.

That's not really quid pro quo. Quid pro quo is a deal where I give you A and you give me B. In these cases there may be an expectation that if you help someone you will be helped when you need it, but it's not a requirement.

That all being said, there are plenty of examples of altruism in the animal kingdom. The advantages of cooperation in most cases are pretty obvious.

 

[Caravaggio]

Great stuff, a wonderful broad sweep. Would you accept that the ideas you most admire come from the Englishman Thomas Paine ("Rights of Man") rather than the American, George Washington?

 

[Anarchist420]

Great stuff, a wonderful broad sweep. Would you accept that the ideas you most admire come from the Englishman Thomas Paine ("Rights of Man") rather than the American, George Washington?

I meant to mention to him that roughly half the founders (including Washington) actually wanted to replicate the british system of monopoly privilege and aristocracy over here... I meant to do so because he doesn't see that Jefferson was pro-market, and Paine, as you say, was the only one of the Founders who really shared Craig's redistributionist views. You had the pro-market Jefferson on one hand and the economic fascist Hamilton on the other... none of the Founders advocated paper money for the purpose of helping the poor (hamilton advocated for it on behalf of the wealthy, Jefferson advocated against it on behalf of the market).

Jefferson was the first President who favored no govt intervention in monetary policy.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Ayn Rand was a disturbed, evil sociopath.

Now there's some highly-constructive, insightful analysis.

As for the story, my reading suggests that its conclusions are being rather overstated here.

 

[woolfe9998]

Now there's some highly-constructive, insightful analysis.

As for the story, my reading suggests that its conclusions are being rather overstated here.

There are many reasons to conclude that Ayn Rand was not a good or decent human being. Try this for one:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html

 

[Craig234]

Great stuff, a wonderful broad sweep. Would you accept that the ideas you most admire come from the Englishman Thomas Paine ("Rights of Man") rather than the American, George Washington?

First, thank you. To your question - I'd have to say while I don't agree with Paine on everything, yes, I agree more with him than with Washington.

 

[Craig234]

I meant to mention to him that roughly half the founders (including Washington) actually wanted to replicate the british system of monopoly privilege and aristocracy over here... I meant to do so because he doesn't see that Jefferson was pro-market, and Paine, as you say, was the only one of the Founders who really shared Craig's redistributionist views. You had the pro-market Jefferson on one hand and the economic fascist Hamilton on the other... none of the Founders advocated paper money for the purpose of helping the poor (hamilton advocated for it on behalf of the wealthy, Jefferson advocated against it on behalf of the market).

Jefferson was the first President who favored no govt intervention in monetary policy.

You do seem to confuse one point. 'Redistributionist' is used as a scary 'bad word' to attack.

But that's mere propaganda. Other policies that redistribute are prasied with nice language.

It's not about redistribution - it's about the balance of wealth you want for humanity. Some policies redistribute to the top, some more evenly.

That's why most arguments against less inequality use scary straw man extremes.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

There are many reasons to conclude that Ayn Rand was not a good or decent human being.

I'm aware of them. They really have little to do with the merits of her philosophy. There are many legitimate criticisms of objectivism, but slurs against its creator are not among them -- especially when they come from someone who consistently demonstrates a lack of understanding of that which he is trashing.

P.S. Libertarianism and objectivism are not the same thing, and them being lumped together is usually an indicator that the one making such comments is not particularly well-informed about either. In Craig's case, it's one of many such indicators.

 

[Caravaggio]

There are many legitimate criticisms of objectivism, but slurs against its creator are not among them.

I cannot see how one can distance a philosophy from its author. We are told that 'ad hominem' attacks are philosophically wanting but they are the obvious place to start. For example, I was once a fan of Bertrand Russell until I read that he threatened to kill himself if his wife would not consent to a divorce. That fact rather pulled the rug from under this great ethicist.

Ayn Rand was just a fairly bright Russian girl who was reduced to poverty and hunger by the Russian revolution. Scared by the loss of her comfortable lifestyle she rebelled against the reality of her insignificance and enforced passivity by re-creating herself as the product of 'the triumph of her own will'.

Ego psychology would call this a blatant compensatory strategy for a wounded personality. She ditched religion and became her own God.

Her writing is bizarre and grossly inconsistent. While ranting against Fascism and Communism her love of power without conscience is by definition Fascistic. The links that others have offered here are damning. Her Wiki page shows her as a workaholic with a limited range of pet topics who was a Benzedrine addict with a 30 year habit. She expected her husband to accept her open affair with her lover but, rather inconsistently, went into an epic hissy fit when her lover dumped her.
Knowing all this tarnishes her writing as well as her reputation, IMO. She was very authoritarian in dealings with her fans, for whom she had open contempt.

She is one of the most over-rated writers I have ever come across. Have you tried to read 'Atlas' or 'Fountainhead'? Over-written drivel, as the Wiki reviewers say.

(Re your exchange about Rand, with Woolfe and Craig)

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I cannot see how one can distance a philosophy from its author. We are told that 'ad hominem' attacks are philosophically wanting but they are the obvious place to start. For example, I was once a fan of Bertrand Russell until I read that he threatened to kill himself if his wife would not consent to a divorce. That fact rather pulled the rug from under this great ethicist.

There's a difference between being a "fan" of an individual and a rational assessment of his or her philosophy. I'm talking about the latter here, not the former.

Eccentric and downright mentally ill people have been the originators of much creativity over the centuries. Many of them have done truly awful things, but we don't discount their achievements or denigrate their value on that basis.

Remember the context here was someone saying something about Rand's views on altruism, and getting back a puerile comment that she was an "evil sociopath". That is a pure ad hominem argument.

Her writing is bizarre and grossly inconsistent.

It's also engaging and thought-provoking. There's a reason AS is one of the most widely-read books in human history.

While ranting against Fascism and Communism her love of power without conscience is by definition Fascistic. The links that others have offered here are damning.

In a bit of irony, your description of her writing as "fascistic" is so severely undercutting the credibility of your argument that I'm having trouble taking your comments seriously. You're exaggerating whatever point you're trying to make, you don't understand what fascism is, you've never really read Rand's work, or some combination of the three.

Her Wiki page shows her as a workaholic with a limited range of pet topics who was a Benzedrine addict with a 30 year habit. She expected her husband to accept her open affair with her lover but, rather inconsistently, went into an epic hissy fit when her lover dumped her.
Knowing all this tarnishes her writing as well as her reputation, IMO. She was very authoritarian in dealings with her fans, for whom she had open contempt.

Yes -- she is often criticized for not being able to live up to the standards that she espoused. And that criticism is fair, but it doesn't change the validity of her political philosophy except in terms of an assessment of its practicality. I agree that her inability to live in a manner consistent with her goals says something about how possible it would be to set up a society in the manner she describes. But it says no more about the moral and ethical basis for her philosophy than a doctor being unable to stop smoking says about his advice to others that they should stop smoking.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

As for the actual story here, the underlying article is highly technical but appears to be discussing one specific aspect of game theory. I think it's completely invalid to take that and generalize it into broad statements about the overall value of selfishness or cooperation.

Any reasonable look at the behavior of animals will show that most of their actions are selfishly motivated, and what cooperation exists is only there as a means to an end, and thus is also arguably selfish in design. To the extent that animals behave in an altruistic manner at all, it is due to programming for propagation, which can be seen as seflish from a genetic perspective.

The concept of altruism is strictly a human social construct. And even there, my personal view is that nobody really does anything purely for someone else -- they do it to fill a need or desire of their own, at some level.

 

[fskimospy]

As for the actual story here, the underlying article is highly technical but appears to be discussing one specific aspect of game theory. I think it's completely invalid to take that and generalize it into broad statements about the overall value of selfishness or cooperation.

Any reasonable look at the behavior of animals will show that most of their actions are selfishly motivated, and what cooperation exists is only there as a means to an end, and thus is also arguably selfish in design. To the extent that animals behave in an altruistic manner at all, it is due to programming for propagation, which can be seen as seflish from a genetic perspective.

The concept of altruism is strictly a human social construct. And even there, my personal view is that nobody really does anything purely for someone else -- they do it to fill a need or desire of their own, at some level.

I think you're stretching the definition quite a bit there. If a mother dies to save her babies it means destroying herself for the benefit of others. While that might be good for the species, that's certainly bad for her. I would define altruism as giving to others without expectation of return, and you certainly can't expect a return if you're dead.

As for the prisoner's dilemma, the main reason why it might not apply here is that there is an indefinite time horizon. In the prisoner's dilemma a purely rational actor will always betray the other actor so long as there are are a fixed number of 'games' to play due to backwards induction. The only time this doesn't hold true is if you don't know how many games there are to play, which seems to be the case here. (that, and people/animals aren't purely rational)

 

[sm625]

Evolution might not favor selfishness, but Madison Avenue does. And the richest people who own everything want the masses to be selfish. So selfish is what the masses will be.