From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 02:30:52 MDT
Emlyn writes
> I think there's a damned good reason that many societies have evolved to
> favour irrational altruism... it makes the society a nicer place to be.
Our altruism evidently evolved (like everything else) because of
the greater reproductive fitness that it often bestowed. Ridley's
"The Origin of Virtue" I found to describe this in a persuasive
way. "The Mating Mind", by Geoffrey Miller went further and
made a good case that sexual selection lies at the basis of our
altruism. Women select men who they think are genuinely kind,
so that their children will benefit from the kindness later on,
(when selfishly it might not be to the man's advantage to stick
around). Then there is pressure on men to feign kindness, and
then improved detection among women, etc., leading to an arms
race. So that's how genuine altruism got into our genes, yet
also explains why it's not universal or dominant in all of us.
Anyhow, I don't see how society being "a nicer place" would
evolve just because it was nicer.
> Sure, you can then take advantage by not being altruistic, by ignoring the
> polite conventions, etc, but that is kept to a minimum by the greater mass
> of the population being willing to kick your butt in many different ways to
> discourage that behaviour. [Yes] The tragedy of the commons can be addressed by
> not abusing the commons in the first place, and cooperating in strategies
> with other likeminded individuals to encourage others to not abuse them, and
> to punish those who do.
I think that this is what ends up going through people's minds
who live in peaceful societies, like ours.
> I realise many people here think that such a society would be a bummer of a
> place to live, but there are worse things. For instance, you could live in a
> hard edged dog-eat-dog culture where there is no spirit to the laws, only
> the letter; litigious, tribal, and brutal. Whoops, some of you do live there.
> Apologies.
Where do you have in mind? Modern societies keep becoming less and
less tribal, and, if anything less dog-eat-dog. Genteel people like
people I personally know would have had a very tough time living in
ancient Rome or Greece, I think. In fact, any time before 1600 might
be pretty challenging to all but our street hoodlums, at least in the
West. Yeah, but I guess you are right about the litigiousness; I
still have not internalized how lawyers are really able to think
of it all as a game.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:36 MST