From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Mar 24 2005 - 21:51:10 MST
Keith wrote
that someone wrote (Keith fails to mention who, and I don't want
to go back and re-read to see who it was)
> >Altruism between unrelated people is simply
> >another evolved response. There is no need to claim that kin selection
> >is the "real" altruism, and unconditional altruism is somehow lesser.
> >They are both merely features. Why do you feel that altruism must be
> >defined in a kinship-selective manner?
>
> Well, how do you account for the evolution of traits where one animal does
> something for the benefit of another? Consider bees rather than humans to
> work it out. That's how Hamilton first understood the origin of altruism.
We do have the examples of people choosing instant
impending death or torture, just in order to benefit
others. We can't---thankfully most people here agree
---torture the language by calling this anything but
*altruism*.
But memes affect people strongly (duh), and can take
over to the point that people do lots of things that
are "unnatural". Yet we have evolved just this ability
to be controlled by memes, and many people here have
testified that they'd die for rather abstract reasons.
What about this?
Lee
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