From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 18:59:36 MDT
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >
> > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> >
> > > Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> > >
> > >>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.
> > >>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. The tradgedy 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.
> > >
> > > ERROR 514: group selection hypothesized
> >
> > Error 999 : Assertion of error without proof.
>
> "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."
>
> This implies that evolution is taking place under a criterion
> in which the
> "niceness" of the resulting society is the metric of fitness,
> rather than
> the reproductive success of the individual. That's group
> selection. For
> further analysis see Lee Corbin's prior post.
Well, what did I mean by the sloppy term "nicer"? I meant a more
predictable, less cutthroat, more supportive - ie: easier to reproduce
successfully in. A tactic of encouraging this, and severely discouraging
"defectors", essentially reducing their reproductive abilities, can be
strong in total.
Also, we are not necessarily talking about the evolution of phenotypes; this
is a memetic evolution. This strategy, or meme complex, doesn't have to
result in the physical reproduction of the user, it just needs to result in
the memes being passed on. Evolution of societies can definitely be looked
at in this way, IMO; evolution of memetic clusters in the environment of a
group of people, fairly independently of the effects on reproductive fitness
of the individual people.
I think this focus on individual reproductive fitness is a red herring. When
you look at evolution of behaviours in humans today, reproduction has little
to do with it. The vast majority of behaviours are learnt, not genetically
inherited, and so the learning and adoption of ideas by individuals within a
social context is far more important than who is popping out bubbas.
I think that the fitness function of social behaviours in this context is
not whether the adoptor reproduces, but whether the adoptor passes on the
behaviours. That implies that the behaviours need either to benefit the
adoptor, or else be somehow tied in with strong memes which make the user
think that the behaviours are worth passing on. The ways people choose to
evaluate their beliefs and behaviours can be extraordinarily varied.
In summation, do you really think we should be trying to examine social
behaviours of humans based on their effect on reproductive fitness???
Emlyn
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