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>> “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspr

>> “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Something like taking resources from your offspring to give to someone else would be more in line with the definition of selfless (e.g. taking food from your own malnourished child to give to another child).

baddox 9y ago
> I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Why? Because it leads to more descendants? In that case, the premise is a tautology.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  The "individual" in evolutionary game theory is generally considered the gene, not the human. A lot of facts of life - like raising offspring at all, or death - make zero sense if you consider the actor to be a person, but make a lot of sense if you consider the actor to be a gene.
  - ChrisSD 9y ago
    I would agree with that but it doesn't appear to be what Kümmerli is saying: > “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly,” Rolf Kümmerli, co-author of the study, told PhysOrg.com. “However, we observe cooperation in humans and other organisms, where cooperation is costly for the actor but benefits another individual. That is clearly referring to the human, no?
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      I think that's the "faulty premise" that TheSpiceOfLife is referring to. He's saying that building a study to explain cooperation between humans is modeling a phenomena that's a social construct anyway, when the real question is "what genes lead to behavior that ensures the survival and propagation of those genes?" Natural selection operates on the genetic level, not on the human level, so Kümmerli made an error by trying to inject natural selection arguments into a model where the primary actors are humans.
  - fizwhiz 9y ago
    > A lot of facts of life - like raising offspring at all, or death - make zero sense if you consider the actor to be a person, but make a lot of sense if you consider the actor to be a gene. Care to elaborate?
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      Raising offspring presents a huge cost to the parents, but every living organism does it because it's the only way to ensure that your genes will propagate on to the next generation after your death. Those that don't are washed out of the gene pool, and irrelevant after one lifespan. Similarly, death is obviously bad for an individual - it's the termination of your existence. However, it frees up resources for new individuals who may be better adapted to conditions of the time. Species where individuals rarely die may see the whole species die off at once as they get outcompeted by other species whose individuals are better adapted to the environment. (There's a societal analogue as well here: historically, societies that hold tight to tradition and preserve the internal firms & institutions within them end up being conquered, en masse, by more competitive societies where the individual firms within them either adapt or die.)
  - baddox 9y ago
    I'm aware of the gene-centered view of evolution, but I think that interpretation of the sentence in question is quite a stretch. If that was the intended meaning, then I apologize.
nostromo 9y ago
Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene is the most fitting way of framing this conundrum. Spending time and energy raising one's children isn't selfish of the parent as an individual. But it's selfish from the view of their genes.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Yeah, but if the definition of "selfish" is so broad that it includes basically all of human behavior, it's not useful anymore.
jerf 9y ago
If you want to think clearly about these issues, you need to be very careful to define "altruistic" and "selfishness" for yourself properly. It seems to be a common temptation to assume as you implicitly do that an altruistic or selfishness-free act must net harm at all time scales the person so acting, but if you try to map that definition back to the real world, you find that it doesn't isn't as useful a model as you'd like for the behaviors you care about. I have phrased that very carefully; it is not as if it is an objectively wrong definition, because it's pretty hard for such a thing to exist. It's just that it's not exactly what we're trying to figure out here.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
> I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Cooperation is selfish. I think this strengthens my point about how the dominant worldview colours our thoughts. It could be argued that even a sports game, the epitome of competition, requires magnitudes of order more cooperation in order for it come about that the game can be played. But then it could be argued that it is the selfish desire of the individual to want to play that drives the cooperation to compete. This reminds me how all(?) Wikipedia articles can lead to philosophy.

baddox 9y ago

> I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Why? Because it leads to more descendants? In that case, the premise is a tautology.

nostrademons 9y ago
The "individual" in evolutionary game theory is generally considered the gene, not the human. A lot of facts of life - like raising offspring at all, or death - make zero sense if you consider the actor to be a person, but make a lot of sense if you consider the actor to be a gene.
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  I would agree with that but it doesn't appear to be what Kümmerli is saying: > “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly,” Rolf Kümmerli, co-author of the study, told PhysOrg.com. “However, we observe cooperation in humans and other organisms, where cooperation is costly for the actor but benefits another individual. That is clearly referring to the human, no?
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    I think that's the "faulty premise" that TheSpiceOfLife is referring to. He's saying that building a study to explain cooperation between humans is modeling a phenomena that's a social construct anyway, when the real question is "what genes lead to behavior that ensures the survival and propagation of those genes?" Natural selection operates on the genetic level, not on the human level, so Kümmerli made an error by trying to inject natural selection arguments into a model where the primary actors are humans.
- fizwhiz 9y ago
  > A lot of facts of life - like raising offspring at all, or death - make zero sense if you consider the actor to be a person, but make a lot of sense if you consider the actor to be a gene. Care to elaborate?
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    Raising offspring presents a huge cost to the parents, but every living organism does it because it's the only way to ensure that your genes will propagate on to the next generation after your death. Those that don't are washed out of the gene pool, and irrelevant after one lifespan. Similarly, death is obviously bad for an individual - it's the termination of your existence. However, it frees up resources for new individuals who may be better adapted to conditions of the time. Species where individuals rarely die may see the whole species die off at once as they get outcompeted by other species whose individuals are better adapted to the environment. (There's a societal analogue as well here: historically, societies that hold tight to tradition and preserve the internal firms & institutions within them end up being conquered, en masse, by more competitive societies where the individual firms within them either adapt or die.)
- baddox 9y ago
  I'm aware of the gene-centered view of evolution, but I think that interpretation of the sentence in question is quite a stretch. If that was the intended meaning, then I apologize.

nostromo 9y ago

Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene is the most fitting way of framing this conundrum. Spending time and energy raising one's children isn't selfish of the parent as an individual. But it's selfish from the view of their genes.

majewsky 9y ago
Yeah, but if the definition of "selfish" is so broad that it includes basically all of human behavior, it's not useful anymore.

jerf 9y ago

If you want to think clearly about these issues, you need to be very careful to define "altruistic" and "selfishness" for yourself properly. It seems to be a common temptation to assume as you implicitly do that an altruistic or selfishness-free act must net harm at all time scales the person so acting, but if you try to map that definition back to the real world, you find that it doesn't isn't as useful a model as you'd like for the behaviors you care about. I have phrased that very carefully; it is not as if it is an objectively wrong definition, because it's pretty hard for such a thing to exist. It's just that it's not exactly what we're trying to figure out here.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

> I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Cooperation is selfish. I think this strengthens my point about how the dominant worldview colours our thoughts. It could be argued that even a sports game, the epitome of competition, requires magnitudes of order more cooperation in order for it come about that the game can be played. But then it could be argued that it is the selfish desire of the individual to want to play that drives the cooperation to compete. This reminds me how all(?) Wikipedia articles can lead to philosophy.