4 ms·

> It's like if sperm/eggs went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a human briefly for reproductive purposes. That's very

by wahern 3y ago

> It's like if sperm/eggs went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a human briefly for reproductive purposes. That's very close to the thesis of Richard Dawkins' seminal book, the Selfish Gene--we're just machines constructed by genes to replicate them. It's literally true, of course, but we don't often take that perspective; yet many things in biology aren't intuitive unless and until we do.[1] [1] OTOH, some things in biology become inexplicable when we do take that perspective, such as non-kin altruism. IIRC, Dawkins admits as much in the book. (Contra some subsequent sociopolitical interpretations, Dawkins never used his "selfish gene" model to refute the possibility of non-kin altruism, just that the model in isolation was insufficient to explain non-kin altruism, the existence of which he seemed to take for granted, at least in humans.)

skolskoly 3y ago
>seminal book Don't think that we don't see this.
- andrewljohnson 3y ago
  Reminds me of a Tweet circa 2021 where someone asked if they should stop using the word seminal because it might micro-harm people.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    Pie’s Law still holds strong
  - Enginerrrd 3y ago
    I've seen people sensor themself on the word "retarded" in a physics context. Which.... Is absurd.
    - alexsereno 3y ago
      Yea there was a lot of that going around
    - taneq 3y ago
      Sensor themeselves? I’m incensed. :P
    - j4yav 3y ago
      A company I was at renamed master to main to avoid implications of human slavery when committing to source control.
      - chiefalchemist 3y ago
        I've experienced similar. Sure, words matter. But so does context, at least it should. And yet I bet those you make the suggestion still say "master bedroom" (which actual is a direct reference to slavery).
        b4ke 3y ago
        American home ownership is so loaded with plantation era subtle subjugation in the form of linguistic convention. If master bedroom were the worst it would get attention. I switched to originating new repos as main instead of master personally, reinforcing the concept of “commuting to” or code “being committed” to “master”, seems diametrically opposed to progress.
        sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
        [dead]
        renewiltord 3y ago
        In San Francisco, when I was looking for a new place to rent in 2022, the realtor would use the phrase "primary bedroom" instead, remarking that apparently people in the field are moving away here from "master" because of the connotation. Personally, my favourite is this Github repo https://github.com/queer/boxxy https://github.com/queer/boxxy The primary branch is called "mistress". haha, that's good
      - KronisLV 3y ago
        On the flip side, there are also cases where some changes to the language make things more obvious and simple. As a non-native English speaker, allowlist/denylist make more sense to me than whitelist/blacklist, since allow/deny describe the purpose well, as opposed to white/black. As for having a "main" branch or other things like that, I don't really mind the change much. Admittedly, both the claims about implications surrounding slavery and counter-arguments regarding names like having a "master record" seem overblown to me (on one side, why care about some obscure software term instead of trying to effect actual change? on the other, why push back against a trivial change so much, it's not like using a different term is so hard if it pleases a lot of people?), although perhaps due to me not having the heritage of the people in the US, so I just quiet down and do the sensible thing.
mewpmewp2 3y ago
Isn't non kin altruism just prisoners dilemma part of the evolution? E.g. groups that work together will survive and genes of these groups will get passed on. So the desire is to help any friendly individuals, but it also works globally because this hasn't really even been part of evolution to be so globalized.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Not exactly, but also yes. There is a game being played where there are local optimums of a ratio of cooperating/betraying and evolutionary pressure against the “wrong” ratios. There is also the problem of it being difficult or too resource intensive to have perfect knowledge of what other individuals actually share your genes and by how much and some group altruism is explained by evolution taking shortcuts that work well enough. The point of the book is that the mechanism explaining such things shouldn’t stop at “because it’s good for the group” instead digging down into why what’s good for the genes must explain the higher order behavior.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
non-kin altruism could just be a mistake. A behaviour intended to be applied to ones own species, but ends up applied to others because of the detectors used to identify another agent not being scrutinous enough. Just because you get diabetes doesnt mean its the intended behaviour of evolution. Could be a spandrel, or an artifact, or aliasing, or a plain mistake.

by wahern 3y ago

skolskoly 3y ago

>seminal book Don't think that we don't see this.

andrewljohnson 3y ago
Reminds me of a Tweet circa 2021 where someone asked if they should stop using the word seminal because it might micro-harm people.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Pie’s Law still holds strong
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  I've seen people sensor themself on the word "retarded" in a physics context. Which.... Is absurd.
  - alexsereno 3y ago
    Yea there was a lot of that going around
  - taneq 3y ago
    Sensor themeselves? I’m incensed. :P
  - j4yav 3y ago
    A company I was at renamed master to main to avoid implications of human slavery when committing to source control.
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      I've experienced similar. Sure, words matter. But so does context, at least it should. And yet I bet those you make the suggestion still say "master bedroom" (which actual is a direct reference to slavery).
      - b4ke 3y ago
        American home ownership is so loaded with plantation era subtle subjugation in the form of linguistic convention. If master bedroom were the worst it would get attention. I switched to originating new repos as main instead of master personally, reinforcing the concept of “commuting to” or code “being committed” to “master”, seems diametrically opposed to progress.
      - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
        [dead]
      - renewiltord 3y ago
        In San Francisco, when I was looking for a new place to rent in 2022, the realtor would use the phrase "primary bedroom" instead, remarking that apparently people in the field are moving away here from "master" because of the connotation. Personally, my favourite is this Github repo https://github.com/queer/boxxy https://github.com/queer/boxxy The primary branch is called "mistress". haha, that's good
    - KronisLV 3y ago
      On the flip side, there are also cases where some changes to the language make things more obvious and simple. As a non-native English speaker, allowlist/denylist make more sense to me than whitelist/blacklist, since allow/deny describe the purpose well, as opposed to white/black. As for having a "main" branch or other things like that, I don't really mind the change much. Admittedly, both the claims about implications surrounding slavery and counter-arguments regarding names like having a "master record" seem overblown to me (on one side, why care about some obscure software term instead of trying to effect actual change? on the other, why push back against a trivial change so much, it's not like using a different term is so hard if it pleases a lot of people?), although perhaps due to me not having the heritage of the people in the US, so I just quiet down and do the sensible thing.

mewpmewp2 3y ago

Isn't non kin altruism just prisoners dilemma part of the evolution? E.g. groups that work together will survive and genes of these groups will get passed on. So the desire is to help any friendly individuals, but it also works globally because this hasn't really even been part of evolution to be so globalized.

colechristensen 3y ago
Not exactly, but also yes. There is a game being played where there are local optimums of a ratio of cooperating/betraying and evolutionary pressure against the “wrong” ratios. There is also the problem of it being difficult or too resource intensive to have perfect knowledge of what other individuals actually share your genes and by how much and some group altruism is explained by evolution taking shortcuts that work well enough. The point of the book is that the mechanism explaining such things shouldn’t stop at “because it’s good for the group” instead digging down into why what’s good for the genes must explain the higher order behavior.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

non-kin altruism could just be a mistake. A behaviour intended to be applied to ones own species, but ends up applied to others because of the detectors used to identify another agent not being scrutinous enough. Just because you get diabetes doesnt mean its the intended behaviour of evolution. Could be a spandrel, or an artifact, or aliasing, or a plain mistake.