What's so great about Humanity, anyway?

[emotional leper]

The problem is, 'selfishness' is a gene-level thing that has effects at the individual level. Look at ants. For a long time, no one could understand why ants, upon aquiring a disease, or infection, or defect or damage, would survive? How did it benefit the ant?

The problem was, people were looking for reproduction advantage in the wrong place. If an ant that is a detriment to the colony removes itself, then the colony is improved ( or, at the least, not worsened.) Since the asexual workers and soldiers don't matter in terms of reproduction, what they do by not infecting or removing food from the colony is to give the reproducing members (queens and drones,) protection from disease, and increased food.

Just because selfishness of the Gene Level creates 'bad' behaviour in humans, does not mean that some other species will do the exact same. It's just likely.

And humanity will never change. The behaviours that are decried as selfish and bad are in existance because they get passed on. And despite how we change our society, our society is shaped by our genes. Look at all of human history and everytime something changes, it never disappears. Just changes form. The base instinct is still there.

[Zarathustra]

Humans won't ever change? I thought that was the whole point of evolution. Are you saying that Darwin's mechanisms worked up until the point when we were produced, and then shut off? Have you forgotten about genetic engineering? And there is freewill. We can become whatever we wish.

[emotional leper]

Humans won't ever change? I thought that was the whole point of evolution. Are you saying that Darwin's mechanisms worked up until the point when we were produced, and then shut off? Have you forgotten about genetic engineering? And there is freewill. We can become whatever we wish.

That's the point. Natural selection stops when intelligence comes into being. You no longer have to adapt to your environment. You can now adapt your environment to you.

Sexual selection inside the species still exists. That is, currently, in humans, the driving force.

And the attributes that make you most likely to be the winner of the sexual selection contest are the 'selfish' ones.

[Zarathustra]

Natural selection in no way stops when intelligence comes into being. What is it about intelligence which stops mutations from happening, and stops nature weeding from out the losers? Sure, we can adapt to our environments. But not indefinitely. And there are some circumstances where evolution apparently stops without intelligence being involved (bacteria, sharks, etc.).

But our own selfishness can become a selection factor. If humans become too selfish, they'll blow up each other or degrade the environment so much that most people will die. Selfishness for humans has a greater impact than any other species. Selfishness isn't an unlimited survival advantage. Again, survival depends upon your context. If the environmental context changes (including changes we make to it ourselves), then selfishness can certainly become a detriment which is "selected" for removal by the sheer fact that we might kill most of our species. The resulting population bottleneck would indeed present huge selection factors.

And just what, exactly, is it about selfishness that makes a woman want to have children with you? If you can explain that one, you're a much wiser man than I am. Selfish "bad boys" may be sexy, but we have birth control now. Humans choose their mates--their breeding partners--for entirely different criteria than what is sexy when they're 17. Women, especially, don't want selfish fathers who are more interested in hanging out with the guys playing poker than they are tossing a ball with their boy in the back yard.

Are you married? Have any kids? I mean no offense when I say you don't sound like you have much experience in this particular area. But I could be wrong.

[Loredoctor]

Humans won't ever change? I thought that was the whole point of evolution. Are you saying that Darwin's mechanisms worked up until the point when we were produced, and then shut off? Have you forgotten about genetic engineering? And there is freewill. We can become whatever we wish.

That's the point. Natural selection stops when intelligence comes into being. You no longer have to adapt to your environment. You can now adapt your environment to you.

Not true. Malik23's post answered this adequately.

[Avatar]

Well, it's certain that we can adapt our environment to suit ourselves, but that doesn't mean we don't adapt to our created environment too.

Afterall, the the environment is usually only changed by a few...

--A

[Zarathustra]

Av, I have great faith in humanity to survive all sorts of catastrophes. And yes, when you throw genetic engineering into the equation, we'll probably be able to adapt to just about anything. But if you're willing to admit that much change, then EL's original statement "humans will never change" is obviously false.

EL was saying that we don't need to change anymore because our incredible ability to change our environment. This is true up to a point. After all, we can take air and pressure with us to the Moon and back, surviving a trip through the void. Our mastery over our environment--especially on local scales--is indeed impressive.

But something like a comet hitting the earth, or a nuclear holocaust, will reduce our population to a survival bottleneck. If any survive, they'll have to work together. They won't be primitive tribes of ancient humans who have no knowledge of human potential. Unlike our ancient forefathers, they will know the power of human organization and cooperation. Sure, ancient hunters may have known how to work together to take down a mammoth. But that's nothing compared to working together to rebuild a world. Humans today will know about corporations, cities, governments, etc. Some might fall into barbarism. But most will recognize Jack Shepard's (Lost) truism: "Live together, die alone."

I'm not sure how this selfishness talk started in the first place. I haven't read through this entire thread. But it is certainly not the whole picture. There is also love in the world. Humans wouldn't be able to survive our incredibly long childhood--relative to other animals--without the help of a tribe or family. Mothers took care of children. Fathers took care of mothers. It is precisely because of our intelligence that our children are so vulnerable. During gestation and well into childhood, our bodies are "sacrificed" at the cost of our brains. So much energy goes into developing our brains, that it takes years for our bodies to catch up. Horses, for instance, plop out of the womb, hit the ground, and they're up and running in a few hours. Many animals are the same. But humans are extremely vulnerable for nearly a decade. If we were truly a selfish species, we'd never survive this gigantic "tumor" at the top of our flimsy necks.

Humans have been working together for a common good and for reproductive success for 100s of 1000s of years. Our ability to work together has been a much larger survival factor than our selfishness.

[Avatar]

Good post. Of course, selfishness (the need to survive) prompted that ability to work together.

--A

[Zarathustra]

A man's survival in no way depends upon the survival of a woman. A woman's survival in no way depends upon the survival of her baby. These aren't acts of selfishness. Selfishness would be saying, "Bitch, get your own mammoth ribeye. Damn."

[Prebe]

But the perpetuation of their genes do. Hence the term kin-selection. This it widely accepted as a genetic explanation of altruism. I think we discussed that in the "does altruism exist" thread?

Technically, saving two siblings would be the equivalent of saving yourself. Saving three would be better!

[emotional leper]

But the perpetuation of their genes do. Hence the term kin-selection. This it widely accepted as a genetic explanation of altruism. I think we discussed that in the "does altruism exist" thread?

Technically, saving two siblings would be the equivalent of saving yourself. Saving three would be better!

And giving that rib to the woman makes her more likely to let you do the horizontal conga with her, thus increasing the chances of spreading your genes to the next generation.

[Zarathustra]

But spreading your genes to the next generation in no way is selfish. That's the exact opposite of selfish. Why do I give a damn if my genes are carried into the future? I don't get anything personally from that after I'm dead. Caring about the continuation of something beyond yourself is by definition, caring about something beyond yourself. Even if by association you're loosely related to it.

Taking care of your kids is a burden and a sacrifice. Dead-beat dads who skip town are selfish. Dads who take care of their kids--not only taking on that financial load but also putting their time and their love into giving that kids all the skills he needs to survive--that benefits the kids a lot more than it benefits the dad. Sure, the dad might be able to take pride in his child, and have a vicarious sense of accomplishment in his child's accomplishments. But the benefits to the child vastly outweigh these meager returns. Otherwise, why would anyone ever abandon a child? If the benefits of having children were so great, why are there dead-beat dads in the first place? And how could we ever establish a distinction between a dead-beat dad and a dad who takes care of his kids if both are selfish bastards? Surely we can all agree that there's a difference, despite the warm fuzzy feelings the responsible dad receives from his own acts of selflessness.

EL, there are much easier ways to get laid than to risk your life killing an animal 50-100 times your own weight. Women actually like sex, believe it or not. You can't tell me that every man who provides for his wife is just trying to get laid.

[Prebe]

Genes are selfish Malik, making organisms do stuff that are not good for the individual but good for the dispersal of the genes. That's what I meant. That's why many animals take care of their young. Ant's probably don't feel a lot of love to mention an extreme example.

[Avatar]

But spreading your genes to the next generation in no way is selfish. That's the exact opposite of selfish. Why do I give a damn if my genes are carried into the future? I don't get anything personally from that after I'm dead. Caring about the continuation of something beyond yourself is by definition, caring about something beyond yourself. Even if by association you're loosely related to it.

Agree with Prebe...anyway...children can be seen as part of the immortality drive...the desire to leave part of yourself behind. Not because you care about the rest, but because you do not want to cease to exist.

(It's probably due to that genetic selfishness, but it's a psychological manifestation or something.)

--A

[Zarathustra]

Oh yeah, genes are selfish. I see what you mean.

Yes, people do have an "immortality drive," but I'm not sure they're thinking about this when they have sex. Nor do they think about it when they go to a parent-teacher conference. All the little sacrifices you make for your kids surely are not driven by your desire for them to take a bit of your DNA into the future. You do it because you love them.

[Avatar]

But you love them because your genes want to be perpetuated.

Of course they're not thinking about it during sex, or when hauling their children from burning houses. But its not always your mental and conscious motives that drive you.

--A

[Zarathustra]

Well, it sure feels like a mental and conscious decision when I tell him not to stick a fork in the wall socket.

I know what you mean. Our evolution has shaped us to love each other. Genes perpetuate themselves by shaping organisms into successful breeders.

But we're not robots following a program. We can actually disregard what our genes "want." Many people choose not to have children at all. How do you explain that if genes make us have and love kids? Clearly, we exercise a level of control beyond our genetic predispositions. And that control still exists even when we're going in the direction our genes might "want" us to go. Just because I choose to love my child doesn't mean I have no choice in the matter. I could be an ass if I wanted to. There's lots of people getting divorces these days.

[emotional leper]

Well, it sure feels like a mental and conscious decision when I tell him not to stick a fork in the wall socket.

I know what you mean. Our evolution has shaped us to love each other. Genes perpetuate themselves by shaping organisms into successful breeders.

But we're not robots following a program. We can actually disregard what our genes "want." Many people choose not to have children at all. How do you explain that if genes make us have and love kids? Clearly, we exercise a level of control beyond our genetic predispositions. And that control still exists even when we're going in the direction our genes might "want" us to go. Just because I choose to love my child doesn't mean I have no choice in the matter. I could be an ass if I wanted to. There's lots of people getting divorces these days.

The only reason you can disregard what your genes want is you have other genes which allow you to do that.

[Zarathustra]

The only reason you can disregard what your genes want is you have other genes which allow you to do that.

We have genes which allow us to disregard our genes? What, you have some proof of these mysterious entities? So what happens? My genes battle it out among themselves? Who decides which one wins? Is there some genetic "referee?"

But let's say that you're right. Just because I have other genes which allow me to disregard the first one doesn't mean that these other genes actually control me and force me to disregard the first ones. There's not a direct connection between my genes and my will. If that were the case, you could tell what a person will choose in every situation simply from decoding his genes.

Humans are more than the sum of their parts. Mind is a holistic phenomenon. You can't reduce mental properties and mental actions to a one-to-one relationship with genetic blueprints. These genes don't take into account the myriad contexts we find ourselves in. And since my genes never knew that I'd find myself in, say, an Internet message board, there's absolutely no way you could look at my genes and decide what I would have said once I got here. I'm not some damn computer program spewing output determined by my genes.

My genes exert influence on me, primal urges. Predispositions. But I can choose which urge to follow or ignore. If there were some other gene that made me choose which urge to follow or ignore, then we could discover that gene by looking at our DNA. And once I discovered it, I could deduce its function, and then choose to disregard that one, too. (Maybe you can see where I'm going with this.) Which gene determined that choice? Well, you'd have to postulate yet another higher-level gene which caused me to disregard the gene which caused me to disregard the gene which caused . . . ad infinitum. Clearly, we don't have an infinite number of genes with infinite numbers of instructions for every possible contingency. Clearly, it's ridiculous to propose an infinite number of genes that command us to disregard other genes as a means to mechanize and explain freewill. (What possible evolutionary explanation could you have for such a construction of overrides which depend entirely upon us discovering our genetic code?)

As such, my behavior is necessarily beyond the firm control of my genes.

[emotional leper]

This is true, but the reason you have behaviours at all, a mind at all, is because your genes code for them.