"True altruism would be an act where no perceived good comes to the actor (not to be confused with someone who acts in stage or screen) or the actor acts without concern for or thought towards that reward."

OK, let's take Mother Teresa: Altruistic? I say no...allshe did was for rewards in Heaven.

That is the problem with altruism - unless you know the psyche behind and individual, you can know their motives.

A firefighter dies in a blaze of glory...he knows he is to die someday (we all will), so he chooses his manner of death (a blaze of glory...) such that it satisfies his psyche. It appears altruistic to an outside observer who say him rush into a deadly fire...but the driving motive was in internal belief/reward system. A firefighter isn't risking his life blindly in some altruistic fashion; he is risking his life in a chosen profession in which he has already accepted the possible eventually of his death.

I guess it really depends on the definition of altruistic.

I would agree with the Mother Teresa analogy. Plus, some of her "good" acts were a little less than kind to borrow a phrase from the Bard. But while motive drives it, we have to be reasonable and find a practical definition for altruism, not a perfect one. Elsewise even Christ's ultimate sacrifice wasn't altruistic as he knew he would rise ("destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it") and he knew it would be the redemption for all mankind.

Don't get in the Mother Theresa thing...

Just because a firefighter has accepted the possibility that he could die doesn't mean he has resigned to the idea that he will die on the job. The huge majority of firefighters live out their profession without ever encountering a position like those did on 9/11 where both life and death are just as likely as the other at day's end. These people go into the tallest building in the world as it is burning down, assuming that they will come out alive and well and will save lives. Instead, one tower crumbles and countless lives are lost. Those in the next tower are given the alert to leave the tower and those giving the alert know very well just how imminent the situation is; if my memory serves me, they told them they had a maximum of 29 minutes. Yet they all stayed in the tower to try and get as many people out as they could. They didn't want the medals, they wanted to bring as many people out of that tower as possible. That's altruism at its finest in humans and in animals.

"Evolutionary psychology is by and large a silly field, in any case." -semck

agreed. pure theory. no science.

but evolution and natural selection are pretty well known quantities at this point as is genetics. It's hard to look at human behavior objectively because we are humans and we are attached to our feelings. But the truth is the vast majority of human social behavior is reciprocal based on shared mutual interests and transactions.

" But the truth is the vast majority of human social behavior is reciprocal based on shared mutual interests and transactions. "

Eh. A great deal of it is. But this is the kind of generalization that I think gets people in trouble. In truth, human behavior is staggeringly complicated, with enormous numbers and varieties of motivations, rational and irrational actions, emotions, and beliefs playing a role.

But you're not wrong that the motivations you name are probably more common than altruism, if one could catalog all human actions somehow.

Oh, and "but evolution and natural selection are pretty well known quantities at this point as is genetics."

That depends what you mean. Very little is known about any of these fields at the level where one would want to use them to say something useful. (That's not to say that uses have not been found for genetics; but that for a given question one would like to ask, the answer is almost certainly still unknown).

too druck to split hairs

Don't assume that anything is known about these. Use what information we have to improve upon the field but don't assume that the information is fact. Compared to what's out there, which may as well be infinitely many little bits and pieces of knowledge that will affect just about everything else in our complex world, we know practically nothing.

lol, word dirge.

Personally speaking I dislike the words selfish and genes used in combination. It suggests to the unwary that genes somehow have an existence independent of the cell/ organ/body oaf which they are a part. I think this is a deception initiated by those who wish to persuade us of the all encompassing explanatory power of the theory of Natural Selection.

Have we discussed the effect that an organism has on its own environment yet in the context of Natural Selection? Lewontin is particularly good on this topic.

Jesus christ it annoys me to see people discussing deontological ethics with no knowledge of the subject

I really regret making this thread

We regret you being here too, SYnner. Go away.

I'm amazed that the BBC could report such an article as science, and also amazed that the people conducting the experiment thought what they were doing is science. If I believed in co-operative genes it is easy to use a game like diplomacy or the prisoners' dilemna to illustrate it. It does not prove that genes are co-operative, it proves that humans can co-operate to acheive a shard aim. If I wanted to prove genes are selfish, I'd illustrate it with a game like poker. Here there is no co-operation and players a selfish and have no regard to taking another person's wealth. This proves that humans can be selfish to meet the objective of winning the game. It does not prove genes are selfish.

On a wider scale think about casino operators. They exist to take money from people - selfish. But many businesses can only survive by co-operating - large number of individual shareholders for example. I say they only co-operate to fulfil their desire for money.

And on a base level, what are gay people up to? Do their genes selflessly feel they are contaminating the gene pool in some way so prefer not to procreate? Do people with heritable diseases stop having sex for the greater good? If so, many diseases would have died out long ago.

Is knitting genetic? Do individuals carry the info on the XX pair? Come to think of it a couple of hundred years ago it was carried on the XY pair? What is going on here? Yeah right NS can explain all........ Not.

> If I wanted to prove genes are selfish, I'd illustrate it with a game like poker.

Um. "Selfish genes" is a metaphor. And it doesn't mean "genes that make people selfish."

Yes, knitting is genetic. It is carried in the X chromosome. Both men and women have it. In fact most things are genetic and carried in the X chromosome. About the only thing in the Y chromosome is the existence of the penis and testosterone.

And driving, Draug. Don't forget driving.

;-)

Nope, driving is just a recessive X gene so there is only about a 50/50 shot ofba woman being able to drive assuming her dad can and her mom is a carrier. If dad sucked or grandpa sucked, odds are she won't be able to. That's the only way to explain Danica Patrick.