Evolution favours altruism

[downbeatplumb]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23529849

"You might think that natural selection should favour individuals that are exploitative and selfish, but in fact we now know after decades of research that this is an oversimplified view of things, particularly if you take into account the selfish gene feature of evolution.

"It's not individuals that have to survive, its genes, and genes just use individual organisms - animals or humans - as vehicles to propagate themselves."

"Selfish genes" therefore benefit from having co-operative organisms.

[Silver]

Tell that to the 1%

[Anomalocaris]

I think ultruism vs selfishness is a false, and crude dichotomy resulting from particular cognative mechanisms evolved in parallel with ape social behavior.

At a fundamental level, thete nature there is no such thing as selfish or ultruistic, only behavior patterns which so happen to have enhanced the survival of a species down through the particular trajectory of environmental and social pressures which that particular species had been exposed to.

What we see as selfish, or ultruistic, may be survival enhancing under one set of conditions, and fatal under another.

---

Tell that to the 1%

A revolution every few hundred years to even the odds is therefore not always a bad thing.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@Chuck, as far as i know, evolutionarily, whatever qualifies as altruistic is an act that causes harm to one individual (the one acting) but benefits the group/species. Selfishness would be an act that benefits that individual, whether or not it benefits others is not taken into consideration.

There is a dichotomy because I think because many people don't understand how altruistic behaviours can be explained by evolution as the ones who behave that way are likely to die. Selfish behaviours are more easily explained.

[Zen Badger]

Humans have evolved as a tribal(or pack) species, individuals that would have acted in a consistently selfish way would have been driven from the tribe.
(Later on they discovered religion as a way of justifying their selfishness)

[Anomalocaris]

@Chuck, as far as i know, evolutionarily, whatever qualifies as altruistic is an act that causes harm to one individual (the one acting) but benefits the group/species. Selfishness would be an act that benefits that individual, whether or not it benefits others is not taken into consideration.

There is a dichotomy because I think because many people don't understand how altruistic behaviours can be explained by evolution as the ones who behave that way are likely to die. Selfish behaviours are more easily explained.

In evolution, the only good is success in passing on of some portion of the individual's own genes. Nothing that doesn't serve this goal is relevant per se. Not happiness, not health, not one's group or species.

If it appears the individual is, as you say, causing harm to the individual but benefiting the species, then either the individual is an aberration soon to be weeded out by evolution, or it only appears to do so because you didn't look closely enough. In the second case, the individual is in reality engaged in a sophisticated behavior that, while appearing to also benefit the group and species, is in reality driven solely by the ability of some pseudoultruistic behavior to improve the odds of one's own success in passing on one's own genes.

So in nature, there is no true ultrism. There is only appearence of ultruism which serves the good of the individual.

What the discovery referred to here said was in effect, selfishness is not served by appearing to be blatantly selfish all the time. Selfish interests are some times better served by acting as if one is ultruistic.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@Chuck you have anything that has shown altruistic behaviours in nature are in actuality acts that would benefit that particular individual's survival?

*to clarify my previous post, altruism: decreases the individual's chance of survival, helps others survive. selfish: increases the individual's chance of survival, may or may not help others survive. I didn't mean the probability of passing on genes.

[Anomalocaris]

It is an unavoidable conclusion draw from how genetic inheritance at the level complete organisms, which is verified ad infinitum in modern biology, and which is also the fundmental basis of how evolution at the level of species and organisms works. .

Now you may look deeper, and strip evolution down even further than the individual. At this true fundamental operating level of evolution, evolution is about the survival of genes. Organism is just a proxy for the genes.

At the genetic level, you can more clearly see why so called altruistic behavior is really selfish. At this level, an altruistic gene that appears to cause the organism to harm itself can only survive evolutionary competition if one of the two conditions are met:

1. By harming the organism, somehow the organism better passes on its own genes. Example. The male praying mantis often appear to sacrifice itself in the mating ritual by allowing itself to be eaten by its mate. Reason, by sacrificing itself, the make enhanced the survival prospects of the mate carrying eggs that has been fertilized by its own sperm. Thus self sacrifice serves its ultimate self interest of passing on its own genes

2. By harming the organism, somehow an identical or very similar copy of the organism's genes is better passed on through another organism, thus fulfilling the fundamental function of evolution in passing on genes, rather than organism's appearent lineage. Example: worker bee does not reproduce, but by serving the queen, the gene of the worker bee, in the form of its duplicate in the queen, prospers.

A gene will only pass on if it helps the organism harboring it to better facilitate the passing on of the gene onto the second and third generation. If the does not help the organism harboring it to do so but instead some others, the the ultruistic organism will die without sire, ultruistic behavior will vanish from the next generation, and true ultruism would inevitably defeats itself

[pineapplebunnybounce]

actually, Chuck, yes the passing on of the genes, after considering all probabilities, is likely to be selfish. But I was talking about behaviours that undermine one individual's survival, you moved back and forth between these 2, do you mean no such behaviours exist if it decreases the chance of this individual's gene being passed on? But you must also take into consideration that if one doesn't engage in these behaviours, one can survive and pass on 1/2 of its genes. Compare that to a situation where this individual sacrifices its own survival, and its genes can only be passed on by relatives, which decreases that to about 1/4 of its genes (more or less).

The mantis is not a good example because it dies in the act of passing on its genes. second example is closer to what I meant. What I would call altruistic behaviours would be things like the mobbing behaviour in birds. And often in prey animals who give out alarm calls to alert others of predators.

It isn't "true altruism" as in completely for someone else with no benefit to self, but these behaviours are favourable. And this sort of behaviours are what tend to be called altruistic in the books i've read.

[Anomalocaris]

I do not say no such behavior exists. The appearance of new genetically driven behavior is an essentially random affair. The efficient, but more critically - aimless, generation of new genetic combination and new mutation is the hallmark of genetic process. Therefore in any generation a fraction of new behavior is bound, by random chance, to be in your words, altruistic. By you definition of altruism, the gene would be detrimental to the survival of the individual bearing it, and by extension the ability of this ultruistic gene itself to survive. So, such gene would, by definition of "detrimental to own survival", soon be eliminated.

So the key is altruistic gene, by your definition of ultruism, must be self eliminating. So although new ones may pop up all the time, and some may be sltruistic, none that is sltruistic would endure for long in the gene pool. Self serving gene, on the other hand, self perpetuating, and will endure.

So in any gene pool, there will be the chaff, some of which could be ultruistic, and the chaff will soon be gone. there would also be the wheat, all of which are, in the sense they exist to aid the gene itself and by necessity the organism bearing the gene, selfish.

In your warning call example, do you really need me to work out for you why, if the gene is truly altruistic in the sense that it truly reduce the survival prospect of the animal issuing the warning call over the long run compare to those that don't, in a few generations there would be no more animals with the genes to issue warnings?