RE: Evolution favours altruism
August 3, 2013 at 7:33 pm
(This post was last modified: August 3, 2013 at 8:06 pm by 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
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
