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JCPRuckus t1_iu4t2g0 wrote

Reply to comment by Fumquat in Getting horny is your bodies way of reminding you what you're really here for. by Meshd

There are evolutionary models that show altruism evolved because it does offer an evolutionary advantage in the way you claim. But as evidenced in the real world, it is only advantageous in a limited amount. Too much altruism leads to the the individual being taken advantage of and losing out.

Yes, if you can't find a mate, then helping with your neices and nephews makes evolutionary sense. But statistically speaking, you (and your close genetic family) are better off with additional lottery tickets rather than "better" lottery tickets.

If you have 4 neices and nephews that you boost to a 50/50 chance of "success" then there's a 0.0625% chance none of them succeeds. If you have your own 2 kids, and that reduces everyone to a 40% chance of success, then there's only a 0.004096% chance that none of them succeeds. That's a whole order of magnitude difference. Obviously, these numbers are for example purposes. But it's reasonable to assume that a reasonable amount of additional support from an aunt or uncle is only going to offer a small boost in outcomes on average.

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Fumquat t1_iu4zwuy wrote

Altruism does imply a choice is being made. The organization of a group into reproductive and non-reproductive members doesn’t usually happen at the choice level in nature. It’s developmental.

Humans can only survive in groups larger than a nuclear family unit. We have to have tendencies inborn to make that work.

Think of dogs. A litter of puppies, left together, will naturally organize themselves into extremes of dominant and submissive personalities. In the wild, the next generation will be coming from the alphas, but sustained and protected by the group. With domestic dogs, we find that separating the puppies at the right age will result in more balanced individual personalities, desirable for training. The dogs aren’t making a reasoned choice to become leaders or helpers, it’s just their programming interacting with their environment, with a little randomness nudging them each down one path or another.

People are unique in the sense that we like to think we have control over our own life paths. We have free will, and we use it, and we have this wonderful ability to analyze those choices with game theory and such. But we’re still animals at the same time, living in an unpredictable world.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu50ron wrote

>Altruism does imply a choice is being made.

>People are unique in the sense that we like to think we have control over our own life paths. We have free will, and we use it, and we have this wonderful ability to analyze those choices with game theory and such. But we’re still animals

Your definition of altruism takes for granted that choice exists, which you acknowledge may be an illusion by the end of your comment. So, no, if choice could be an illusion, and altruism still exists, then altruism does not imply that a choice is being made. It's just another instinct, one that we mainly/only clearly see in social animals.

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Fumquat t1_iu53u37 wrote

Well yeah I guess I got off track.

The point I intended to get into was to look at it from the grandparent generation perspective. Clearly there’s success in genes that produce a mixture of self-sacrificing and selfish individuals.

It doesn’t make sense to me to call contributing, necessary members of a group an “evolutionary dead end” when the differences between them and the direct reproducers are pretty much epigenetic. But maybe a different dose of hormones in the brain would change which parts of the picture I focus on in the first place lol.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu55wzp wrote

You aren't your grandparents. Looking at the situation from their point of view makes no sense. You, yourself, pointed out how disgusted we are at the idea of hive minds/social structures. You, from your POV, are not just a replaceable worker ant for your grandparents, and I'd assume that you would be upset if they told you that you were, even though on some level you are.

Although, nonetheless, even from their POV, the statistical math of you and your siblings having more total offspring is still better. If you pump all of your parenting into your nieces and nephews, and those families go on vacation together and all die, then obviously it would be better for your grandparents' genes if you had your own kids instead.

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Fumquat t1_iu5h0v9 wrote

I mean, where does being upset or offended come into this?

In evolutionary biology, the F2 (or grandchildren) generation is the more conceptually useful focus point for analyzing the success of various reproductive strategies. Many losses will occur along the way for a wide variety of reasons, some of which are built-in.

Worker ants exist, in great numbers. So do sharks who get eaten by their siblings in the womb. Or sea turtles, alligators and the like who basically start life as snacks and continue to exist only because 1/1000 made it to adulthood. How? There were too many to eat at once.

Genes are genes and individuals are individuals.

If I were a sentient worker ant, would knowing what I am cause a revolution? I think not. Should a sentient baby turtle fall into despair? Wouldn’t be useful.

The vast majority of hominid species that existed are extinct. We’re what’s left, in part by chance. Having a baby is so insanely costly and risky to human women as individuals that given the technology and freedom to avoid it, on average the birth rate falls way below replacement levels. And then on the other extreme Elon Musk has this notion to select all boy children (through IVF, no kidding), who he hopes then will go on to serially impregnate multiple women each, spreading his genes as far as possible. This is also pretty gross. He’ll die at the end of his own life, just like every other person.

So, who are the ‘winners’ versus the sacrificial members of the species here? We each just exist until we don’t. The genes we happen to inherit neither ‘belong’ to us nor define us as individuals. Across generations, life continues on as a massive unguided amoral process, up until it doesn’t.

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