Evolution Will Kill Off Selfish People

[Lauren Admire]

Evolution Will Kill Off Selfish People

Last year, scientists published a study claiming that evolution favors the selfish, but a new study says the trait will disappear.

Remember that jerk who yanked the last doughnut and you spent the rest of the day in your cubicle plotting glorious, glorious revenge? Well, pat yourself on the back and consider it a job well done. As it turns out, evolution's got your back and its revenge will be deadly.

Evolutionary biologists at Michigan State University used high-powered computers to run game theory simulations in order to test the theory that evolution favors the selfish. One such game is known as the prisoner's dilemma, which is often used to study cooperation. In the game, two people have been arrested after committing crimes, probably involving diamonds and bricks of gold. Each person is offered a deal that would have even Bonnie and Clyde reconsidering their friendship: Rat the other person out and you'll go free, but your friend will spend six months in jail. If you both tattle, you will each spend three months in jail awkwardly trying to avoid one another. If mum's the word, you will both stay in jail for just one month. If the prisoners can talk to one another, they'll usually opt for the one-month plan. If not, they'll usually rat out the other person.

However, the selfish strategy, known as zero-determinant strategy, only works for a little while. After the zero-determinant players have eliminated their cooperative, unselfish partners, the theory breaks down. "The only way ZD strategists could survive would be if they could recognize their opponents," co-author Arend Hintze, molecular and microbiology research associate, said. "And even if ZD strategists kept winning so that only ZD strategists were left, in the long run they would have to evolve away from being ZD and become more cooperative. So they wouldn't be ZD strategists anymore."

So, long story short. Selfish people win in the short term. But in the long term, you'll have the last laugh. After a few millenia have passed, that is.

Source:
Discovery [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2382017/Selfish-people-eventually-die-evolution-favours-cooperation.html]

Permalink

 

[schrodinger]

I thought the title said shellfish people...

anywho, evolution better work overtime because there's a lot of selfish dicks i want phased out of the human species already, starting with terrible customers and asshole CEOs.

 

[iniudan]

Trouble is that you first have to prove that selfishness is genetic and not a social construct, to show this theory to be valid.

 

[Angelous Wang]

Evolution Will Kill Off Selfish People

No it won't, some selfish maniac will eventually get hold of some way to destroy the planet before his death and will do an "If I have to die, I'm taking everyone else with me!" moment wiping all the non selfish people out too.

...That's my funeral plan anyway.

Trouble is that you first have to prove that selfishness is genetic and not a social construct, to show this theory to be valid.

Selfishness is just part of basic genetic animal survival instinct, so it does exist in us on a genetic level. Not to say other instincts can't override it like parental instinct,- or community/social instincts, and not to say you can willingly ignore it because you can. But it is part of standard animal in-built-genetic behaviour.

Unless you are creationist that doesn't believe we evolved like the rest of the animals on the planet. Then you can claim we don't have it.

 

[Baresark]

It's amazing how people of science can seem to misconstrue what evolution is and does. I'm a bit surprised they fell into this trap. Organisms evolve to match their environmental needs. This is of course taking the assumption that environment will not change to suit the selfish folks. They seem to talking in a definitive manner when there is so little that is definitive within the field. The other issue I have is that selfish people can only exist as a subset in a society where most people are cooperative (like human society is). One thing Evolution doesn't do is adhere to extremes. Life is way to complex for that.

Also, duh. Human beings are a social animal. We have the most complex social structure on the planet. We have a highly evolved division of labor which lends itself to not being selfish but being absolutely cooperative. I honestly wouldn't rely on a game theory simulation for this. There is so much evidence outside of a complex simulation that running simulations borders on useless.

But, what the heck. Lets pretend like they said something that hasn't been all but completely proven before they ran a simulation. "Yay, the suspicions of social and biological evolutionist for the last 50 or so years has been proven by game theory!"

PS. You'll have to excuse the tone of this. It kind makes me mad when I read current articles about information that has been theorized and basically proven for decades. I just feel that a game theory simulation doesn't contribute to the overall scientific basis of this.

 

[Baresark]

Trouble is that you first have to prove that selfishness is genetic and not a social construct, to show this theory to be valid.

No, you don't. Evolution happens in multiple dimensions simultaneously. Social evolution effects how genetic phenotypes are expressed, and genetic evolution sculpts social changes at times. In biology it's called reciprocal causation. It's a common myth that genetics are everything. It's also a common myth that evolution is expressed in strictly genetic terms.

Evolution stops working once a community starts to care for the weak and infirm.

That is another common myth. Evolution never stops working. The path of evolution changes, but change is constant and occurring forever.

 

[Moth_Monk]

One of the article's sources of info is the Daily Mail... *sigh*

 

[kael013]

Selfishness is a social construct, i.e. it is not genetic. Therefore, evolution cannot affect it. What this study shows is that if the selfish people get rid of all the selfless people (an unlikely scenario in itself), in order for the species' society to survive and not throw the world into anarchic chaos, then some of the selfish would have to become selfless. That is not an evolution theory, but a social progress theory - and a bad one at that.

 

[RJ 17]

Couple things about this story:

Evolution is a study of what traits are passed down from one generation to the next...as such, isn't this study making the assumption that selfishness is an inherited trait and not the result of someone's personality and how they were raised/grew up?

Assuming that selfishness IS an inherited trait that's passed down from generation to generation, saying that the selfish people win in the short term but lose in the long term...doesn't that therefor mean that the process of evolution will ensure that EVERYONE becomes selfish?

And even if ZD strategists kept winning so that only ZD strategists were left, in the long run they would have to evolve away from being ZD and become more cooperative. So they wouldn't be ZD strategists anymore.

I'm just really having trouble following the logic here. If everyone's selfish, then that doesn't mean that people will suddenly have to start becoming more cooperative...it just means that everyone's selfish and the person who can get the most resources via being selfish wins out in the end. If selfishness is an inherited trait, that means that a selfish person won't look around them and say "Well everyone's selfish, so I should start trying to cooperate with these selfish people", it means they'll look around and say "Well everyone's selfish, so I need to be even MORE selfish if I hope to get ahead in life."

Sorry, I just find this study to be very flawed. From the premise that selfishness is an inherited trait that is subject to the process of evolution to the to the premise that even if it is, at some point the process of evolution will evolve selfishness out. The phrase "Survival of the Fittest" - often equated as a short way of describing evolution - implies selfish behavior being rewarded by evolution to begin with since selfishness ensures that you'll have more resources with which to survive, even if everyone around you thinks you're a total dick.

Edit: In reading some of the other comments, I'm glad to see that the general interpretation is "This is totally bunk."

 

[lacktheknack]

The thing is, while they will eventually have to evolve away from selfish behaviour, they "kill off" all the non-selfish ones right now...

 

[thiosk]

The most important thing about this article is that the driver of that double-parked Stang needs to be hunted down, tarred and feathered, and run out of town.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I read that article, and while I'm not a sociologist or a geneticist, I have difficulty believing their claims.

Evolution stops working once a community starts to care for the weak and infirm. Selfish people in modern society are unlikely to be denied food and shelter so they will survive until breeding age. And given the shit relationships I've seen a lot of my friends in, selfish people will still be able to pass on their genetic code.

So, yeah, maybe there will be changes in society that will marginalize the selfish, but I find it highly unlikely that there will be a base, genetic change (ie evolution) in humanity unless some natural or man-made catastrophe puts the species on the brink of extinction.

I do wonder how many grants the researchers received during the course of their investigations.

Also, any time a study claims it proved something using a computer simulation, you know the results are suspect. Computer simulations run based on parameters you program into them and, as a result, they only test within a limited set of parameters that don't resemble the real world. Furthermore, the kinds of scenarios they ran are even more limited and context specific.

Also, I'm pretty sure selfishness is one of those personality traits that's more nurture than nature, as well as being heavily influenced by environmental factors. No amount of evolution is going to completely rid the world of the trait.

 

[oldtaku]

Way too simplistic.

The clever selfish people find a way to make their selfishness a perceived social positive, by going into politics or corporate management. That way they get all the positives of being selfish destructive a-holes while still being viewed positively by the people they're parasitizing (they may do badly in general polls, but hardly anybody votes out 'their' politician).

If anything, this simulation just implies the selfish need to evolve to be more cunning parasites.

 

[Dragonbums]

Being selfish in my opinion is not something that is passed down. It is something that is taught.
Either through whomever the kid looks up to, or through their own struggles. It could be a sensible as "Every man for themselves" where being kind often wounded you dead in the water.


On that note the truly selfish people play the game well. The kind of selfish the research displayed is the most common and most failed look at selfishness. One sided self gain, everybody out of the way.

The truly greedy people are also manipulators.
You "help" people so they will help you back. In time you will give them rewards here and there to thank them for letting you one up them so they never catch your rouse, but the lions share always goes to them.
The ones that get caught eventually just stopped playing the game right.

 

[templar1138a]

That's a pretty big leap from game theory to natural selection. Jerks and assholes breed every day, and they raise more jerks and assholes.

Plus the elimination of natural selection through preservation of the weak and stupid has already been mentioned. Just watch Idiocracy to see what's in our future.

 

[flarty]

One of the article's sources of info is the Daily Mail... *sigh*

You sir win post of the day.

OT: If true, how do we speed up evolution?

 

[templar1138a]

One of the article's sources of info is the Daily Mail... *sigh*

You sir win post of the day.

OT: If true, how do we speed up evolution?

No wonder the quality of these "news" articles has been dropping like turds.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Isn't the iterated prisoner's dilemma [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma] kind of old news? Society hasn't killed off its defectors in ten thousand years, despite some fairly thorough attempts to. It's not going to do it now.

Some people think that even if ideally no one would steal or break the rules, in our society some people who break the rules [http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society-Thrive/dp/1118143302] can be a good thing, because sometimes the rules are themselves wrong. Selfishness is bad, but not everyone who performs action X is necessarily doing it out of completely selfish motives.