Evolution Will Kill Off Selfish People

[Baron von Blitztank]

Yay! I'm gonna sing The Daily Mail song now...

 

[Terminal Blue]

Evolution works on a cultural level as well as (in human society much more than) a genetic level. Humans adopt survival strategies based on cultural norms and family patterns, as well as through individual rational and emotional decision-making.

Proteins exist in a relatively simple and stable fashion. You can tell where one protein ends and another begins quite easily provided you can see or detect them. Social structures or cultural trends do not work like that, they are not dividable into "units", and they generally do not conform to an overarching narrative of survival.

So it isn't like "This society has selected cultural trait B from the list of options A to C, and family pattern E from the list of options A to F, therefore it's survival metric is 7.6. If it replaced its family pattern with option B then its score would rise to 9.7, therefore it will do so eventually."

"Survival" (at least individual survival) long since ceased to be the goal of human society. We aren't picking options to increase our survival, we're generally picking options according to systems of rationality to which we either conform or resist, and many of these are extremely arbitrary.

Evolution is a great way to explain the clear and defined world of hereditary proteins, but it's a poor way of explaining the extremely murky world of society.

It seems to be a bit of a popular thing at the moment to try and use evolutionary theory as a general model to explain society without having to rely on all those annoying anthropological and social science perspectives. Personally, I'm not a fan.

 

[Flatfrog]

The thing is, if a gene exists in a wide segment of the population, that means it was selected for

(Pedantry alert) Technically, it means it wasn't selected against. Don't forget neutral mutations.

But once again I do want to reiterate my point above - in the context of culture, survival strategies have other means than genetics to evolve. Just because a behaviour isn't genetically coded doesn't mean it can't be tested and selected.

 

[J Tyran]

Its right in a sense, grasses often suffer from sudden and unexplained deaths. You know like stab wounds or gunshots, most criminals would take six months on the chin rather than grass someone up so the whole premise is broken.

 

[The Funslinger]

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.

Yeah, evolution always happens, and it's not always, strictly speaking, an improvement.

What a society caring for its infirm does get rid of, though, is natural selection. I believe that was the argument for Eugenics, which was quite popular being espoused by Churchill. But then of course World War 2 happened and it was just uncomfortably close enough to Nazi ideology to become unfashionable and people dropped it.

Not that I agree with it, mind you. It's just historic fact.

 

[Flatfrog]

Evolution works on a cultural level as well as (in human society much more than) a genetic level. Humans adopt survival strategies based on cultural norms and family patterns, as well as through individual rational and emotional decision-making.

Proteins exist in a relatively simple and stable fashion. You can tell where one protein ends and another begins quite easily provided you can see or detect them. Social structures or cultural trends do not work like that, they are not dividable into "units", and they generally do not conform to an overarching narrative of survival.

Nor do genes. Survival is always down to the interplay of thousands of genes in complex ways, and an individual mutation doesn't have survival value in and of itself except in the context of an environment of other genes, including those in other species. That's no different from cultural norms (I've been mostly avoiding the word 'meme' because it has so much garbage associated with it, but that's what I'm talking about)

So it isn't like "This society has selected cultural trait B from the list of options A to C, and family pattern E from the list of options A to F, therefore it's survival metric is 7.6. If it replaced its family pattern with option B then its score would rise to 9.7, therefore it will do so eventually."

"Survival" (at least individual survival) long since ceased to be the goal of human society. We aren't picking options to increase our survival, we're generally picking options according to systems of rationality to which we either conform or resist, and many of these are extremely arbitrary.

Evolution is always arbitrary, and yet patterns emerge. There are certain high-level strategies which emerge time and again - predator, grazer, scavenger, parasite; monogamy, harems, leks, courtship displays; etc

Cultural evolution is the same. From multiple individual norms emerge political philosophies which appear in societies all over the world. And of course, there is no 'survival metric', just as there isn't in biological evolution. A strategy like free market economics only works in a culture which accepts the rule of law. And criminality only works as a strategy when there are enough property owners to support it. In less lawful societies, blood ties are more important as a means of building trust, and so on. These things can be modelled successfully using simple evolutionary principles.

And yes, it's not about 'survival' in the physical sense, although for a hefty proportion of the world it still is, but still, memes survive by copying and we copy the behaviour of those around us who we perceive as successful, therefore in the meme world, 'success' (financial, sexual, emotional) takes the place of survival as the metric for which norms of behaviour will take hold and which ones will not.

 

[WabbitTwacks]

So...This was an experiment to confirm which Richard Dawkins discovered and confirmed? Am I missing something here? The selfish gene theory pretty much covers this topic from top to bottom.

Exactly and that was years ago. Although I don't think Dawkins discovered it, just improved and explained it.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Except there is no evidence to support the conclusion that these selfish or cooperative strategies are determined through genetics or at least genetics alone. Of course human behavior is much more complex than this simulation as the same individual may act selfishly in some situations and cooperatively in others.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The study and its justification doesn't do much for me, but that picture...

Oh man, that picture. There is only one appropriate response:

[small](Police reported three dozen cheerful bystanders, yet no one claims to have seen who did it)[/small]

agreed, i saw the picture and cringed, i wanted to get that table flip picture but yours is better, fuck i wanna flip that car off a bridge now, fuckin selfish wanker ****, pop their bloody tires, see if they get the picture as to why that happened.

OT: that study is...well, frankly is a bunch of bull, but GAH THAT DAMN PICTURE. GET IT OFF.

Really? Humans fighting for their right to be regimented. The rich controllers have already won because you already think the way they want you to think. "Oh, but we have to cooperate if we are going to get along." "A little revolution is good for the soul." --Thomas Jefferson. The only reason people hate the car parked diagonally in two spaces is because they don't have the balls to dare to do it themselves. It's a slap in the face of your cowardice.

not parking in the painted lines in a parking lot =/= sticking it to "the man"

it's just being an inconsiderate asshole, plain and simple, if you want to be an asshole because you think your car is "too nice" to be in a normal spot, then go park way in the back of the lot where their are spots galore. It's extremely selfish and that's just about all there is to it. Go ahead and do it since you apparently have such "huge balls" and want to revolt against our parking spot overlords.

 

[irok]

Hmmmm, well this sounds like the kind of pseudo science the field of phycology tries to push it doesn't really say anything more then in this instance all the non-selfish people get wiped out first and then eventually will be forced to choose another option, nothing more then a nice theory from a really rather pointless test.

 

[1337mokro]

These articles are both fucking rubbish.

First off all evolution in humanity has sort of slowed to a crawl, in comparison to the amount of stress a wild animal is under the major forces in human evolution are instantly lethal mutations, sexual selection and societal adaptability. Guess what? Being selfish is sometimes a necessity, always being altruistic will let people take advantage off you.

So selfishness is a trait that is actually beneficial, as is altruism because it helps society become better as a whole. If you are the guy that always says yes to whenever they are asked for help, never thinks there might be ulterior motives behind those requests and always puts other people first you will finish last. I guarantee you that. However if you are the asshole that stabs people in the back, lies and cheats constantly, screws other people out of their possessions and drinks directly out of the milk carton you can become a wealthy businessman, a politician or a successful lawyer.

So why is selfishness so much better rewarded with much better chances at having offspring? Because selfishness is the result of several different traits that benefit the individuals survival. However why is it then that not every human on earth is a selfish asshole? Because altruism favours the entire group, including the individual who benefits from a healthier environment. So most people end up with a mix of both, where they will help if it is in everyone's favour, but will be much more reluctant if it comes at a great detriment to themselves.

Now we have an individual that is both smart about who he helps and when he does so and an individual that when presented with a chance that will bring him great fortune will weigh that fortune against the cost for others. There is no huge divide in the world between completely selfless and utterly selfish.

99% of people are a mix of both in various degrees. Though my prediction for the future is that the 99% of regular humans will just get fed up with the 0.5% of utterly selfish people and hang them all from their skyscrapers. Star Trek here we come, after the Eugenics wars of course.

 

[Baresark]

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.

Yeah, evolution always happens, and it's not always, strictly speaking, an improvement.

What a society caring for its infirm does get rid of, though, is natural selection. I believe that was the argument for Eugenics, which was quite popular being espoused by Churchill. But then of course World War 2 happened and it was just uncomfortably close enough to Nazi ideology to become unfashionable and people dropped it.

Not that I agree with it, mind you. It's just historic fact.

I think that a lot of people misunderstand what Natural Selection is. It's selection of genetic traits that meet an environmental need. Caring for the infirm does not get rid of natural selection. Selection, like all the other forces of evolution, is always happening. But people seem to think that selection is always going to favor the tallest, strongest and best looking (as an example). The issue is that selection is like all other forces and does not and cannot be stopped. Selection in it's original form requires modification by the standards of most modern evolutionist though. Why? Because we care for the infirm, which is just one example. Social evolution (coming to care for the infirm in this case) does not get rid of genetic selection of traits. Like in one of my previous posts, it can modify the how a species like humans will select for traits. The other problem is that infirm as a definition is far far too broad. Stephen Hawking is infirm, but he has contributed a whole lot to the world.

It's also a common myth that people didn't live to be old for the entirety of human existence. When humanity existed in exclusively hunter gatherer societies, the family unit was still what we call in the modern world, the "nuclear family". That is a mother, father, and 2 kids to replace them. Contrary to popular belief, the whole giant family unit didn't come till much later. But also, there is this myth that people only lived to be 35, which is misunderstanding of statistics. If someone lived to be 12, there was a good chance they would live into their 60's or 70's. Ages that by today's standards, fall into the range of infirm. They would not be able to hunt at all and they would be of limited use as gatherers. To further my point, all humans are born infirm. Human babies are infirm for a very long time in comparison to all other animals. I would even go so far as to say that natural selection has favored us caring for the infirm.

Eugenics is actually a neat idea, it would be far neater were it not so monstrous. But the whole idea arises from extreme hubris. It's the belief that a person or people can select traits to make a society stronger. In Sparta, it was easier. They were a society built around their really strong military. They could simply get rid of any kids that were exceptionally weak or disfigured in some way. But they couldn't do it. In Churchill's time they thought they knew everything about people so they thought they were better suited for the practice of Eugenics (that is the people who believed in the practice). If we look back on what they knew about human development and the various forms of evolution, we know that the amount of scientific knowledge they had was completely laughable by today's standards. I will not follow that path because I also know that we still know so little about development, evolution and genetics that we could not do it right either.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Not to be philosophical, but I don't think any of this matters until we figure out what 'selfish' means. I have a theory that everyone wants what is best for the universe and humanity as a whole, but that many people are too stupid to realize they aren't the most important thing ever created. Therefore, selfishness is a lack of the foresight and knowledge needed to see past short-term small-scale gains and accept the responsibility of improving the well-being of the species.

So yes, I would say that evolution should not favor the stupid, considering we've come this far.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I haven't read the whole thread, but I've learned that reading the words "prisoner's dilemma" immediately transports me to a situation where Phi is chewing me about about betraying being the only logical choice. Too bad nobody in the study are jumpers...

 

[Headsprouter]

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

By KILLING THEM ALL! Kill all the selfish bastards! It's only us, the selfless that matter! Selfless master race, mother fucker!

....

I'm dying out in a few millenia...

 

[keserak]

Evolutionary biologists are to biology what flat-earthers are to geography.

I hate to say that, but with the inane and trite detritus that hits the media every few months -- not to mention the racist or misogynist subset of the profession that gets in the spotlight every other year -- it's hard to reach any other conclusion.

I will drop a caveat on that snide statement -- the media loves misreporting the findings of evolutionary biologists (and psychologists), but even so, information management is essential to any discipline that looks "sexy" to the dumbasses that populate the most powerful journalistic outlets.

As for the proposition at issue: no. The prisoner's dilemma does not accurately model human social dynamics. It sure as hell doesn't model human mating behavior, so how the hell do you conclude that it can predict reproductive outcomes?

In the really-real world, humans have found themselves trapped in authoritarian regimes where sacrificing their own well-being for some raping, murdering asshole is the only viable survival strategy for millennia now. And authoritarian regimes reward the selfish. Look at present headlines: government-sponsored leakers get full pardons in the U.S. (Libby) or never charged (everyone else) while patriotic or socially-benign ones get hunted down (Snowden) or set upon with literally legally-impossible charges (Assange).

Relying on the prisoner's dilemma for anything but inane math problems is, well, inane.

 

[Keoul]

It's strange how they can say selfish people only win short term, and then go on to say it'll take a few millenia for them to be wiped out.

Never knew millenia was short-term these days.

 

[Black Reaper]

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.

Indeed, humans basically killed natural selection, now that medicine exists, both the weak and the strong survive, evolution generally happened because of natural selection, humans are also at the top of the food chain

But if it does happen eventually, this will be awesome, the thing i hate the most about my life are the douchebags i run into all the time, i doubt ill be alive by then, but good for those who will be