Evolution Will Kill Off Selfish People

[Yopaz]

Actually this is wrong. Altruism isn't an evolutionary stable strategy thus it can't be absolute. Let's say we have a population of altruists then we get one selfish renegade. He will reap enormous short term advantage over the altruistic individuals. In the example above with the prisoner's dilemma he would never go to prison while the altruist would always serve 6 months when grouped together.

The selfish individuals themselves won't be evolutionary stable either. The evolutionary stable strategy will usually favour a polymorphism in the case of selfish/non selfish. This has been proven both by observation and simulation on several occasions.

Altruism will be the best strategy on average, but it allows selfish individuals to gain too much advantage and will break down with time. The idea is beautiful, but it suggests that evolution favours long term over short term. Evolution doesn't work that way. Evolution doesn't "think ahead".

Now ignoring the fact that they tried to use evolution as a part of this it's entirely possible that human society might move towards a state like this because we are able to think ahead unlike evolution. We can actually plan ahead and increase our long term success at the cost of short term. The cynic in me doesn't consider this plausible though.

 

[NeedsaBetterName22]

Actually this is wrong. Altruism isn't an evolutionary stable strategy thus it can't be absolute. Let's say we have a population of altruists then we get one selfish renegade. He will reap enormous short term advantage over the altruistic individuals. In the example above with the prisoner's dilemma he would never go to prison while the altruist would always serve 6 months when grouped together.

The selfish individuals themselves won't be evolutionary stable either. The evolutionary stable strategy will usually favour a polymorphism in the case of selfish/non selfish. This has been proven both by observation and simulation on several occasions.

Altruism will be the best strategy on average, but it allows selfish individuals to gain too much advantage and will break down with time. The idea is beautiful, but it suggests that evolution favours long term over short term. Evolution doesn't work that way. Evolution doesn't "think ahead".

Now ignoring the fact that they tried to use evolution as a part of this it's entirely possible that human society might move towards a state like this because we are able to think ahead unlike evolution. We can actually plan ahead and increase our long term success at the cost of short term. The cynic in me doesn't consider this plausible though.

This dude's got the right idea. Situational conditions determine situational responses. Evolution is not some magical path that is all-knowing.

 

[mad825]

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.

 

[Flatfrog]

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.

Just came to post the same thing. Since when is this news? I remember Douglas Hofstadter writing about the Robert Axelrod tournaments back in the mid-80's. It's been known for decades that Tit-For-Tat is the most robust strategy (give-or-take some complex variations which pretty much amount to the same thing) and that constant defection is hopeless.

And as you say, in a society consisting mostly of nice, forgiving strategies like Tit-For-Tat, there will always be space for a few non-nice strategies to forge a parasitic living, as long as they don't damage their hosts too much.

 

[Flatfrog]

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.

No, it absolutely doesn't in any way.

The selfish gene theory is a theory about genes. It's not a theory about behaviour of organisms - in fact, the whole point of it is that it mostly ignores organisms altogether. Genes 'for' altruism can still themselves be selfish.

 

[Olrod]

If this were true then they would have already died out, or never evolved the trait to begin with.

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.

A few millennia have ALREADY passed. Humanity is more than 100 years old, you know.

 

[mad825]

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.

No, it absolutely doesn't in any way.

The selfish gene theory is a theory about genes. It's not a theory about behaviour of organisms - in fact, the whole point of it is that it mostly ignores organisms altogether. Genes 'for' altruism can still themselves be selfish.

Whatever, this argument is old and was masturbation material during the cold war era.

 

[Flatfrog]

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.

No, it absolutely doesn't in any way.

The selfish gene theory is a theory about genes. It's not a theory about behaviour of organisms - in fact, the whole point of it is that it mostly ignores organisms altogether. Genes 'for' altruism can still themselves be selfish.

Whatever, this argument is old and was masturbation material during the cold war era.

Not sure what you mean by that, but in any case, you brought it up.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

What I'm reading is "evolution will kill off selfish people after selfless people." I still don't see the reason selfless people have nothing to worry about, the selfish will just change into selfless people after learning it's the most profitable thing to do.

I maintain that a man should be selfish but the people should be selfless.

 

[Frankster]

I interpreted the article as selfish people will only change their ways once they have screwed over the non selfish people so hard that they ain't none left and some of the selfish people have to convert out of sheer neccesity.
So not much of a "revenge" unless you consider the conquerors wearing the clothing of those they defeated to be some kinda moral victory.

 

[Icehearted]

So, long story short. Selfish people win in the short term. But in the long term, you'll have the last laugh.

I look at the economy, how selfish short-term profit was prioritized over long-term sustainability, at how those that knew best and were best enabled to exploit the system took hundreds of billions in free, no-strings bailout money from the government they say spoils the poor with a trickle of food stamps, and I wonder where the last laugh is in all that mess.

I think other factors are being ignored as well, such as apathy, social acceptability, meritocracy (in all it's presently warped and grossly manipulated glory), and the countless socio-political factors that determine on a daily basis literally who lives well and who gets to be used up until they drop dead, or worse, grow old and further "burden" the system. Then there's the whole introvert/extrovert argument.

I'd like to be optimistic and say that we will outgrow greed and evolve more to a people as were represented by Captain Picard to the unfrozen 90s assholes about how people didn't need money anymore, but really, I think we're headed more toward a Soylent Green kind of future.

Edit:

I interpreted the article as selfish people will only change their ways once they have screwed over the non selfish people so hard that they ain't none left and some of the selfish people have to convert out of sheer neccesity.
So not much of a "revenge" unless you consider the conquerors wearing the clothing of those they defeated to be some kinda moral victory.

This reminds me of stories about griefers on MMOs and online games. Essentially, in some communities things would get really ugly, people would exploit something, or harass others until only the griefers remained and the community eventually died out entirely. An example would be Mario Kart DS, wherein an exploit was used by some people to allow them a tremendous advantage granted you could or would be able to use this exploit (called snaking). Eventually other players just stopped playing until only mostly the "snakers" remained, and since there weren't enough of them to keep things really going the community died out. The "meek" (those willing to/only capable of playing fairly) inherited nothing, they were just run off.

It's impossible, using the MMO environment as a model, to see how the selfish are capable of being anything other than selfish even until it destroys them, and how anyone that is not can do anything more than imply continue to be victimized ( I use the term loosely) or just giving up.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

How does game theory and models of weirdly specific sets of circumstances show that selfish are people are less likely to survive and procreate?

It doesn't.

This is complete bunk.

 

[Dagda Mor]

That title was misleading. To me, anyway. I consider selfishness a virtue in the Ayn Rand sort of way, though I'm no objectivist--I thought that the article would claim that altruism will become more prevalent, which was disturbing to me, not that it would claim that taking from others would decrease.

 

[Thaluikhain]

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

No it doesn't, it just stops selecting against the weak and infirm so much.

There's still lots of ways to die before breeding. Evolution may have slowed down compared to previous times, but that's not to say it's stopped.

 

[KOMega]

So a few things:

I didn't know selfishness was genetic.

I would think evolution only works here if we outbreed the selfish people.
Do we know that the unselfish people are breeding faster than the selfish people?
Or that people that are selfish are dying off somehow?

 

[Hagi]

I honestly can't see how anyone could possibly make the claim that selfishness has been evolutionary selected for in humans.

We're one of the most, if not the most, social species on this planet. Most living creatures ( counting one-celled organisms etc. ) probably aren't even aware that other individuals exist, let alone that they have feelings, motivations etc.

And, if you go back far enough, that's where we came from. And at one point we developed this sense of empathy and it's still here, stronger than it probably is in any other species. A sense whose sole point is allowing us to share the feelings of others, to make their happiness our own and their worries our own.

If selfishness was evolutionary selected for in humans we'd never have developed empathy. We'd never have developed the breadth of communication, especially in regards to feelings and cooperation, that we have.

I realize that it's cool, edgy and dark to go all cynical on everything and claim everyone's just out for themselves. But that's simply not true. Through evolution we've developed, one way or the other, empathy. And that sense is stronger in us than in any of our primate ancestors.

It's quite obvious that emphatic people are the ones that are evolutionary selected for, people who share in the happiness and worries of others.

 

[unpronounceable]

selfishness is a social construct

I don't think there's any reason to believe that this is the case.
Selfishness could easily have a genetic basis.

 

[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.

 

[popa_qwerty]

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

They are both from the Daily Mail.

The researchers believe the theory holds true in all organisms, and even plan to experiment on yeast cells, the Daily Mail reports.

and

Communication is critical for cooperation; we think communication is the reason cooperation occurs,? Adami told the Daily Mail.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

First, it's going to be more than a few millennia. Second, the problem with these tests is that they check only one variable, which is nice when you are talking about something specific instead of someone's personal philosophy. Third, what does selfishness have to do with having kids? Children are the machine of evolution. Finally, even if this worked on a societal level, somehow the selfish people, who will more likely be in positions of power, will convince us that selfishness is a virtue and encourage it. Hey, look, I've come full circle to Ayn Rand.