> -- and your risk of death for attempting to provide this help is 10%;
>
> -- and your benefit if you survive is a 20% increase in your
> probability of reproducing.
>
> In this case, the variant of this species that tends to help others
> will increase over time; the variant will be selected for.
One of the real problems with is that it may be great for the group to help others but
within this context genes for selfish behavior will thrive because their owners get
the benefit of your alturist behavior without having to pay the price.
>
>
>
> Put another way, it is often the case that you are more likely to
> increase the probability that your genes will be passed on if you save
> the life of a nephew than if you save the life of a stranger.
Kin selection
> This hypothetical genetic predisposition fits the notion that people
> help those within a group they define as `ours' and are willing,
> sometimes eager, to kill those who are not `one of us'. Statistically
> speaking, a 100,000 years ago, your genes gained if you helped
> non-relatives in your group; but your genes gained little or nothing
> if you helped an outsider.
>
> Put another way, groups do not commit genocide on their own members;
> they kill people whom they define as different even if they are
> neighbors - Bosnian Serb vrs Bosnian Muslim; Hutu vrs Tutsi;
> Englishman vrs Tasmanian.
>
> One of the characteristics of civilization has been to define a wider
> and wider portion of humanity as `us'. This is happening so quickly
> -- in under 10,000 years -- that this redifinition must be memetic,
> not genetic.
To me this is the saving grace of globalization; I think that it is hard to dehumanize
someone who smells of McDonalds and wears Gap shirts and jeans. This may be jeanetic
in a sense because the cues that were used in the hunter gatherer stage to identify in
versus outgroup may have been smell and possibly something about ornamnetation (not
the specifics but a tendancy to kill or not kill someone who dressed like mom or dad).
>
