On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 Chris de Morsella <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have heard this survival of the community dynamics being used to > suggest why for example we still have behaviors such as altruism still > quite common amongst members of our species > It's not just our species that displays altruistic behavior, a ground squirrel will call a warning alarm to the group if it spots a predator even though by calling attention to itself and behaving heroically it most certainly increases the likelihood that it will get eaten by the predator. > > when from a simple game theory perspective altruistic behavior is a > handicap > It's not a handicap it you look at it from the gene's point of view in a closely related population. If I have the altruistic gene and I save the life of 2 other individuals who also have that very same gene then even if my heroism costs me my life the altruism gene will tend to spread through the population. Evolutionary biologists call this "The Green Beard Effect"; a gene that causes you to have a green beard and behave altruistically toward others who also have a green beard can potentially spread threw a population (and if the group is very closely related then the same thing can happen even without the green beard). And yes, a mutated gene that gives you the green beard but no altruistic desires might spread even faster. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
