On 01/13/2014 01:07 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Perhaps I could get you guys to read it by promising hereafter to be an
> altruistic lurker.
Do _not_ be more of a lurker. There are enough lurkers and not enough
participants ... of course, I'm a big fan of noise, so I may not be the
best touchstone.
undacova - sciarex
http://youtu.be/YHtplHywEyY
> The basic question is, "In our explanations of human behavior, do
> we always have to appeal to benefits to Ego's germline, or can we appeal to
> explanations based on benefits to the group of which Ego is a part? Here,
> FWIW, is the most serious contribution that I made to that literature.
> <http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/nthompson/1-websitestuff/Texts/2000-2005/Shif
> ting_the_natural_selection_metaphor_to_the_group_level.pdf>
What irritates me about the attempts to tie group selection to altruism
is not the ambiguity [*] in selection or group or flock but the
ambiguity in altruism. You do a bit of disambiguation by identifying
reciprocal altruism. And if I extrapolate (or put words in your mouth),
I can imagine the problems with the term "altruism" falling out as the
other terms are clarified. But I still have this nagging feeling that
"altruism" is illusory (hearkening back to Lee's recent post). We don't
do anything we could reasonably call "selfish" or "altruistic". We
simply do things that make us feel good or bad. A more immediate
question might be why do some actions make us feel good or bad?
[*] I don't really like the way you use the word "ambiguity" in that
paper... but I should leave that for another argument.
--
glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847
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