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View Poll Results: Does altruism exist? | |||
Yes |
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9 | 52.94% |
No |
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6 | 35.29% |
I don't know. |
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2 | 11.76% |
Voters: 17. You may not vote on this poll |
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#18 (permalink) | |
Juicious Maximus III
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
Posts: 6,525
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![]() Quote:
It's the same thing with social bees kamikaze-killing themselves for the good of the hive. Unlike us humans, a worker bee always has the same set of chromosomes from her (haploid) father, and they make up 50% of her genes. So 50% of the genetic material will always be the same. Then they also inherit one of two sets of genes from their (diploid) mother. So, putting it simply, on average any worker bee will share 75% of her genes with her sisters. If a worker bee would have her own children, she would only share 50% of her genes with each child (the other half would come from her father), which is actually less relation than she would have to a new sister. So, in fact, a better strategy for a worker bee to maximize fitness would be to ensure that her mother, the queen, births more sisters .. even if it means giving her life for that cause. Is it then altruism? I would say not, because the basis of it all is selfish. edit : A simple mechanism by which one might argue that altruism exists is by variation. The optimal strategy or expression of a trait depends on the environment. Let's say that there's a gene that makes people nice and it evolved because being nice raises their fitness, so it evolved out of selfishness. But how nice should you be? That depends on the environment and generally speaking, the environment changes constantly and you also have genetic variation and so the gene will generally never be optimally expressed. A person would either be too nice or not nice enough. If they are too nice, you could argue that that is altruism. A gene could also mutate, resulting in a new behaviour making an individual behave more altruistic.
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Something Completely Different Last edited by Guybrush; 08-10-2014 at 04:36 PM. |
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