The examples used to demonstrate altruism more accurately reflect a rational selfishness. Most rational people will go to greater lengths to help a sibling vs. a cousin. Notice I didn’t say “sacrifice”. To sacrifice is to give up something of lesser value for a greater one (i.e, altruism).
If any “hardwiring” is taking place, it’s caused by society’s confusing rational self interest with altruism.
But “DNA has no eyes.” A behavioral rule that survives because it often, or more often than not, promotes survival of the behaving entity’s genes can be invoked by stimuli that do not promote such survival. So, if I am adapted to sacrifice my life to save two brothers or eight cousins, that behavioral adaptation can be triggered by similar seeming circumstances where I have no brothers and maybe no first cousins: and that would be altruism, biologically speaking. It might or might not be altruistic, morally speaking, depending on my reasons, or at least my conscious rationalizations. Of course, I may have misunderstood your comment, or misunderstood the main article, or both.
Right! Steven Pinker argued that humans universally love music because it's "auditory cheesecake." Cheesecake, he said, appeals because evolution gave us insatiable cravings for oils & carbs because both were scarce and essential. Now they're not, but the cravings persist. Similarly, language, pattern recognition, and emotion were essential to survival. Music accidentally fulfilled all 3. As a musician, I think it's a great explanation, in contrast to MGM's "ars gratia artis" ("art for art's sake").
If one sacrifices his life for his child, is he valuing his life less than the child's ("altruism") or selfishly maximizing the likelihood of his own genes surviving ("rational self-interest")? I'm not persuaded that the two are distinguishable. Does my dog love me, or is he just a genetic grifter, programmed to mimic love, like the robot in "Ex Machina"? Is human love more than mere chemical reaction? Interesting but ultimately unknowable and unimportant distinctions.
I was going to say essentially what Kevin said: altruism is not the opposite of self sacrifice— a sacrifice is only a sacrifice if one exchanges a higher value for a lower value. Otherwise it is a positive gain. The Oxford Dictionary correctly defines altruism: “selfless concern for the well-being of others, without care for one's own interests; unselfishness”.
> It forces economists to respect their subjects. They can’t simply write, “People smoke cigarettes because they’re stupid.” Instead, they must ask, “Why do intelligent people smoke, given that they understand the dangers?”
Because they're foolish, which is not the same thing as stupid.
One of the most fundamental traits of wisdom, learning from the mistakes of others so you don't have to make them yourself and learn from them the hard way, seems to be entirely uncorrelated with intelligence. It's strongly correlated with humility which, if anything, makes it difficult for highly intelligent people to pick up, because they know enough things well enough that there's always the temptation to think they "know better" about moral issues as well.
The reason that most smokers smoke, intelligent or otherwise, is because they're addicted to it. And the reason they got addicted was because they started young, before they had enough wisdom to not start smoking. (See also: alcohol, coffee, gambling, social media, pornography, etc.) They may have been warned about the dangers before they ever started, but they didn't *understand* them, because something you have no experience with is never truly real to you.
Sometimes that experience comes secondhand in a viscerally personal way, such as a person choosing at a young age never to drink or smoke because they saw what it did to a close friend or relative. (cf. Donald Trump, who never drank because he lost a brother to alcoholism.) And sometimes you have someone with enough humility to say "maybe the people who say not to do this know what they're talking about, even if it doesn't make sense to me right now." And they don't start.
When neither of these factors apply, all too often people do end up starting bad habits when given the opportunity.
In middle school, my son's teacher showed an anti-smoking video whose message was, "Smoking doesn't look cool." My son, who was precocious and a fan of classic movies, came home and said the argument was unconvincing. He never smoked but said "I've seen enough Bogart and Bacall films and such to know that it's extremely cool-looking."
For many, the utility of smoking's coolness today exceeds the disutility of probabilistic, decades-in-the-future health risks. Your argument would be equally applicable to driving fast, rock-climbing, white-water rafting, and other dangerous pastimes. By the way, I've never smoked, but I'll start doing it today if it's a choice of that or rock-climbing.
Economics never said foolishness and stupidity weren't real. Merely that other fields (eg, psychology) can worry about those. Consider obesity. Four main causes: genetic propensity, addiction, lack of education, and rational obesity. Most of today's obesity is the latter--the person knows why he's obese, knows how to lose weight, knows the health risks, but finds the costs (forgoing tasty food, exercising) higher than the benefits. For such people, education programs are useless.
He's seen enough films to know that a film crew can make even things that look really dumb and unappealing IRL look glamorous. (See also: pornography.)
Absolutely! Son and I agreed at that time that a better approach would be PSAs telling you that smoking gives you bad breath and discolored teeth and fingernails. Near-term, high-probability, tangible costs, versus long-term, low-probability, unimaginable costs.
Are you psychic? I got your email blast at 7:16 pm EST. At 8:19 pm EST my email blast said Joe Biden had pardoned his son Hunter. Many an essay will be written about this pardon, the online "pearl clutchers" will have a field day -- talking about Presidential norms, politics etc. But who among us would not pardon our offspring if we had the chance and opportunity?
But the at least as likely reason (and probably more likely) he did it was as a deal to keep Hunter from spilling beans harmful to Joe and others (and so Joe’s reputation).
So while I concede it’s plausibly just about gene preservation, it is not more probably so in this case.
Completely off topic here, but I'm once again reminded of the cinematic genius of The Godfather. I have no idea how many times I've watched that early scene in the movie, yet this is the first time my brain picked up the foreshadowing of a somewhat out of focus Sonny in the background.
Another interesting twist on altruistic behavior is the role which religion might play. Is it really altruistic or is there a "buying my way into heaven" motive lurking in the background? Another way of saying that might be........"It's not personal Sonny. It's strictly business."
You remind me--I need to add "The Offer" to my list of recommended TV miniseries (in my previous column). About the making of The Godfather. Tremendous fun and highly informative. After watching it, we felt compelled to re-watch all three Godfather films. And on your last point, many (most?) clerics involved in the Spanish Inquisition thought they were doing Jews and others a favor by torturing them. As bad as the torture was, they thought, at least we are saving them from the far worse tortures of eternal damnation.
Funny. Just Friday evening a couple I met at the local wine store highly recommended "The Offer" to me. Given his first name was Mario (I'm not joking), I should probably follow directions. As to your last point, we often forget there's nothing new under the sun when the topic is human behavior.
On the other hand, certain strains of Jihadist do assume that they are doing fellow Muslims when, say, a bomb goes off, killing Jews and Muslims. By their logic, the Jews will receive eternal damnation and the Muslims will go to paradise. And by their logic, there's an advantage in going sooner rather than later.
I’d say we’re a combination of both. DNA lays down the structure of language—it’s an instinct—but what we say is up to us. Where the line is drawn—nature versus nurture—is hazy.
“ Where the line is drawn—nature versus nurture—is hazy.”
Well put.
I find it sad - and occasionally infuriating - when people claim to know with certainty that some behavior - or group outcome - is definitively nature or definitively “nurture”.
Even if that might somehow possibly be true of a very few things, the idea that we can know with even near certainty demonstrates a complete lack of epistemic humility.
And probably that the person making the claim doesn’t even have a clue about what the concept of “epistemic humility” is.
A fun, thought provoking read, but I often think the concept that evolution methodically shapes beings by ‘looking backward’ at what seems to work stretches things a bit. increasing evidence suggests many animals can adapt behaviors through observing ‘what works’ like Orcas who hunt great white sharks for their livers, and those that adapt survive and procreate, but attributing that to some inherent goal of ‘preserving DNA’ seems quite a leap.
Of course some amount of altruism is encoded in our DNA; but not too much. Just the species survival maximizing amount, which appears to be fairly low. I believe it was the economist Bryan Caplan, whom I cite with caution because he’s on here, so I will add that I am unsure, who estimated about 5% of income, the same for government employees’ selfless devotion to the national interest as the entrepreneur’s or the salaryman’s donations to charity.
Following a colleague's example, when I taught at the University of Richmond (wealthy student body), I would ask not about genetics and income, but rather family and income. The revelation for them was that the correlation of income between parents and children is modes, and the correlation between grandparents and grandchildren is almost nonexistent. They had difficulty believing it, but then I would ask how many of them had one or more grandparents who were poor, and most hands would shoot up. Not exactly about DNA, but related.
It's a defect in my character but such topics as you are writing about leave me snoring gently on the bed, the alpha waves oscillating gently. I'll merely point you in the direction of an old, but good book DUPONT DYNASTY by Gerald Colby. Published in 1984, it's a history of the DuPonts and their company from the Revolutionary War to the 1970s. I bring this book up because it relates the often savage dealings between brothers and cousins that left the whispering of the genes deaf and cowed.
Also a note on Henry Ford. The five dollar day did not mean a five spot at the end of the work day. It meant $2.34, with $2.66 being deferred compensation. To earn the rest, employees had to live a prudent lifestyle, in which gambling and drinking were scowled at. Ford also had a Sociological Department that did what Cass Sunstein would call 'nudging' encouraging employees to take English learning classes and Americanization classes for its ;employees, many of whom were fresh from Ellis Island. It was well meant, but as time passed, the Sociological Department became oppressive and employee turnover(which had been a big driver of the original decision for the five dollar day) rose once again. This is well covered in the first volume of Nevins and Hill's biography of Ford Motor FORD: THE TIMES THE MAN AND THE COMPANY (very hard to find) or more recently in FORD: THE MEN AND THE MACHINE by Robert Lacey.
You write as if you believe the nudging and the very idea of Ford making a big component of compensation deferred were bad things.
When pretty clearly they were not.
Even if reasonable people - contemporaries or modern - might disagree on certain specific Ford requirements.
Nor does the fact that the “Sociological Department” became oppressive over time seem to me a valid indictment that what Henry Ford did in the early years was bad either.
The examples used to demonstrate altruism more accurately reflect a rational selfishness. Most rational people will go to greater lengths to help a sibling vs. a cousin. Notice I didn’t say “sacrifice”. To sacrifice is to give up something of lesser value for a greater one (i.e, altruism).
If any “hardwiring” is taking place, it’s caused by society’s confusing rational self interest with altruism.
But “DNA has no eyes.” A behavioral rule that survives because it often, or more often than not, promotes survival of the behaving entity’s genes can be invoked by stimuli that do not promote such survival. So, if I am adapted to sacrifice my life to save two brothers or eight cousins, that behavioral adaptation can be triggered by similar seeming circumstances where I have no brothers and maybe no first cousins: and that would be altruism, biologically speaking. It might or might not be altruistic, morally speaking, depending on my reasons, or at least my conscious rationalizations. Of course, I may have misunderstood your comment, or misunderstood the main article, or both.
Right! Steven Pinker argued that humans universally love music because it's "auditory cheesecake." Cheesecake, he said, appeals because evolution gave us insatiable cravings for oils & carbs because both were scarce and essential. Now they're not, but the cravings persist. Similarly, language, pattern recognition, and emotion were essential to survival. Music accidentally fulfilled all 3. As a musician, I think it's a great explanation, in contrast to MGM's "ars gratia artis" ("art for art's sake").
If one sacrifices his life for his child, is he valuing his life less than the child's ("altruism") or selfishly maximizing the likelihood of his own genes surviving ("rational self-interest")? I'm not persuaded that the two are distinguishable. Does my dog love me, or is he just a genetic grifter, programmed to mimic love, like the robot in "Ex Machina"? Is human love more than mere chemical reaction? Interesting but ultimately unknowable and unimportant distinctions.
I was going to say essentially what Kevin said: altruism is not the opposite of self sacrifice— a sacrifice is only a sacrifice if one exchanges a higher value for a lower value. Otherwise it is a positive gain. The Oxford Dictionary correctly defines altruism: “selfless concern for the well-being of others, without care for one's own interests; unselfishness”.
> It forces economists to respect their subjects. They can’t simply write, “People smoke cigarettes because they’re stupid.” Instead, they must ask, “Why do intelligent people smoke, given that they understand the dangers?”
Because they're foolish, which is not the same thing as stupid.
One of the most fundamental traits of wisdom, learning from the mistakes of others so you don't have to make them yourself and learn from them the hard way, seems to be entirely uncorrelated with intelligence. It's strongly correlated with humility which, if anything, makes it difficult for highly intelligent people to pick up, because they know enough things well enough that there's always the temptation to think they "know better" about moral issues as well.
The reason that most smokers smoke, intelligent or otherwise, is because they're addicted to it. And the reason they got addicted was because they started young, before they had enough wisdom to not start smoking. (See also: alcohol, coffee, gambling, social media, pornography, etc.) They may have been warned about the dangers before they ever started, but they didn't *understand* them, because something you have no experience with is never truly real to you.
Sometimes that experience comes secondhand in a viscerally personal way, such as a person choosing at a young age never to drink or smoke because they saw what it did to a close friend or relative. (cf. Donald Trump, who never drank because he lost a brother to alcoholism.) And sometimes you have someone with enough humility to say "maybe the people who say not to do this know what they're talking about, even if it doesn't make sense to me right now." And they don't start.
When neither of these factors apply, all too often people do end up starting bad habits when given the opportunity.
In middle school, my son's teacher showed an anti-smoking video whose message was, "Smoking doesn't look cool." My son, who was precocious and a fan of classic movies, came home and said the argument was unconvincing. He never smoked but said "I've seen enough Bogart and Bacall films and such to know that it's extremely cool-looking."
For many, the utility of smoking's coolness today exceeds the disutility of probabilistic, decades-in-the-future health risks. Your argument would be equally applicable to driving fast, rock-climbing, white-water rafting, and other dangerous pastimes. By the way, I've never smoked, but I'll start doing it today if it's a choice of that or rock-climbing.
Economics never said foolishness and stupidity weren't real. Merely that other fields (eg, psychology) can worry about those. Consider obesity. Four main causes: genetic propensity, addiction, lack of education, and rational obesity. Most of today's obesity is the latter--the person knows why he's obese, knows how to lose weight, knows the health risks, but finds the costs (forgoing tasty food, exercising) higher than the benefits. For such people, education programs are useless.
Forgive my breaking this into multiple posts. There's some glitch preventing me from posting a single, lengthy reply.
He's seen enough films to know that a film crew can make even things that look really dumb and unappealing IRL look glamorous. (See also: pornography.)
Absolutely! Son and I agreed at that time that a better approach would be PSAs telling you that smoking gives you bad breath and discolored teeth and fingernails. Near-term, high-probability, tangible costs, versus long-term, low-probability, unimaginable costs.
Are you psychic? I got your email blast at 7:16 pm EST. At 8:19 pm EST my email blast said Joe Biden had pardoned his son Hunter. Many an essay will be written about this pardon, the online "pearl clutchers" will have a field day -- talking about Presidential norms, politics etc. But who among us would not pardon our offspring if we had the chance and opportunity?
I didn't even think of that connection. :)
I wouldn’t.
Cool story, bro.
But the at least as likely reason (and probably more likely) he did it was as a deal to keep Hunter from spilling beans harmful to Joe and others (and so Joe’s reputation).
So while I concede it’s plausibly just about gene preservation, it is not more probably so in this case.
Completely off topic here, but I'm once again reminded of the cinematic genius of The Godfather. I have no idea how many times I've watched that early scene in the movie, yet this is the first time my brain picked up the foreshadowing of a somewhat out of focus Sonny in the background.
Another interesting twist on altruistic behavior is the role which religion might play. Is it really altruistic or is there a "buying my way into heaven" motive lurking in the background? Another way of saying that might be........"It's not personal Sonny. It's strictly business."
You remind me--I need to add "The Offer" to my list of recommended TV miniseries (in my previous column). About the making of The Godfather. Tremendous fun and highly informative. After watching it, we felt compelled to re-watch all three Godfather films. And on your last point, many (most?) clerics involved in the Spanish Inquisition thought they were doing Jews and others a favor by torturing them. As bad as the torture was, they thought, at least we are saving them from the far worse tortures of eternal damnation.
Funny. Just Friday evening a couple I met at the local wine store highly recommended "The Offer" to me. Given his first name was Mario (I'm not joking), I should probably follow directions. As to your last point, we often forget there's nothing new under the sun when the topic is human behavior.
Yeah. At least the Muslims don’t imagine they’re doing us any favors.
On the other hand, certain strains of Jihadist do assume that they are doing fellow Muslims when, say, a bomb goes off, killing Jews and Muslims. By their logic, the Jews will receive eternal damnation and the Muslims will go to paradise. And by their logic, there's an advantage in going sooner rather than later.
Humans have free will. We are more than just collections of muscle twitches, glandular squirts, and DNA-controlled responses.
Unlike other living organisms, we must make complex choices in order to survive.
Certainly genetics plays an important role in who we are, but ultimately the values we choose (or avoid) are what make us human.
I’d say we’re a combination of both. DNA lays down the structure of language—it’s an instinct—but what we say is up to us. Where the line is drawn—nature versus nurture—is hazy.
“ Where the line is drawn—nature versus nurture—is hazy.”
Well put.
I find it sad - and occasionally infuriating - when people claim to know with certainty that some behavior - or group outcome - is definitively nature or definitively “nurture”.
Even if that might somehow possibly be true of a very few things, the idea that we can know with even near certainty demonstrates a complete lack of epistemic humility.
And probably that the person making the claim doesn’t even have a clue about what the concept of “epistemic humility” is.
A fun, thought provoking read, but I often think the concept that evolution methodically shapes beings by ‘looking backward’ at what seems to work stretches things a bit. increasing evidence suggests many animals can adapt behaviors through observing ‘what works’ like Orcas who hunt great white sharks for their livers, and those that adapt survive and procreate, but attributing that to some inherent goal of ‘preserving DNA’ seems quite a leap.
As good an explanation as any.
Love your artwork, by the way.
Thanks!
Of course some amount of altruism is encoded in our DNA; but not too much. Just the species survival maximizing amount, which appears to be fairly low. I believe it was the economist Bryan Caplan, whom I cite with caution because he’s on here, so I will add that I am unsure, who estimated about 5% of income, the same for government employees’ selfless devotion to the national interest as the entrepreneur’s or the salaryman’s donations to charity.
Following a colleague's example, when I taught at the University of Richmond (wealthy student body), I would ask not about genetics and income, but rather family and income. The revelation for them was that the correlation of income between parents and children is modes, and the correlation between grandparents and grandchildren is almost nonexistent. They had difficulty believing it, but then I would ask how many of them had one or more grandparents who were poor, and most hands would shoot up. Not exactly about DNA, but related.
It's a defect in my character but such topics as you are writing about leave me snoring gently on the bed, the alpha waves oscillating gently. I'll merely point you in the direction of an old, but good book DUPONT DYNASTY by Gerald Colby. Published in 1984, it's a history of the DuPonts and their company from the Revolutionary War to the 1970s. I bring this book up because it relates the often savage dealings between brothers and cousins that left the whispering of the genes deaf and cowed.
Also a note on Henry Ford. The five dollar day did not mean a five spot at the end of the work day. It meant $2.34, with $2.66 being deferred compensation. To earn the rest, employees had to live a prudent lifestyle, in which gambling and drinking were scowled at. Ford also had a Sociological Department that did what Cass Sunstein would call 'nudging' encouraging employees to take English learning classes and Americanization classes for its ;employees, many of whom were fresh from Ellis Island. It was well meant, but as time passed, the Sociological Department became oppressive and employee turnover(which had been a big driver of the original decision for the five dollar day) rose once again. This is well covered in the first volume of Nevins and Hill's biography of Ford Motor FORD: THE TIMES THE MAN AND THE COMPANY (very hard to find) or more recently in FORD: THE MEN AND THE MACHINE by Robert Lacey.
Carry on.
You write as if you believe the nudging and the very idea of Ford making a big component of compensation deferred were bad things.
When pretty clearly they were not.
Even if reasonable people - contemporaries or modern - might disagree on certain specific Ford requirements.
Nor does the fact that the “Sociological Department” became oppressive over time seem to me a valid indictment that what Henry Ford did in the early years was bad either.