{"id":42,"date":"2007-08-12T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-12T20:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=42"},"modified":"2007-08-12T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-12T20:27:00","slug":"selfish-bastards-every-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"Selfish Bastards, Every One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now and then I’ve fielded questions \u2014 in interviews, private e-mails, maybe even here in the ‘crawl \u2014 about my reductionist take on human nature. <\/span>In particular, a lot of folks are not comfy with my dissing of altruism, which <\/span>(if it ever does<\/i><\/i> arise in a population) is likely to get weeded out real fast because Hey, who’s going to leave more offspring to the next generation: <\/span>the selfless doof who gives up his life jacket on the Titanic or the selfish bastard who takes it for himself? <\/span> <\/p>\n

Seems pretty straightforward to me, but it seems to give pause to a lot of folks (I even recently received an e-mail on the subject from the legendary Ted Chiang). <\/span>What about Mothers who rescue their babies from burning buildings?<\/i><\/i> some of the most egregiously out-clued might ask (A: Kin selection, dummies). <\/span>What about people who willingly die for their countries or for their religious beliefs?<\/i><\/i> (Yeah, and if Christ had said “Do unto others, turn the other cheek, walk the second mile and in the end you’ll go to hell anyway”, I’m sure the Christians would’ve just been lining up<\/i><\/i> to go one-on-one with the lions.) <\/span>What about people who just act out of the goodness of their hearts and help out those who are not so fortunate, even if they’re athiests or <\/i>unrelated to the beneficiary<\/i><\/i>? <\/span>(Ah, you mean reciprocal<\/i><\/i> altruism. T<\/span>hat’s done in expectation of a payoff somewhere down the road\u2014 and remind me to scribble a post at some point reviewing what we do to people who accept our kind gestures and then don’t<\/i><\/i> <\/span>reciprocate…)<\/p>\n

Yeah, well, um\u2014 yeah, what about people who give to panhandlers, or volunteer for good causes even though there’s no way some rubby or Malawian foster-child will ever be able to return the favour? <\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Hmmm.<\/p>\n

This last challenge never really shook my position much. <\/span>I can rattle off <\/span>“status enhancement\/increased mating opportunities” as fast as the next guy. <\/span>Still, I wasn’t aware of any actual studies on humans that backed it up. <\/span>But now there is one, courtesy of <\/span>the niggardly cocksuckers at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, who \u2014 despite <\/span>my online access privileges as a postdoctoral fellow at a major academic institution \u2014 still want to charge me $30 before letting me see any more than the abstract. <\/span>Screw that. <\/span>Fortunately there’s a layperson-friendly summary<\/a> in The Economist<\/i><\/i>. <\/span>So here’s the he-said\/she-said version:<\/p>\n

Men, like most male mammals, like to acquire resources. <\/span>When they’re not especially horny, they’re as likely to go for furniture and big-screen TVs \u2014 i.e., major, nonportable items that remain in the home \u2014 as anything else. <\/span>When they’re horny, however, they’d rather buy bling and fast cars \u2014 flashy stuff they can take on the road to attract mates. <\/span>Also, when in a horny mood, they’re more likely to give publicly to panhandlers (also to indulge in risky\/heroic behaviour). <\/span>In other words, both conspicuous consumption and conspicuous generosity are just ways of attracting mates: <\/span>hey baby, lookit me! <\/span>I’ve got so much money I can just give it away!<\/b>..<\/b><\/i><\/i>.<\/p>\n

Women are no better. <\/span>They aren’t so much into resource acquisition as they are into volunteer work and do-gooding social causes \u2014 and once again, <\/span>when they’re not thinking about sex, they don’t really care what kind<\/i><\/i> of good they’re doing. <\/span>When horned up, however, women show a distinct preference for conspicuous<\/i><\/i> do-gooding (working in a homeless shelter, for example), while shying away from other kinds (e.g., going off on their own and picking up garbage in a ravine).<\/p>\n

So once again, behaviour that seems noble at first glance turns out to be stone self-serving upon closer examination: another brand of faux<\/i><\/i> altruism that has far more in common with peacock’s tails and wattles on chickens than with any spark of divine generosity. <\/span>What’s more, the nature<\/i><\/i> of our displays breaks down along the same stereotypic r\/K selection lines that have always (understandably) driven feminists up the wall because seriously, who really wants to believe that sex-is-destiny shit anyway?<\/p>\n

Not that this should come as news to anyone. <\/span>(Have any of the men in the audience ever been targeted by a street vendor with an armload of overpriced roses when they weren’t<\/i><\/i> in the company of a woman?) <\/span>Still, it’s nice to see actual data backing up the just-so story.<\/p>\n

Now, anybody know of any cases of Human altruism that haven’t<\/i><\/i> been exposed as kin selection or sleazy get-laid strategies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now and then I’ve fielded questions \u2014 in interviews, private e-mails, maybe even here in the ‘crawl \u2014 about my reductionist take on human nature. In particular, a lot of folks are not comfy with my dissing of altruism, which (if it ever does arise in a population) is likely to get weeded out real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-putting-it-out-there","category-rant","category-sociobiology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}