@OmegaChosen:
Altruism in itself can be construed to be a form of ethics based upon a moral obligation to protect others. In order to truly be free of morals these other-oriented emotions towards "defective or old cogs" must be suppressed and the cogs removed from an otherwise "perfect" system. I'm sure you see a flaw somewhere in here though.
Altruism's likely foundation is the survival of an individual as integrating into a social order has many benefits like division of labor and access to mates. A likely explanation of why people do not destroy the helpless is because it would destabilize cooperation resulting in a breakdown of the social order and thus the efficiency and survival gains from cooperating. Those that signal they wish to destroy the weak are signaling that if you become a potential liability, even temporarily, you can be under threat. In addition cooperation is likely facilitated via memory Trivers (71) "evolution of reciprocal altruism". Memory serves as an accounting mechanism that allows individuals to reconcile others that provide value and those that do not. Without an enforcement mechanism mutation would permit a purely selfish rather then "selfishly altruistic" entity to thrive and suppress a putative "pure altruist". Behaving in ways that are overtly selfish to the point of sociopathy would just cause suspension of systematic cooperation.
Those that signal pure intentions ( even if they are not) stand to make relatively major gains in a simple social order so aiding the weak or elderly is a potential means of generating "social capital". For example:
In a society where there is abundant need for aid there are plenty of opportunities for individuals to take advantage of or attempt to “socially monetize” that need. Saving the child of your neighbor in the hut-next-door from drowning would no doubt be acknowledged and lauded by members of your tribe or small social order. If by some chance you had the good fortune to save every tribesman’s/woman’s child at the same time your tribal market value would likely increase. If by some totally improbable chance you had the opportunity to save every tribesman’s/woman’s child at the same time every week for 3 years your value to the tribe would experience additional gains and you would likely never have to hunt or repair your hut again, you may even receive sexual rewards which would just facilitate enhancing the % various genes you carry in society would be expressed in the population. Actions like this with low risk vs. high reward ratio would net robust fitness gains as other members of the tribe would see you as an asset and there would likely be incoming gains from members who observed your superficially beneficent actions. Under the hood we are likely optimized to wanting to engage in low cost sacrifice for others bcs it makes rational economic sense with regards to potential gains from proximal agents.
As for those that merely signal the virtues of altruism publicly, this itself is typically costless to the self-promoting actor. It's rather difficult to know, even more so in a global economic order who is really sincere or who'es rhetoric matches the magnitude of their actions. Thus in modern society where its' more difficult to observe our "tribesman" it can be very profitable to engage in the rhetoric of an altruist but not follow it up in practice because of the concealment complex society offers. Others wishing to graft altruistic dynamics onto a global cooperative effort are likely to find the foundational necessities of a proto-market, like memory, don't scale well.
Further complicating this is biological self-deception.
“If... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray — by the subtle signs of self-knowledge — the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.”-Robert Trivers
Because of this spotting the false signaling altruist via rhetoric alone is even more difficult especially when he isn’t, himself, aware his love for his fellow man is driven by selfish motives.
Altruism, and the missives its’ spawns, Meh, I’m not impressed.
@Gunner:
I would like to meet the person that gives these rights out to people, oh wait, there isnt one.
Society gives people rights. The only question is, how do you determine what are societies “true” preferences ? What methodology do you use to extract your “social welfare function”?
Hint: Don’t say democracy.
As for guns, yes please. No I don’t trust the state. And UK stats cherry-pickers need to include knife crime death/assaults which occurs at a higher rate than knife crime in the US.
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