Makes for interesting speculation. In any case it seems to me that greater conformity is a more likley measurable product of a totalitarian state. In a sense the totalitarian state speeds up some of the processes of self-domestication.
I think differential birth rates between “altruists” and “non-altruists” have much more impact than more “altruistic” people dying. Also I think its probably more of a general unfortunate effect of living in a a urban civilized society than something just limited to totalitarian societies.
Also I think its probably more of a general unfortunate effect of living in a a urban civilized society than something just limited to totalitarian societies.
Altruism is a product of kin selection. It seems safe to say that group selection is far too weak to account for it. What are the conditions under which altruism that can easily be diverted to non kin can survive?
While it sounds plausible and perhaps likley I’m not convinced that urban environments are overall places where kin selection can’t work as well, consider for example the endogamous situations one sees in societies with caste systems or more clan based structures, where people both economically and reproductively closely cooperate with their kin.
But I do think that it is likley that in modern society kin selection is basically broken, and may have been broken since the industrial revolution. Perhaps similar conditions could be found in other societies?
I think you are right concerning urban environments. We have plenty of examples of societies where the urban environment is very clannish. How well you do is closely tied to how well your extended family does and you also select mates from that family.
By definition, altruism is selected against by within-family selection (individual selection) and favored by between-family selection, since the average fitness of a family is directly proportional to the frequency of altruists within the family. Indeed, it can be shown that Hamilton’s rule translates into the condition in which between-family selection overrides within-family selection (Wade 1980)….”
“Breden and Wade pointed out that inbreeding eventually fixes the population for two family types resulting from matings between like homozygotes (AA x AA, aa x aa). Matings between like homozygotes result in families that have no genetic variation in them. Consequently, they concluded that inbreeding generally decreases the average within-family variance. The two types of families produced by matings between like homozygotes are also maximally different from each other in frequency of the altruistic allele and in average fitness. Consequently, inbreeding increases the between-family variance. Both these factors, that is, the decrease of within-family selection and the increase of between-family selection, have the effect of making the evolution of altruism easier. This effect was also emphasized by Boorman and Levitt (1980: 350). They concluded that ‘…a high degree of inbreeding may be expected to favor sib altruism over the random mating case….’
But societies that are very inbreed don’t seem to be very “altruistic” in the way the word is used on LW. They seem to be altruistic towards family members but not very much to random strangers. Or it might just be that the well known effect of inbreeding depressing IQs might make their societies more impoverished and thus leaves them less able to help random strangers.
This brings me to three interesting interesting predictions one might make. All else being equal:
1) Societies with a longer history of faster travel tend to be more indiscriminately altruistic (since that presumably means more out-breeding).
2) Societies where the cost of travel over long distances is low will have less inbreeding.
3) Subcultures that maintain high inbreeding despite exposure to 1) and 2) out-compete those groups in a society that don’t, because they enjoy the fitness boost of indiscriminate altruists while being highly selective about who is the target of their own altruism.
I do not have a high confidence in these but they seem to make sense.
I didn’t mean to imply that the “overall level” of altruism would remain the same, just that remaining altruist impulses would be distributed less selectively by an individual. If I said a certain society has a more equal distribution of wealth I wouldn’t wish to imply they overall also have more wealth per capita. The word indiscriminately was probably not an optimal choice, but I wanted to avoid the warm glow associated with words like “equally”, “egalitarian” or “less discriminating”.
In an inbreed society you are more closely related (as in likley to have a greater overlap of genes) to your spouse and consequently your children than otherwise. The relative advantage of you being extra altruistic to them, compared to most other less related people, seems greater than it would be in a outbred one. So if I was speculating on how altruism is directed in such a society I’d expect it to drop more sharply when going from me>brothers>cousin>clan member>tribe>ect., because the fitness differences are more pronounced.
Say I have 0.9 Ghandi, and I distribute it 0.5 to my family 0.3 to my tribe and 0.1 to the default human who isn’t part of my tribe. If I shift this to 0.4 to my family, 0.3 to my tribe and 0.2 to default human who isn’t part of my tribe, this may obviously result in fewer people actually helping each other, because diminishing returns would kick in. What it may also do is for example make coordination on the tribal or even trans-tribal level easier, which can lead to certain tragedy of the commons situations being averted that otherwise wouldn’t have.
But societies that are very inbreed don’t seem to be very “altruistic” in the way the word is used on LW. They seem to be altruistic towards family members but not very much to random strangers.
Right, for relative strangers in an outbreed society the pay-offs for altruism between them is more favourable than in a more inbreed society.
What I find interesting is that you could get there in several ways, for example you could tweak your tendency to categorise people in outgroup vs. ingroup to make them more likley to classify people in the former, while decreasing how much you want to help any individual of the ingroup. Or you could just tweak up the altruism for outgroup. Actually thinking a bit more about this I’m not sure there is any real difference between the two approaches.
Interesting take. Upvoted.
You might be interested in this paper by Peter Frost:
The Roman State and Genetic pacification
Makes for interesting speculation. In any case it seems to me that greater conformity is a more likley measurable product of a totalitarian state. In a sense the totalitarian state speeds up some of the processes of self-domestication.
I think differential birth rates between “altruists” and “non-altruists” have much more impact than more “altruistic” people dying. Also I think its probably more of a general unfortunate effect of living in a a urban civilized society than something just limited to totalitarian societies.
Can you elaborate on that?
Altruism is a product of kin selection. It seems safe to say that group selection is far too weak to account for it. What are the conditions under which altruism that can easily be diverted to non kin can survive?
While it sounds plausible and perhaps likley I’m not convinced that urban environments are overall places where kin selection can’t work as well, consider for example the endogamous situations one sees in societies with caste systems or more clan based structures, where people both economically and reproductively closely cooperate with their kin.
But I do think that it is likley that in modern society kin selection is basically broken, and may have been broken since the industrial revolution. Perhaps similar conditions could be found in other societies?
I think you are right concerning urban environments. We have plenty of examples of societies where the urban environment is very clannish. How well you do is closely tied to how well your extended family does and you also select mates from that family.
To quote from pg. 84 of The Natural history of Inbreeding and Outbreeding:
But societies that are very inbreed don’t seem to be very “altruistic” in the way the word is used on LW. They seem to be altruistic towards family members but not very much to random strangers. Or it might just be that the well known effect of inbreeding depressing IQs might make their societies more impoverished and thus leaves them less able to help random strangers.
This brings me to three interesting interesting predictions one might make. All else being equal:
1) Societies with a longer history of faster travel tend to be more indiscriminately altruistic (since that presumably means more out-breeding).
2) Societies where the cost of travel over long distances is low will have less inbreeding.
3) Subcultures that maintain high inbreeding despite exposure to 1) and 2) out-compete those groups in a society that don’t, because they enjoy the fitness boost of indiscriminate altruists while being highly selective about who is the target of their own altruism.
I do not have a high confidence in these but they seem to make sense.
Why not just more selfish?
I didn’t mean to imply that the “overall level” of altruism would remain the same, just that remaining altruist impulses would be distributed less selectively by an individual. If I said a certain society has a more equal distribution of wealth I wouldn’t wish to imply they overall also have more wealth per capita. The word indiscriminately was probably not an optimal choice, but I wanted to avoid the warm glow associated with words like “equally”, “egalitarian” or “less discriminating”.
In an inbreed society you are more closely related (as in likley to have a greater overlap of genes) to your spouse and consequently your children than otherwise. The relative advantage of you being extra altruistic to them, compared to most other less related people, seems greater than it would be in a outbred one. So if I was speculating on how altruism is directed in such a society I’d expect it to drop more sharply when going from me>brothers>cousin>clan member>tribe>ect., because the fitness differences are more pronounced.
Say I have 0.9 Ghandi, and I distribute it 0.5 to my family 0.3 to my tribe and 0.1 to the default human who isn’t part of my tribe. If I shift this to 0.4 to my family, 0.3 to my tribe and 0.2 to default human who isn’t part of my tribe, this may obviously result in fewer people actually helping each other, because diminishing returns would kick in. What it may also do is for example make coordination on the tribal or even trans-tribal level easier, which can lead to certain tragedy of the commons situations being averted that otherwise wouldn’t have.
I want to however strongly emphasise:
Right, for relative strangers in an outbreed society the pay-offs for altruism between them is more favourable than in a more inbreed society.
What I find interesting is that you could get there in several ways, for example you could tweak your tendency to categorise people in outgroup vs. ingroup to make them more likley to classify people in the former, while decreasing how much you want to help any individual of the ingroup. Or you could just tweak up the altruism for outgroup. Actually thinking a bit more about this I’m not sure there is any real difference between the two approaches.