Why not become a pure reproductive consequentialist?
Reading these posts I notice a preference for altruism, utilitarianism and rejecting some of the intuitions that natural selection gave us. Moreover, almost everyone working on evolutionary psychology takes a lot of effort to avoid the naturalistic fallacy: Not confusing what is with what ought to be (see Richard Dawkins—“The Selfish Gene” or Steven Pinker—“The Blank Slate”).
Still I am wondering what is so “good” about altruism? Knowing that our preference for altruism also developed by natural selection, because it either benefits our genes in other humans (W.D. Hamilton—Kin Altruism ) or leads to reciprocal benefits for ourselfs (Robert Trivers—Reciprocal Altruism ), or it least did in small hunter-gatherer tribes in the ancestral environment. Utilitarianism is now projecting this altruism that we naturally feel towards friends and family (which was good for our genes) onto humanity as a whole (which probably isn’t). Usually there is the assumption that every human life is worth the same.
I agree that you can’t take your values from evolution, but why assume that there are any (objective) values at all? Why not embrace nihilism? Why not become a pure reproductive consequentialist?
Some practical consequences of this value system (some of them pretty weird):
Valuing your family, esp. your children more than strangers (anybody does that intuitively anyway)
Valuing your friends more than strangers (because they reciprocate; people also naturally do this)
Sacrificing your life for your children if that improves their survival more than it reduces your chance for future surviving children (you also see this very often in the real world, fathers drowning to save their children, etc.; Of course you could do the math much better than our adaptation which basically says “save drowning children”)
Switching to full altruism after your chance (or plan) to have future children has fallen to zero. Of course, still caring more about your relatives more than others (grandparents do this a lot, also Bill Gates would be an example)
Ignoring your will to have sex unless you plan to have children or it becomes distracting and reduces your ability to achieve your other goals.
Going to the sperm bank (spreading your genes and getting paid for it. That’s what I call a win-win situation.)
Avoiding fatty and sugary food, following the paleo diet. (to improve your direct fitness and sexual attractiveness)
Not having any higher moral values whatsoever. Following your moral intuitions only when they are useful to other goals.
Basically acting like Gordon Gekko from Wall Street. Only that you would try to turn your money and power into a lot of children, likely from different women. (Like the Aztec or Inca emperors which had thousands of women. Unfortunately for the inclusive fitness of today’s powerful men this has become nearly impossible. It’s better for the average man I guess.)
I am not planning to act out this slightly silly idea in my life. Still I am astonished how well it approximates what people actually do considering the change from our ancestral environment. I would like to hear your thoughts.
I was heavily thinking about this topic in the past few weeks before stumbling across this post and your comment, and I appreciate both.
Ultimately, I agree with your conclusion. What’s more, I think this (becoming a pure reproductive consequentialist) is also inevitable from the evolutionary standpoint.
It’s already clear that pure hedonistic societies (“shards of desire” et al) are on a massive decline. The collective West, with an average US fertility rate of something like 1.6 per woman, is going to die off quickly.
But the gap will be filled, and it will be filled with the programming that re-enables higher reproductive fitness.
My take, though, is that you don’t have to be radical about either of those strategies. You don’t have to maximize your fertility to the absolute best by sacrificing all joy. I think you just have to maximize it to some reasonable subjective degree. Arguably, having fun should have a positive impact on your gene propagation — as long as you efficiently propagate!
So my personal choice is to follow all the strategies from your comment and some more — except the ones that are not fun. And treat the rest of the activities (fun but pointless) as inevitable cost of slow evolution, but not blame myself for this since this is not really my fault.
This excludes sperm banks but includes maximizing offspring by various other joyous ways.
This poses some interesting challenges though. Brute-forcing the problem of limited resources to pass to your offspring, you still have the challenge of limited bonding opportunities with the mothers, which may be detrimental to the children and hurt their own reproduction (which is critical, as also mentioned in the comments).
I wonder what is the optimal number of human offspring for one male, given that at some higher numbers, further increase seems to be detrimental to the sum of group fitness.
Why not become a pure reproductive consequentialist?
Reading these posts I notice a preference for altruism, utilitarianism and rejecting some of the intuitions that natural selection gave us. Moreover, almost everyone working on evolutionary psychology takes a lot of effort to avoid the naturalistic fallacy: Not confusing what is with what ought to be (see Richard Dawkins—“The Selfish Gene” or Steven Pinker—“The Blank Slate”).
Still I am wondering what is so “good” about altruism? Knowing that our preference for altruism also developed by natural selection, because it either benefits our genes in other humans (W.D. Hamilton—Kin Altruism ) or leads to reciprocal benefits for ourselfs (Robert Trivers—Reciprocal Altruism ), or it least did in small hunter-gatherer tribes in the ancestral environment. Utilitarianism is now projecting this altruism that we naturally feel towards friends and family (which was good for our genes) onto humanity as a whole (which probably isn’t). Usually there is the assumption that every human life is worth the same.
I agree that you can’t take your values from evolution, but why assume that there are any (objective) values at all? Why not embrace nihilism? Why not become a pure reproductive consequentialist?
Some practical consequences of this value system (some of them pretty weird):
Valuing your family, esp. your children more than strangers (anybody does that intuitively anyway)
Valuing your friends more than strangers (because they reciprocate; people also naturally do this)
Sacrificing your life for your children if that improves their survival more than it reduces your chance for future surviving children (you also see this very often in the real world, fathers drowning to save their children, etc.; Of course you could do the math much better than our adaptation which basically says “save drowning children”)
Switching to full altruism after your chance (or plan) to have future children has fallen to zero. Of course, still caring more about your relatives more than others (grandparents do this a lot, also Bill Gates would be an example)
Ignoring your will to have sex unless you plan to have children or it becomes distracting and reduces your ability to achieve your other goals.
Going to the sperm bank (spreading your genes and getting paid for it. That’s what I call a win-win situation.)
Avoiding fatty and sugary food, following the paleo diet. (to improve your direct fitness and sexual attractiveness)
Not having any higher moral values whatsoever. Following your moral intuitions only when they are useful to other goals.
Basically acting like Gordon Gekko from Wall Street. Only that you would try to turn your money and power into a lot of children, likely from different women. (Like the Aztec or Inca emperors which had thousands of women. Unfortunately for the inclusive fitness of today’s powerful men this has become nearly impossible. It’s better for the average man I guess.)
I am not planning to act out this slightly silly idea in my life. Still I am astonished how well it approximates what people actually do considering the change from our ancestral environment. I would like to hear your thoughts.
I was heavily thinking about this topic in the past few weeks before stumbling across this post and your comment, and I appreciate both.
Ultimately, I agree with your conclusion. What’s more, I think this (becoming a pure reproductive consequentialist) is also inevitable from the evolutionary standpoint.
It’s already clear that pure hedonistic societies (“shards of desire” et al) are on a massive decline. The collective West, with an average US fertility rate of something like 1.6 per woman, is going to die off quickly.
But the gap will be filled, and it will be filled with the programming that re-enables higher reproductive fitness.
My take, though, is that you don’t have to be radical about either of those strategies. You don’t have to maximize your fertility to the absolute best by sacrificing all joy. I think you just have to maximize it to some reasonable subjective degree. Arguably, having fun should have a positive impact on your gene propagation — as long as you efficiently propagate!
So my personal choice is to follow all the strategies from your comment and some more — except the ones that are not fun. And treat the rest of the activities (fun but pointless) as inevitable cost of slow evolution, but not blame myself for this since this is not really my fault.
This excludes sperm banks but includes maximizing offspring by various other joyous ways.
This poses some interesting challenges though. Brute-forcing the problem of limited resources to pass to your offspring, you still have the challenge of limited bonding opportunities with the mothers, which may be detrimental to the children and hurt their own reproduction (which is critical, as also mentioned in the comments).
I wonder what is the optimal number of human offspring for one male, given that at some higher numbers, further increase seems to be detrimental to the sum of group fitness.