The Cost of Selfishness Is Reduced Mutualism and Not Altruism

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051026_chimpfrm.htm

"Joan Silk of the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues
conducted a study that they said confirmed this, showing chimps are
uninterested in doing a friend a good turn, even at no cost to themselves.

The researchers presented captive chimps with a device that gave them a
choice between two options. The chimp could choose to serve only itself with
food, or it could select an option that gave it the same food, but also
resulted in food being delivered to another chimpanzee.

The chimpanzees were no more likely to choose the second option, even though
they could see that it would help a friend at no inconvenience to
themselves, the researchers said."

JE:-
The altruism Vs selfihness arguments are just a tautological red herring
inspired by the misuse of W.D. Hamilton's gene centric oversimplified model
know as "Hamilton's Rule". The empirical cost of selfishness is a reduction
in mutual gain and not altruism where at least two inviolate independent
units of selection must exist and remain unchanged. It appears chimps do not
have enough intellgence to overcome their most basic selfish instincts so
that they cannot see the benefit of even a zero cost mutual gain situation
if it does not absolutely _increase_ their own gain. They are not alone. We
make the same error with war except here the cost of reduced mutualisation
is not just zero.

In general the argument is: a relative gain to any actor that produces a
reduction of some final and critical total to itself, i.e. an absolute loss
to that actor, cosntitutes a loss and not a gain to that actor. For the
chimps, unless a gain provided to another chimp (even at just a zero cost to
the actor) actually produces an absolute increase for the acting chimp it is
simply not interested.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx







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