[MD] example of reciprocal altruism?

[Platt Holden]

Hi Marsha,

You don't have to convince me about science believing one thing and then 
another. It wasn't so long ago when eugenics was all the rage in scientific 
circles. Now it's the global warming scam. 

Humans have a marvelous capacity for being duped. Makes no difference if 
the source is a scientist, philosopher, politician, priest or a  
millionaire member of a Palm Beach country club.

Platt


> Hi Platt,
> 
> If you listened to that 2-part program on Neanderthals, you'd note 
> that science once believed one thing and now believes something quite 
> different.  It's all so much myth.  It's reality until patterns 
> change.  I do not have a problem seeing all human knowledge as a 
> temporary understanding.
> 
> 
> Marsha
 
> At 02:33 PM 12/27/2008, you wrote:
> >Hi KO, Craig, Marsha, All:
> >
> >A couple of monkeys behaving with reciprocity in a zoo is hardly
> evidence
> >of our inheriting a spirit of cooperation from our animal ancestors. In
> >fact, our closest monkey relatives, the chimpanzees, "formed hunting
> >posses" in the wild and "tore baby baboons they captured limb from limb
> and
> >seemed to enjoy it." -- Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology,
> Rutgers
> >University, WSJournal, 12/27/08 .
> >
> >Pirsig also presented less than a heartwarming picture of our
> evolutionary
> >inheritance:
> >
> >"What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the
> twentieth-century
> >intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural
> is
> >disastrously naive. The ideal of a harmonious society in which everyone
> >without coercion cooperates happily with everyone else for the mutual
> good
> >of all is a devastating fiction.
> >
> >"Studies of bones left by the cavemen indicate that cannibalism, not
> >cooperation, was a pre-society norm. Primitive tribes such as the
> American
> >Indians have no record of sweetness and cooperation with other tribes.
> They
> >ambushed them, tortured them, dashed their children's brains out on
> rocks.
> >If man is basically good, then maybe it is man's basic goodness which
> >invented social institutions to repress this land of biological savagery
> in
> >the first place. (Lila, 24)
> >
> >This reminded me of the phrase "thin veneer of civilization." When I
> >entered it in Google the following passage quickly came to the fore:
> >
> >"Civilization (which is part of the circle of his imaginings) has spread
> a
> >veneer over the surface of the softshelled animal known as man. It is a
> >very thin veneer; but so wonderfully is man constituted that he squirms
> on
> >his bit of achievement and believes he is garbed in armor-plate.
> >
> >"Yet man to-day is the same man that drank from his enemy's skull in
> the
> >dark German forests, that sacked cities, and stole his women from
> >neighboring clans like any howling aborigine. The flesh-and-blood body
> of
> >man has not changed in the last several thousand years. Nor has his
> mind
> >changed. There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day that did not
> exist
> >in the minds of the men of long ago
> >
> >"It is the same old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a
> veneer,
> >thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of
> self-exaltation
> >and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear. The
> raw
> >animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pent in the
> >crust of the earth. As he persuades himself against the latter till it
> >arouses and shakes down a city, so does he persuade himself against the
> >former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he stands undisguised,
> a
> >brute like any other brute."
> >
> >http://www.erblist.com/erbmania/nkima/veneer.html
> >
> >All of which has led me to reiterate Pirsig's stern advice to today's
> >intellectuals:
> >
> >"Where biological values are undermining social values intellectuals
> must
> >identify social behavior, not matter its ethnic connection, and support
> it
> >all the way without restraint. Intellectuals must find biological
> behavior,
> >no matter what its ethnic connection, and limit or destroy destructive
> >biological patterns with complete moral ruthlessness., the way a doctor
> >destroys germs, before those biological patterns destroy civilization
> >itself." (Lila, 24)
> >
> >Our civilization is under attack. Will our "intellectual" leaders heed
> >Pirsig's advice? I have my doubts. We shall see.
> >
> >Platt
> >
> >
> > > Yes, you are right Craig but people behave altruistically often
> without
> > > thought of reciprocity - they do this by virtue of inheritance. The
> > > reciprocity is the quality that was selected.
> > >
> > > -KO
> > >
> > > 2008/12/27 <craigerb at comcast.net>
> > >
> > > > [KO]
> > > >
> > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7797776.stm
> > > > Good news for those of us who see mutual cooperationas
> > > > evolutionary.However, the term 'reciprocal altruism' is oxymoronic
> > > > inEnglish.  'Altruism' is doing something for another's
> sakewithout
> > > expected
> > > > benefit to one's self.  A betterdescription is the one from the
> > > article
> > > > above, viz.,"calculated reciprocity".Craig