11 May 2012, 4:10 am
Almajo88 wrote:
Ahaha I seriously hope I haven't made people think I'm a Stalinist with my first post in this thread. I did pause for a second when I saw the hammer-and-sickle on the post preview but I figured you guys would "get it". Now I'm tempted to carry it off as a gimmick and post nothing but Stalin quotes forever 
People tend to take things pretty literally here.
11 May 2012, 12:43 pm
AstroGeek wrote:
VMSmith wrote:
marshall wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
AstroGeek wrote:
Well, then I'll never be in the situation you describe. I'm gay and if I have children they'll be adopted. So I have no genetic reason to act as you say. (I'm not being serious here. But since there would be no Darwinian reason for me to rescue my child at all it would show a degree of selflessness to put myself in that dangerous situation).
Do you have siblings for whom you care. Or nieces or nephews for whom you care? Or cousins for whom you care? None of these kin attachments require heterosexual preference.
Most likely children of your own flesh and blood are not likely but the other kin attachments I described can be operative.
ruveyn
Not necessarily. You shouldn't just assume. Some people have as*holes for relatives.
the flaw in ryuven's argument. conservatives keep talking about this selfish gene that we all have but there is no selfish gene that you can point to so i dont get what theyre talking about.The "selfish gene" normally does not refer to the concept of a gene that makes us selfish (such ideas of a single genes giving us personality traits are rather absurd in any case) but the idea that in evolution everything is about the genes being replicated as much as possible, and that the survival of the organism (let alone other organisms of that species) is irrelevant. It's a flawed concept because you see collectivist behaviour in nature (bees and ants of course, but there are also bacterial colonies where one bacterium will essentially act as a suicide bomber against a rival colony).
If its based on genetics, it makes perfect sense for bees, ants and other such species to be collectivist because they all share very very similar genes. It's the same as most humans would sacrifice themselves for multiple members of their own family. Why history is full of men, women and children who sacrificed themselves for each other. The higher genetic diversity gets between two organisms the less likely one is to sacrifice itself for the other. I'm sure humans will sacrifice themselves for humans if we were facing off against a non-human enemy.
The whole argument of "the best of the collective is the best for the individual" and vice versa argument some evoked, is not a sound argument. One can point to an exhaustive list of events throughout human history where the best of the collective has not been the best for the individual provided one is not overly reductionist about the groups in question. The best for the collective can be the best for the individual and the best of the individual can be the best for the collective, but the two are not always the same.
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