Robots 'Evolve' Altruism 360
sciencehabit writes "Computer simulations of tiny robots with rudimentary nervous systems show that, over hundreds of generations, these virtual machines evolve altruistic behaviors. They begin to share small disks — a stand-in for food — with each other so that their comrades' traits are passed on to the next generation. Experts say the study sheds light on why various animals — from bees to humans — help each other out, even when it hurts their own chances to reproduce."
Robots Randroids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this mean that robots are now more evolved than Randroids?
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No, it means that these scientists should stop using the world "altruism" because they don't know what it means.
Re:Robots Randroids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Apparently, a few thousand neurons is all that it takes to realize that your own chances of survival go up if you are a member of a group, and that being a member of a group is easier if the other members of the group think you contribute to the group.
Conclusion: Randians have less neurons than bees, and/or a less complex intelligence than these robots.
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Re:Robots Randroids? (Score:4, Insightful)
altruism and cooperation are investments without guarantee of return on investment. cooperation is not a bartering situation. nor does your effort to redefine trade to be a form of altruism do anything but prove you don't know a fucking thing about what you are talking about
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I wish I had mod points.
Yeah, Randroids haven't grasped the tragedy of the commons situation (in that situation selfishness without trust brings the tragedy).
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Investments without guarantees is ... risk analysis. The understanding that if you do x, y is more likely is a risk, with not guarantees. If the reward is greater than the cumulative risk, then in the long run, that is exactly what will play out, if not, then it won't.
Of course humans often don't care about such risk/reward analysis and will override sane behavior and engage in high risk, low reward (lotto/slot machines) on the OFF chance that one CAN get beat the system for a very large reward. I play the
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If that's what she really said, I find it somewhat agreeable. Being "guilted into helping people" -- yes, I hate that. I think that I do quite a bit to help people out. I'd probably stop helping others real quick if someone tried to make me feel guilty about *not* doing it, though. It's hard to explain why I'd stop, but somehow I find the act of "guilting someone into something" to be repugnant. Takes all the pleasure out and ruins the day.
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Not to take a cheap shot... well, maybe precisely to take a cheap shot.
There's a difference between Randroids, Objectivists, and objectivists (small 'o'). Randroids and Objectivists follow a doctrine -- hence, they do not evolve. Perhaps it is not the altruism or resource sharing he was questioning, but the ability for a being to have a different thought than his ancestors.
I am an objectivist, but I find Objectivists to miss the greatest feature of Ayn Rand's work -- that it leads you to think outside the t
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Randian thought and Objectivism works on the basic question of, "Is this good for me?" At it's core is selfishness, and quite a few people—from christians to secular humanists—find this selfishness repugnant.
Before you claim I don't know what I'm talking about, I used to be a Randian drone. It's a sick, inhuman mindset that places self on a pedestal above all others.
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Altruism, by definition, must be 100% voluntary.
No such thing exists. There is always some social pressure or societal gain for altruism. Nothing is 100% voluntary.
So let's be clear: government is NOT voluntary.
Sure it is, you are free to move to Somalia whenever you like.
Whether you support the forced redistribution of wealth
Please name a functioning society that does not have this on some level. Support makes it sound emotional, this is about practicality.
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Altruism, by definition, must be 100% voluntary.
No such thing exists. There is always some social pressure or societal gain for altruism. Nothing is 100% voluntary.
What about an anonymous donation never taken credit for or mentioned to anyone else?
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In reality, the ones who acquire the most wealth are inclined not to give "altruistically" due to the cutthroat nature and feelings of entitlement required to rise to the top, and are more inclined to spen
Re:Robots Randroids? (Score:4, Informative)
He didn't make fun of all Libertarians, just followers of Ayn Rand, who said:
Soviet Russia is the ultimate result, the final product, the full, consistent embodiment of the altruist morality in practice; it represents the only way that that morality can ever be practiced.
And other fun quotes about the subject [sciencemag.org].
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Sorry, wrong link: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html [aynrandlexicon.com]
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Are you really being 'atruistic' if you're helping others solely because it increases the chances of your own characteristics being passed on to future generations?
Re:Robots Randroids? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, selflessness is really selfish? Ok. Let's assume that. I guess the discussion should then move on. What do we think of that?
Is there any difference in being "altruistically selfish" compared to being selfishly selfish? Is helping the fellow human out and feeling good about it no better than feeling good about ripping off the same?
I'd say altr
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Yes there is. You see... society functions dependent on mutual altruism, and we reserve the right, collectively, to punish those who don't act sufficiently altruistically for own needs. Evolutionary models support this as not just more efficient than greed based societies, but natural too.
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In the case of the robots, and evolution, altruistic means lowering your chances to procreate in favor of the survivability of the species.
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So, I guess robots, unlike humans, don't cockblock each other (purposefully or not) at the bar when they're trying to land a hot chick.
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Yeah. Survival of the fittest is about the fittest species, not the fittest individual.
Any species that makes selfless sacrifices for others in the species will out-compete the species in which members only look out for no. 1.
Being a social animal (caring what others think of you) and being altruistic is a huge competitive advantage in terms of survival...of your species as a whole, not necessarily you personally. This could explain why people generally feel satisfaction and self-esteem when they help other
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I've always thought it obvious as an Objectivist that sharing and compassion are highly evolved, successful traits. Not to be confused with political collectivism like communism or corporatism. This is more like, taking turns in traffic and letting exactly one person merge from each direction in turns. Rand doesn't really go into those distinctions herself. But she does say to look at the evidence and go by that, not to take somebody's word for something. (including hers) She didn't think the "social darwin
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Hear hear...well, spoken Bruce!!
I like to help my fellow man...I often help my friends and family whenever I can.
I don't mind being asked to help as long as 'no' is a reasonable choice of answers. I don't say no very often, but there are times when I can't afford the time or money to help.
Do I give till it hurts? No.
There is a level of who I care about...close family first...c
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Freedom includes the right to be an asshole. FORCING people to be charitable is the opposite of freedom - it's basically what plantation masters did to slaves (volunteer work picking cotton).
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Some reason she took those social security checks and let Medicare pay her doctors bills.
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Rand didn't redefine anything, she just phrased the definition according to the usage of those words - in harsh contrast to the dictionaries which are again written by altruists.
Altruism is also donating to charity, generally helping those less fortunate, doing any "good works" without expectation of recompense (monitary or otherwise), sustaining risk for the betterment, or protection of others... etc..
Actually when I hear the term"Altruism" I think of the above... The bible never comes to mind, neither does people with money spending it on their family (there is no problem with that, and I'm a liberal who thinks Rand is laughable) . I think that you, personally, don't understan
"They begin to share small disks...." (Score:5, Funny)
This only addresses one aspect of altruism... (Score:4, Interesting)
So why do we help people who are not related to us?
Compassion and caring is not bounded by family boundaries, so it seems to me that the evolutionary advantage behind altruism is still questionable.
Re:This only addresses one aspect of altruism... (Score:4, Interesting)
Compassion and caring is not bounded by family boundaries, so it seems to me that the evolutionary advantage behind altruism is still questionable.
The vast majority of people care more about themselves than their relatives and much more about their relatives than some starving child in Nowhereistan. Which is precisely what you'd expect from genetic explanations of 'altruism'.
The real 'altruists' who sacrifice everything to feed starving Nowhereistans are badly programmed (and the end result of such behaviour is probably to cause more starvation as they put Nowhereistanian farmers out of business).
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That's my point. No evolutionary advantage.
But there is an evolutionary advantage, because your genes are more likely to reproduce if you are 'altrustic' towards people who are related to you. Dying to save three brothers and sisters is likely to spread more copies of your genes than letting them die.
In fact, you could argue that sending free food to Nowhereistan is an evolutionary advantage, because after you bankrupt the Nowhereistanian farmers they'll all die off and you'll have less competition.
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Except people *aren't* just altruistic towards people they are related to. In fact, quite often it's just the opposite... particularly among young people who happen to be an ideal breeding age.
Sure it can be argued that benefetting your nearby gene pool has evolutionary advantages, but as it's no less common to find that altruistic behavior is exhibited bet
Re:This only addresses one aspect of altruism... (Score:5, Insightful)
The genetic reward is proportionate to how much of one's genes the recipient shares. Thus altriustic behavior will (and should) drop off outside of children, of family, of relatives, of tribe, finally of all of humanity... however, it never reaches zero as long as the recipient is approximately inside our species.
And there is the confounding variable that because society rewards altriusm (for obvious reasons), individuals will invest in appearing to be altruistic, especially if they actually are not altruistic. Such behavior will overwhelm the very mild altruism that we are looking to observe between strangers. You need to track down some of those "subject is not aware he is being observed" experiments.
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Relevant, recent:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/comments/gsp7o/where_does_good_come_from_edward_o_wilson_tries/ [reddit.com]
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Part of the problem of child-rearing, from an evolutionary perspective is that it is hard to know who your family is. (I'm only talking about in nature. Jokes aside, most animals can't be certain about the father, siblings, etc...
So, it may make sense to "bond" with those nearby and treat them as family, on the off-chance that it is true.Of course, there are plenty of examples where humans can know they are an exception, but that is the exception, and most evolved traits emphasize quick-and-dirty answers.
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Your mistrake is in thinking that there are people who are not related to you. We are all cousins; some are simply closer cousins than others.
Even my cat is your cousin, as is the grapefruit tree in my back yard.
Indeed, until Craig Venter did his most recent jiujitsu, there hasn’t been a living organism on this planet for billions of years that wasn't your cousin or your aunt or your uncle, if not one of your direct great-great...great-grandparents.
Once you understand that almost all of your genes are
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"Compassion and caring is not bounded by family boundaries, so it seems to me that the evolutionary advantage behind altruism is still questionable."
You quite possibly provided the answer without realizing it--I suspect the advantage comes from the increase in genetic diversity, at least as far as species that utilize genetics are concerned. Family has nothing to do with it--species often mate outside the core familial structure. We humans are a good example. We have developed an actual taboo or disdain for
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Google "reciprocal altruism" or "Price Equation". Or get a basic education in evolutionary theory before you dismiss it offhand.
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I forget what the exact statistic is, but humans are not as genetically diverse as you might think. A completely random stranger shares 1/64th of your genes (that is, by the same metric that states your children share 1/2 of your genes); therefore, by helping them, you are still achieving an evolutionary advantag
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Humans evolved in small communities, meaning most people you knew were related in some way. Just because it has changed since then does not mean we have adapted to this environmental change.
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So why do we help people who are not related to us?
Because we're social creatures and helping socity helps propogate our society, our culture, and ultimately the genes of our cousins.
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John Prescott.
God, please, let it be true.
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A perfect example of this is any hereditary disease.
Tribalism, not altruism (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are the "quotes" around "evolve" rather than "altruism"? The robots did seem to evolve, but what they evolved was tribalism.
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oblig (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new altruistic overlords!
The theory is nothing new, but it's cool to see it (Score:5, Interesting)
Altruism (noun): The principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others - dictionary.reference.com [reference.com]
According to the strict definition, I don't think any theory of evolution could ever explain true altruism, because for altruism in it's pure definition, there simply is no reason. If it has a personal reason, then it is, by definition, not altruism.
Now that's out of the way, there are a number of ways that the less-strict form of altruism (let's call it 'altruistic behavior' rather) would be able to evolve. Firstly, as mentioned in TFA (yes, I skimmed it.. there were only 2 comments at the time) - it makes sense to exhibit altruistic behavior if it improves the odds of your immediate relatives to survive, thereby carrying on part your genes. The more genes your share, the closer the relative, and the more likely you are to care 'selflessly' for them.
But in humans, carrying over genes is not the only reason. There is also the matter of respect, and trustworthiness. In order to convince your allies that you are trustworthy and 'good', you would exhibit selfless acts, with no expectation of return from the person concerned, but definite returns from those you know. By always tipping waiters more than required (selfless by any means), your partner sees your selflessness and gains trust in you. Business partners sees this and are more likely to trust you in business ventures. This all improves your chances of reproduction and survival.
all this is made possible by our fantastic ability to remember and build mental models of specific individuals and relationships, keep tabs on how others acted in the past, and spread the word of any 'egotistic' act to other members of society by means of language. Anyone who is /not/ altruistic (at least as far as others perceives it), is therefore placing himself in distrust, and a disadvantage for carrying over his genes.
So no, it's not much of a surprise that altruistic behavior evolves in robots with a built-in desire to spread their own genes. But it still is pretty damn cool.
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Technically, the definition specifies "unselfish" behavior. Being that selfish behavior is categorized as caring solely for one's self regardless of others, I would say that true altruism need not be entirely unreasoned or disinterested in one's own benefit. So long as that caring for one's self is done with regards to other people, I think it matches the technical definition of altruistic behavior just fine.
Re:The theory is nothing new, but it's cool to see (Score:4, Informative)
First is Kin Selection, which is what the article seems fixated upon. Bees and naked mole rats are the classic example. Essentially, it means you'd take a 10% risk of removing yourself from the gene pool to save an individual who shares 15% of your genetic material.
The second is reciprocity. Vampire bats may give a starving individual a blood meal to save their life, and it's a lot more likely if the starving individual offered a blood meal in the past.
The third, and most difficult for people who don't understand math to wrap their head around, is trait group selection. Natural selection has a mathematical model. This is a corollary of that model. In nature, animals form large numbers of groups, either transiently or permanently. Within a group, a non-altruist will always out-compete the altruists and reproduce at a higher relative rate. However, groups with more altruists will reproduce at a greater rate relative to groups with more non-altruists. Overall, you often can have altruists increasing in absolute number despite falling in relative concentration within each group. This process is iterated over generations or within multiple (perhaps infinitesimal) groups that the individual forms within it's life. Being a purely mathematical phenomenal, I would suspect this would emerge within any appropriately complex computer model (it did for the one I wrote for my final project in my Evolution elective back in college).
OTOH, the entire concept of altruism seems offensive to some people. I'm not trying to say any of these are "true altruism", since they happen all the way down to bacteria secreting proteins that deactivate antibiotics, subsequently protecting nearby unrelated bacteria. It's an explanation for observable animal behavior that humans also demonstrate. Plus, "true altruism" isn't a falsifiable hypothesis, so there's little sense in arguing about the moral proclivities of humans, bacteria, chemicals, cultures, or ideas.
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Apparently, carrying over genes is the only reason.
Skynet? (Score:2)
So skynet really did get turned on a few weeks ago?
I don't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
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For example, if a robot had a goal to pass on its genes, and sharing food was the means to accomplish this, it isn't a surprise that's the result: It didn't evolve that response; it was designed to acheieve it!
You say that as if they were two different concepts, rather than a rephrasing of the same thing. Either you don't understand evolution, or you don't get what's being discussed.
More than likely (Score:2)
Absolute greed and selfishness are more advanced behaviors than a good amount of selflessness. Indeed, it seems the more advanced the organism, the more extreme the organism is capable of behaving.
From a purely logical standpoint, if you have 10 widgets, and you only need to consume 5, wouldn't you care if somebody else consumed the other 5? From a long-term perspective, if two can survive through altruism where it would have otherwise been one, the species as a whole will benefit (with natural selection as
They didn't really evolve it (Score:5, Insightful)
The robots/virtual robots didn't actually evolve altruism as such. I was hoping they were going to say the robots had discovered they ability to recognize weak kin and share food. Instead, the researchers taught the robots how to share, and also changed their optimization problem to "if we both have a decent amount of food, all of our genes will die, but if I give it all away, your genes might propagate." So they just solved the optimization problem they were taught, as opposed to figuring it out on their own.
Their description of the rudimentary nervous systems make the robots sound like they're related to Braitenberg Vehicles, which are otherwise pretty fascinating.
News... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news:
Mac fanboys still arrogant hippies.
Windows fanboys still wearing pocket protectors.
Linux fanboys still have 6 digit Slashdot accounts.
One tiny flaw (Score:3)
These virtual machine robots are computer programs. So, are they, the robots, actually developing altruistic behavior or are the original program(s) somehow biased to include that behavior? I would posit that what is being "seen" is not some simple evolutionary trait, but an artifact of bias installed in the original programming.
If you program a device to seek out the possibilities that garner the greatest success, regardless of how that success is defined, won't the device act based on it's programming? Now, if somehow these virtual machine robots are changing their programming as they go, that would be impressive. Of course, being computer simulations, even that feat would be based on the biases imposed in their original programming.
Even in nature, the simplest organisms, like bacteria, amoebas, etc. don't exhibit this altruistic behavior. Even more complex organisms don't exhibit this behavior and they have been around a lot longer than a few hundred generations of the study.
The result of the study seems to indicate that altruistic behavior develops when an organism (such as the virtual machine robot) is programmed that way by it's programmer. Of course, then that begs the question for those organisms in real life that exhibit the altruistic behavior, who programmed them?
Are we not men? (Score:4)
There's probably a point in there somewhere.
Sounds more like "instinct" than altruism (Score:2)
Altruism describes decisions to help others for the sake of helping that person. It's irreducible in concept.
The robots are helping each other due to developed "instinct" to preserve accumulated improvements through further generations, not for genuine care for the well-being other robot in and of itself. This is not altruism.
Around 1987 I simulated cannibalistic robots... (Score:3)
Around 1987 I simulated cannibalistic robot by accident on a Symbolics 3600 in ZetaLisp+Flavors. It was perhaps one of the first simulations of self-replicating robots in a 2D sea of spare parts. The parts were something like a computer, a welder, a gripper, a battery, a radar, and another rock-like item. The first robot was programmed to collect parts to attach to itself to duplicate itself as two similar halves as a sort of repair process back towards and ideal, and then cut itself in two, and then each separate piece was supposed to go off and do the same. But I did not think it through all the way, and the first thing the original robot did as the copy started up was to start to cut the copy in two to reuse the parts because they were the closest available that were not in itself. So, the robot was both cannibalistic and killing its own offspring.
It goes to show how easy it is to make a mistake designing artificial life. I had to add a sense of "smell" to prevent that from happening, where the robots would set a smell on each item they used and would leave similar smelling items (in offspring) alone.
I gave a talk about the simulation around 1988 at a workshop on AI and Simulation at CHI+GI in Minnesota, and talked about how easy it was to make robots that were destructive and how much harder it would be to make them cooperative. Afterwards someone from the Army working with DARPA literally patted me on the back and told me to keep up the good work. And that was one reason I stopped working on it. :-)
And since then we have sadly seen the rise or an ironic use of military robots when robotics could otherwise bring us abundance (like President Obama authorizing a drone strike within days of taking office that allegedly lead to the deaths of three Pakistani children).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
But, to the army officer's credit back then, I don't know if he was more interested in the destructive or constructive aspects of what I had to say. And in truth, both construction and destruction are both related in this plane of existence. And we all need some security, the issue is how we go about getting it. An essay I wrote on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
I do believe robots will learn cooperation. The issue is more if humanity will be wiped out first and then later any robots (if they too survive) might be regretful, or whether we will co-evolve together somehow. As long as much of our R&D is mostly driven by short-term profit maximization and the push to privatize profits and to socialize risks and costs, I don't know...
Re:Nah. (Score:5, Interesting)
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for many creative individuals and IT employees, there can be lulls in their job,
My code's compiling. [xkcd.com]
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So, the lady in front of me in a checkout line dropped some money. I picked it up and gave it to her (true story). How is this helping my survival and not hers in the least?
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Nobody said the system works perfectly. Especially considering these patterns have evolved at a slow rate, and our culture has experienced pretty dramatic changes in a few years. We are living in much bigger groups for instance. Our brains are wired for smaller groups, where you know everybody, and where the chance is much greater that this person will be nice to you in the future.
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She would probably have wanted to sleep with you after that. Duh. j/k
Anyway, regarding simulations like these, if you have agents that reproduce, and whose governing algorithms can change, and which are limited in which ones can reproduce, then you will see shift toward reproduction-favoring agents through "natural" selection. (Artificial in that it's a simulation, natural in that you do not have to separately program it.)
Depending on how the environment is set up, agents that "help" others (for certain d
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When people don't have to spend too much of their resources being paranoid and watching their backs they can generally get more productive stuff done.
That's why stuff like culture and religion are important.
The atheists might claim religion is net negative, but so far it looks like not all religions are the same, and the major religions are still competing very well against atheism (which does not seem to have a good reproduction/conversion[1]
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We're on the subject of altruism.
If you have "A" a culture that does 85% good, but does not reproduce itself, and "B" a culture that does 60% good and does reproduce itself. In the long run "B" will do more good than "A", since "A" would die out.
As for your other points:
1) there are very few rational beings.
2) From what I see most people want to belong to a group (which tends to be divisive) - whether that group is a football team, Greenpeace, Vegans, Apple, Linux, Democrats, Republicans. They're going to g
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You've got it backwards. You picked it up and gave it to her because it has helped survival in the past. The behavior has evolved already. There are instances where it does not benefit the group, sure -- but even in your case, it benefitted you by not making you a rebellious member of the group. If people saw you steal that woman's money, how likely do you think they would be to invite you into their social units?
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So the gamble is this: I can take the immediate reward and spend it on groceries, or I can give the $ back to the lady on the off chance that I might drop some money in the future and the even more remote chance that some complete stranger will give it back? Sounds like I made a really bad choice, evolutionarily speaking.
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So the gamble is this: I can take the immediate reward and spend it on groceries, or I can give the $ back to the lady on the off chance that I might drop some money in the future and the even more remote chance that some complete stranger will give it back? Sounds like I made a really bad choice, evolutionarily speaking.
Monkey see, monkey do. You've just reinforced that behavior in the eyes of anyone that saw you do it. People around you now are more likely to exhibit the same behavior.
Bit at a time, man.
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Hmmm...so you have a lot of explanatory power with that statement. You can explain pure altrusim (my tribe will all start acting nice because they saw me do it for some reason, creating a bright shiny utopia), and you can also describe selfish behavior (I saw that guy mug someone and get away with it, that's why there's so much selfish behavior in the world). So which is it?
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Hmmm...so you have a lot of explanatory power with that statement. You can explain pure altrusim (my tribe will all start acting nice because they saw me do it for some reason, creating a bright shiny utopia), and you can also describe selfish behavior (I saw that guy mug someone and get away with it, that's why there's so much selfish behavior in the world). So which is it?
One word answer: Yes.
Three-word answer: Ask Schrodinger's cat....
....or better yet, take a look at this talk from TED and consider what Philip Zimbardo has to say on the subject.
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html [ted.com]
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"I can steal her money and spend it on groceries..."
FTFY
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Hmmm? Sorry, that department is already taken care of. All my kids are quite mature at this point, and my wife would certainly not appreciate me hitting on the lady in line. No, this to me seemed like pure altruism (e.g., the right thing to do)
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No, on the level we are talking about, humanity has it in abundance.
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Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is worth noting that ants also form colonies and work together...but they do not work together with other colonies.
betterunixthanunix, I'd like to introduce you to the Argentine Ant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant#Global_.22mega-colony.22 [wikipedia.org]
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The illusionary boundaries will vanish once we rise up from the nationalistic psychosis. There will be many wars before that happens, so it's not going to be pretty. The resources are getting scarce.
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The United States doesn't cooperate?
So you missed the US sending military and technological assistance to Japan after the Earthquake and Tsunami, the US sending food aid to North Korea or the US sending aid or offering to send aid to everyone touched by a natural disaster for the last 60+ years.
You missed the US involvement in the Dayton Peace Talks and US Peacekeepers in Bosnia and later Kosovo, US de-mining operations in North Africa, Afghanistan, South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the constant US Pe
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The more equal the women are to the men the less children they will have. The more options available the more they are used by the women to control the fertility rate. It's tragic how much religion dictates the policies about the issue. The inevitable result of family planning projects and education is a falling fertility rate. It's actually pretty hard to find a country where the rate is going up.
Rationally sharing the resources doesn't mean that the fertility rate will be sustained or go up. The reason wh
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What placebo effect? I've read this many times and have never seen documented evidence for it in relation to Chiropractic! Meanwhile it has cured millions of aches, pains, some diseases, deafness and colic. That's not placebo.
Don't feel bad. The individual probably just did some basic online research and found studies like this from the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research:
http://www.chiro.org/research/ABSTRACTS/Placebo_Chiropractic_Treatment.shtml [chiro.org]
Kinda disappointed to find that your field doesn't insist on Continuing Education requirements. You might have caught this otherwise.
Re:Fascinating yet has me concerned for their heal (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it is. I don't think you know what Placebo means.
You have been completely hoodwinked by people who want your money, don't know what the term 'energy' means, and don't understand confirmation bias. AS well as a host of other issue.
Listen to this:
http://www.pusware.com/quackcast/quackcast10.mp3 [pusware.com]
Read this:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6839 [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
in fact, you should probably read everything here:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?cat=4 [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
If you know how to read studies, seriously most eople don't, then do research here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ [nih.gov]
If you don't understand what makes a proper study, who to use the, how to properly understand p value and apply the results then freaking learn. As a bonus learn to apply the finding in a Bayesian way.
Oh, and be sure to read this. In fact, I HIGHLY recommend you read this first:
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx [theskepticsguide.org]
There is no effect above a placebo effect for any Chiropractic 'treatment'.
Part of the placebo effect is the person doing the test, or treatment. So Yes, chiropractors would claim there was an effect because they are inferring an effect where there is none.
"What placebo effect? I've read this many times and have never seen documented evidence for it in relation to Chiropractic! "
Clearly you haven't looked. There are volumes of good* data showing it has no effect above Placebo.
The site I list usually, if not always, have citation you can follow up on, as well as asked questions.
*Good as in well done. Double blinded, proper controls, and so on. Which is all In care about in a study.
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The sensation of pain is very sensitive to placebo effects, much more so than other physical properties of the body. It makes sense because the placebo effect is controlled by the brain, just like the sensation of pain.
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The sensation of pain is very sensitive to placebo effects, much more so than other physical properties of the body. It makes sense because the placebo effect is controlled by the brain, just like the sensation of pain.
Except that when I get an adjustment, most of the time knots I have in my muscles disappear. That's not a placebo effect. I'm not just imagining it.
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Placebo effects are not just imaginations. Maybe you were just unconsciously tensing up the muscle, and the therapy made you relax it.
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Actually, that -IS- the placebo effect. The neuromuscular release can be tied to the belief in the adjustment.
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Actually, that -IS- the placebo effect. The neuromuscular release can be tied to the belief in the adjustment.
There have been other times when chiropractic treatment has not worked for me as sited above. Also, I've had things like pain in my back when I breathe in, due to subluxated ribs, and the pain went away after they popped my ribs back into place. It was something I both felt and heard. Having the ribs put back was unpleasant to say the least, but there was no more discomfort with breathing after it was done. You can continue being skeptical, I just know that in most instances chiropractic care has worked wel
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Robots don't "evolve". They are clearly programmed (designed) that way.
You're right. Straight from the article: "Once the team was comfortable with the virtual evolution environment it had set up, it added a new twist: It allowed the robots to share food disks with each other." If they truly evolved the ability, it would have happened without the team allowing it to happen.
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They allowed the robots to share food, but they did not tell the robots to share food. If you define your simulation such that as soon as a robot acquires food, it is consumed, sharing is simply not possible. The researchers changed the simulation to make sharing possible, but it was still up to the robots to "discover" that they could now share food. If sharing wasn't evolutionary advantageous, they would have kept on being selfish, despite the change in the simulation.
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Robots don't "evolve". They are clearly programmed (designed) that way. The fact that the designers aren't clever enough to realize the final outcome of their complex programming doesn't change the fact that they were programmed that way.
Unless the new traits came from copying errors or they have a program generator hooked up to /dev/random, this is not "evolution", by any reasonably scientific definition of the term.
There is a whole field of study regarding genetic algorithms. The outcome is certainly not "programmed" by the designer.
And evolution is not random, either. The entire point is that selection processes create a filter, and thus a non-random result.
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Being a programmer at small start-up afforded me to be laid off quite frequently. Each tim this happened, I forwarded any suitable position to which I was applying to to my other laid off friends. My logic was simply this: If I don't get it, my friend will get it, and he or she will rally for my cause once inside, or in the worst case, there is one less equally capable competitor in the market.
So, your last strategy is to create a shortage of unemployed programmers, and fill that niche?
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Lets wait for them to evolve atheism. That will be fun.
They're atheist by default; it's just that they'd have to make up some kind of religion before the concept starts having any meaning in reference to them.