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Originally Posted by Xurtio
I would argue that altruism does exist, it's not just not the pure ideal of altruism that some people think it is. Altruistic behavior is our behavior that is irrational in terms of personal survival, but somehow helps the survival chances of species or individual members of the species. It doesn't matter whether the altruistic behavior makes the organism feel good or not, though typically it does and that's why they do it.
In primates (including early humans) altruism stemmed from limited inbreeding (a typical trait of social organisms). It turns out that social animals are more willing to help out fellow members of their species that share more resemblance to them. The benefits/cost of altruism aren't necessarily realized by the individual itself, it is a random mutation that favored reproduction of social species, and thus, those groups of primates had a higher chance of survival than groups with more in-group competition.
Altruism - EvoWiki |
I wouldn't call that altruism myself. Being nice to family who you share genes with is called kin selection. The reason doing so has evolved is because generally, there's a fitness reward associated wth it, which means there's a selfish reason behind it all. By being "altruistic", you are doing something to perpetuate your genes and ensure your biological fitness. Can it then be altruism?
It's the same thing with social bees kamikaze-killing themselves for the good of the hive. Unlike us humans, a worker bee always has the same set of chromosomes from her (haploid) father, and they make up 50% of her genes. So 50% of the genetic material will always be the same. Then they also inherit one of two sets of genes from their (diploid) mother. So, putting it simply, on average any worker bee will share 75% of her genes with her sisters.
If a worker bee would have her own children, she would only share 50% of her genes with each child (the other half would come from her father), which is actually less relation than she would have to a new sister. So, in fact, a better strategy for a worker bee to maximize fitness would be to ensure that her mother, the queen, births more sisters .. even if it means giving her life for that cause. Is it then altruism? I would say not, because the basis of it all is selfish.
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A simple mechanism by which one might argue that altruism exists is by variation. The optimal strategy or expression of a trait depends on the environment. Let's say that there's a gene that makes people nice and it evolved because being nice raises their fitness, so it evolved out of selfishness. But how nice should you be? That depends on the environment and generally speaking, the environment changes constantly and you also have genetic variation and so the gene will generally never be optimally expressed. A person would either be too nice or not nice enough. If they are too nice, you could argue that that is altruism.
A gene could also mutate, resulting in a new behaviour making an individual behave more altruistic.