Chapter 3 Chapter 1 Why is there someone?

A life with understanding on a planet is considered mature when it realizes the reason for its own existence.If advanced creatures from space come to visit the earth, in order to evaluate the level of our civilization, the first question they ask will be: "Have they discovered the law of evolution?" Living organisms, but they remain ignorant of how life exists.Later, one of them finally understood the truth, and his name was Charles Darwin.To be fair, other people had vague ideas about the truth, but it was Darwin who was the first to give a coherent and tenable account of why we exist.Darwin enables us to give a practical answer to the curious child's question, which is the title of this chapter.Does life have meaning?What is the purpose of life?What is a person?We no longer need to resort to superstition in the face of these profound questions.The famous zoologist GG Simpson (GG Simpson) said after asking the last question above: "The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer this question before 1859 were in vain, if We put it all behind us and we will be better off."

Today, the theory of evolution is doubted like the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, but the full implications of Darwin's theory of evolution are still far from being understood.Zoology is still a minority study at the university level, and even those who decide to take it often do so without appreciating its profound philosophical significance.Philosophy and courses called "humanities" are still taught as if Darwin never existed.There is no doubt that this situation will change in the future.In any case, it is not the intention of this book to advocate Darwinism comprehensively, but to explore the consequences of the theory of evolution for a particular problem.My purpose is to study the biological implications of selfish and altruistic behavior.

Before I begin the argument, I want to briefly explain what kind of argument this is, and what it is not.We can make some guesses as to what kind of a man someone is if we are told that he has lived a long and prosperous life in the gangster society of Chicago.We can imagine that he has a rough and reckless personality, is prone to shooting, and can attract loyal friends.These inferences are not foolproof. But if you know the circumstances under which a man lives and prospers, you can draw certain inferences about his character.The thesis of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our own genes.In a highly competitive world, like the Chicago robbers, our genes have survived, some for millions of years.This gives us reason to discover certain traits in our genes.I will argue that one of the outstanding characteristics of successful genes is their ruthless selfishness.This genetic selfishness often leads to selfishness in individual behavior.We will also see, however, that genes, in order to achieve their selfish ends more effectively, can also, in some special cases, breed a limited altruism.In the sentence above, "special" and "limited" are two important words.Incredible as we may find this to be the case, universal love and universal good are evolutionarily meaningless concepts for an entire species.

So now I come to the first point which this book is not going to argue.I'm not advocating an evolution-based morality, I'm just talking about how things evolve, not how humans should behave in order to be ethical.I emphasize this because I know I run the risk of being misunderstood.There are too many people who cannot distinguish between stating what we know about things and advocating how things should be. I myself find it repulsive to live in a human society based solely on the universal, relentless law of selfishness of the gene.But however sorry we may feel, facts are facts.The purpose of this book is to arouse the reader's interest, and if you want to draw some lessons from it, then read it as a kind of warning.If you wish, as I do, to create a society of generosity and selfless cooperation among men for the common good, you cannot expect to benefit from biological nature.Let us try to instill generosity and altruism in people's minds through education!Because we are born selfish.Let us understand what our selfish genes are up to.Because then we at least have the chance to disrupt their plans in a way that no other species has ever hoped to do.

What has been said about education must show that it is a mistake to think that inherited traits are, from the point of view of genetics, definite and fixed.This is a fallacy, and one that is extremely common. Our genes can drive us to act selfishly, but we don't have to be submissive for life.If we were genetically genetically altruistic, it might not be so difficult to learn altruism.Of the animals, man alone is subject to culture, and also to acquired and inherited influences.One could argue that culture is so important that it has nothing to do with our understanding of human nature, whether genes are selfish or not.Others will disagree with this statement.It all depends on where you stand on the "nature versus nurture" debate as a determinant of human identity.This brings me to the second point which this book does not attempt to demonstrate.This book does not take one or the other position in the nature versus nurture debate.Of course I have my own opinions, but I'm not going to express them.In the last chapter only, I include my point of view in the cultural point of view that I will articulate.If genes do turn out to have nothing to do with determining modern human behaviour, and if we are indeed unique among animals in this respect, it will remain intriguing to at least explore the rules by which we have been the exception so recently.And if our species is not the exception, as we would like it to be, it is even more important to study this rule.

A third point that this book does not attempt to demonstrate is that it does not describe the details of human behavior or that of some other animal species. I use factual details only when illustrating.I wouldn't say: "If you look at the behavior of baboons, they behave selfishly; so humans can be selfish too." My argument about the "Chicago Bandits" is logically quite different from that different.It is the case that both humans and baboons evolved by natural selection.If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that evolves by natural selection should be selfish.So we can predict that when we look at the behavior of baboons, humans, and all other creatures, we will find that their behavior is selfish.If our foresight turns out to be wrong, if the human behavior we observe is indeed altruistic, we have something puzzling that needs to be elucidated.

We need to have a definition before we go any further.An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if, as a result of its actions, it advances the interests of another like entity at the expense of its own.The effect of selfish behavior is just the opposite.What we mean by "interest" is "chance of survival", even if the effect of the action has little effect on actual life and death.People now realize that the impact on survival probability, which appears to be extremely small on the surface, can also have a great effect on evolution.This is a startling consequence of the latest interpretation of Darwin's theory.Because this influence has a lot of time for it to work.

It is important to understand that the above definitions of altruism and selfishness refer to behavioral, not subjective.My point here is not the psychology of motivation, and I am not going to argue whether people "really" secretly or subconsciously have selfish motives when they act altruistically.Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, and maybe we'll never know.But in any case, these are not the content of this book.My definition refers only to the effect of the behavior, which reduces or increases the probability of survival of the putative altruist, and the probability of survival of the putative beneficiary.

Accounting for the long-term effects of behavior on survival is an extraordinarily complex business.In fact, in applying this definition to actual behavior, we must qualify the actual behavior referred to with the word "obviously." An apparently altruistic act appears (however improbable) to make the altruist more likely to die and the beneficiary more likely to survive.A closer look often reveals that apparent altruism is actually selfishness in disguise.Again, I am by no means suggesting that their underlying motives are all selfish.What I mean is that the actual effect of this behavior on the probability of survival is exactly the opposite of what we originally supposed.

Now let me give some examples of overtly selfish as well as overtly altruistic behavior.It is difficult to avoid habits of subjectivity in thought whenever our own species is discussed, so I will use other animals as examples.Let me give some representative examples of selfish behavior of individual animals. Black-headed gulls make nests in clusters, with the nests spaced only a few feet apart. The chicks are just out of their shells and are delicate, defenseless and vulnerable to being swallowed.It is not uncommon for a gull to wait until its neighbor turns away, perhaps while it is off to catch a fish, and then pounce on one of its neighbor's chicks in one gulp.In this way he had a nutritious meal without having to bother to catch fish.Nor does it have to leave its nest, leaving it unprotected.

The fearsome cannibalism of female praying mantises is even more well known.Praying mantises are large, carnivorous insects that generally devour smaller insects such as flies.But they attack almost anything that lives.During mating, the male praying mantis carefully climbs onto the back of the female praying mantis and rides to mate.The female mantis eats the male at every opportunity, biting off the head first, either when the male approaches, or immediately after climbing up, or after separating.Logically speaking, it seems that the female praying mantis should wait until after mating before starting to eat the male praying mantis.But the loss of the head doesn't seem to disrupt the rest of the male mantis' mating process.Indeed, since some neuroinhibitory centers are located in the insect's head, eating the head might actually improve male sexual activity.If so, that would be an added bonus.The main takeaway is that it's a hearty meal. While these extreme examples of cannibalism fit our definition well, the word "selfish" is a bit of an understatement.We may be more directly sympathetic to the so-called cowardly behavior of Antarctica's emperor penguins.They can be seen standing at the water's edge, hesitant before diving in due to the risk of being eaten by seals.As long as one dives into the water first, the rest will know if there are seals in the water.Naturally, no one is willing to be a test subject, so everyone is waiting, and sometimes even pushes each other into the water. A more common form of selfishness may simply be a refusal to share something considered precious, such as food, territory, or a spouse.Now for some examples of overtly altruistic behavior. The stinging behavior of worker bees is a very effective defense against honey predators.But the worker bees who perform the stings are some death squads.In the act of stinging, some vital internal organs are usually dragged out of the body, and the worker bee dies quickly.Its suicidal mission may preserve the colony's vital food stores without them themselves living to benefit.By our definition, this is altruistic behavior.Remember, we are not talking about conscious motivation.In the case of altruistic as well as selfish behavior, such conscious motivations may or may not be present, but these are irrelevant to our definition. Dedicating your life for a friend is clearly altruistic, but so is taking a little risk for your friend.There are many small birds that emit a characteristic "warning call" when they see a predatory bird, such as a hawk, approaching. Upon hearing this "warning call", the flock takes appropriate evasive action.Indirect evidence suggests that birds that make this warning call put themselves at particular risk by drawing predators' attention to themselves.This extra risk is not large, but by our definition, at least at first glance, it still qualifies as an altruistic behavior. The most common and obvious example of animal altruism is that of parents, especially mothers, towards their children.They conceive these small animals in their nests or inside them, paying great expense to feed them and taking great risks to protect them from predators.To give just one specific example, many ground-nesting birds, when approached by predators such as foxes, will perform a "trick to turn the tiger away from the mountain".The mother bird limped away from the nest while spreading one wing as if it had snapped off.The smoker, thinking that prey is just around the corner, abandons the nest in which the chick rests.When the fox's claws were about to catch the mother bird, it finally gave up its camouflage and soared into the air.In this way, the brood may be safe and sound, but at its own risk. I'm not going to illustrate a point by telling a story.Selected examples are never important evidence for any worthwhile generalization.These stories are simply meant to illustrate what I mean by altruistic behavior versus selfish behavior on an individual level.This book will show how individual selfishness and individual altruism can be explained by a fundamental law that I call genetic selfishness.But first I need to talk about a particular mistake people make when explaining altruism because it's so widespread, even taught in schools. At the root of this misinterpretation is what I have already mentioned, the misconception that organisms evolve "for the good of their species" or "for the good of their group."It is obvious how this misconception is beginning to seep into the field of biology.Animals spend a lot of time in their lives reproducing, and most of the altruistic self-sacrifice we observe in nature is done by parents for their offspring. "Perpetuating a species" is often a euphemism for reproduction.The perpetuation of species is undoubtedly an inevitable consequence of reproduction.As long as the logical reasoning goes a little too far, it can be deduced that the "function" of reproduction is "to" perpetuate the species.A small false step forward from this extrapolation leads to the conclusion that animals generally behave in ways that benefit the permanence of their species, and thus are altruistic towards other members of the same species. This way of thinking can be expressed in vaguely Darwinian terms.Evolution is driven by natural selection, which refers to the differential survival of the "fittest".But are we talking about individuals, or species, or species, or what?In one sense, this doesn't matter much, but when it comes to altruism, it's clearly crucial.If it is species that compete in what Darwin called the struggle for existence, then the individual seems rightly to be regarded as the pawn in that competition.Individuals have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the species as a whole.To put it more elegantly, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, is better off than a competing group if its individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the good of the group. Individual members who put their own selfish interests first are less likely to become extinct.The world, therefore, is largely occupied by groups of self-sacrificing individuals.This is the "group selection" theory that Wynne-Edwards (Wynne-Edwards) made public in one of her famous books.This theory was later popularized by Adlay in his book The Social Contract.The other orthodox theory is usually called the "individual selection" theory, but I personally prefer the term genetic selection. To the argument just raised above, the "individual-selectionist" can answer without hesitation that even within the altruist community there are almost certainly dissenters who refuse to make any sacrifices. If there is a selfish rebel ready to exploit the altruism of other members, it is, by definition, more likely to survive and reproduce than the other members.These offspring have a tendency to inherit their selfish traits.Such natural selection, after several generations, the "altruistic group" will be overwhelmed by selfish individuals, and cannot be distinguished from the selfish group.Although improbable as it may be to assume that there initially existed purely altruistic groups without rebels, it is difficult to see what would prevent selfish individuals from migrating from neighboring selfish Purity of altruistic groups. Individual selection theorists would also admit that groups do perish, and that whether or not a group becomes extinct may be influenced by the behavior of individuals in the group.He might even admit that, if only the individuals of a group have far-sightedness, they will see that it is in the end their best interest to refrain from selfishness and avarice, and thus avoid the destruction of the whole group.But group extinction is a slow process compared with the quick and hand-to-hand combat in individual competition.Even when a group declines slowly and irresistibly, some selfish individuals in the group can still achieve short-term prosperity at the expense of altruists. Although the theory of group selection has little support today among professional biologists who understand the laws of evolution, it still has enormous intuitive appeal.Successive students of zoology, after they have moved from high school to college, have been surprised to find that this is not an orthodox view.They are not to be blamed for this, for in the Nuffield Teacher's Guide to Biology, written for senior biology teachers in the UK, we find the following sentence: "In the higher animals, in order to ensure the Survival, there will be individual suicide behavior".The unknown author of this guide was fortunately unaware that he was raising a controversial issue.In this regard, the author should be among the Nobel Prize winners.When Konrad Lorenz talked about the functions of aggressive behavior on "species preservation" in his book "On Aggression", he believed that one of the functions was to ensure that only the most fit individuals could reproduce.This is a model of a recurring debate.But the point I want to make here is that the idea of ​​group selection is so ingrained that Lorenz, like the author of "Nafeld's Guide", apparently did not realize that what he said was in conflict with the orthodox Darwinian theory. Recently I heard a report on a BBC TV program about spiders in Australia.It mentions an example of the same nature that sounds hilarious.If there is no such example, it would be a very wonderful program.The "experts" who host the show commented that most of the small spiders end up being eaten by other species.Then she went on: "That may be the real purpose of their existence, because only a few survive to preserve their species." Adlay used the theory of group selection in "The Social Contract" to explain the entire social order .He clearly believes that human beings are a species that deviates from the right path of animals.Adrey is at least a hardworking person, and his decision to go against the orthodox theory is a conscious action.For that, he should be commended. Perhaps one reason for the enormous appeal of group selection theory is that it fits perfectly with most of our moral and political ideas.As individuals, our behavior is often selfish, but in our moments of high profile, we praise those who are happy after the world, although we still don't agree on how to understand the scope of the word "world".Altruistic behavior within a group often goes hand in hand with selfish behavior between groups.In another sense, the state is the main beneficiary of our other self-sacrifice.It is inexplicable that young people, as individuals, are to be sacrificed for the greater honor of the nation as a whole, and it is inexplicable that in peacetime people are called upon to make small sacrifices, slowing down the rate at which they improve their standard of living, than in wartime. The call of life is harder to work. Recently there has been a tendency to run counter to nationalism and patriotism, and to substitute the whole human species as the object of our sympathy.This humanistic extension of our altruistic goals has an interesting corollary: the concept of the "good of the species" in evolution seems to gain support once again. Political liberals, usually the most steadfast advocates of the morality of the species, now have the greatest capacity for sneer at those who extend altruism slightly to include other species.It would probably shock some of my friends to say that I am more interested in protecting whales from hunting than in improving human living conditions. The sentiment that members of the same species should be accorded special moral considerations as compared with members of other species is ancient and deeply rooted.Out-of-combat homicide is considered the most serious of the usual crimes.The only thing our civilization condemns more severely is cannibalism (even if it's dead).Yet we eat members of other species with relish.Many of us, horrified at the sight of the executions of even the most feared criminals of mankind, gleefully encourage the shooting of rather docile vermin.We do kill members of otherwise harmless species for our pleasure.A human fetus has no more human emotions than an amoeba, but it enjoys dignity and legal protection far exceeding that of an adult chimpanzee.Chimpanzees are sentient, thinking, and, according to recent experiments, they can even learn some form of human language.Just because fetuses belong to the same species as us, special rights are immediately given to them.I don't know if I can put the morality of "speciesism" (as Richard Ryder uses it) on a more legitimate footing than "racism," but I do know that this "speciesism" is It has no valid basis. Biologically, there is confusion about the level at which altruism should manifest itself according to evolutionary theory.This confusion mirrors the parallel confusion that exists in human morality about what level of altruism is desirable—family, nation, race, species, and all living things.Even group selection theorists find it unsurprising that group members compete against one another.But it's worth asking, how do group selectionists decide which level is important?If selection can be carried out between groups of the same species as well as among different species, why can't selection be carried out between groups of higher levels?Species make up a genus, a genus makes up an order, and an order makes up a class.Lions and antelopes belong to the same class of mammals as we do.Shouldn't we be asking lions to stop killing antelope "in the interest of mammals"?In order not to bring about the extinction of this class, there can be no doubt that they should have preyed on birds or reptiles.But, by analogy, what should be done for the eternal existence of the whole phylum of vertebrates?Arguing by reductio ad absurdum, while revealing the dilemma that group selection theory cannot justify itself, is certainly in my favor, but the apparent existence of individual altruistic behavior remains to be explained.Adlay goes so far as to say that group selection is the only possible explanation for behaviors like the leaping of Thomsons gazelles.This striking jerk in the presence of the predator is similar to the bird's alarm call; for the implication of this leap seems to be to warn its mates, while at the same time distinctly drawing the attention of the predator to the leaper himself.It is our responsibility to account for this jumping behavior and similar phenomena, and this is the problem I am confronted with in the next few chapters. Before going any further, I must defend my beliefs a few words.I think that the best way to explain the theory of evolution is to start with selection taking place at the lowest level.This belief of mine was heavily influenced by GC Williams' great book Adaptation and Natural Selection.The central point of view I want to use can be traced back to the days before the emergence of genetic theory at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century. At that time, A. Weismann's "continuity of the germ-plasm" theory had already Foreshadowing today's development.I will argue that the basic unit of selection, and therefore of self-interest, is neither the species, nor the group, nor, strictly speaking, even the individual, but the genetic unit, the gene.To some biologists, this may at first sound like an extreme view.I hope that, when they see what I really mean, they will agree that this view is essentially orthodox, though expressed in a different way.Making the argument takes time, and we have to start from scratch, starting with the origin of life.