On Dec 24, 2007, at 17:34 , rob brown wrote:
It's easy to apply your intuition about human behavior to other
animals, but if you apply it to non-reproducing bees, you are
making a big mistake. It just doesn't apply.
I try to map human concepts to bees and bee concepts to humans and
generic scientific concepts to both. I don't like the idea of trying
to see animals as if they would have human like intentions etc. Also
talking about the (human like) intention of genes to do something
(e.g. selfish genes trying to multiply) is an interesting but
theoretically not the best possible style to explain their role in life.
When a bee stings, it kills the bee. Do you know of anything like
that in an animal that reproduces directly?
Yes, unfortunately at the very moment many soldiers at their best
reproducing age give their lives for their country. Worker bees are
likely to die when they sting a soft skinned large animal. Humans are
not that radical - in most war situations individual soldiers have a
reasonable probability to stay alive. But often sacrificing one's own
life in order to protect others is praised and thereby encouraged,
and happens in real life.
Note also that worker bees can produce drones if needed (not totally
different animals from that point of view). They can also be said to
be in the state of rage when they attack (driven to attack by a
smell). Rage with its possibly fatal consequences is also a known
phenomenon among (typically male, maybe less important from
reproduction point of view) humans.
There is a fundamental difference between eusocial animals and non-
eusocial animals.
I still tend to rather see the differences to be in scale and style.
Surely colonies where majority of the members are (usually) non-
reproductive has somewhat different rules and outcome than humans.
Maybe my basic approach is simply "some characteristics of a group of
animals tends to keep that population alive". No big difference if
some behaviour pattern leads to high mortality rate ("unpremeditated/
unplanned suicides") (among a subset of the population) or not.
Altruism in humans can be explained by reciprocity and similar
things, but (with the exception of parent-child) kin selection
hardly plays into it. Kin selection is EVERYTHING in worker bees.
Humans form also extended families, clans, tribes and nations,
concepts that are to some extent based on genetic similarity.
I wrote above "in favour of the genes", but I would say only that
genes are one way to explain motivations and the way the world
works, not necessarily the only correct one (maybe you didn't say
so either).
I'd like to hear another.
Survival of one's children is the more traditional alternative to
genes. A bit more different path is cultural evolution. Nations also
fight for survival, why not ideologies too. Referring to my earlier
definition above, it is interesting to study any property that either
stays or disappears in time (no need to always explain them with
attributes like selfishness and biological survival instincts).
(for what it's worth, I'm actually working on an article on this
stuff, independent from voting theory. Bees, and understanding the
difference between their motivations and more typical animal
motivations, is what inspired my interest in evolution, game theory
and related fields as a kid, so it is core to my thinking on all this)
Go for it. Don't listen too much to the current popular trends, and
avoid humanization of the story (well, humanization sells better ;-).
Juho
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