Le 19-juil.-12, à 06:47, meekerdb a écrit :
This may be of interest to those recently discussing free-riders.
Brent
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Unto Others
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
It is the oldest and most universally recognized moral principle that
was codified over two millennia ago by the Jewish sage Hillel the
Elder: “Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, do not
do that to them. This is the whole Law. The rest is only explanation.”
With comp this does not work. We are too much different, and we can
never judge for another. The principle becomes: "Don't do to others
what others does not want to be done on them, unless you need to defend
your life". Put in another way: respect the meaning of the word "no"
when said by others.
Bruno
That explanation has been the subject of intense theological and
philosophical disputation for millennia, and recently scientists are
weighing in with naturalistic accounts of morality, such as the two
books under review here.
Paul J. Zak is an economist and pioneer in the new science of
neuroeconomics who built his reputation on research that identified
the hormone oxytocin as a biological proxy for trust. As Zak
documents, countries whose citizens trust one another have higher
average GDPs, and trust is built through mutually-beneficial exchanges
that result in higher levels of oxytocin as measured in blood draws of
subjects in economic exchange games as well as real-world in
situ encounters. The Moral Molecule is an engaging and enlightening
popular account of Zak’s decade of intense research into how this
molecule evolved for one purpose—pair bonding and attachment in social
mammals—and was co-opted for trust between strangers.
The problem to be solved here is why strangers would be nice to one
another. Evolutionary “selfish gene” theory well accounts for why we
would be nice to our kin and kind—they share our genes so being
altruistic and moral has an evolutionary payoff in our genes being
indirectly propagated into future generations. The theory of kin
selection explains how this works, and the theory of reciprocal
altruism—I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine—goes a long way
toward explaining why unrelated people in a social group would be kind
to one another: my generosity to you today when my fortunes are sound
will pay off down the road when life is good to you and my luck has
run out. What Zak has so brilliantly done is to identify the precise
biological pathways that explain the mechanics of how this system
evolved and operates today.
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Order the hardcover from Amazon
Order the Kindle Edition
The Moral Molecule is loaded with first-person accounts of how Zak
got his data, starting with a wedding he attended in the English
countryside to draw the blood and measure the oxytocin levels of the
bride, groom, and accompanying parents before and after the vows. The
half-life of oxytocin is measured in minutes, so Zak had to draw 24
blood samples in under ten minutes that then had to be frozen and
shipped back to his lab for analysis, the results of which “could be
mapped out like the solar system, with the bride as the sun,” he
vividly recalls. The bride’s oxytocin level shot up by 28 percent
after vows were spoken, “and for each of the other people tested, the
increase in oxytocin was in direct proportion to the likely intensity
of emotional engagement in the event.” Bride’s mother: up 24 percent.
Groom’s father: up 19 percent. The groom: up only 13 percent. Why? It
turns out that testosterone interferes with the release of oxytocin,
and Zak measured a 100 percent increase in the groom’s testosterone
level after his vows were pronounced! How far will Zak go to get his
data? In the western highlands of Papua New Guinea he set up a
make-shift lab to draw the blood from tribal warriors before and after
they performed a ritual dance, discovering that the “band of
brothers” phenomena has a molecular basis in oxytocin.
The Moral Molecule aims to explain “the source of love and
prosperity,” which Zak identifies in a causal chain from oxytocin to
empathy to morality to trust to prosperity. Numerous experiments he
has conducted in this lab that are detailed in the book demonstrate
that subjects who are cooperative and generous in a trust game have
higher levels of oxytocin, and infusing subjects with oxytocin through
a nose spray causes their generosity and cooperativeness to increase.
Zak concludes his book with a thoughtful discussion of how liberal
democracies and free markets produce the types of social systems that
best enable people to interact in a way that puts them on the
oxytocin-empathy-morality-trust-prosperity positive feedback loop.
Every corporate CEO and congressman should read this book before
making important decisions.
In Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame the
USC evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm tackles head-on the
“free-rider” problem in explaining the origins of morality. Kin
selection and reciprocal altruism only go so far in explaining why we
would have evolved the propensity to be nice to our fellow group
members, because big bullies and Machiavellian manipulators could
easily take advantage of naively engendered trust. Before long,
free-riders operating on the goodwill of other groups members would
gain an evolutionary reproductive advantage and swamp the gene pool
with psychopaths lacking any pretense of real morality and thereby
reduce humanity to an inhumane Lord of the Flies. But that did not
happen and Boehm explains why: we evolved the social technology of
shaming and shunning free riders who violated social norms, along with
the desire to punish those who attempted to unfairly gain an upper
hand against naïve group members or those who could be exploited by
powerful alpha-male bullies. This explains why we not only practice
but often even enjoy “moralistic punishment” against those who cheated
or bullied us. It’s a powerful emotion based in evolutionary logic
that I felt the full visceral effect of during the revenge scene from
the film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that followed the
pornographically brutal rape scene of the central character Lisbeth
Salander. There’s a deep emotional satisfaction that comes from seeing
a bully get his comeuppance. It’s an evolved moral emotion necessary
to deal with the realities of a social life that includes bullies and
cheaters.
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Order the hardcover from Amazon
Order the Kindle Edition
Boehm’s data comes from his direct observations of primate groups and
indigenous populations over many decades, which he extrapolates back
into our Paleolithic past of hunter-gatherers on the plains of
Africa. Hunting wild game is a dangerous enterprise for a puny bipedal
primate, so collaborative hunting through social bonding evolved. The
free-rider problem of individuals shirking their responsibilities,
laying back during risky moments, or taking more than their fair share
of the hunt, were vigorously punished through shame and shunning, and
even expulsion and capital punishment. Knowing that there are
consequences to cheating the system, humans evolved a moral emotion of
guilt and shame that enabled our ancestors to learn to control their
impulses to do the wrong thing and to be reinforced for and feel good
about doing the right thing.
Boehm estimates that this system evolved over the last 50,000 years as
human groups became vigilantly egalitarian, and yet our psychology
contains much older selfish moral emotions that are often in conflict
with these newer sentiments. This goes a long way toward explaining
why we often feel selfish and strongly desire to first take care of
ourselves and our kin, while also feeling tribal and bonded with our
fellow group members, especially when we are collectively threatened
by other tribes. As Boehm notes in a moving epilogue reflection on
humanity’s moral future, “people in a band are basically economic
equals, whereas our world of nations is very far from being
egalitarian in this way. This economic inequality can be seen as a
special engine that helps to drive international conflict, and it
stands in the way of creating a more effective international order.”
We can’t go back, but we can go forward armed with the knowledge that
deep-thinking scientists such as Christopher Boehm provide in such
important contributions to humanity’s prospects as Moral Origins.
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"We have geared the machines and locked all together into
interdependence; we have built the great cities; now there is no
escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival,
insulated From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on
all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net Is being hauled in."
~ From The Purse Seine, Robinson Jeffers, 1937
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