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Try it. With actual evolving populations with inherited strategies, and without hard-coding group selection.

Without hard-coding the groups as separate evolving units, you'll have a hard time.

In general, it is easy to show the group behaviors you want if you can treat the group as atomic for the purpose of the model. But you've just moved the goalposts, your 'individuals' are not the unit of evolution any more, and you've simply set the required behavior in the fitness function.

So try it and see.

But... under his conditions it is clear that everyone in the group with the least altruists dies. There also seems to be no particular benefit for an individual of getting more points than anyone else. No point trying anything, it is clear prima facie.

Whether this has any relevance to the real world is the debatable matter. I would argue that it does, there are many examples where strong communities have grown as a result of general goodwill and altruistic behaviours, and these communities prosper compared to those where exploitative behaviour is common. There is of course another element which a simplified model neglects - communities, once formed, exert a strong pressure on its members to conform to the norm, be it good or bad. This pressure has the effect that the individuals who depart from community norms are "evolved out" so to speak. In case of altruistic communities, this protects the group from infiltration by exploitative individuals. In case of exploitative communities, unfortunately, this perpetuates the communal problems. Eventually, if the two communities come into a conflict, the exploitative community will be eliminated.

What do you mean when you say "without hard-coding group selection"?

Are you saying the simulation is not valid unless collaboration between individuals arises as an emergent behavior?

If you hard-code group selection (setting the group as the unit of evolution), then you are already assuming what you want to prove.

> without hard-coding group selection

Unless you're disputing the existence of group selection in real systems, what does hard coding it change vs. a given system where it is an emergent property?

You have a model with 3 demes, with the deme having the lowest proportion of A-individuals being killed. This is no different from a model with 3 individuals with the individual with the lowest number of A-alleles being killed.

You can, of course, give a narrative argument on why you feel it is justified to exclude the interplay between these levels. But if you, at some point, try to show it is justified, by removing the assumption from your model, you'll struggle, I predict.

Evolving systems are very complex, it is an unwise assumption that you can chunk their dynamics into levels of abstraction and expect those dynamics to function independently or predictably when combined.

Good example but in most real world cases choice will be to keep one point to themselves and give away between zero to one point to the group out of that one point.

Now selfish behaviour kicks in as every individual wants to give as little as possible. But survivial of the group becomes crucial in face of an adversory. In that case everyone will contribute towards maximising group's strength. So in my understanding nature and wars (to a lesser degree) shaped altruism. But mostly nature. There's no way monkeys can survive without taking care of each other and group dynamics are strongest amongst them.

Altruism is completely practical.

But can it still be called altruism? Imho, helping out the group to preserve yourself disqualifies it as such; the selfish aspect is clearly there.

That's why I called it practical. It's more like a long term investment where everyone wins (not only you). That's why it can be considered selfless.

well altruism is an emotional response, if the brain has evolved to exhibit altruism it would be because the behaviors most likely to be exhibited by altruism were rewarded with survival and possibilities for procreation, as well as helping with the survival of those carrying your genetic material.

Sure, but just "feeling good" for helping others could be viewed as selfish as well. But at that point it's just semantics. I think we need to call altruism altruism for the actions, regardless of your return net effects. Is charity not altruism because you happen to benefit from it 50 years later in societal growth?

It totally is. I think the selfless aspects are highlighted more as they are for long term benefit. It also about definition of self from that point onwards..

Wrote my post before I saw this one. This is in line with what I was thinking, an act of altruism to make yourself feel good is not pure altruism.

I also agree that it is about the actions more than what you gain by doing so.

Charity is a good example of how altruism helps yourself, I donate to charity every now and then and of course it makes me feel good about donating, thus the act has an emotional gain for me.

I actually struggle with this idea myself. I consider myself a good person, and I enjoy helping others. Sometimes with a fair bit of cost to myself.

But I don't consider it "altruistic". I help them because I want to help them and enjoy having done so, and not out of some innate sense of ethics or of what needs to be done.

I think people doing altruistic things do enjoy them, but they don't do them because they enjoy them. They do them because they need to be done, and the enjoyment is a side effect.

Of course, this distinction makes it incredibly difficult to know if someone is actually being altruistic or not.

At that point, does it particularly matter if it's altruistic or not if the person is helping others for their own selfish gain, or for the benefit of others?

For example, a restaurant owner might serve food for free for homeless people for increasing their own reputation and social wellbeing, vs the owner who does it entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. The net result is the same, so why worry so much about the motivation behind it? I'd say they're both equally good people, in this example.

Being able to be generous and therefore altruistic is also a decent signal to the rest of your group you're fit and healthy.

> I think people doing altruistic things do enjoy them, but they don't do them because they enjoy them. They do them because they need to be done, and the enjoyment is a side effect.

What is the difference between the two conditions? The only one I can think of is that removing the side effect does not change the behavior, but removing the main motivator does. How is this significant though? Is it easier to lose enjoyment from altruistic activities than to lose a sense of responsibility? Is pleasure more fickle than duty?

That distinction, IMHO, also makes the definition of altruism so narrow as to be useless.

Good point, if it is altruism out of self-interest it is not altruistic in the pure sense.

I think that I might go as extreme as to say it is only altruistic if it makes you feel bad or puts you in a clearly bad position.

Let's say that out of an act of altruism you help a person achieve some goal of theirs. Now you do not have a material gain from this, but doing so will make you feel good, hence you did it to make yourself feel good?

I think the thread has gotten way off topic. The article is about kindness, not altruism. Kindness is, in my experience, doing something that makes someone else feel good, regardless of how it makes you feel. You do something, in kind, as it reciprocates the emotive intent to be helpful. You don't do something, in kind, as it creates a lack (for either party) as a result of that act. Self sacrifice and kindness are completely unrelated. Self sacrifice should not, and must not, be a deciding factor in what determines kindness as it confuses the moral agent motivating the act.

just as ascribing intentions to evolution is frowned upon, the evolutionary successful behaviour doesn't have to be intentional, does it? This's no direct dispproval of the selfishnes, however, just semantics.

> But can it still be called altruism? Imho, helping out the group to preserve yourself disqualifies it as such; the selfish aspect is clearly there.

What you described there is in nature called symbiosis [1]. Like a cat or dogs lives with a human, or an ant with a fig tree.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

When in history have completely random samples of complete strangers been thrown together in life-or-death situations with no ability to communicate with each other and discuss their options?

Artificial studies like this have practically no bearing on actual behavior of real populations in real situations. Try the same study with a family, or a football team or the employees of a company or a military unit and then see what result you get. That's what reality is like. Real people don't live in randomly selected study groups, they live in communities.

Randomly selected study groups are intended to represent the larger society made up of those smaller communities.

But in this arrangement there is no reason for an individual need more points. You inserted your own assumption that "more imaginary points is better for itself" to define altruism.

Maybe an additional rule where the 20% with less points of the population of the groups with more points also dies. So there is actually an incentive for the individual that keep the points.

I have a little modification of your experiment.

* Divide the big group into smaller groups (where they are giving each other inside the group only).

Now individuals in the group where many give to each other get an advantage over individuals in other groups.

Individuals that keep for themselves while staying in a group that gives also keep the better advantage on cost of their group.

Another modification would be:

* Allow the group to punish those who keep for themselves.

The rules you create are completely artificial, and IRL, people will rarely perceive "If everyone gives 2 points then everyone gets 2 points", even in the case it's true. They will see what they loose. Then you will have the ones abusing the system in some clever way. Then you will have people trying to scare others, or rule others, or both. Sub group will forms. Situation will changes, some old resource will become scare, some new resource will become in demand. Power play will come in. And Ego.

We are not ants.

Now in emergency situations, my experience is that we ARE hardwire to help each others. It works almost automatically, and is quite magical.

But as son as the immediate threats wears off, all the stuff I mentioned come into play.