
Altruism can be explained by natural selection - frossie
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100825/full/news.2010.427.html
======
skowmunk
Is it really altruism or self-preservation?

If a society has rules where helping each other out increases the chance of
survival, even if the ultimate purpose of survival, reproduction is disabled
for whatever reason, won't the need to survive keep the 'altruistic' behavior
going on?

'altruistic' behavior => high chances of survival => high chances of
reproduction.

Now even if the downstream purpose is removed, unless there is an inner
mechanism that says, "stop surviving because you have stopped reproducing" why
would it stop doing things (altruistic behavior, in this case) that would keep
its chance of survival high?

If there is such an inner mechanism, we would all die the moment our gonads
dry up and not really live till 70s, 80s or 100s.

Its not always that animals or humans do things for others just because they
want to help. They end up often "helping" others because they are forced to do
and need to do so for their own survival, consider the feudal societies in the
past.

The moment a queen bee is destroyed, some of the dormant females start being
active regarding their reproduction cycles and compete to become the next
queen bee. And its some secretions of the queen bee while its alive which keep
the other females dormant regarding their reproduction capabilities and just
keep servicing the queen bee.

I Wonder if the researchers considered this perspective?

