| ▲ | mytailorisrich 8 hours ago |
| People, animals, everyone look after their own interests and the interests of their offsprings. Any studies that might be conducted will, shockingly not, come to that conclusion. You can't escape 3+ billion years of evolution through natural selection. |
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| ▲ | mihaic 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Human evolution actually escaped the trap of this short term thinking twice: first some 100k years ago, when altruism bloomed (see E O Wilson), and some 2500 years ago with the universal moralistic religions. The group that maximizes their long-term reproduction is the one that inherits the earth. |
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| ▲ | BartjeD 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's the malthusian fallacy. The winners are the ones that maximize survival. Reproduction is what all the shills did anyway | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is not short-term thinking. It is how we all think on a daily basis, even unconsciously, because it maximizes survival and reproduction, at least on evolutionary scales. > The group that maximizes their long-term reproduction is the one that inherits the earth. Yes, that's an interesting paradox in a world where the poorer tend to have more (surviving) children that the richer. But it emerged only very recently on evolutionary scales. | | |
| ▲ | mihaic 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Before it meant the group that even sometimes risked their life for the children of everyone in the tribe. I think you're discounting natural human altruism, which is well studied. | | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | The tribe was bound by blood and reciprocal ties. This works at small scales, which is the context we evolved in. This is why in a village where everyone knows each other people help each other but in a holiday resort locals screw tourists. | | |
| ▲ | mihaic 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Religions like Christianity are the natural development at global scale for that. We're losing that scaling in altruism now, but it doesn't have to be this way. |
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| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | On a longer time scale, the poor having more children than the rich is a minor temporary aberration. Their fertility is going the same direction, just with a bit of a lag. |
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| ▲ | Romario77 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| But the experiment compares MBA Ivy league students to the general population. Yes, everyone looks after their own interests, but some more than others, like in this example the students above:
> implement substantially more unequal earnings distributions than the average American |
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| ▲ | mytailorisrich 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you are, or consider yourself, part of the top "performers" you have a self-interest incentive to favour this because you expect to be among the "winners" and don't want to share with the "losers". I.e., unequal earnings distribution looks better and better as you climb the social ladder because you benefit more and more. On the other hand, if you are at the bottom you may strongly support more equal distibution because that can only benefit you. Same reasoning as to why workers unions emerged from the bottom, not the top. | | |
| ▲ | teamonkey 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Don’t hire the best people in order to make yourself look better. Got it. | | |
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