Biologische oorsprong van moraliteit.

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Op zaterdag 3 mei 2008 09:28 schreef Dwerfion het volgende:

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Het gegeven dat je de gulden regel telkens terug ziet keren, is dat de reden om hem te hanteren?

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Dat zou mijns inziens een democratisch principe van 'het goede' zijn. Als de meerderheid van Amerika graag naar de Torah zou willen invoeren, dan is dat dus 'het goede'. (Als ik dit niet goed heb, wat is dan de reden om de gulden regel te omarmen?)

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Eldakar, O.T. and Wilson, D.S. (2008) Selfishness as second-order altruism. PNAS, advanced online

Selfishness is seldom considered a group-beneficial strategy. In the typical evolutionary formulation, altruism benefits the group, selfishness undermines altruism, and the purpose of the model is to identify mechanisms, such as kinship or reciprocity, that enable altruism to evolve. Recent models have explored punishment as an important mechanism favoring the evolution of altruism, but punishment can be costly to the punisher, making it a form of second-order altruism. This model identifies a strategy called "selfish punisher" that involves behaving selfishly in first-order interactions and altruistically in second-order interactions by punishing other selfish individuals. Selfish punishers cause selfishness to be a self-limiting strategy, enabling altruists to coexist in a stable equilibrium. This polymorphism can be regarded as a division of labor, or mutualism, in which the benefits obtained by first-order selfishness help to "pay" for second-order altruism.

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Selfishness is rarely described as a group-beneficial strategy. Selfish strategies are labeled as deviant, cheating, free-riding, egoistic (1), but most of all, as undermining altruism and cooperation (2). In contrast, altruistic and cooperative strategies, almost by definition, benefit the group, often at the expense of the individual actor (2). In the typical evolutionary model, the invasion of selfish strategies into a group leads to the dissolution of altruism. Examples include scroungers among foraging groups (3, 4), infanticide of unrelated infants (5), sneaking worker reproduction in eusocial insect colonies (6, 7), and failure to help in territorial defense (8, 9). The experimental economics literature amply demonstrates the corrosive effects of selfishness in human social interactions. In public-goods games, participants start out moderately generous but quickly withdraw their cooperation in the presence of selfish cheaters (10–13).

Earlier evolutionary models focused on how altruism can evolve through nonrandom interactions or guarded cooperation in dyadic interactions (14–17). More recently, interest has focused on punishment as a mechanism for maintaining altruism in sizeable groups (10, 11, 13, 18–23). Punishment can be effective in curtailing selfish behavior within a group, but it can also be costly for the punisher, compared with cooperators in the same group who do not punish, thereby qualifying as a form of second-order altruism. Individuals who are altruistic in firstorder and second-order interactions are at a double disadvantage (10, 23–25). The solution to this problem might lie where least expected.

An often overlooked aspect of game theory is that selfish individuals also have an incentive to punish other selfish individuals, thereby increasing the proportion of cooperators for them to exploit. This behavior might seem hypocritical in moral terms, but it makes sense as an evolutionary strategy. It can even be looked upon as a division of labor, or mutualism, whereby cheating during first-order interactions becomes a ‘‘payment’’ for altruism (punishment) in second-order interactions. A combination of strategies (selfish punisher plus altruistic nonpunisher) that split the costs of first- and second-order altruism can be superior to a single-altruist/punisher strategy that bears both costs.

In an earlier computer simulation model (26, 27), we showed that when first- and second-order altruism are modeled as initially uncorrelated traits, a negative correlation robustly develops between the two, although the size of the correlation depends upon a number of parameters. Here, we present an analytical model demonstrating how altruistic nonpunishers and selfish punishers, through the benefit of division of labor, can exist in a stable equilibrium.