Gene Genie

In a widely read New Yorker article, Ezra Klein tries to explain how Republicans could oppose the individual mandate in the health care bill.  I didn't find the piece too illuminating, but one part intrigued me--Klein quotes NYU psychology professor Jonathan Haidt to back up his argument.

Haidt [...] argues in a new book, “The Righteous Mind,” that to understand human beings, and their politics, you need to understand that we are descended from ancestors who would not have survived if they hadn’t been very good at belonging to groups. He writes that “our minds contain a variety of mental mechanisms that make us adept at promoting our group’s interests, in competition with other groups. We are not saints, but we are sometimes good team players.”

Haidt is a backer of group selection.  A lot of people like the idea of group selection--that animals, including us, have genes telling them to make sacrifices for the good of their group.  It's such a pleasant idea that even a fair number of scientists believe it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be true, as Steven Pinker notes in a recent essay.  Evolution can be seen as genes competing for limited space, and a self-sacrificing gene would be ruthlessly selected against; it's up to those who support true altruism--helping others at your own expense--to show how it would work, and they don't seem to have the evidence.

No one doubts that animals are willing to help their own kin--that makes sense for genes fighting to remain in the pool. (I'm using the language of agency for genes, but everyone understands it's merely a useful shorthand.) And there are special situations, often seen in the insect world--but given as examples by people like Haidt--where all share the same genes, and unconditional sacrifice from sterile individuals to protect the queen or the hive increases their own genetic fitness.

There's also an understandable tendency toward cooperation--if you cooperate with someone who cooperates with you, you're both benefitted.  In other words, your cooperation increases your own success (and when it doesn't you stop cooperating).

So with built-in altruism toward kin (seen everywhere in nature, but also in studies of human society), and a potential for cooperation, it's no surprise that some humans can be convinced to move toward a purer altruism--to help (or believe they're helping) non-relatives in some particular group, or humanity in general, or even other animals, at a sacrifice to themselves.  This hardly means, though, we're genetically programmed to promote the good of the group.  Bees, wasps and ants automatically make these sacrifices, while what we've got is a capacity for abstract thought that allows us to believe under the right circumstances that we should make sacrifices.