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SomeDudeist t1_iu48uuw wrote

I disagree. If the only reason for existing was reproducing then I would have killed myself a long time ago.

Edot: do you think the purpose of walking is to produce steps? Lol

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mrgreyeyes t1_iu4ejrl wrote

You don't reproduce, so you don't pass on your genes. For evolution's sake you are a dead end already.

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Fumquat t1_iu4jm1t wrote

Your niblings also carry ‘your’ genes. The whole human race carries genes in common with you.

Helping the tribe is enough in evolution. Not every individual reproduces, and yet here we are with a strong urge to cooperate.

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Fumquat t1_iu4pem6 wrote

Funny how the most terrifying space aliens tend to be the hive insect type

Our need to exist runs so deep, we credit ourselves with the random shuffling of chromosomes that occurs during our own conception, and we trust the products of our mating activities to somehow carry our essential selves into the future.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu4t2g0 wrote

There are evolutionary models that show altruism evolved because it does offer an evolutionary advantage in the way you claim. But as evidenced in the real world, it is only advantageous in a limited amount. Too much altruism leads to the the individual being taken advantage of and losing out.

Yes, if you can't find a mate, then helping with your neices and nephews makes evolutionary sense. But statistically speaking, you (and your close genetic family) are better off with additional lottery tickets rather than "better" lottery tickets.

If you have 4 neices and nephews that you boost to a 50/50 chance of "success" then there's a 0.0625% chance none of them succeeds. If you have your own 2 kids, and that reduces everyone to a 40% chance of success, then there's only a 0.004096% chance that none of them succeeds. That's a whole order of magnitude difference. Obviously, these numbers are for example purposes. But it's reasonable to assume that a reasonable amount of additional support from an aunt or uncle is only going to offer a small boost in outcomes on average.

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Fumquat t1_iu4zwuy wrote

Altruism does imply a choice is being made. The organization of a group into reproductive and non-reproductive members doesn’t usually happen at the choice level in nature. It’s developmental.

Humans can only survive in groups larger than a nuclear family unit. We have to have tendencies inborn to make that work.

Think of dogs. A litter of puppies, left together, will naturally organize themselves into extremes of dominant and submissive personalities. In the wild, the next generation will be coming from the alphas, but sustained and protected by the group. With domestic dogs, we find that separating the puppies at the right age will result in more balanced individual personalities, desirable for training. The dogs aren’t making a reasoned choice to become leaders or helpers, it’s just their programming interacting with their environment, with a little randomness nudging them each down one path or another.

People are unique in the sense that we like to think we have control over our own life paths. We have free will, and we use it, and we have this wonderful ability to analyze those choices with game theory and such. But we’re still animals at the same time, living in an unpredictable world.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu50ron wrote

>Altruism does imply a choice is being made.

>People are unique in the sense that we like to think we have control over our own life paths. We have free will, and we use it, and we have this wonderful ability to analyze those choices with game theory and such. But we’re still animals

Your definition of altruism takes for granted that choice exists, which you acknowledge may be an illusion by the end of your comment. So, no, if choice could be an illusion, and altruism still exists, then altruism does not imply that a choice is being made. It's just another instinct, one that we mainly/only clearly see in social animals.

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Fumquat t1_iu53u37 wrote

Well yeah I guess I got off track.

The point I intended to get into was to look at it from the grandparent generation perspective. Clearly there’s success in genes that produce a mixture of self-sacrificing and selfish individuals.

It doesn’t make sense to me to call contributing, necessary members of a group an “evolutionary dead end” when the differences between them and the direct reproducers are pretty much epigenetic. But maybe a different dose of hormones in the brain would change which parts of the picture I focus on in the first place lol.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu55wzp wrote

You aren't your grandparents. Looking at the situation from their point of view makes no sense. You, yourself, pointed out how disgusted we are at the idea of hive minds/social structures. You, from your POV, are not just a replaceable worker ant for your grandparents, and I'd assume that you would be upset if they told you that you were, even though on some level you are.

Although, nonetheless, even from their POV, the statistical math of you and your siblings having more total offspring is still better. If you pump all of your parenting into your nieces and nephews, and those families go on vacation together and all die, then obviously it would be better for your grandparents' genes if you had your own kids instead.

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Fumquat t1_iu5h0v9 wrote

I mean, where does being upset or offended come into this?

In evolutionary biology, the F2 (or grandchildren) generation is the more conceptually useful focus point for analyzing the success of various reproductive strategies. Many losses will occur along the way for a wide variety of reasons, some of which are built-in.

Worker ants exist, in great numbers. So do sharks who get eaten by their siblings in the womb. Or sea turtles, alligators and the like who basically start life as snacks and continue to exist only because 1/1000 made it to adulthood. How? There were too many to eat at once.

Genes are genes and individuals are individuals.

If I were a sentient worker ant, would knowing what I am cause a revolution? I think not. Should a sentient baby turtle fall into despair? Wouldn’t be useful.

The vast majority of hominid species that existed are extinct. We’re what’s left, in part by chance. Having a baby is so insanely costly and risky to human women as individuals that given the technology and freedom to avoid it, on average the birth rate falls way below replacement levels. And then on the other extreme Elon Musk has this notion to select all boy children (through IVF, no kidding), who he hopes then will go on to serially impregnate multiple women each, spreading his genes as far as possible. This is also pretty gross. He’ll die at the end of his own life, just like every other person.

So, who are the ‘winners’ versus the sacrificial members of the species here? We each just exist until we don’t. The genes we happen to inherit neither ‘belong’ to us nor define us as individuals. Across generations, life continues on as a massive unguided amoral process, up until it doesn’t.

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Rheanar t1_iu4p6xx wrote

Niblings sounds like some fantasy race

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Fumquat t1_iu4rrlx wrote

The gentle niblings are a sweet addition to our world, often playing happily in the background of family gatherings, sleeping soundly (for all we know) in the homes of other people.

We bring them offerings of noisemakers and candy, as is tradition. It is believed the right tithings will ensure a great harvest of comeuppance over our childhood rivals. Blessed is the home where niblings visit frequently!

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RavelordN1T0 t1_iu4prmp wrote

We are all pawns, controlled by something greater:
#MEMES, THE DNA OF THE SOUL

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RobJP94 t1_iu4m4b6 wrote

What if I do neither

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aioncan t1_iu4ox3c wrote

You’re still part of the system. Even viruses, which are bad for us, act as selective pressures culling the herd and making sure the future human iterations are “stronger” in their environment

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RobJP94 t1_iu4p0h3 wrote

What if I kill the strong to make way for the weak

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SomeDudeist t1_iu4mnnr wrote

None of us are permanent and neither is the human race. So by your logic aren't we all dead ends in the end?

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Samuel7899 t1_iu4opf8 wrote

Neither evolution, nor life, rely exclusively on genes and traditional vertical gene transfer.

What is Einstein's genetic contribution to civilization? Or Shakespeare's? Or Netwon's?

Life, especially complex life, is a complex pattern of vertical gene transfer, as well as both vertical and horizontal meme transfer.

Just because we/life as a whole couldn't persist that long without reproduction doesn't mean that there aren't still many hundreds of absolutely necessary processes that also absolutely have to happen for life to carry on for any significant amount of time.

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Gooftwit t1_iu4qzej wrote

Humans will eventually go extinct anyway. So whatever evolution has accomplished by then is of no consequence. Therefore, I don't care about doing the right thing for evolution.

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aioncan t1_iu4oid3 wrote

That’s only true if you have a gene that’s unique to you. Otherwise the gene pool stays the same even if you don’t reproduce since other people carry on your genes.

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scorpious2 t1_iu493hh wrote

Have you fullfilled your purpose?

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SomeDudeist t1_iu49cma wrote

My purpose is to explore purpose

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clitter-box t1_iu4batq wrote

what have you found so far?

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SomeDudeist t1_iu4hndw wrote

Ultimately I think it just comes down to helping people. You know feed clothe and offer shelter to the people around you if you can.

I'm a little self conscious about talking about my own thoughts honestly. Lol but I think the happiest people live for others. But not to the point of being stepped on and taken advantage of. There's a lot of nuance to consider.

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00000110100100 t1_iu4mz3k wrote

I completely agree with you, as someone who’s never happier than when I’m improving someone else’s life. There was one time I was leaving the grocery store and a lady rode up to me on a bike, asked if I could help her buy dinner for her family. I said sure, put my groceries in my car, and went back into the store with her. We walked through the whole store and I chatted with her while she grabbed what she needed. It was one of the best moments in my life. Ironically, it’s helping family/friends/people who know you personally that you need to be careful with. I’m always happy to help a stranger, but make sure to have boundaries when helping friends/family, especially when it comes to money.

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Tmaster95 t1_iu4re83 wrote

It is the main purpose of any animal. Survival and Reproduction

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SomeDudeist t1_iu4svbh wrote

I disagree.

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Tmaster95 t1_iu5ag6e wrote

What is the main purpose of an animal then?

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SomeDudeist t1_iu5anhb wrote

Why should it be any different for them than it is for us?

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JCPRuckus t1_iu5hwti wrote

It isn't. That's the point they're making. We're just animals. Our basic purpose is to survive long enough to breed and help our offspring survive long enough to breed in turn. Everything else is stuff we make up, because we accidentally became too capable of abstract thought to just be satisfied doing the basic stuff, ironically in an attempt to make us better at doing the basic stuff.

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SomeDudeist t1_iu5jnqf wrote

I think the universe is more than just a mechanical device. If the purpose of life was simply to reproduce then we might as well have just stayed single celled organisms. But then we wouldn't be growing or evolving.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu5mc79 wrote

>I think the universe is more than just a mechanical device. If the purpose of life was simply to reproduce then we should have just stayed single celled organisms. But then we wouldn't be growing or evolving.

Or... Multicelled organisms had some sort of advantage over single-celled organisms, and it is all just the result of ongoing mechanical processes and a bit of chance over a long enough period of time.

You're dipping into philosophy. Which, again, is part of the extra stuff, not the basic. Your opinions don't change the objective facts of what life's basic functions are. Ability to reproduce is part of what defines what life is at the most basic level... Even single-celled organisms reproduce.

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SomeDudeist t1_iu5ncw3 wrote

You can reduce life to the basic function of reproducing but that doesn't mean the purpose of life is to reproduce. I'm making a distinction between the process of a function and the purpose of a function. Reproducing is a process of life but the purpose of life is simply to be alive.

I've been talking about philosophy from the start. I'm not sure you can talk about purpose in the sense I'm talking about without philosophy.

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Tmaster95 t1_iu5yq0o wrote

Yes, the purpose in the sense you are talking about is to be alive which is survival. You can’t survive as a species if you don’t reproduce, so these two go hand in hand. There isn’t anything more to it.

There isn’t anything more mechanical than the universe. To see this realization as something negative is stupid. It is just the rejection of the naive thought that we would need more. We can keep telling ourselves some made up stories and reasons maybe to feel better (in the great picture useless and maybe even counterproductive) but that doesn’t make them real at all.

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SomeDudeist t1_iu61kcf wrote

I feel like reducing life to reproduction is just ignoring the fact that it's alive. The reason I think the universe is more than mechanical is because it's alive. Or parts of it anyway. Lol

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Tmaster95 t1_iu67a54 wrote

Being alive is a label invented by humanity to adress constructs and arrangements of matter that can react to its environment and sense things. Being alive doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t change the purpose of anything. Plants are alive. What is their purpose? Survival and reproduction. Many wouldn’t say the universe is alive but I think it could be just to slow to see, still there is no proof for that.

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JCPRuckus t1_iu6log3 wrote

If life doesn't reproduce then there's no more life. If the purpose of life was to live, and then wink out and leave the universe sterile, then we wouldn't exist to be having this conversation.

I'm not "reducing" life to reproduction. I'm not saying life is reproduction. I'm saying that reproduction is part of the definition of life. So if you don't reproduce, you have missed out on part of the fundamental meaning of being alive.

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Tmaster95 t1_iu5wy91 wrote

That’s exactly what I said. It isn’t any different. We all are animals whose "purpose" it is to survive and to reproduce. Everything we do somehow has something to do with one of these two. Knowledge and fulfillement are secondary factors which we made up that aren’t unique to humans.

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SomeDudeist t1_iu5xab1 wrote

I think there's a distinction to be made between the method life uses to perpetuates itself and its purpose in perpetuating itself.

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Tmaster95 t1_iu5zmdx wrote

The reason you are referring to isn’t different to the reason I’m referring to. If we look at it now as highly developed animals you could think that they differ, but the process of evolution proves their equality. We exist because the generations of our ancestors had some advantage to the other iterations and species.

We are better than many of them, that’s why we are here. We want to countinue being better and existing, that’s why we want to reproduce and survive.

I don’t have anything more to say.

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