RE: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Priso
Dan Henry (dmhenry@csn.net)
Thu, 24 Apr 1997 20:58:59 +0600
At 10:25 AM 4/24/97 +0100, Robin Faichney wrote:
>Dan Henry wrote:
>>Do we think of gazelles as altruistic because they hang around together and
>>cooperate for survival? NO. It's a survival mechanism that is used by
>>each
>>individual gazelle.
>
>This is what I don't understand about this sort of assertion:
>As people interested in memetics, haven't we all read
>Dawkins? And don't we know that it's *genes* that are
>primarily selfish? And Dawkins himself says that does
>*not* mean that *we* have to be selfish!
>
>Robin
>
The point of the entire post was that cooperation (e.g., sharing knowledge)
is not evidence of altruism.
But if Dawkins himself said it, I guess the discussion is over!
Dan