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RE: Priming an audience: Information Finding Championship - Season 1 : Round 22 entry MUSIC
I think it is the nature of a large group of individuals (humans and otherwise). I do remember reading a paper about the optimum balance of selfish and altruistic members of a society (animal). It turns out that a balance of the two is required for a stable society.
Completely selfish is destructive, but completely altruistic should also be unstable. A small mutation to have a slightly more selfish trait would in a few generations completely dominate.
I forget the balance though, just that the point of stability was somewhere in between. Admittedly, it is a simplistic model, but I think the idea that a completely altruistic society is unfortunatly not as stable a community as we would hope to believe it would be.
I need to see more data about how altruism is harmful in society before I can comment. I just don't even know how to interpret that without more information.
I would be curious if you could bring me more information about this, cause I'd like to see how selfishness is a good thing and too much altruism is bad. I'm genuinely curious too, not being sarcastic. Please lemme know if you can go into more detail on that.
Oof, that paper I read was such a long time ago. I have searched around for it, but I haven't found it yet.
Anyway, Im not sure I was totally clear in my comment. I (the paper) wasn't making a point on the morality or anything about selfish vs altruism. It was only making a point about the stability of the systems that contained both traits.
The completely selfish system was unstable as it led to self destruction.
The completely altruistic was also unstable, as the merest introduction of a selfish trait (via mutation or otherwise) led to it gaining rapid dominance (as it harnessed more resources selfishly) over multiple generations.
The finding was that a mix of the two traits was needed to provide stability to a system over many generations.
The research and conclusion was about system stability, not about what was better.
I will continue looking, my memory is hazy on how I came across it originally...