I have to agree. I was listening to an episode of Radiolab (great podcast/radioshow if you are into science). It was the story of a scientist who discovered a genetic code within us that measures chance and weighs danger in terms of "what will increase the chances that my DNA will survive." This code is applied to absolutely every decision you make, no matter how selfless that decision seems.

Interestingly, this scientist then devoted his life to proving his own discovery wrong, and when he realized that he couldn't, he killed himself out of depression.

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There is always something that could be said. Because of this, people forget that silence is also an option.

I think this entire THREAD is bullshit.

A lot of guys are naturally nice. They aren't nice because they want pussy. They may certainly want pussy but they are nice because they are nice people.

These guys are shit all over by every girl they come in contact with.

Women don't want nice. Women want alpha male behavior. They keep nice guys around as backups and that's just a simple fact.

Ah, but the copies of your DNA inside your body are not the only copies of your DNA. If killing yourself increases the chances for the copies of your DNA outside of yourself, by leaving more resources for others, suicide becomes a survival strategy.

This is kin selection or group selection. These are the roots of altruism.

Source: "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins.

I assume that the presence of major depression throws off this whole process. This genetic process happens in a normal mind. A depressed mind isn't a normal mind; the same way that a mind on drugs isn't normal, and a schizophrenic mind isn't normal.

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There is always something that could be said. Because of this, people forget that silence is also an option.

Its determinism man, every action has a cause. You don't do nice things - for the intrinsic value of doing them. That's stupid and doesn't make sense.

Everything we do has a motive or agenda. We may not realize why we are doing it or we may be intentionally blind.

Some may argue that Christians are the most unselfish people on the planet and are alturistic. That is completely wrong, without the motive of trying to get to heaven they wouldn't do what they did. They are basically helping you, not for the sake of helping you, but for the sake of trying to get to heaven.

Give me any example of behaviour that is alturistic and I will give you a simple explanation.

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Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small people - Muhammad Ali

Surely there MUST be some kind of agenda/motive for every action we take? The reasons for doing those actions may be so small and insignificant that you barely pay any attention to them, so therefore you conclude that 'I did not have any agenda to perform this action'.

Or perhaps, the more pathetic conclusion is that some do not even want to admit this to avoid seeming selfish/egoistic, when ironically denying this for those reasons will in fact make you more egoistic.

I don't know, to me it seems that every action and decision we will ever make will always have an agenda or motive behind it. Perhaps not of selfish reasons, but to get some-thing out of it.

Kin and group altruism are fairly easily understood in a context of evolutionary biology.

I'm not giving a definite answer. I'm actually only letting you all know something I heard that I feel is relevant to the conversation. I can't argue in the favor of this theory because, honestly, I know next to shit when it comes to science.

I could choose to argue from a deterministic point of view (an above poster claimed that determinism is that every action causes an other, when really it is that every action is CAUSED BY SOMETHING. May seem like the same thing, but I don't think it is), but my philosophical knowledge is limited to one quarter of Philosophy 101.

However, what I WILL argue is that IMO the scientific theory is interesting and plausible. I WILL argue that Determinism makes sense to me in so many ways. And I WILL argue that despite all this, I do believe in the potential for selfishness! This is because I'm one paradoxically optimistic skeptic!

P.S. While I feel that every single action is made with an intended goal, whether conscious or not, I classify selfishness as doing something for an other with out that goal being the primary thing considered- When the goal is subconscious.

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There is always something that could be said. Because of this, people forget that silence is also an option.

Are you attempting to refute evolutionary biology?

What's your educational level in biology, at the college level and beyond?
We are survival machines for DNA.

The survival machine tries to maximize the survival of its DNA, and also of copies of that DNA that exist outside itself (in children, sisters, close community members, etc).

Sometimes, though, the survival machine makes suboptimal decisions that can result in termination of its gene-line. Like the lady who just drowned herself and her kids.

We are survival machines evolved for small tribal communities, hunter-gatherers living in tent villages. Not for megacities.

Features of the survival machine that evolved for those environments may very well be sub-optimal for the modern urban environment.

The fire fighters who ran into Ground Zero on 9/11 to possibly save other lives knowing that they were going to die.

You could say they were after fame or heroism.

I would disagree.

LOVE is ALTRUISM.

It's about giving. Not taking.

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what dr. house brings to medicine, i bring to everyday life (an extreme dose of cynicism), don't listen to the curmudgeon!

Firstly, I feel the need to point out that doing something for a gain of some sort doesn't make it a bad thing! The whole point of this post was to make people realise there are some things that you just have to accept and then you become a much more genuine person.

The reason for most heroic acts like the fire-fighters at 9/11 or the nuclear technicians in Japan who are risking their lives isn't due to them gaining something but more likely to do with them feeling they have a duty to do it or that they couldn't live with the guilt of not doing something.


But to go back on topic - understand the real reasons you do things and you will come across as a much more genuine person. That doesn't mean you can't do nice things but just be aware of WHY you are doing it rather than trying to bullshit about how you are just such a great person.

Holding the door open for some decrepit, ugly woman then walking into the shopping centre and carrying on imagining yourself bucking Cheryl Cole.

The one that no one's mentioned yet that covers almost all eventualities;
The idea of Karma. You do something nice for one person and someone else does something nice for you.

Also, you tend to get a slight warm fuzzy feeling when you help others.

Having said all that, the return on doing something nice is probably smaller than a lot of other reasons why people do stuff.

This is woo woo magical thinking bullshit.

There is no karma. There is only character. Most of the time, character (evil character or good character) maps out to karma anyway.

But I think that good character is maladaptive in the dating game.

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When in Doubt, Freeze Her Out.

It was explained in some psychology book a while back that examined altruism. Basically, their summation was; when the tribe was only 10 people, if you did something nice for them, they'd probably do something nice back. Now that the tribe is millions, it doesn't work in quite the same way but we're still hard wired to think like that.