TheOtherDave comments on Cryonics without freezers: resurrection possibilities in a Big World - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Yvain 04 April 2012 10:48PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 05 April 2012 07:32:47PM 2 points [-]

Every man's death diminishes you, because you are involved in all mankind?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 April 2012 07:10:01AM *  2 points [-]

Well yes to a very small extent. However when I get to very small amounts of me I don't give away any extra effort, much for the same reason animals responding to the pay offs of kin selection don't:

Kin selection is emphatically not a special case of group selection. … If an altruistic animal has a cake to give to relatives; there is no reason at all for it to give every relative a slice, the size of the slices being determined by the closeness of relatedness. Indeed this would lead to absurdity since all members of the species, not to mention other species, are at least distant relatives who could therefore each claim a carefully measured crumb! To the contrary, if there is a close relative in the vicinity, there is no reason to give a distant relative any cake at all. Subject to other complications like laws of diminishing returns, the whole cake should be given to the closest relative available.

(p. 290, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins)