In my case, awareness of evolutionary psychology has made me more skeptical of morality, of "should" as a moral command. I know whatever else is going on that I feel most of my "shoulds" because my ancestors who didn't were not as successful at reproducing as my ancestors who didn't. If aliens enslaved us and set about efficiently breeding us to meet their purposes, we would not likely internalize their goals as our goals. Until they managed to selectively breed that tendency in to us. So instead of aliens, we have been enslaved by a mindless natural selection, why internalize its goals?
I am less likely to feel depressed or guilty about percieved lack of success. This constant striving is a feature that natural selection likes, but it sorta sucks for the individual. Sure, you drive yourself mercilessly and you get more done and in the past that was the difference between almost surviving and thriving. But if I can survive without that grinding internal demand to do better, I'll shut the damn thing off with medication and be personally better off for it.
Its extremely interesting to contemplate whether what makes you different is a feature or a bug. Is it something natural selection would be "wise" (in its mindless way) to include in future generations, or is it, as is much more likely statistically, something that reduces human's fitness if generalized?
We know from the selfish gene and the moral animal that human social connection is a primary driver of our fitness ( a lone human or pair of humans is not a successful animal in the wild). Much, perhaps all of what we call morality has to do with internalized rules for how to interact with other humans. Knowing these evolved, I consider it educational to contemplate how the various rules helped us survive. How did they improve cooperation, or at least the kind of cooperation that was useful?
Natural selection is dumb, there is no reason to think it is looking for a "uniform" human genome which is optimized for survival if replicated. Indeed, we have the obvious man-woman split. Maybe other variations are features of the survival of the whole of us (and therefore the survival of our selfish genes). Maybe we need a few sociopaths to run big companies and countries without the survival-sapping restraints that the rest of us, who make great followers and cannon fodder, have. Maybe the optimum physicist, general, politician, and businessman really are genetically different from each other, and a human genome which becomes too homogeneous will be out-competed by groups of humans that stay more varied.
It is also fascinating to contemplate "gaming the system." The dodo bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest and its chicks are raised by the other birds as their own. What do our genes tell us about adultery? Rape? Dishonesty for seduction? Cuckoldry? I have read that leaders of many countries and companies are sometimes psychopaths. Maybe a society of 100% psychopaths would fail. But would a society of 1% psychopaths have any advantages over one with 0%? Do we need immoral leaders, unconstrained by conventional concerns for their fellow humans, to organize a group of humans and allow that group to compete in a less restrained way against the other groups?
The "shoulds" I take from evolutionary psychology are 1) there often is a survival reason something is a certain way, even if I find that something morally odious, 2) don't "worship" your moral tendencies or beliefs: they didn't come from god they were just what worked better than available alternatives, 3) when there is a feature of the world you hate, this may be a map-territory problem: genetics had to optimize you by giving you a simple map for a complex world, and that map may not work all the places you try to use it.
Hello everyone,
After being introduced to the fascinating subject of evolutionary theory by Less Wrong and starting reading The Selfish Gene I have been slowly coming to terms with the mind-blowing revelation that I am simply a machine built to ensure the preservation of my genes, and that they are the only part of me that will outlive me. This is a change of huge magnitude, requiring I abandon the usual cached thoughts and perceptions of humanity as somehow special, detached from and above the world and baser matter that built us.
Such a revelation should make me question all my assumptions, permeate my thinking, yet I find myself still thinking much the same ways I did before. I have not fully integrated this information and its implications into my world-view. I have noticed myself changing my mind less often than I think, and hope.
My question to you is therefore, how would you expect a person who had learnt of their status as a "mere" gene machine then reflected and fully integrated the knowledge to think? What new thoughts and habits would they form compared to their old life as an immortal special creature, allegedly made in god's image? What would you expect to change?
I offer the following suggestions of the kinds of change this hypothetical person, let us call them "the subject", would make:
- The subject would have to reformulate their attitude to other non-human life-forms or potential lifeforms. With no divine spark seperating us from other animals or artificial minds, they would experience the freedom to decide what they place in their "tribe" (I'm reminded of Human the piggy in Speaker for the Dead realising he can include other cultures and even alien species in his definition of his "tribe"). Would they show more empathy towards non-sapient animals too? How else would this manifest?
- The subject would become more aware of their own mortality and that of others. This would hopefully result in taking additional care of themselves and others on the basis that each has only one chance to be happy and our indifferent creators will not do so. Regrettably this could go the other way and result in undervaluing life given its brevity and seeing no need for morality.
- The subject would feel additional kinship towards fellow humans, bearing in mind that their fundamental structure is almost exactly the same. They would hopefully have greater difficulty labelling others as inhuman or evil and be better capable of empathy. This coupled with their own mortality might incline them to pursue longer-term projects for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
- Less laudably the subject might make their new awareness a source of pride instead of humility, and take pleasure in looking down up those who still hold such "backward" beliefs, seeing them as weak for embracing reassuring falsehoods and having inflated senses of their uniqueness and special-ness.
These are all very general, and I would be very interested to hear your ideas of specific behaviours such a conversion would engender if properly reflected upon and integrated. Thank you for your time.