Tim_Tyler comments on The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 August 2008 10:00PM

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Comment author: Tim_Tyler 15 August 2008 07:03:35AM 0 points [-]

Re: why on Earth would any human being think that one ought to optimize inclusive genetic fitness

"Ought" is a word that only makes sense in the context of an existing optimisation strategy. As far as biologists can reasonably tell, the optimisation strategy of organisms involves maximising their inclusive genetic fitness. So the short answer to this is: because nature built them that way.

The bigger puzzle is not why organisms act to maximise their inclusive genetic fitness, but why they sometimes systematically fail to do so. What cognitive malfunction causes phenomena such as the western demographic shift - that are unlikely to be adaptive.

With humans, it's not such a puzzle - the answer is usually: humans exist in a bizarre environment, and this causes their genetic program to malfunction. The problem will get fixed eventually.