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mwengler comments on Open Thread May 30 - June 5, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Some people believe that altruism has evolved through helping your relatives or through helping others to help you in return. I was thinking about it; on the surface the idea looks good -- if you already have this system in place, it is easy to see how it benefits those involved -- but that doesn't explain how the system could have appeared in the first place. Anyone knows the standard answer?
Imagine that you are literally the first organism who by random mutation achieved a gene for "helping those who help you". How specifically does this gene increase your fitness, if there is no one else to reciprocate?
Or imagine that you are literally the first organism who by random mutation achieved a gene for "helping your siblings". How specifically does this gene increase your fitness, or the fitness of the gene itself, if your siblings do not have a copy of this gene?
In other words, it seems simple to explain how these kinds of altruism can work when they are already an established system, but it is more difficult to explain how it could work when it is new.
And this all is a huge simplification; for example, I doubt that "helping those who help you" could be achieved by a single mutation, since it involves multiple parts like "noticing that someone helped you", "remembering the individual who helped you" and "helping the individual who helped you in the past". Plus the problem of how to start this chain of mutual cooperation.
My guess is that... nygehvfz pbhyq unir ribyirq guebhtu frkhny fryrpgvba. Yrg'f rkcynva vg ol funevat sbbq jvgu bguref. Svefg, vaqvivqhnyf abgvpr jub vf tbbq ng tngurevat sbbq, naq gurl ribyir nggenpgvba gbjneqf tbbq sbbq pbyyrpgbef. Gung znxrf vzzrqvngr frafr orpnhfr vg vapernfrf fheiviny bs gur puvyqera, vs gurl nyfb trg gur trarf tbbq sbe tngurevat sbbq. Nsgre guvf nggenpgvba rkvfgf jvguva gur fcrpvrf, gur arkg fgrc pbhyq or fvtanyyvat: vs lbh unir fbzr rkgen sbbq lbh qba'g npghnyyl arrq, oevat vg naq ivfvoyl qebc vg arne bgure vaqvivqhnyf, fb gung bguref abgvpr lbh unir zber sbbq guna lbh pna rng. Ntnva, guvf znxrf vzzrqvngr frafr, orpnhfr vg znxrf lbh zber nggenpgvir. Abgvpr ubj arvgure "urycvat lbh eryngvirf" abe "urycvat gubfr jub uryc lbh" jnf arprffnel gb ribyir urycvat vaqvfpevzvangryl. Npghnyyl, gubfr pbhyq unir ribyirq yngre, nf shegure vzcebirzragf bs be nqqvgvbaf gb gur vaqvfpevzvangr urycvat.
My first thoughts reading your post are 1) You start WAY TOO LATE IN THE GAME. You are essentially talking about altruism as a conscious choice which means you are well into the higher mammals.
Virtually every sexually reproducing creature devotes resources to reproduction that could have been conserved for individual survival. As you move up in complexity, you have animals feeding their young and performing other services for them. As would be expected with all evolved cooperation, the energy and cost you expend raising your young produces a more survivable young and so is net cost effective at getting the next generation going, which is pretty much what spreads genes.
How big of a leap is it from a mama bird regurgitating food into her baby's mouth to you helping your neighbor hunt for wooly mammoth?
If you were the first organism to get the gene to feed your babies or do whatever expanded their survivability, then obviously that is how that gene propagates, your babies have the gene.
As you get to the more complex forms of altruism of primates and humans, you also get to strong feedback mechanisms against non-cooperators and free-riders. The system may not be perfect but I think it allows a path from feeding babies or burying eggs in the sand to modern altruism in humans where no wierd "how do we start this" behaviors bump up to stop things.