I don't want to be happy because that increases the likelihood that I'll have lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren. I want lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren because I believe that would increase the likelihood that I'm happy.

It is not clear to me that you're using "happy" in the way that most people use "happy." Specifically, the things that people enjoy and the things that people pursue are often different, and whether or not people are pleased in near mode or far mode are different things. It could very well be that you pursue children but they decrease your enjoyment of life, and yet you pursue them despite knowing that.

These are values you consciously have. But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in genetic fitness. Your not being conscious of that doesn't change it.

Well, for the particular case of vows of celibacy, let me put it this way:

• Will you, personally, take a vow of celibacy?
• How would you explain the reasoning of people who do take vows of celibacy?
• Are there any errors or mistaken beliefs in their reasoning?

More generally, humans have values and heuristics that, taken together in the ancestral environment, usually increase genetic fitness. Sometimes they don't, especially when technology and a modern economy provides ability and incentives for people to add superstimuli to the environment. For example, the guy who plays so many video games that he never meets women, or the guy who drinks one Big Gulp(TM) a day until he weighs 300 pounds. Or the guy whose concern for his personal safety, combined with a belief in Heaven and Hell, convinces him to protect his long-term interests with a vow of celibacy.

The genetic values are terminal because they don't serve other values and hence don't change. Human preferences serve genetic terminal purposes, so human preferences change with the environment. Also, they're heuristics more than values, so they're likely to be inconsistent and to sometimes counter terminal values.

I'm confused.

Why would human terminal values necessarily have to encompass or be compatible with genetic terminal values? Doesn't this assume whatever mental algorithm determines which instrumental values are most conducive to reproductive efficiency in any environment has access to explicit and accurate information about the genetic endgoal? If it's using heuristic proxies instead, and of course it is, since it's not possible to directly observe reproductive fitness, the proxies would then be human terminal values.

Men and women are different on the biological level. They are different in multiple ways, but a particular one is that they have a different mix of hormones which affect the brain and so the mind. This gives rise to biologically (NOT socially) determined loci of attraction for certain behaviours and attitudes. Note that biology is not necessarily destiny, but ceteris paribus it's easier for biological males to gravitate to some centers of attraction and for biological females to gravitate towards other centers of attraction. Sure, there are lots of exceptions, but that doesn't change the picture of the averages.

If I read this post correctly, you're iterating the conventional wisdom that team players are not less important or less necessary than star players even though the status is less glamorous. (They are, perhaps, more interchangeable, but also definitely indispensable on much shorter timescales than star players.) Only you are framing it in terms that make it sound as if this was not generally agreed upon by everyone not suffering from the malignant form of ambition.

Nuance matters. "Sidekick" is not meant to refer to actual humans, but to second grade fictional characters. When applied to a human being it turns into an ugly word. It reduces the character/person being referred to into a prop for another. This works well in storytelling: minor characters are not thinking, feeling beings. It is reasonable and appropriate to treat them as if they existed for the purposes of others. But by bringing these connotations into real life, you end up implicitly reinforcing the contagious and intuitive falsehood that there is always a number one and having any other number means you failed. Life can easily be made to look like this, if simplified into a single story, but it's not an accurate or helpful way to look at things.

Your use of the word "sidekick" poisons the entire post for me. I have to suspect I'm not getting the general tone quite right. To me, it's an unhappy post. Not only because other people have consistently and unfairly made you defend being what you are, but because you are still trying to convince yourself that it shouldn't have to be defended. I hope I'm wrong and "sidekick" does not mean to you what it means to me, and that if you ever felt genuinely inadequate because of this in the past that's ended now.

In real life Samwise Gamgee would be, by any reasonable standards, a true full-blown hero. At least I can't see how doing something extraordinary that greatly benefits other people stops being heroic if someone else was also involved and did a little bit more or played a more central or interesting role.