What is our purpose?

Could be that a sense of fairness is a major difference between lifeforms with a sense of self/other and bugs in a bottle.

Quote:http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170516...t-rushmore

“My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes also,” Standing Bear wrote to Ziolkowski at the turn of the 1940s.

Standing Bear's desire became Zuikjiwski's vision and today the rock sculpture of Crazy Horse is much bigger than the white man's sculpture of presidents, several miles away, and it includes a museum, preserving for a while the memory of the tribe and their hero Crazy Horse.   We differ from other animals because we can envision what is not and make it so.

(Aug 13, 2017 01:44 PM)confused2 Wrote: Could be that a sense of fairness is a major difference between lifeforms with a sense of self/other and bugs in a bottle.

Is the Struggle for Equality a Fight Against Nature?

Hunter gatherers may have very egalitarian societies, but evolution says the human love of status runs deeper.

[Inequality is not a negative-sum game — in which everybody ends up worse off — but a zero-sum game, in which the poorer health of those at the bottom of the pile is offset by the health gains of those at the top. There is nothing like the sight of a beggar to make one feel rich. It is not enough to succeed, as Gore Vidal said; others must fail.

According to game theory, a rational proposer should always offer the smallest amount possible, and a rational responder should always accept the proposer’s offer, no matter how small it is. After all, some money is better than none. But this isn’t what people actually do when they play this game. Instead of offering the smallest possible amount, most proposers offer between 40 and 50 per cent of the money. And on the few occasions that proposers offer less than 20 per cent, responders reject about half of those offers, despite the fact that this means both lose.

Such findings have been interpreted as evidence that people naturally dislike inequality and will sacrifice some personal gains to avoid it. However, when the experiment has been carried out with indigenous people with a low degree of market integration, the results are very different. Machiguenga farmers in Peru, for example, offer very little, and accept almost every offer, no matter how derisory. In the cultures least exposed to the influence of capitalism, people behave almost as greedily as game theory suggests they should. This does not bode well for the idea that inequality aversion is part of our DNA.]

Attempts to forge a more equal society will have to contend with our competitive instincts and our innate desire for status.

I don't know.  What do you think, C2? 

(Aug 13, 2017 01:09 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:

(Aug 13, 2017 02:21 AM)Syne Wrote:

(Aug 12, 2017 03:59 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just when I start thinking about not getting along and the benefits that may bring to species' survival, you two go and agree on something.

I think her Christian friends are subconsciously rubbing off on her. That test with monkeys is basically the Parable of the Workers:

The value of piecework, a contract and a union.

Angry workers can point out the inequities of an unfair situation. They may even go to war to achieve equality but when they have disagreements either passive or agressive, does it prove to be actually beneficial to the species? Or is it only the side that wins the dispute who benefits? Does a dispute loser benefit in some way? Our purpose may be to force our will on someone else.

I'm feeling very evolutionary this morning. Made it through another day.

There is no such thing as worker inequity where each worker voluntarily agreed to the terms. That is called choice, and everyone learns from what they consider bad choices. Your jealous comparison of another person does not make your free and fair agreement for pay suddenly, ex post facto, unfair to you. If it did, then you would be forced to advocate for fascism that would deny the employer the right to offer whatever pay he wishes. If anything, enforced equity would only lower the pay for everyone else....a kind of "if I can't have it, no one can" situation.

But generally, competition always helps a species become more fit. The losers adapt or the winners breed more.

(Aug 13, 2017 06:07 PM)Syne Wrote: But generally, competition always helps a species become more fit. The losers adapt or the winners breed more.

Really? I'm not so sure about that. Who's producing more offspring, the winners or the losers?

Survival of the fittest (wikipedia.org)

Inventing the statistic (82% probable) that [economic/almost any standard] losers breed faster than [economic/almost any standard] winners we find the losers are the winners - which is where I came in with bugs in a bottle and so on.

SS Wrote:Attempts to forge a more equal society will have to contend with our competitive instincts and our innate desire for status.

That's a large part of it (it?). I'm kind'a thinking along the lines of the poor having not just air conditioning but being more engaged in 'thinking smarter' - or something like that. The really smart guys are using technology to suck wealth out of even the poorest. As Syne has pointed out - America is borrowing money so the poor can buy iphones (I may be out of date on the name) and the money ends up with Apple and a few others.

(Aug 13, 2017 06:43 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Aug 13, 2017 06:07 PM)Syne Wrote: But generally, competition always helps a species become more fit. The losers adapt or the winners breed more.

Really?  I'm not so sure about that.  Who's producing more offspring, the winners or the losers?

A sufficiently nurturing environment can tip the balance...like welfare, funded by the winners, propping up the losers...whose offspring would otherwise be malnourished and die. Also, species who have lower life expectancies...like the poor...compensate with reproductive quantity. This kind of reproduction is largely indiscriminate. It's a trade off in survival strategy between quantity and quality.

What if Life as a separate entity does not care who wins or loses, the more offspring the better. It's all about quantity. Remember we're talking purpose here. The purpose for a life form is a little different than that of life. But if you ask me, life as an entity cannot get enough of life forms. Be they brainless or intelligent, doesn't matter.

Quote:It's a trade off in survival strategy between quantity and quality.

Rich people being the high quality people? Yeah..just look at Trump.

(Aug 14, 2017 12:20 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: What if Life as a separate entity does not care who wins or loses, the more offspring the better. It's all about quantity. Remember we're talking purpose here. The purpose for a life form is a little different than that of life. But if you ask me, life as an entity cannot get enough of life forms. Be they brainless or intelligent, doesn't matter.

Life itself is not an entity...it doesn't have the capacity to "care" about anything. "The more the better" ignores things like the carrying capacity of an ecosystem and predator/prey/available resources that keep populations in check. Life only exists as life forms.

(Aug 14, 2017 12:54 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:It's a trade off in survival strategy between quantity and quality.

Rich people being the high quality people? Yeah..just look at Trump.

First generation rich? Most likely more fit. Inherited rich? That's more likely a result of a nurturing environment.