this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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Microblog Memes

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Empathy over natural selection ftw.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Empathy was created by natural selection - of groups, not individuals, of course.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Fear and stress shut down empathy. But narcissists feel constant fear and stress. And we've made a hellworld that rewards narcissism

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's natural selection which has born empathy. There are a lot of species which are successful because they are collaborative.

Same story with us humans. We usually prefer groups and collaboration. And look what we can achieve if we put all of our minds and strengths together.
Yet, this hasn't been sufficient to overcome some individuals who live and enforce competitiveness.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Dawkins' The Selfish Gene goes into this in greater detail. Many species are hardwired to be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the survival of their kin. Basically, genes that code for protective and social behaviors might result in any given individual more likely to die before reproducing, but makes that individual's close genetic kin more likely to survive to reproduction such that a particular group/pod/clan/flock is much more likely to persist over generations.

The extreme example is ants and bees, where most of the workers we see biologically cannot reproduce and are dead ends as individuals. But they work for the hive/colony, and the reproducing queen is the center of that reproductive strategy.

You see it with a lot of animals, especially those wired to be social.