He was the guy who created the Price equation for altruism. His work was built on William Hamilton's theories about genetics controlling human decision making. From what I understand, animals (including human beings) who 'selflessly' help each other, are in fact behaving selfishly, as their sacrifice for the sake of other individuals helps in furthering their own genes. In animals, this helps explain behaviour like sacrificing for herd members that are genetically related. Thus, genetically similar individuals may live on and reproduce. In human beings social factors interact with genetics. Human beings will help out and sacrifice for people that they know over strangers, because that act is beneficial for at least one of them or maybe even both in the long run. I think in humans the social aspect trumps the genetic one. Our society is built on give and take, social structures are comprised of groups of people with different genetic backgrounds working together. Therefore the Price equation in humans would imply that humans would behave altruistically for people they know well rather than strangers. This would explain in-group preferences and implies that behaving altruistically towards strangers is a bad strategy, genetically.Price was so disturbed by the implications of his theory (true selflessness doesn't exist) that he spent the rest of his life selflessly giving away his possessions to random people in London, in an attempt to prove himself wrong. He started off by giving his clothes, watches, furniture, money to homeless hobos. Then he invited homeless hobos that he never knew to live in his house. He began doing charity work such as cleaning the streets and whatnot. His objective was to prove that behaving altruistically with strangers is truly selfless and a good strategy genetically. Eventually, he himself ended up homeless because the hobos he invited kicked him out of his own house. His health declined considerably and eventually he committed suicide.
>>16772408That a brilliant scientist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and made important contributions to mathematics and genetics ended up destitute because he tried to behave altruistically with strangers proves that his theories about altruism being a selfish strategy for furthering genes were correct. Behaving altruistically with strangers is harmful and not genetically beneficial.
>>16772408Do scientists hate common sense?
>>16772408Racism is a naturally evolved trait of healthy humans. Multicultural societies don't work.
>>16772408That proves that his theory cannot be straightforwardly applied to humans, since Price provably acted altruistic to strangers.I'd say that it also demonstrates that human behavior is as much about the survival of memes (original Dawkins sense) as it is about the survival of genes.
>>16772408He didn't die. He just moved to youtube and took the name pewdiepie
>>16772408All my friends are stuffed animals. I would die for them all, but we have no shared genetics.Being dead proves nothing btw. 117 billion dead people and you think they were all correct as a result?
>>16772408I'm glad we had smart scientists working on the Manhatten project to figure out protecting your offspring makes it survive.
>>16772408I really hope you didn't actually type this.
>>16777149Why?
