chickens proof that capitalism doesnt work

[Sasha]

[C]onsider my favorite group selection experiment... William Muir, an animal breeder at Purdue University, selected for egg productivity in hens in two different ways. Both involved housing hens in cages (groups), which is standard practice in the poultry industry. The first method involved selecting the most productive hen within each cage to breed the next generation of hens. The second method involved selecting the most productive cages and using all the hens from those cages to breed the next generation of hens. It might seem that this is a subtle difference, that the same trait (egg productivity) should be selected in both cases, and that the first method should be more efficacious. After all, eggs are produced by individual hens, so why not directly select the best? Why select at the group level, when even the best groups might have some individual duds? The results told a completely different story. The first method caused egg productivity to perversely decline, even though the most productive hens were chosen each and every generation. The second method caused egg productivity to increase 160 percent in six generations, an astonishing response as artificial selection experiments go.
What happened? ...The first method favored the nastiest hens who achieved their productivity by suppressing the productivity of other hens. After six generations, Muir had produced a nation of psychopaths, who plucked and murdered each other in their incessant attacks. No wonder egg productivity plummeted! It would be hard to imagine a more graphic example of what I have called "the original problem" throughout this series of blogs; traits that are "for the good of the group" are not always locally advantageous within the group and require a process of group-level selection to evolve.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/truth-and-reconciliation_b_266316.html

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Humans aren't chickens.

[Red Flag]

"The Bourgeois Darwinists proclaim that only the elimination of the weak is natural and that this is necessary to prevent the corruption of the race. On the other hand, the protection provided to the weak is against nature and contributes to the decline of the race. But what do we see? In nature itself, in the animal world, we can establish that the weak are protected, that they don't hold out thanks to their own personal strength, and they are not eliminated due to their individual weakness. These arrangements don't weaken the group, but confer on it a new strength. The animal group in which mutual aid is better developed is better able to look after itself in conflicts." - Anton Pannekoek

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

To elaborate on my last post, it's a fallacy to take examples from nature and apply it to humans, in either the anti- or pro-capitalist direction.

There are other reasons, perfectly sound, for opposing capitalism - let us not sink to the level of social darwinists, eh?

[Lynx]

Selecting for certain traits has an effect on all species. If you did this to humans you would see an effect. So yes, humans are chickens if the outcome of such an experiment turned out to be similar.

[Sasha]

To elaborate on my last post, it's a fallacy to take examples from nature and apply it to humans, in either the anti- or pro-capitalist direction.

There are other reasons, perfectly sound, for opposing capitalism - let us not sink to the level of social darwinists, eh?

but even withoud sinking to the level of social darwinist looking at nature can give an nice perspective at humanity


'The Age of Empathy' by Frans de Waal

BOOK REVIEW

Dutch psychologist and primatologist Frans de Waal, using primate tendencies as a model, contends that humans are hard-wired for compassion.


September 20, 2009|Sara Lippincott, Lippincott is a freelance editor specializing in science.


"Greed is out, empathy is in." So writes optimistic Dutch psychologist and primatologist Frans de Waal in the preface to his latest meditation on the similarities between apes and people.
"The Age of Empathy" might not strike you as the most accurate representation of a period in human history that will be remembered -- if we survive it -- for the War on Terror, nuclear wannabes, various genocides and looming Armageddon in the Middle East. But De Waal, perhaps sensing this, suggests an alternate reading: "Human empathy has the backing of a long evolutionary history -- which is the second meaning of 'age' in this book's title."

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And it's the more interesting meaning for him. After a cheerful glance in the direction of the new administration ("Empathy is the grand theme of our time, as reflected in the speeches of Barack Obama") and good riddance to the old ("Many have felt as if they were waking up from a bad dream about a big casino where the people's money had been gambled away,"), he turns his attention to human evolution.
Chimpanzees share with us a common ancestry and an all-but-common supply of genes, so it's worth watching how they behave toward one another. In "Chimpanzee Politics" (1982), his bestselling first book, De Waal was chiefly concerned with the power games played by chimps in the Arnhem Zoo. "Aggression was my first topic of study," he admits. But the slaying of his favorite Arnhem chimp by two male chimps "opened my eyes to the value of peacemaking. . . ."
Over the years, De Waal has recorded many instances of ape empathy, even among the relatively bloodthirsty chimpanzees and particularly among the gentler bonobos. Like us, apes yawn when another yawns, return favors, bristle at the unfair distribution of goods and even kiss babies in pursuit of the top job: "[W]hen male chimps vie for high status, they . . . do the rounds with females, grooming them and tickling their offspring. Normally, male chimps are not particularly interested in the young, but when they need group support they can't stay away from them." This apercu is accompanied by De Waal's sketch of a man closely resembling President George W. Bush hoisting a toddler aloft. ("Have you ever noticed how often politicians lift infants above the crowd? It's an odd way of handling them, not always enjoyed by the object of attention itself. But what good is a display that stays unnoticed?")



De Waal's principal thesis is that when contemplating our evolutionary heritage, we see ourselves more as natural-born competitors than natural-born empathizers and cooperators. "[U]ntil recently," he writes, "empathy was not taken seriously by science." Even with regards to our own species, it was considered an absurd, laughable topic. . . . " Some of us indeed have tended to think like Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase Darwin has been unfairly stuck with: "survival of the fittest." Indeed, some, like Hitler and the American and British eugenicists of the early 20th century, have tended to think that only the fittest ought to survive. But De Waal's readership is probably aware by now that altruism too has been built into the animal kingdom.




Nevertheless, he rightly argues that we modern humans need to recognize and cultivate our fellow feeling, "an innate age-old capacity" that has been naturally selected for -- for the excellent reason that without it we would have gone extinct long ago. "It's not as though we're asking our species to do anything foreign to it by building on the old herd instinct that has kept animal societies together for millions of years," he writes. "Every individual is connected to something larger than itself. . . . The connection is deeply felt and . . . no society can do without it."




De Waal bolsters his case with plentiful anecdotes of sweet-natured primates and contemporary examples of ill-advised human cold-bloodedness (Enron, the response to Hurricane Katrina). Along the way, you learn a lot of interesting primatological arcana, such as that apes can't swim and invariably defecate when excited. In concluding, De Waal points out that Adam Smith, the alpha male of free marketeers, has consistently been misunderstood. Smith's disciples "leave out an essential part of his thinking, which is far more congenial to the position I have taken throughout this book, namely, that reliance on greed as the driving force of society is bound to undermine its very fabric."