Recent Changes
- ElephantInTheBrain . . . October 30, 2019, at 05:42 PM by phaedrus: [[Category: Florilegium]]
- TruthAndLoyalty . . . September 28, 2019, at 01:24 AM by phaedrus: We don't consider it "loyal" for an employee to stay at a company when it's paying her twice the salary she could make elsewhere; that's just calculated self-interest. Likewise, it's not "loyal" for a man to stay with his girlfriend if he has no other prospects. These attachments take on the color of loyalty only when someone remains committed despite a strong temptation to defect. Similarly, it doesn't demonstrate loyalty to believe the truth, which we have every incentive to believe anyway. It only demonstrates loyalty to believe something that we ''wouldn't'' have reason to believe ''unless'' we were loyal.
- ArabianBabblers . . . September 27, 2019, at 10:28 PM by phaedrus: The alpha male ... almost never tries to replace the ''gamma male'' from guard duty; instead the alpha directs all of his competitive energies toward the beta. ... Even more damning is the fact that babblers often ''interfere'' in the helpful behaviors of their rivals, for example, by trying to prevent them from feeding the communal nestlings. This makes no sense if the goal is to benefit the group as a whole. So if these activities aren't altruistic, what's the point? What's in it for the individual babbler who competes to do more than his fair share of helping others? The answer, as Zahavi and his team have carefully documented, is that altruistic babblers develop a kind of "credit" among their groupmates—what Zahavi calls ''prestige status''. This earns them at least two different perks, one of which is mating opportunities: Males with greater prestige get to mate more often with the females of the group. A prestigious alpha, for example, may take all the mating opportunities for himself. But if the beta has earned high prestige, the alpha will occasionally allow him to mate with some of the females. In this way, the alpha effectively "bribes" the beta to stick around. The other perk of high prestige is a reduced risk of getting kicked out of the group. If the beta, for example, has earned lots of prestige by being useful to the group, the alpha is less likely to evict him. Here the logic is twofold. First, a prestigious beta has shown himself to be more useful to the group, so the alpha prefers to keep him around. Second, by performing more acts of "altruism", a babbler demonstrates his strength and fitness. An alpha who goes beak-to-beak with a prestigious beta is less likely to win the fight, and so gives the beta more leeway than he would give a beta with lower prestige.
- WhyNotBeHonestWithOurselves . . . September 26, 2019, at 02:29 AM by phaedrus: Why can't we be honest with ourselves? The answer is that our thoughts aren't as private as we imagine. In many ways, conscious thought is a rehearsal of what we're ready to say to others. As [Robert] Trivers puts it, "We deceive ourselves the better to deceive others." ... Human beings are self-deceived because self-deception is useful. It allows us to reap the benefits of selfish behavior while posing as unselfish in front of others; it helps us look better than we really our. Confronting our delusions must therefore (at least in part) undermine their very reason for existing. There's a very real sense in which we might be better off not knowing what we're up to.
- GroupHeader . . . September 26, 2019, at 02:27 AM by phaedrus: (:stylepage Site.StyleSheetApostaxe:)