• Steve@communick.news
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    17 days ago

    Well it is, just like greed is a made up thing.

    In a proper world, altruism wouldn’t exist.
    It only does because nature is uncairing, and society can be cruel.

    But being made up doesn’t matter to my point. People can create a problem with one hand, while trying to fix it with another, having never noticed the connection.

    • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      I would’ve been fine with your comment if you hadn’t included that. I don’t doubt these people are trying to act in their own self interests.

      But when you say “as anyone would” it implies everyone is horribly selfish and never takes other people into account when making decisions ever and this is just accepted common knowledge, which it isn’t.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Animals are altruistic. Just search for _____ saves person. You will find lots of instances of animals saving humans. Not just dogs and cats either. Ravens, crows, pigeons, elephants dolphins, beluga, and humpbacks are all well documented displaying protective behaviors when predators are around humans that they know.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        13 days ago

        It’s not just animals that are altruistic, i maintain that life as a concept is fundamentally cooperative.
        At its most basic you can just reduce it to “fighting and competing wastes energy, whereas actively cooperating can make things more efficient or straight up unlock new resources”.

        I mean just look at our own gut flora: The microorganisms that cooperate with us (to the degree that we’d die without them) actively do things to prevent other nasty microorganisms from taking hold. Or how tons of plants and fungi communicate with each other and even share nutrients.
        Cooperation is so utterly fucking bog standard that we gloss over 90% of it and it takes an individual basically killing itself to save another for us to realize it’s happening.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          While that is all true, I didn’t think the previous commenter would find many stories titled “ameoba saves man,” or the like.

      • Steve@communick.news
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        17 days ago

        Of course they do. Altruism was made up by all social species. A few others even copied it.

          • Steve@communick.news
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            13 days ago

            No. Altruism is an evolved survival trait that’s beneficial to social species. They all found their own way to it. In fact it’s probably the foundation trait of social behaviour and pre-requisite for all social species.