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What you know is what's been good for YOU. At the expense of the rest of the nation.

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Redstorm said:

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What you know is what's been good for YOU. At the expense of the rest of the nation.

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Come on now. You don't fit the altruist bit and you know it. Politics is the means of getting what one wants. I have my political views and you have your political views and both stem from the beliefs that those views are what are best for us as individuals.

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zappaisgod said:

I can, however, without shame point out that that is exactly what Trendal is, a shamelessly self interested. Although he probably thinks he's the people's champion, he is actually the people's burden.

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I think a second discomfort with the biological approach to the human mind is the worry that it somehow makes our ideals a sham or less real. Life would be a Potemkin Village, where there's only a facade of value and worth, but really biology is showing that there's nothing behind the facade. For example, if we love our children because the genes for loving children are in the bodies of those children and so the genes are benefiting themselves, doesn't that undermine the purity or the value of that love? If our ethical ideals, our sense of justice and fairness, were selected for because it did our ancestors good in the long run, would that imply that there's no such thing as altruism or justice, that deep down we're really selfish?

I think that this reaction is based on a misreading of Richard's metaphor of the selfish gene. It's not because of what Richard actually said in his book The Selfish Gene, which is crystal clear. But here's how it could be misread: the theory says that one can make powerful predictions about the process of natural selection by imagining that the gene has a selfish motive to make copies of itself. Of course no one ever thought that a gene has real motives in the sense that people have motives, but it this is a valuable way to gain insight about the subtleties of natural selection, especially when it comes to social interactions, and it leads to many correct predictions.

Here is the distortion. People think that genes are our deepest hidden self, our essence, so if our genes are selfish, that means that deep down we're selfish. It's an unholy hybrid of Freud's idea of unconscious motivation and the straightforward modern theory of the natural selection of replicators. Now, I think I'm safe to say that it was not intended by Richard, and it doesn't follow from the logic of the theory. The metaphorical motives of the genes are not somehow a more fundamental or honest version of the real motives of the entire person. Indeed, sometimes the most "selfish" thing a gene can do, in this metaphorical sense of selfish, is to build a brain that is not selfish -- not selfish at an unconscious level, not selfish at any level -- even if the genes are themselves metaphorically selfish. When we love our children we aren't at any level of the brain calculating that it will increase our inclusive fitness. The love can be pure and in and of itself in terms of what's actually happening in the brain. The selfishness of genes explains why we have that pure emotion.

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Turn said:

Its weird how noone on the site uses statistics.

This is a great paper interpreting a World Health Organization study of all industrialized nations in 1999-2000.
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf

It basically says how bad our health care is, and also very expensive. "The US ranked 37th in health performance while paying the most per capita, twice that of Switzerland the 2nd place. Definitely worth reading. Black babies have twice as high mortality rates as whites. Our infant mortality is the highest of all modern nations. Read this paper and skip the movie.

Also public support is overwhelming on the side of universal health care. And in a Democracy I like to think public opinion matters.
http://www.pollingreport.com/health3.htm

The US and South Africa are the only industrialized countries that don't provide health care for all citizens.


I think Michal Moore is annoying, but after hearing him talk to the California Congress about how bad the health care system is I am going to see his movie. I don't have much experience with it personally but it sounds fucked. Especially not having free insurance for children, come on at least the kids, how does free market capitalism work for infants, it dosn't thats why blacks have something like 15/1,000 infant mortality rate.

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1) Good Health "making the health status of the entire population as good as possible" across the whole life cycle.

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2)"responsiveness" responding to people's expectations of respectful treatment and client orientation by health care providers.

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3)"fairness in financing" ensuring financial protection for everyone, with costs distributed according to one's ability to pay.

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FrenchSocialist said:

zappaisgod said:

I can, however, without shame point out that that is exactly what Trendal is, a shamelessly self interested. Although he probably thinks he's the people's champion, he is actually the people's burden.

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Your statement is unscientific.

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I think a second discomfort with the biological approach to the human mind is the worry that it somehow makes our ideals a sham or less real. Life would be a Potemkin Village, where there's only a facade of value and worth, but really biology is showing that there's nothing behind the facade. For example, if we love our children because the genes for loving children are in the bodies of those children and so the genes are benefiting themselves, doesn't that undermine the purity or the value of that love? If our ethical ideals, our sense of justice and fairness, were selected for because it did our ancestors good in the long run, would that imply that there's no such thing as altruism or justice, that deep down we're really selfish?

I think that this reaction is based on a misreading of Richard's metaphor of the selfish gene. It's not because of what Richard actually said in his book The Selfish Gene, which is crystal clear. But here's how it could be misread: the theory says that one can make powerful predictions about the process of natural selection by imagining that the gene has a selfish motive to make copies of itself. Of course no one ever thought that a gene has real motives in the sense that people have motives, but it this is a valuable way to gain insight about the subtleties of natural selection, especially when it comes to social interactions, and it leads to many correct predictions.

Here is the distortion. People think that genes are our deepest hidden self, our essence, so if our genes are selfish, that means that deep down we're selfish. It's an unholy hybrid of Freud's idea of unconscious motivation and the straightforward modern theory of the natural selection of replicators. Now, I think I'm safe to say that it was not intended by Richard, and it doesn't follow from the logic of the theory. The metaphorical motives of the genes are not somehow a more fundamental or honest version of the real motives of the entire person. Indeed, sometimes the most "selfish" thing a gene can do, in this metaphorical sense of selfish, is to build a brain that is not selfish -- not selfish at an unconscious level, not selfish at any level -- even if the genes are themselves metaphorically selfish. When we love our children we aren't at any level of the brain calculating that it will increase our inclusive fitness. The love can be pure and in and of itself in terms of what's actually happening in the brain. The selfishness of genes explains why we have that pure emotion.

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Steven Pinker- Department of Psychology, Harvard University.

The fact is we are the product of our genes, and our genes, in their selfish pursuit, have wired us with selfless instincts via pure emotion.

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