OT: Of Noble Kneasies and Nasty Beasts

[nkafkafi]

> Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) wrote:
> I was also thinking about four things: (1) Don't acts of physical
> bravery have the helpful trait of displaying strength, courage and 
other
> physical and emotional traits that are only indirectly connected to
> kindness and generosity? (2) Granted (1), wouldn't females (who, in 
our
> current discussion, perpetually sit about waiting for class-A males 
to
> show up) also gradually develop the ability to distinguish between 
truly
> generous males and macho, show-off males? 

> Pippin:
> Isn't there a mathematical model for the peacock's tail? It's a
> useless, risky appendage for the individual peacock, but the 
> female who selects for it is selecting for a male whose strength 
> and vigor are obvious and tested, so her offspring are advantaged 
> over the female who doesn't select for the showy tail.
> 

Neri:
Yep, you both hint to the "Handicap Principle" by one of my B.A. 
teachers, Amotz Zehavi (you can look him up in Amazon, the link is 
too long to paste here). He argues that risky deeds of courage or 
costly cues like the peacock's tail have a survival advantage because 
they are reliable proofs of high fitness: only the really strong can 
afford to engage in them. The idea is of honest advertisement: any 
car firm can advertise it's cars as more reliable, but only the 
producer of truly reliable cars would be able to increase the 
warranty period without suffering unacceptable loses. I should warn 
you that Zehavi is one of those story-tellers old geezers I mentioned 
earlier. Some of his suggestions, like handicapping in sexual 
preference (as in the peacock's tail), are indeed well validated in 
models of other investigators, but many others aren't. I'm not aware 
of any working model using the Handicap Principle to explain extreme 
altruism, but my specialized field isn't behavioral ecology (as it's 
usually called today) so it's quite possible I've missed it.    

> Aberforth's Goat:
>(3) Granted (2), wouldn't said
> males develop a tendency to err just enough on the side of 
generosity to
> be perceived as "truly generous" rather than "show-off macho 
generous"?
> (4) Couldn't it be precisely this inbred error pattern that would 
lead
> to acts of Kneasulous nobility - acts which we note as "heroic" 
since
> they fall on the outside "generous" section of the behavioral bell
> curve?
>

Neri:
This is indeed the common explanation evoked by evolutionary 
biologists whenever the theory can't explain the whole range of the 
phenomenon: The system is not foolproof, so it simply overreached. 
There are certainly many good examples of blunders like this in 
nature (cross-species adoption I mention below being one). In the 
case of risking your life for strangers,however, I doubt it's a 
system error. Human are more intelligent than other mammals, 
certainly much more than (say) insects, so you would expect that 
they'll have a better assessment of a risky situation and would be 
less prone to "errors" like this. But simple observation suggests 
they're more prone, not less.

I have (naturally) my own pet theory, which is as unsupported as the 
next one. I think extreme altruism in humans does have, in a sense, 
biological origins, but it's not a survival trait. It's a by-product 
of human imagination, which *is* a survival trait. Humans have an 
unmatched ability to visualize hypothetical situations, or to 
visualize a current situation from the POV of the other person, and 
they use it all the time: in personal relationships, while discussing 
the Harry Potter books, while constructing evolutionary models, or 
for tactic and strategic planning. This ability probably accounts for 
a large part of human superior intelligence. I think it's also the 
basis of human empathy. Simply put, Kneasy (unlike any baboon out 
there) could imagine very clearly what it would be like to be stuck 
in the overturned tanker while somebody else is passing by without 
stopping. The facts that the driver was a stranger and there was no 
one around to impress were completely irrelevant to this ability.

So if I were writing HP, the power in the locked room wouldn't 
be "love", and not "life" either, but "imagination". But I quite 
agree with the Goat that it's most probably love, and JKR is just 
trying not to be too fluffy.


 
> Aberforth's Goat:
> I liked that! Last year I did some ethics stuff centered partly on 
feral
> children (which you mentioned tangentially), partly on Vicki Hearn's
> discussion of virtue in dogs and horses. I'd be interested in your 
take
> on Vicki Hearn. She argues that dogs and horses *are* noble - and 
noble
> in exactly the same way we are - but she also argues that this 
shared
> nobility is directly connected to our shared form of life. (And she
> talks a lot about the  basic difference between dogs and wolves.)
> 
> Of course, she holds that other species have their own virutes and
> nobility. It was entrancing stuff.
> 
> BTW, is there actually any proof of feral children who have been
> substantially reared by animals? There are a lot of stories, but a 
lot
> of them seem to be pretty dodgy.
> 

Neri:
I'm not familiar with Hearn, and I admit that I've never researched 
any of the feral children stories, so I know as much as the next guy. 
I seem to remember that at least some of them were credible, and I've 
recently read somewhere about a new case of a child reared by dogs – 
can't remember in what country it was, but it seemed well supported. 
In any case, the dodgy part in these stories is the child surviving 
the conditions, but the cross-species adoption I have no problem 
believing, since it's a well documented phenomena. Most zoos would 
have at least one story about how the lioness or whatever wouldn't 
raise her cub so they gave it to a bitch instead. All mammal babies 
share the same cues: the big round eyes, the shortened face and the 
ungainly walk, coupled with the fairly universal mommy-mommy-please-
feed-me voice. These cues are very powerful – nail those XX 
chromosomes carriers almost every time (and have a considerable 
affect on me too. Must be that single X chromosome). 

Neri