The Groupish Gene: Hive psychology and the Origins of Morality and Religion

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College. There is a near universal interest in morality that has sparked thought-provoking inquiry for thousands of years. Much of that inquiry proceeded without the benefit of modern cognitive science, but that is now changing. And the change promises to shed new light on morality, particularly its practices, development, and the psychology behind ethical thought. In this series we bring together speakers from a vast array of disciples--from philosophy and law to biology and psychology--to discuss cutting edge research in the cognitive science of morality. Dr. Haidt is a Professor in the Social Psychology area of the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He studys morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. He is also active in positive psychology (the scientific study of human flourishing) and study positive emotions such as moral elevation, admiration, and awe. Dr. Haidt's research these days focuses on the moral foundations of politics, and on ways to transcend the "culture wars" by using recent discoveries in moral psychology to foster more civil forms of politics. Morality, by its very nature, makes it hard to study morality. It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups.

[@markusmatthew7044]

30:29 "cruel and hip" 30:49 circle around 30:57 Alexander, Cohesive 31:31 Cohesion is Key

[@mingonmongo1]

Spot on, and for some reason have never been interested in 'Tribal' kinda stuff (group think, political ideologies, sports teams, 'my side', whatever).... enuff to suspect that there has to be some sorta groupish 'gene' motivating those instincts.

[@stugrant01]

I think that the hiveishness gene is simply a gene that dictates for one to truly agree with his countrymen in order to avoid getting thrown into the volcano during the festival week rituals.

[@maxheadrom3088]

Now, being serious: This is marvelous! Heidt is a great teacher! There's confirmation bias here - I must say. But there's also serious work by Prof. Heidt part.

[@maxheadrom3088]

Hey, blackboards! Wow, Prof. Heidt! Two nice sights!

[@maxheadrom3088]

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms the phrase is best understood as "Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations." Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."[1] Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection", and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868.[1][2] In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869,[3][4] intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".[5][6] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

[@7buddha]

As a European I can say that we do have a tribal mentality as Europeans, but it is as distant cousins whom you seldom meet, you would not give them your house but you would help them build one. Also, concerning the Roman empire and external pressure, it might be prudent to remember that all the sources point to them generally having considered to have created the empire through defensive warfare. And they do not seem to have cared at all to whom you prayed as long as you prayed for the welfare of the emperor. Many likely believed that other peoples gods were minor local gods with some influence in their local domain.

[@landofthefree2023]

A little over the edge on this one. Wondering if you look back in these and wonder , why? Assigning, motivation like selfishness to genes is quite a stretch and completely an assignment if meaning and interpretation.

[@TheWdayton]

I find his ideas relatively convincing, but my biggest question is how can we test this? At the very end someone seemed to ask something along those lines. Darwinian evolution has falsifiable predictions. I would suspect that groups selection hypothesis may also offer testable predictions.

[@gregzeng]

It is easily tested. I published frequently in the computer operating system world on the Internet. Factoids, fashions, FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), pre-release and post-release products, gcc, ... We create and kill memes. Google etc documents our work.

[@shivapazoki1881]

George is this the most intelligent objection you found to his lecture?

[@jjcevallos12]

That’s a great question. That could be your PhD paper

[@maxheadrom3088]

37:00 There's a nice movie about this ... people don't usually see the movie in this manner but this cinephile cat does: 2001, A Space Odyssey.

[@georgeflitzer7160]

What about the P2 gene? Ty

[@maxheadrom3088]

The Selfish Gene theory was developed in the 1960s by Bill Hamilton - not Dawkins in the 1970s.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Morality, like pornography.. a kind of opposite viewpoint, is in the category of, "I know it when I see it" because it;s the emotional value judgement of a situation in context that is the issue. "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so". (An un-qualified, ie not professionally licenced POV) So, Thinking Fast and Slow, in the holistic wave-package differentiates here-now-forever integration, can be shortened by sum-of-all-histories point-positioning reasoning to "Conscience", (aka Karma, in generational progression), is inescapable because "what goes around comes around", in superimposed circularity, aks continuous creation connection cause-effect, the physical manifestation/representation of logarithmic time duration timing in formatting and coordination, aka AM-FM Communication. Ie Complicated and messy policies are reflected by personal circumstances and responsibility. (Stating the obvious which is truly horrific when re-cognised.., real-ised)

[@markusmatthew7044]

38:44 tribal instincts hypothesis, 38:55 mortal norm shame and guilt 39:19 symbolist markers - wa6a67W2020

[@caramel9600]

English philosopher Herbert Spencer coined "survival of the fittest" in 1864, to answer the question at 4:40

[@notloki3377]

i'd be curious to see how this gels with stephen c meyer's mathematical critiques of evolution as a function of random mutation curtailed by natural and sexual selection.

[@maxheadrom3088]

If there are precursors on chimps then making them stronger, through Natural Selection, is easier and quicker. Gould created the Punctuated Equilibrium and he passed away in 2002. His theory shows that some evolution is really fast (in engineering and applied math there's a whole field dedicated to Biology Inspired Algorithms that contains Genetic Algorithm used very successfully in optimization problems). Gould divided (from memory, here) the evolutionary process in two types: changing the size of an insect's wings (very fast) and creating a new pair of wings (very slow - to the point that insect are defined by the number of wings). What geneticists use to measure time in genes is the "genetic drift" - a noise that appears at a constant rate (depends on the species) in the genetic information. Since this noise is added at a constant rate it can be used to see when such and such modification appeared. Note: this was recorded in 2012. It seems a lot of respected academics are now somewhat critic of Pinker's work.

[@Jester123ish]

So now like David Sloan Wilson it's needed to look at the adaptive advantages of religion and the role it plays in moving us from primitive tribalism to inclusive societies.

[@stugrant01]

Haidt reflects on what drove him to want to display the flag after 9-11. I would rather that Haidt studies and discovers what was the source for his panic attacks at being seen displaying the American flag. That (panic attack) is what sounds to me more like a groupish instinct.

[@francesbernard2445]

Since cradle Roman Catholics on average according to statistics in genetic research have more so called Irish genes then if we can believe all in this lecture then being a cradle Catholic predisposes us most to have this allegedly called 'groupish' gene. I miss my sister Sharon who was 8 years younger than me who was in the habit of challenging my interpretations of what was said during lectures I attended during her lifetime too. She once said in exasperation after I shared with her the fact that our biological uncle shared with me that the results of his genetic test surprised him when finding out that the majority of his genes were so called Irish instead of German, "What culture will you have descended from tomorrow next according to you?" I found it so funny it made me start believing that getting the same test done for me would be a complete waste of my time and money too instead of taking offense.

[@Jester123ish]

People need to belong to groups, for this to happen the group needs to 'include' other people, the most effective groups are the most inclusive. For example, any religion worth it's salt has always included the poorest and most needy as well as those well off. They are deliberately not exclusive. I'll check out the video.

[@amiraslkhalili5638]

1:19:40_ 1:19:50 very special

[@maxheadrom3088]

I like Jonathan because I already thought and agreed with his ideas! (this is an attempt at a joke)

[@ukasztrojanowski3149]

I don't think the simulation at 13:15 is accurate. What i would like to see is what happens when the internal wealth accumulated is lost over time (as in calories gained with food). I think we could expect a behaviors similar to the one we get with the predator-pray equations. As the number of selfish cells would increase their likelihood of bumping into a non selfish one would decrease. At a certain point it would become so small the internal capacity for wealth accumulated would be to small to sustain them until their next encounter with a cooperator and they would die, tilting the proportions again in favor of the cooperators, at this point the cycle continuous.

[@thoreengevik8598]

If you look at the math it allways goes towards a global max for any kind of population

[@ClearerThanMud]

According to Wikipedia, this attempt to revive group selection (which I think actually occurred in 2010, two years before this video was published on KZbin) didn't gain much traction: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism

[@michaels4255]

Western culture is the most individualistic in the world, so we are resistant to messages (like multi-level or "group" selection) that go against that grain. Neither our left nor our right are receptive to messages about group selection or the inter-group competition that forms the context for group selection. There could be no group selection if everyone were part of one giant group--selection means that some groups enable their members to reproduce more effectively than the aver member of other groups. The typical Westerner feels very uncomfortable even thinking about such scenarios. Reproductive competition is one of the taboos of our post-1960's civilization, yet that is what drives evolution and maintains the health of the gene pool.

[@DreamlessSleepwalker]

According to Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_sex

[@josephl6289]

Darwin never used the exact term "survival of the fittest."

[@ChrisKogos]

It's lonely out here

[@Jester123ish]

I guess I'd have to qualify that statement, I was thinking more in terms of social systems, it probably holds true for specialist groups to some extent, an NFL team that doesn't discriminate unnecessarily would have a larger pool to draw players from.

[@cask2010]

Lady that starts talking at 59:45 ... Nice try honey. "My attention span is declining" - Priceless.

[@gregzeng]

She was trying to attract attention from a supposed sexual target (a married man). He accurately detected this. Her "on-duty" hunter voice tones were obvious, especially after he tried to fob her hunting venture away from him. This kind of thing happens very often, including to myself from straight women and unstraight men. I hate it.

[@markusmatthew7044]

41:16 tribes become vehicle 41:29 group beat out of group

[@begooshtube]

gcc= group cultural conflict?

[@Dorian_sapiens]

Way too late to matter, I'm sure, but in this context it's "gene-culture coevolution".

[@dhirendrad6128]

Some of the audience seems cheap as they enjoyed failure of speaker to find correct slide.

[@maxheadrom3088]

There's something that's missing from Heidt's arguments: the different ways in which a gene is stored. I'll say "gene" for the trait that's encoded as genetic information. One thing that's very clear from genetics is "if it works, it says". The molecule that move the first cilium is the same that's moving the muscles that are allowing me to type. If there's some genetic information - and if such trait is a gene - the exchange of genetic information does not necessarily destroy the idea of group selection. When the victors absorb and reproduce with the defeated females it does not necessarily hampers that - and it is important to maintain genetic variability in the group. Cheetahs, for instance, went through a very strong genetical bottleneck and are so similar genetically they're already in the path of extinction (scientists are using what we know now to choose pair of animals so the species will continue to be alive). A species is extinct before all individuals are dead - here, I think, is something that could explain the absorption of females by victors as a biologic imperative. I studied a bit of Genetic Programming - using processes that are inspired by genetic encoding and natural selection in systems optimization. A real tiny bit - be warned!

[@josephl6289]

Heidts spot on.

[@josephl6289]

What you wrote is literally nonsense 😂. I bet you were a member in the audience, I can't believe those people are in academia. I was embarrassed for them.

[@maxheadrom3088]

@@josephl6289 I'll have to rewatch it. Somethings that I have written are incorrct - and not only the typo on "if it works, it *stays*.

[@benjaminschooley3108]

Darwin did endorse survival of the fittest, and thought it would help people to understand his theory better, his phrasing survival by means of natural selection was difficult for people to consume. Dawkins writes about this in one of his books, extended phenotype I think.

[@markusmatthew7044]

1:01:54" well I guess we do take their woman"

[@cpolychreona]

The blue-green model unjustifiably assumes zero-sum resource exploitation. This is patently false assumption. All you need to do is factor in cooperative productivity (hunting together rather than competing, collaborative product being much higher than the sum of individual efforts) and the model collapses before we even consider cooperative defense against the bad guy.

[@eRoNNNNNN]

Explaining inclusive fitness could have made this lecture 10min long

[@Pompeii2020]

Embarrassed to put up a flag? 1:10:21 Am I missing something? He identifiers with the group that is called America...America was attacked...he felt personally attacked...he wanted to respond to the violence directed at him....raising the flag would have been a message of 'you have not knocked me down'. All seems very natural to me.

[@readigo]

why he keeps moving his hips like Elvis Presley?

[@gregzeng]

Healthy humans are never meant to stand like statues. Being a white man, he is not allowed to gesture with his hands, arms, legs. White women are allowed to twist their spinal columns & heads. Men are not. White men told me that I am not allowed to have my hands too close to my face. He does though. My time in the Australian Army however stopped spinal column gyrations, since only homosexual men are allowed to do this, in Australia. It is a national, ethnic taboo or fashion system used by military cultures imho.

[@jamesbarlow6423]

Dubious conclusions.

[@sacredsoma]

Why exactly does Haidt who is not an evolutionary biologist want the case to be re-opened? This granting of proper ontological status to groups as replicators, does it really have better explanatory power? What does it explain? Evolved groupishness ..?

[@dominicberry5577]

+sacredsoma Margulis's SET theory absolutely does have explanatory power. You're not listening to him at all. He showed you the evidence already. If you go to the journals, you 'll see he's right. As Heidt says, If you go into the cell, you can see the groups cooperating right there. He absolutely does have to re-open the case. At the time of Selfish Gene, everyone figured he'd just finished the whole thing like Einstein, using game theory economics. That was fine in the 1990s. Unfortunately, Margulis's SET theory of evolution turned the selfish gene theory on it's head, by revealing us to be huge aggregates of bacteria cooperating together for common survival. There are two apparent reasons why does nobody knows about this, which are extensively documented by Mary Midgely, a philosopher of science and morality, another non-evolutionary biologist, who noticed a lot more than the scientists themselves about what was going on. She pointed out, like Heidt, the people don't tend to question scientific theories which fit with their politics. As with Hitler's eugenics, so with 'for-the-good-of-the-species' reasoning in the 60s and so with Selfish Gene theory was highly compatible with the neo-classical economics of Reagan and Thatcher, and indeed the rise of Ayn Rand style individualism, post 1980. The other thing was that Dawkins took his success in biology and used it (and ideas like memetics,) to launch a scientist assault on religion. Right or wrong, it was incredibly popular for the concurrent generation of new-atheists who began to think of scientific hypothesis testing as a disproof of religion. But here is the news - While Dawkins was becoming the high priest new-atheists, evolutionary science has moved on a good deal and has already left him behind. Memetics went nowhere as a field of study. (In the whole history of ideas, it was about the worst idea ever). The Selfish Gene theory is now naked as a hypothesis which fitted the mathematical models in game theory, but failed to stand up to the empirical counter-evidence Margulis was producing. Dawkins's own parting comment to Margulis meeting her face to face was "I now wish I had called it The Cooperative Gene". But we're left with all these new-atheists who think that not believing in god is the only thing you need to qualify you in science... While being thirty years behind in their awareness of actual evolutionary theory.

[@sacredsoma]

Evolved groupishness is not necessarily a benign phenomenon and can easily feed a national socialist agenda, so no need for a Thatcherite/Randian influence on gene-centric models, if anything most of the scientists who did the pioneering work for it were on the left. I don't see how Margulis is a refutation of a gene-centric view?

[@dominicberry5577]

Margulis, for a start, didn't believe that DNA was the basis of evolution. And she didn't believe evolution is about competition. It's rather obvious that a lot of it is about cooperation. Most of her mechanisms are epi-genetic.

[@sacredsoma]

Thanks again for your response man, since I think it is clear that agency of the sort which would merit the label cooperation cannot be attributed at sub-cellular level. What evolves by definition are the variations in inter-relatedness and differences which are not filtered out by the system. So competition between alternative forms of co-operation (inter-relatedness-es) is a good metaphor, even though sub-cellular interlocking forms and clusters are not competing either.

[@dominicberry5577]

Well parts of a cell work together, right? OK. So they're cooperating. The RNA was there before the DNA, right? I'm not saying they're all making conference calls on skype. Margulis makes an exhaustive explanation of how parts of the cell originated separately and then started to cooperate and also how your body's cells originated separately and then later came to share DNA. Listen you you can argue with me all you like. You might win the argument too. My major is economics. But if you look at the scientific awards she's picked up, you'll see that you captured a scout and there's a whole academic army coming behind him.

[@Wild_Sugar_Love]

Hey those green cells reminds me of pyramid schemers lol!

[@dominicberry5577]

+sacredsoma Margulis's SET theory absolutely does have explanatory power. You're not listening to him at all. He showed you the evidence already. If you go to the journals, you 'll see he's right. As Heidt says, If you go into the cell, you can see the groups cooperating right there. He absolutely does have to re-open the case. At the time of Selfish Gene, everyone figured he'd just finished the whole thing like Einstein, using game theory economics. That was fine in the 1990s. Unfortunately, Margulis's SET theory of evolution turned the selfish gene theory on it's head, by revealing us to be huge aggregates of bacteria cooperating together for common survival. There are two apparent reasons why does nobody knows about this, which are extensively documented by Mary Midgely, a philosopher of science and morality, another non-evolutionary biologist, who noticed a lot more than the scientists themselves about what was going on. She pointed out, like Heidt, the people don't tend to question scientific theories which fit with their politics. As with Hitler's eugenics, so with 'for-the-good-of-the-species' reasoning in the 60s and so with Selfish Gene theory was highly compatible with the neo-classical economics of Reagan and Thatcher, and indeed the rise of Ayn Rand style individualism, post 1980. The other thing was that Dawkins took his success in biology and used it (and ideas like memetics,) to launch a scientist assault on religion. Right or wrong, it was incredibly popular for the concurrent generation of new-atheists who began to think of scientific hypothesis testing as a disproof of religion. But here is the news - While Dawkins was becoming the high priest new-atheists, evolutionary science has moved on a good deal and has already left him behind. Memetics went nowhere as a field of study. (In the whole history of ideas, it was about the worst idea ever). The Selfish Gene theory is now naked as a hypothesis which fitted the mathematical models in game theory, but failed to stand up to the empirical counter-evidence Margulis was producing. Dawkins's own parting comment to Margulis meeting her face to face was "I now wish I had called it The Cooperative Gene". But we're left with all these new-atheists who think that not believing in god is the only thing you need to qualify you in science... While being thirty years behind in their awareness of actual evolutionary theory.

[@sacredsoma]

+Dominic Berry I tired to deal with this in a post, (holynose.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/group-selective-benefits-of-brutality-in-dealing-with-irtidad/) its not really a question of Margulis vs a bad metaphor by Dawkins.

[@thoreengevik8598]

It does not have to be just in the gene to be real. The real is the problem about what world we are trying to build if we take away boundary's that separate those that don not belong ore comply to the same "religious" rules as the one inside the system. Religious is a word i then use to say how humans made an instance in the psyche that is out of selfish control and that is named holy. A new prophet now is telling how the bible need one more chapter, in the beginning it was evolving a story about what we are.

[@maxheadrom3088]

C'mon! Green is not the color of selfishness!!! (another comment not to be taken seriously - I got what he meant ... I just happen to like green and will let no one call my color selfish!)

[@carlroberts4963]

The ideia.is.how we .are Nurtured.and.ductrinated

[@stevegovea1]

0

[@jacksonlamme]

um of course groups are vehicles for evolution how can this even be a question? lol why do we have speech for example. Why do we have empathy? This is silly to me. But very smart guy just dealing with myopic academic thinkers. Correct me if im wrong

[@jamesbarlow6423]

BS

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Strong argument there; can we post you your prize?

[@dawnemile4974]

Darwin really only wanted to justify why Europeans were more sophisticated than the other races who were not doing quite so we,l while he was alive. He did not think about the Babylonian, Egyptian, Mongolian or other empires that had existed prior to the Greek and Roman. It is all nonsense and needs a lot more education to have more clarity on the topic.