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A man who gave himself away (2016) (mosaicscience.com)
72 points by drdee on Jan 28, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Also discussed in Adam Curtis's documentary "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o... - available on Amazon, I think


Past related threads—but I seem to remember that there were others as well. Anybody?

Discovering an Equation for Altruism Cost George Price Everything (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14572742 - June 2017 (6 comments)

George Price: The man who died trying to prove selflessness doesn’t exist - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489819 - Sept 2016 (2 comments)

George Price, Who Tried to Prove Selflessness Doesn’t Exist - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9529947 - May 2015 (31 comments)


If you're interested in a more in-depth treatment of the same subject, there's a good biography, The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/09/15/the-price-of-altru...


Related:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200212065851/https://www.bbc.c...

from the article:

> This suggests that human evolution selected for cooperation, tolerance and gentleness – and not, necessarily, for intelligence.

> We always assume that intelligence is responsible for our success, that humans became smarter, which… allowed us to invent wheels and agriculture and iPhones. But what if that wasn’t what happened?

> like the foxes, and like dogs, we became friendlier first, and then got smarter by accident. This would mean that our prosocial skills, the skills that allow for cooperation and friendliness, were what made us successful.


This is quite interesting.

wΔz=cov(wi,zi)+E(wiΔzi)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation

Trying to think of where I fit.


That's quite the story. It's a long read but worth it imo.




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