Re: Discussion - non-free software removal

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:

> 	And there is a reason for being skeptical of people who
>  profess altruism:  It goes against human nature. What? You
>  exclaim. How is this more than mere opinion? The defense is: any
>  organism that puts the welfare of other organisms above its own,
>  especially those who do not share the same genes, would be at an
>  disadvantage, and selected against, in favour of a purely selfish
>  organism. Over time, selection pressure militate against purely
>  altruistic behaviour, and, since we are the product of a log line of
>  surviving competitive ancestors, human nature is _not_ being purely
>  altruistic.

I refer you to the work of Brian Skyrms, on the evolution of the
social contract, in which he shows that there are sensible
evolutionary models in which human-style social altruism is the right
evolutionary strategy.