From: "Andy Robertson" 
Subject: Re: (urth) TBOTSS and colonialism
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 17:17:18 +0100


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 

>  Depends on what you mean by "altruistic" -- if you mean acting
from emotionally altruistic motives, your reading of the premise
is correct; however, it is possible to behave altruistically for
reasons other than altruism (this is actually one of the major
topics in current* evolutionary biology);



As a matter if fact, Evolutionary Psychology is the key to understanding the
whole mess.



There is a case of a planarian that infests a type of water snail.

It affects the snails' behaviour.

It makes them climb to the top of grass stalks and perch there waving their
eyes in the air.

The eyes get nipped of by birds - who are the planarians' secondary host.



The case of inhumi/humans, though not analagous,  is not essentially
different.

The inhumi affect the humans' behaviour, and the humans affect the inhumi.

Yet it is more complex, and mutual reciprocal altruism spreading
cross-species like this and forming a new Evolutionary Stable State would be
an  *exquisite* demonstration of Evolutionary Psychology


I wnder if Wolfe understands the disipline, or if he is just so acute that
he cannot diagram a world that does  not hold these deep truths?


    hartshorn









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