Yes, it is odd, but I'm going to go with beautiful as an adjective that describes it even more accurately.
Thank you for this interesting article. I am reminded of how people who cannot be motivated to change their own unhealthy habits can sometimes be motivated to make the same changes for the benefit of someone else important to them.
Glad you liked it! I agree it is both odd and beautiful—both because somehow evolution has produced this capacity to put someone else’s welfare over our own. This goes way beyond our ancestors’ discovery that working together was a win-win. The triggering of this extreme self-sacrificing mechanism is something of an evolutionary conundrum.
Great article! But is hysterical strength such an evolutionary conundrum? Isn’t the likelihood high that an organism — in sacrificing itself, potentially — would be saving the life of its offspring?
It’s not so much a conundrum—strictly speaking, nothing in evolution should be mysterious 😎— as just an awesome product of natural selection. While researching and writing it, I realized why ‘intelligent design’ has so much appeal. Unless you fully grasp the impact of having all the time in the world, it’s hard to believe life in all its variety and complexity emerged spontaneously.
What is perhaps not so easy to explain in simple terms is that this engages for unrelated individuals too (though our tribal instincts go a long way).
Yes, it is odd, but I'm going to go with beautiful as an adjective that describes it even more accurately.
Thank you for this interesting article. I am reminded of how people who cannot be motivated to change their own unhealthy habits can sometimes be motivated to make the same changes for the benefit of someone else important to them.
Glad you liked it! I agree it is both odd and beautiful—both because somehow evolution has produced this capacity to put someone else’s welfare over our own. This goes way beyond our ancestors’ discovery that working together was a win-win. The triggering of this extreme self-sacrificing mechanism is something of an evolutionary conundrum.
True! Saving random strangers is a bonus feature.
Great article! But is hysterical strength such an evolutionary conundrum? Isn’t the likelihood high that an organism — in sacrificing itself, potentially — would be saving the life of its offspring?
It’s not so much a conundrum—strictly speaking, nothing in evolution should be mysterious 😎— as just an awesome product of natural selection. While researching and writing it, I realized why ‘intelligent design’ has so much appeal. Unless you fully grasp the impact of having all the time in the world, it’s hard to believe life in all its variety and complexity emerged spontaneously.
What is perhaps not so easy to explain in simple terms is that this engages for unrelated individuals too (though our tribal instincts go a long way).