Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
This is interesting, I never contemplated this too much, but I always thought that people naturally went out of their way to save children. Not that I'm disputing your claim, but I'd love to hear a little more of this, do you have anything relevant that would confirm this?
It is easy enough to understand. Imagine if you will that you are on a mountain expedition with 10 friends and an expert guide. A stone block falls down towards you, and you can push two people out of the way. Who should you save?
People do have different values, pretending otherwise is just a lie.
Human tribes tens of thousands of years ago could never have valued their children as highly as their hunters or women capable of bearing children; a good hunter or such a woman could ensure the survival of the tribe. A child would didn't even have no particularly high survival odds given particular external threat that required action.
This isn't to say people are not altruistic in crisis. Indee the opposite is often true, in many such situations people don't panic. They cool down, act rationally and help people. However the key element is
control and time. Reduce those, and this behavior gets more and more reduced. A classic case is Lusitania vs Titanic. The Titanic took two hours to sink, the Lusitania 15 minutes. Aboard the former you had orderly displays and many stories of heroism. In the latter you had a general lack of order and a high number of egotistical actions (after the sinking you saw many displays of altruism again, however).
Last edited by tame_deuces; 09-11-2014 at 02:21 AM.
