Quote:
Originally Posted by Didace
It could be argued that cooperation is in one's self-interest.
This is the entirety of the argument.
The truism of 'what's good for the group is good for the individual' is far more often true than 'what's good for the individual is good for the group'.
This is borne out in game theory, where barring specific circumstances, in general, co-operation usually works out better than competition. The reasons this tends to be true in both game theory and reality are various and interesting. In terms of defence and attack, a group does better than an individual. We can take down bigger and more prey by joining forces. You could see this purely conceptually in terms of a perimeter being smaller by distance per person when in a group than individually. Group dynamics allow for more specialisation, and the efficicency gains that come with specialisation, so now a small handful of the tribe become excellent at hunting, perhaps even specialising in hunting particular types of game, a small group become excellent at storing and passing on knowledge. The bigger group will do better than the small group on this basis. A group that co-operates rather than competes within itself will be able to devote more resources to expansion and ultimately thrival beyond just survival. Two groups that decide to co-operate rather than compete could benefit from knowledge exchange. For all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways, co-operation trumps competition as a survival strategy.
When a person does not reproduce, the selfish gene idea extends to genes that are similar, i.e. to act in a way that maximises the survival of family members is good enough; this logic extends to the tribe, and ultimately social reproduction to the point that people are willing can be convinced to sacrifice their lives for institutions, or perhaps nations.
Ultimately, we've become the most successful species on the planet in a number of criteria not because of our intelligence - the neanderthals were by accounts more intelligent than us - nor even our adaptability, which plays a part in why we survived the ice age ~50k years ago that wiped out the neanderthals (we did not 'kill them off', but more they died out because they fell into the trap of specialisation in their niche where we stayed more adaptable, but also we ****ed with them to the point where they didn't actually really fully die out) but because we co-operate extremely well with each other.
All of this is to say that where we do have the capacity for selfishness, we are far far far more eusocial and co-operative. All the anthropology bears this out. Where it appears not to, I generally suspect a perversion of the science in order to justify today's apparently far more selfish society. And it's true that we're more selfish as a society than we used to, but even despite that, we are still incredibly co-operative. I don't know how you could look at our cities and think 'that's all just people being selfish'. Maybe it's just not seeing the wood for the trees, not appreciating it because it's become the very air we breathe. The evidence for co-operation is everywhere, in everything.