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April 24, 2013

Altruism Gets You Killed

There are people who throw themselves on a live hand grenade to save their buddies and these folks don’t rise to power.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

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The idea of true altruism in evolutionary biology applies pretty well to bats. We are not bats. There is not much evidence of true altruism among the homo sapien population.

I don’t deny that there is some true altruism, but among folks who aspire to high office or political power, they are selected on the basis of self-interest. They are not selected on the basis of altruism.

As I said in an earlier book The Predictioneer’s Game there are people who throw themselves on a live hand grenade to save their buddies and these folks don’t rise to power. They end up being dead. They’re noble people, but they are not the folks that we have to be concerned about because they are not there to be in power.

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