clearly, i have not made much progress on this. ive decided that given my schedule, i should just write about whatever comes to mind instead of writing only after organizing everything i want to cover.

altruism. does it actually exist? does it make sense for altruism to have evolved? Do we ever do anything for someone else just for goodness' sake? Or, do we somewhere deep down expect the good karma to cycle back to us?

Altruism refers to doing something good for another without gaining benefit. Doing something good just because. You get the mail for your housemate not because it will better your relationship but because you were already getting your mail and she would appreciate it; you find a girlfriend for your brother just to be nice, not because that way he'll be out of the house or because he shares half your genes and you want your family line to continue.

Reciprocal altruism entails memory and debt - Monkey B remembers that fellow Monkey A shared a cache of food once so now Monkey B grooms Monkey A. By being 'altruistic' at one point in time, an individual eventually gains something in return in the future. So is reciprocal altruism a form of true altruism?

Let's take a step back and look at evolution itself. The end result of natural selection is just individuals who happened to be more fit and adapted to the environment. These guys at the end were more fit and simply survived and reproduced more. Scale here is important. If you look at maybe 100 years for a species, you may see lots of snout lengths. However, you look 500 years after that, the species now all have only long snouts because the short snouts couldnt dig deep enough in the ground to eat grubs. The long-snouted individuals survived because they were more fit and therefore they were able to mate more, make more babies with long snouts, and they in turn were more fit, and so on. So we see that selection acts on fitness.

Let's return to altruism. Using the logic in the above paragraph, it would make sense then to rationalize altruism by saying that it somehow increased the individuals who were altruistic - altruistic individuals were more fit than selfish ones. Being good to someone somehow increases your own chances. How can that be? This is where reciprocal altruism makes sense. Your own fitness increases when you do good because the recipient will ultimately return the favor. Always, somehow, you expect something back for your good deed. A tax exemption, or social recognition, to make yourself feel better, even. This take therefore suggests that individuals are selfish.

True altruism, then, has no place in evolution. If so, how did it come to be? Why are we nice when we dont need to be nice? How do we explain philanthropists and heros? It is a social contrivance. When our fitness is no longer in peril, we can afford true altruism. We no longer need to rationalize a good deed with a cost/benefit analysis. Social and ethical norms have facilitated this. True altruism is an example of how we are different from 'mere animals and beasts'. In this way, it can be said we are above the hand of evolution.

What makes this difficult to analyze is that if you look hard enough you can almost always find a way in which altruism benefits the actor. This is an example of the interplay between evolution and social norms. Look deep down within yourself when you commit an altruistic deed; ask yourself what is your motivation.

And now we like to pick up the mail for our friends.