I didn’t mean to imply that the “overall level” of altruism would remain the same, just that remaining altruist impulses would be distributed less selectively by an individual. If I said a certain society has a more equal distribution of wealth I wouldn’t wish to imply they overall also have more wealth per capita. The word indiscriminately was probably not an optimal choice, but I wanted to avoid the warm glow associated with words like “equally”, “egalitarian” or “less discriminating”.
In an inbreed society you are more closely related (as in likley to have a greater overlap of genes) to your spouse and consequently your children than otherwise. The relative advantage of you being extra altruistic to them, compared to most other less related people, seems greater than it would be in a outbred one. So if I was speculating on how altruism is directed in such a society I’d expect it to drop more sharply when going from me>brothers>cousin>clan member>tribe>ect., because the fitness differences are more pronounced.
Say I have 0.9 Ghandi, and I distribute it 0.5 to my family 0.3 to my tribe and 0.1 to the default human who isn’t part of my tribe. If I shift this to 0.4 to my family, 0.3 to my tribe and 0.2 to default human who isn’t part of my tribe, this may obviously result in fewer people actually helping each other, because diminishing returns would kick in. What it may also do is for example make coordination on the tribal or even trans-tribal level easier, which can lead to certain tragedy of the commons situations being averted that otherwise wouldn’t have.
I didn’t mean to imply that the “overall level” of altruism would remain the same, just that remaining altruist impulses would be distributed less selectively by an individual. If I said a certain society has a more equal distribution of wealth I wouldn’t wish to imply they overall also have more wealth per capita. The word indiscriminately was probably not an optimal choice, but I wanted to avoid the warm glow associated with words like “equally”, “egalitarian” or “less discriminating”.
In an inbreed society you are more closely related (as in likley to have a greater overlap of genes) to your spouse and consequently your children than otherwise. The relative advantage of you being extra altruistic to them, compared to most other less related people, seems greater than it would be in a outbred one. So if I was speculating on how altruism is directed in such a society I’d expect it to drop more sharply when going from me>brothers>cousin>clan member>tribe>ect., because the fitness differences are more pronounced.
Say I have 0.9 Ghandi, and I distribute it 0.5 to my family 0.3 to my tribe and 0.1 to the default human who isn’t part of my tribe. If I shift this to 0.4 to my family, 0.3 to my tribe and 0.2 to default human who isn’t part of my tribe, this may obviously result in fewer people actually helping each other, because diminishing returns would kick in. What it may also do is for example make coordination on the tribal or even trans-tribal level easier, which can lead to certain tragedy of the commons situations being averted that otherwise wouldn’t have.
I want to however strongly emphasise: