Number of relations grows exponentially with distance, genetic relatedness grows with log of distance, so assume you have e.g 1 sibling, 2 cousins, 4 second cousins etc, each layer will have an equivalent fitness contribution. log2(8 billion) = 33. Fermi estimate of 100 seems around right?
If anything, I get the impression this is overestimating how much people actually care, because there’s probably an upper bound somewhere before this point.
Is the implication here that you should also be caring about genetic fitness as carried into the future? My basic calculation here was that in purely genetic terms, you should care about the entire earth’s population ~33x as much as a sibling (modulo family trees are a bunch messier at this scale, so you probably care about it more than that).
I feel like at this scale the fundamental thing is that we are just straight up misaligned with evolution (which I think we agree on).
Indeed. I’m enough of a sociobiologist to sometimes put some intellectual effort into trying to be aligned with evolution, but I attempt not to overdo it.
Far more likely, they’re not calculating their evolutionary fitness at all. Our having emotions and values that are downstream of evolution doesn’t imply that we have a deeper goal of maximising fitness.
Such a person is very badly miscalculating their evolutionary fitness — but then, what else is new?
Number of relations grows exponentially with distance, genetic relatedness grows with log of distance, so assume you have e.g 1 sibling, 2 cousins, 4 second cousins etc, each layer will have an equivalent fitness contribution. log2(8 billion) = 33. Fermi estimate of 100 seems around right?
If anything, I get the impression this is overestimating how much people actually care, because there’s probably an upper bound somewhere before this point.
If your species goes extinct, you genetic fitness just went to 0, along with everyone else’s. Species-level evolution is also a thing.
Is the implication here that you should also be caring about genetic fitness as carried into the future? My basic calculation here was that in purely genetic terms, you should care about the entire earth’s population ~33x as much as a sibling (modulo family trees are a bunch messier at this scale, so you probably care about it more than that).
I feel like at this scale the fundamental thing is that we are just straight up misaligned with evolution (which I think we agree on).
Indeed. I’m enough of a sociobiologist to sometimes put some intellectual effort into trying to be aligned with evolution, but I attempt not to overdo it.
Far more likely, they’re not calculating their evolutionary fitness at all. Our having emotions and values that are downstream of evolution doesn’t imply that we have a deeper goal of maximising fitness.