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arroba
In a comment to Denyse’s article that touched on altruism a commenter said that evolution predicted altruism. I then explained that Neo-Darwinian Evolution would also predict no altruism if no altruism is found. That’s because random mutation plus natural selection explains everything (thus it explains nothing).
Like a wish come true, one of the more informed posters at Panda’s Thumb came along and explained how NDE explains both altruism where it is found and lack of it where it isn’t.  Hilarious! Check it out…
People who comment here know this, but it needs to be said for the record and for any UD folk that stray over here: the claim that the ToE predicts altruism is bone-ignorant, because the portion of the ToE dealing with natural selection predicts no altruism in organisms that aren’t capable of developing and understanding an ethic of reciprocity, charity, and the “golden rule” (i.e, other than us).  More specifically, anything that looks like altruism (any actions that benefit others while potentially or actually jeopardizing the instigant’s future reproductive opportunities) will turn out to be either a case of net direct personal benefit (e.g., wrasse cleaning parasites off reef fish, doing it to get food rather than because they are community-spirited) or genetically based kin selection, in which the instigants on average save more than their own complements of genes in terms of heightened reproduction by their relatives (e.g., a beaver warning the rest of its family of an approaching predator). ÂÂ
This is just SO precious.