Are We Selfish By Nature?
Very fun podcast with Greg Salmieri
While I was in Austin, I shot a podcast with Greg Salmieri of the Salem Center’s Objectivism Program on “Are We Selfish By Nature”?
Back story: Precisely because she upheld “the virtue of selfishness,” Ayn Rand vigorously argued that human beings are not naturally selfish. In this conversation, I try to convince Randian philosopher Greg Salmieri that evolutionary psychology is right and Rand was wrong. Although bona fide examples of human altruism exist, they are quite rare - especially once you take inclusive fitness into account.
Related: see my earlier two-part essay on “Rand Versus Evolutionary Psychology.”
Here’s the full video.
P.S. Many thanks to the huge crowd at the Austin Meet-Up! Looking forward to seeing you all again next time I’m back, probably around mid-October.
Nice conversation! Many arguments about selfishness have this problem of goalpost moving. Inclusive fitness gets pinned as a form of selfishness. One-off cooperation in prisoner's dilemma-like situations get called "misfires of inclusive fitness." But the sheer quantity of these "misfires" is ridiculous. The strength of social desirability bias hinges on a desire for cooperation even when punishment for defectors is weak or nonexistent. Are enlightened people "selfish"? It seems they have both a more expansive view of self as well as a more expansive view of what is good. At some point, the word selfish seems to become a useless descriptor.
This looks great. Discovering and internalizing evolutionary psychology really changed my life. "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright is the best, IMO.