tkioz said:
Okay since you didn't get it, how about a clearer cut one, two men are taken into a dark room, one is given a choice if he says yes there is a 50% chance he and the other man will be killed, if he says no he will live and the other man will die; our ancestors made choices that boiled down to that all the time, help someone and run the risk of suffering for it, or don't help and stay safe; the people that stayed safe will likely have lived long enough to pass on their genes.
As for good hard-wired into us... err what good? the only thing I can see is the willingness to adopt codes of conduct in order to stay in a group for better protection, the willingness to suffer for our offspring, and that's about all I can see as "good" in human nature, everything else do that could be considered "good" today is against our nature.
That's such bullshit. Yes, our selfless ways were created to allow our genes keep going, be it in ourselves (consideration for others allowing working in groups), in our family members (it doesn't matter if you die after you already passed on the torch to your offspring and them dying is genetically a much bigger setback) and making our species as whole thrive over others (every species with enough intelligence to make the distinction has bias for their own species. In-fighting is common, killing is not).
However logical and genetically selfish explanations don't mean we are thinking it like that even on a subconscious level when we make compassionate choices. Whether they are by-products of instincts designed to protect your own genes or not, we do have in-built empathetic behaviour that often triggers even when we don't know they person or even when it's not even of our own species.
This whole Darwninist notion that you are supposed to look only after yourself because nature says so is flawed for two reasons:
First of all, the whole point of being human is to rise beyond the cruel and unforgiving system that is nature. "It's the natural way" is not a self-evident argument for morals.
Secondly, yes, "good" is hardwired into us. Our social skills are perhaps even more important to us than our intelligence, although they overlap, having developed side-by-side. Take your example for instance - that's not exactly what happened to our ancestors all the time.
If two guys met over a dead animal they had both been hunting, do you figure they just fought over it and had the other die of starvation? Sometimes probably, but a compassionate person would share. They would develop a friendship. And suddenly you have a much more efficient hunting machine of two people. Better yet if they trust each other to share the food after the hunt is over, because then the other can take a more indirect but efficient role in the hunt.
And when you have a hundred people all willing to put their life in line and form that rock-throwing human wall against the big lion, you have a species that is invincible as far as the direct threats from other (non-microbe) species are considered.
And consider how much more efficient the whole community became when they berry-pickers didn't need to worry about the hunters not sharing their prey with them and vice-versa? Even if one source of food failed, they were at the same time relying one or two others through other people.
If we all were parasitic sociopaths with only selfish ambitions we wouldn't have made it this far as a species. Even if the system of sharing, trust and empathy is ultimately selfish from evolution's point of view, that doesn't mean that people who are completely selfish themselves could uphold the system. When you know that the others would stab your back the moment it benefits them more, the selfless behaviour on which the system is based on stops happening. You do need emotional and in-built selflessness, not just cold and calculating selfishness that takes into account the benefit of working in a group. You need a sense of belonging and friendship to truly be ready to put your life in line.
That's not how people work and a community like that would crumble with the lack of any real trust. It's not until recently that we are tied to working like that through laws and rules and fear rather than social drives. It's exactly in our natural environment where we need "goodness", because trust is in the wild the only thing that ties people into efficient social groups.
