19 points

Which is why rats never built empires and conquered the world

permalink
report
reply
15 points

In many cities, there are more rats than human. And yet, who feeds who?

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

or destroyed it

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Tell that to the rat king

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Empathy over natural selection ftw.

permalink
report
reply
23 points

It’s natural selection which has born empathy. There are a lot of species which are successful because they are collaborative.

Same story with us humans. We usually prefer groups and collaboration. And look what we can achieve if we put all of our minds and strengths together.
Yet, this hasn’t been sufficient to overcome some individuals who live and enforce competitiveness.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene goes into this in greater detail. Many species are hardwired to be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the survival of their kin. Basically, genes that code for protective and social behaviors might result in any given individual more likely to die before reproducing, but makes that individual’s close genetic kin more likely to survive to reproduction such that a particular group/pod/clan/flock is much more likely to persist over generations.

The extreme example is ants and bees, where most of the workers we see biologically cannot reproduce and are dead ends as individuals. But they work for the hive/colony, and the reproducing queen is the center of that reproductive strategy.

You see it with a lot of animals, especially those wired to be social.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Fear and stress shut down empathy. But narcissists feel constant fear and stress. And we’ve made a hellworld that rewards narcissism

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Empathy was created by natural selection - of groups, not individuals, of course.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

have you considered that no longer hearing cries of healp is reason enough

permalink
report
reply
5 points

“wow, that guy is annoying. Maybe this will shut him up”

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

And the chocolate chip? Animals having empathy is the most logical conclusion if the experiment went as described here.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

A lot of animals are better at solving “prisoners dilemma” situations than us. Most animals would rather work together for the greater good but I guess they haven’t heard of capitalism.

permalink
report
reply
2 points

I wonder if there is a more mutualist economic system. Oh wait!

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

heathens!

permalink
report
parent
reply
83 points

The rats don’t live in a system that exacerbates and encourages the worst excesses of the worst people. The rats that don’t help are our billionaires.

permalink
report
reply
-5 points

You might be curious to find that in many animal species studied, from pack animals down to ants, there is always a large percentage that contribute nothing and are a net-drain on the larger life-structure or colony. Humans and all other forms of life seem to share this commonality.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

You don’t gotta out yourself like that bud

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

And yet the groups survive anyway. So does it really matter?

permalink
report
parent
reply
51 points

Yeah, pick any two humans and put them in a similar situation, and I truly believe that you’ll see similar empathy 99.9% of time time. But that fucking 0.1%, they’re ruthless and they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior.

permalink
report
parent
reply
29 points

they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior

It’s more just that they aren’t punished for it. They don’t have the empathy to give a shit, and thus will do things regular people won’t. If society doesn’t punish them for being a piece of shit, then there’s no downside to being a piece of shit for them, only upsides from taking advantage of situations others won’t.

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

A lot harder to punish when you can start making the laws as well. Society won’t just reward them sometimes they will let them write what everyone else should do as well.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

This is why you have to introduce the concepts of mimics or demons that have access to change shape. Otherwise the party always frees the chained up maiden in the dungeon without asking any questions. Alternatively, if there is a rogue, you don’t have to worry. They’ll try their best to convince the others that they’ll get xp for stabbing the prisoner.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply

Microblog Memes

!microblogmemes@lemmy.world

Create post

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, Twitter X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

Community stats

  • 13K

    Monthly active users

  • 1.5K

    Posts

  • 46K

    Comments