[extropy-chat] is spreading ones own genes relevant, or just an anachronism ?

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

user wrote:
> I am informed by both my own (very powerful) instinctual urges and
> tendencies, and by works of authors (such as Jared Diamond in The 3rd
> Chimpanzee) that it is my goal to spread my genetic material, or progeny,
> as far and as wide and as varied as possible.

No, this is your genes' goal.  *Your* goals are to love, to live, to have fun, 
to have sex, to eat good food rich and sugar in fat, to increase your status, 
to find a good long-term mate, to raise children together, etc. etc.  Natural 
selection has no mind, you do.  Natural selection constructs a mind that wants 
things that would have helped you reproduce in the ancestral environment, 
whether or not that helps you reproduce now.  Individual organisms are best 
thought of as adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers (Cosmides and Tooby 
1992).

I recommend that you read "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright.  You appear to 
be confused on some basic points about evolutionary psychology, and Wright is 
an excellent introduction.

Please ignore Dirk Bruere, he doesn't speak for the list.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence