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

[user]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

> 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).

ok.

It would seem, that for me, what I want most (when I really think about
it, and think beyond myself) is for the continuance and improvement (and
enlargement, planetary size constrictions notwithstanding) of the human
race.

It would seem also that the goal of my genes is to spread themselves as
far and wide as possible.

So where do these two goals intersect ?  And I am perfectly willing to
accept "the standard 2.5 child nuclear family" as a plausible answer.  It
seems to have "evolved" as the standard expression across all (large
successful) cultures around the world.

But as I said before, I can't help but think that if every individual
reproduced as much as possible (for them) competition for mates would be
higher, and successive generations would be more fit (granted, more fit to
pursue reproduction in that manner) than the successive generations
wherein CEOs and ditch diggers all have 2-3 children.

If my intellectual goal is what I said it was above, I wonder if there is
a (somewhat distasteful, and certainly deviant in current
society) eventual conclusion that I should produce as many offspring as I
can possibly support, with as many mates as will consent.

I think the interesting question here, and perhaps the one I would most
like answered, is:

what are the long term (many generations) outcomes of your particular
genes, given 3-5 very carefully, lovingly and personally raised children
in a (recently) traditional family, vs. the outcomes of, say, 20 children
produced and supported semi-anonymously ?  I wonder how many children you
would have to father to get a 50-generations-later more positive outcome
than raising 3-5 children very carefully and conscientiously yourself...


> 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.


Thanks - I'll take a look.