[ExI] Genuine Altruism in Animals? (was How could you ever support an AGI?)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 05/03/2008, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

>  > and in particular the general trend is more intelligent the animal more
>  > altruistic it is .... ants are very social but they cannot extend their social
>  > rules to other beings not belonging to their species... a dog can do that
>  > in fact it has no problem to extend its social rules to human beings
>
>  except that it has been bred expressly to do so (which was not too
>  hard starting from wolves, which are pack animals)

Does it matter that the dog is bred to like humans? The flip side is
that we humans have evolved to like dogs; if we had evolved to find
them as loathsome as spiders, an intelligent appraisal of their
positive qualities wouldn't do much boost altruistic feelings towards
them.





-- 
Stathis Papaioannou