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<P>From the <A
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1109247,00.html">Guardian
Unlimited</A>: The origin of altruism goes to the heart of the gene/culture
debate that was launched in 1975 with the publication of EO Wilson's
Sociobiology and, a year later, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. Sociobiology
claims that human nature - and by extension human society - is rooted in our
genes: we are, according to Dawkins, "lumbering robots" created "body and mind"
by selfish genes. <BR>At the same time kindness and cooperation underpin much of
human society. From the Kyoto agreement to arms controls or the state of public
toilets, they all depend on individual willingness to commit resources to a
common good. But no one has come up with a satisfactory evolutionary explanation
of why we do it. In a recent Nature paper, Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher of the
University of Zurich claim that the key to promote what they call strong
reciprocity is rewarding generosity with kindness but punishing cheaters, even
at the expense of the punisher. Strong reciprocity promotes kindness and
discourages cheats, but is it a product of our genes or in our culture? It can't
be entirely genetic, since different human societies (with very similar genes)
vary greatly in their tolerance of cheating. Fehr and Fischbacher argue for
gene-culture co-evolution: cultural and institutional environments promote
social norms that favour the selection of genes that promote cooperati! on.
<BR>Making strong reciprocity work at both a local level (discouraging
anti-social behaviour) and international level (persuading the Americans to sign
the Kyoto agreement) would be beneficial to society and the
world.</P></BODY></HTML>