What you are describing here is called kin selection, not group selection. Kin selection is indeed a powerful force in evolution. We sacrifice ourselves as individuals for the sake of relatives who share our genes. It’s the simplest form of altruism to explain, because there is a net advantage for the gene involved when all copies of the gene are considered.
Ok, this is much clearer, I think we agree completely. As you say, it’s a strategy of reciprocal cooperation – making the sum greater than the parts, and thus conferring an individual fitness advantage for all who follow the strategy and participate in the cooperative group. The group incidentally becomes stronger, but the evolutionary driving force is at the individual level.
Sorry to be a bit of a pedant about clarity on this point - but it’s still such a widespread misconception that group selection is a valid concept, when it was shown to be impossible (except in special cases) in the '60s. And clarity on the point was not aided by E.O.Wilson’s recent strange departure.
If anyone’s interested, here’s a bad Guardian article on it, portraying it as Dawkins v E.O.Wilson, I’ll find a better one when I have time later.
In fact, it was everyone in evolutionary biology against E.O.Wilson. Or, more accurately, E.O.Wilson (sadly, since he’s one of my heroes) going off the deep end in his dotage.
But isn’t kin selection a type of group selection?
An easy-to-explain type, sure – but see where that leads: imagine a continuum of empathy and cooperation and sacrifice, where instead of it being an all-or-nothing affair I’m more likely to feel empathy for/cooperate with/sacrifice on behalf of folks in proportion to how much they’re like me.
So figure I do good-of-my-group stuff in general – including good-for-my-kin stuff in particular. I mean, if you and I grew up together, I give you the benefit of the doubt and treat you well and make myself useful to you, because I’m a darned nice guy; and I go even further to help my brother, since I like him better than I like you.
So on the strength of that one – sentiment? impulse? – I’m a good neighbor and a great brother, which produces kin-selection help for my genes while also producing group-selection help for my community. And I work hard to protect the community’s kids, and work harder to protect my own kids; I’m fond of the community’s kids, and I’m especially fond of my own; that one tendency of mine drives both actions.
And so I’m an us-versus-them asset to people who are kind of like me – making me an us-versus-them asset to my kin (who are a lot like me) as well as to others (who aren’t as much like me, so I’m less likely to go the extra mile for them). And it also makes me an us-versus-them enemy to anyone who attacks my community in general, as well as to anyone who attacks my kin in particular.
Now, like the man said, people I thereby help may well pay me back, since keeping me around is useful to them and reciprocal cooperation can net good results – but can’t what I just said work even before we get to that point? Near as I can tell, I’m already getting kin-selection benefits as a subset of my group-selection work.
The simple answer is - no. These are precisely defined technical terms in evolutionary biology. There is no overlap, they are distinct mechanisms. Group selection is not a casual synonym for “cooperation within a group” or “reciprocity”. It is hypothetical evolution driven by competition among groups - and it doesn’t happen.
And see the first paragraph of Mijin’s post #60 for a concise description.
I clicked on that link before I posted; it says that “kin selection and group selection are not distinct processes”, and dwells for a while on the idea of “a continuum between individual selection, kin selection, kin group selection and group selection without a clear boundary for each level”. I didn’t figure it was worth citing in support of my post, but I sure don’t see how it summarily disproves it.
But you run into the problem I mentioned above.
If you act on a lack of empathy, society will punish you for your actions. So it’s to your benefit to act in an empathetic manner, regardless of whether or not you feel genuine empathy.
And if you’re being forced by social pressure to act in an empathetic manner, it’s a lot easier for you if you have a natural feeling of empathy to employ. If you lack natural empathy, you’re going to have to spend extra effort in first figuring out what the empathetic action would be before carrying it out. Faking empathy is harder than having empathy.
It’s the Belkar Bitterleaf Syndrome.
It’s related to a problem some publicly traded companies have. Empathy isn’t usually necessary in the short term. Maximize your gains now, now, now. But that sort of behavior is disadvantageous in the long term.
Even if you don’t feel empathy peronally, it’s a good long term survival strategy for a human being at least to emulate empathy. If you only need to interact in a situation socially for a brief amount of time, you don’t need to show much. The way people treat public restrooms is a good examples of this. If you need to interact socially for an extended amount of time, it’s a good idea to show consideration for other people, if only for your own sake/comfort/etc because you may need them to reciprocate later and for an extended amount of time.
Since we have these brains capable of long term strategy, empathy should be a no-brainer for anybody capable of planning more than a couple days in advance.
‘It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men.’
- Spock, from Mirror, Mirror
Minor quibbles, not a big deal:
Well, maybe placental mammals - marsupial mammals are born at a far less developed stage and much stay in their mother’s pouch (essentially a secondary uterus) for quite some time afterward, varying by species. The red kangaroo (largest marsupial overall) spends about six months fully pouched, and several further months intermittently pouched, after being born in a very immature state after about one month of gestation.
Well, your life expectancy at birth in the jungle could be 38, but if you manage to get past all the many things that can kill you as an infant or child (and which are pulling the average lifespan down to 38) and make it to 20, you probably have a good shot at making it to 60, and if so you could easy be more physically fit than a soft mushy urbanite of the same age.
5-2 is quite short, but he was married enough to not qualify as solitary 
It affects me in the sense that there is a nonzero chance that ‘one’ will be me. When that happens, it is advantageous to me to be on the receiving end of empathy, therefore, it is generally advantageous of me to want to invest in a prevailing background of empathy.
Really, the question can be framed in other contexts - why do I need governments to build roads except for the ones I am interested in driving on? Why do I need car manufacturers to make any other car except mine? Why do I need farmers to produce millions of gallons of milk, when I consume less than a pint a day?
The examples given in this thread are mostly about feeling empathy for bad situations, but being able to derive enjoyment from the enjoyment of others can also be advantageous: it can motivate you to be a better lover (which in turn can make you more likely to get laid), or a better cook (ibid.), or to provide to your children many diverse and positive experiences because you enjoy watching them learn a new thing. Or a better teacher, because if you understand what part of what you explain is someone having problems with, you’re more likely to be able to hit on an explanation they do understand.
In fact, a successful psychopath will have the ability to recognize and manipulate other people’s feelings; they may not completely understand those feelings, those people, but they can use them like I use my car or this computer. To a successful psychopath, what another poster called “shallow empathy” is a very powerful tool and the root of their success.
Why should we care about your disorder or what you wonder about?
It is statistically near-certain such anti-social behavior will be punished, and you’ll be worse off. Thieves, rapists and murderers usually end up in prison; in other societies, they are simply hanged or shot or whatever.
Human empathy is part of a complex set of innate behavior instincts which ALSO include the instinct to punish those who transgress accepted rules. I have empathy for others, and so when someone hurts others, I want them punished. A person who acts as if they have no empathy will almost inevitably be punished for it. Sociopaths are - by a wildly disproportionate margin - failures. They are by any measure worse off as a group than people with empathy.
Possessing empathy therefore benefits you by allowing you to be accepted by the group and NOT get punished.
This is a good point, in an odd way.
Empathy can make you the un-empathetic better at preying on your neighbors, by helping you understand how and why they act. That is assuming you can switch your empathy on and off, so you can learn what you need and still act ruthlessly on the insights.
The actual answer is that society and everyone in it benefits as a whole when they can cooperate to achieve a greater ends. It’s hard to do that when everyone is in constant competition with each other. Empathy helps enable that competition as it allows you to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and reach a common understanding.
I find that people who ask these questions on the internet are the last people who should want to live in such a society. Such as world is only “entirely free” in that it gives the strong the freedom to prey on the weak.
Such a situation is inherently unstable anyway. Eventually the strongest would dominate and then decide what the “law” is.
It’s normal to have individuals who have different sets of traits including “cheating.” Whether or not it’s beneficial to the genes that indirectly dictate the behavior of that individual only time can tell.
Well, people can feign empathy and act a role. Not being constrained by empathy allows some very brutal people to amass great power.
One thing I’m curious about: do people with low empathy have difficulty enjoying fiction? They’re called to care about people who may not even exist. That’s a challenge for writers even when it comes to a neurotypical audience.
Reducing empathy to evolutionary game theory does offer a sort of explanation, but is somewhat unsatisfactory. I find this true for most subjective experiences. For example, you can explain hunger by saying we need food to live. But why does this require a subjective experience of hunger pangs? We could know we’re hungry and just eat, purely mechanistically. But then we’re getting back to the problem of consciousness, qualia, and p-zombie talk.
Or summarizing a half remembered quip about the nature of feelings, “sure maybe pain is useful, but why does it have to hurt so much?”
This is a setup for a really good punchline.
I’m familiar with this old idea, but I’m not sure what its proponents think the case should be. Why shouldn’t women have sexual feelings, when having them is obviously a massive reproductive advantage? Not only for seeking sex, but for pair bonding and loyalty.
From my understanding some psychopaths can superficially appear to care about their family and friends like anyone else, but for different reasons than normal people. A broken family or depressed friends signals low status. Psychopaths want to project high status.
AFAIK psychopaths do have a theory of mind, but that’s not empathy. They know if they hurt someone the other person will be sad, they just don’t care.
It’s harder to care about a tragedy on the other side of the planet than a minor problem in your own backyard. David Wong’s idea of the “monkeysphere” may be useful here, based on Dunbar’s number.
Seems more likely the OP has low/no empathy and is frustrated over hearing about it all the time. Libertarianism or objectivism is possible too.
Survival of the fittest is always the law, including right now. People confuse “fittest” with some image of a big strong animal killing everything. That’s a simplistic view. There are many animals that live solitary lives. Seems boring to me.
You might enjoy Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene.
It’s worth mentioning that the most successful sociopaths are the ones who can at least fake empathy when talking to others. It’s easier to exploit people when they like you.
A person with ASPD is often more off-putting to others than a charming psychopath, so their lac of empathy doesn’t benefit them as much as a psychopath who at least is familiar with the rules of society and superficially abides by them.