Why doesn't stuff that improves our genetic fitness make us happy

Great Debates
21

There has been lots of good information, but I like lists. Lets recap. (Feel free to modify or add to the list.)

  1. Not all genetic predispositions to behaviors or motivations are positive.
  2. Not all genetic predispositions to behaviors that are positive are associated with happiness. Think of salmon swimming upstream. Dispite the incredible drive to get to the spawning grounds, happiness may have nothing to do with it.
  3. “Materialism”, which I’m assuming is code for competition, may or may not be a motivation to behavior that increases “fitness”.
  4. Competition is definitely not the only behavior that increases “fitness”. If it was, we’d all be unicellular.
  5. Cooperation may or may not be a motivation to behavior that increases “fitness”. Dracoi went into ways that cooperation can increase “fitness”.

If the “Pro-social” stuff: “relationships with people and the world at large . . . gratitude, optimism, altruism, etc.” makes us happy; why would you assume that it’s not because our genes predispose us to be happy when we do them and that the predisposition evolved because it increases our “fitness”?

The OP mentions a ladder and how material happiness ought to trigger an “I’m full” message that makes us stop competing. But materialism is just a way of expressing competition and if there is a genetic predisposition to competition, the easiest way the genes can cause it is by causing an organism to notice its position in the social heirarchy and goading it to improve that position, relative to the others around it.

It’s not a ladder of posessions, it’s a pyramid of social heirarchy. And an urge to move up the pyramid may be no more happiness-producing than a swim up the river is for a salmon. In fact, anxiety is more likely to be a large component.

And now we get to the difference between happiness and the pursuit of happiness. People don’t pursue happiness with their genes, they do it with their brains. And they don’t pursue happiness if they have happiness. People are more likely to pursue happiness when they’re feeling sad or anxious or bored or something else that isn’t happiness.

If we’re thinking about what might make us happy, and we come to the wrong conclusions, that’s not a sign that we don’t have a few happiness triggers that also make us “fitter”, it’s a sign that we came to the wrong conclusion. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average human brain came to the wrong conclusion six times before breakfast.

I’m not going to start in on family and group expectations and their demon sibling advertising. I’m not going to start in on Maslow’s heirarchy of needs. I’m just going to point out that competition can cause anxiety and many of the things in the OP’s “pro-social” list can soothe anxiety, letting us step back and see that our situation’s not really that bad.

I’m also going to mention that I once read an article, now vaguely remembered, about a study of houses and what elements of a house had an effect on the happiness of the people living in that house. It speaks to the idea of real material needs vs. perceived material needs. The size of the house didn’t matter. The cost of the house and the size of the yard didn’t matter. Sharing bedrooms didn’t matter. The study was before granite countertops were a thing, but I guarantee you that granite countertops don’t matter.

Having enough bathrooms - that mattered.

22

Slightly related Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

23

But lard does improve our genetic fitness.

24

I would also add - natural selection works on the group level as well as the individual level. The tribe that thrives as a whole will have females that produce more children that survive . Such tribes can outbreed the other tribes over many generations.

In his book,The Story of the Human Body, Daniel Lieberman looks at evolution vis a vis energetic balances — if you need to expend more than 2000 calories to come up with 2000 calories worth of food, you won’t survive. If you can run an energetic surplus by only expending 1500 calories to forage 2000 calories worth of food you can put that surplus to use in many different ways, including reproduction.

Reproduction, for a male, does not use much of that energetic surplus - the cost is a few minutes of calories burning activity and a tablespoon of protein.

On the other hand, pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing require a huge energetic surplus.

In the face of such biological inequality, the best use of energetic surplus, in terms of survival and natural selection, is often to donate it to other members of the tribe. The tribes with the greatest cooperation grow the fastest and become the dominant group, carrying their genetic traits with them.

25

And being a valued part of a community tends to make your offspring have a better chance at surviving, hence the pro-social behaviors.

26

I agree there are evolutionary benefits to being (conditionally) pro-social. However my question is why are the rewards for pro social behavior that increases fitness different and more meaningful than the rewards for selfish behavior that increases fitness.

27

I think this is the key factor. We’re evolved for struggle not satisfaction.

28

This becomes a more interesting question. (Although “meaningful” is in the eye of the beholder.)

To rephrase - why, from an evolutionary perspective, do we experience happiness at all?

Happiness clearly is not required to get us to engage in every behavior that increases evolutionary fitness.

Happiness is most often a short term reward, like a Scooby snack. An increase in material goods, the getting a desired partner to choose to partner with you, the getting better from sickness, the birth of a child, the getting recognition … all cause a short term happiness bump and then back to baseline.

That makes sense. Evolutionarily our genes would not be best served by us being satisfied with what we’ve got. Getting more and by doing so being able to better get our children to adulthood and their children born and to adulthood is what serves our genes. As has been said they be selfish things.

So to some degree lasting happiness and thereby satisfaction goes against our genes’ selfish interest in most cases. Yes, we need to be motivated to climb the next rung.

Therefore the interesting question is whether or not the lasting happiness/satisfaction that comes from pro-social activities still serves a selection advantage and in what why does the difference of that advantage allow for lasting happiness and satisfaction to occur?

Perhaps because it is at a group selection level and thus the benefit more diffuse? It is of note that in general pro-social behaviors are most directed to those within tribe (or fictive tribe in the modern world), and less often directed to members of a competing tribe. In general people are more likely to be happy helping someone who they feel is more like them than someone who they feel is very different.

29

That pre-supposes that happiness is more meaningful than anxiety or other drives. It’s certainly not more efficient than other drives.

And as Mr. Tobin used to say: Happiness is a relatively positive datum point within a sequence of negatively skewed range/frequency variables.

30

Who is Mr. Tobin? His ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter. As far as the other thing, yeah you are right. Negative experiences are far more powerful than positive. Anxiety and terror are far stronger motivators than happiness.

And while more selfish pursuits do not provide much deep positive reward, they do build a buffer against negative experiences that can be very traumatic. Power, resources, health, food, etc. can build a buffer against victimization, starvation, abandonment, pain, etc. So maybe much of the reward from more selfish pro-life activity is just that buffer against negativity, not the temporary pleasure you get from a good meal or a good romp.

31

Perhaps because the latter is easier to get (for an African hominid in the Pleistocene).

32

There are a huge number of mechanisms that evolution COULD have come up with, but didn’t.

33

Nonetheless, we do have reward mechanisms related to happiness, inner peace, inner contentment, etc. and these are not activated by activities that enhance our survival. Pro-social activities seem to have more effect on them, even though pro-social activities also enhance our survival. My point was why does only a small sliver of life enhancing behavior cause meaningful emotional rewards? no one feels inner peace from a good meal or from sex.

Then again, drugs which hijack the reward mechanisms like amphetamines can cause these feelings. I think the brain areas affected by drugs are the ones that are involved in rewards for food or sex, I’m not sure.

I read in a neuroscience book once that that is one reason heroin addicts become socially withdrawn, the drugs end up stimulating reward centers that are normally meant to be stimulated by meaningful human interaction and pro-social behavior.

34

Because salt and fat are rare and difficult to obtain in nature, while vitamin C is abundant. Vitamin C deficiencies only occur in circumstances that humans only rarely find themselves in. Sure scurvy was an immense problem for sailors, but what percentage of humans were sailors during the age of the sail? 1 in 10,000 maybe? An how long did the age of sail last? Maybe 400 years? Before the 1400s, ships almost never sailed so far off-coast that they had to rely on foods with low vitamin C content.

35

nevermind

36

Former high school AP English teacher, sadly deceased. He was a great teacher.

37

To be honest, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree on this one, though I don’t know any way to phrase than as my opinion/observations.

Learning to be content is not really about what you have or what you do, but about how you perceive those things. There are intrinsic rewards to various types of behaviors, but someone who’s truly contented has only arrived there by a conscious decision regarding what’s enough. If you want more stuff, there’s always more stuff. If you want more charity, there’s always more to give. The ability to sit back and “enjoy the fruits of your labor” is a state of mind that is only loosely connected to what you do. There are some people with more contentment out of a tidy kitchen than other people will ever experience from any source.

38

That does happen, but luckily it takes so many years that you’ve already grown old and are about to die anyway. Thus, the content are removed, and younger generations can proceed with not feeling content, and driving evolution forward. :stuck_out_tongue: