I don't know what the H.P. says about relatedness--it seems to be
de-emphasizing that aspect altogether, from what I can tell (probably
because it doesn't work as niftily as it ought :-)).
> In an earlier post I know I used the word trait perhaps I should of
> used the word behavior. If an individual exhibits the trait or
> behavior of altruism as it applies to the H.P. one would expect their
> chances of survivorship to increase. I don't recall anything in the
> book that suggested there was a gene for the kind of behavior
> described in the H.P. Does there necessarily have to be one?
I agree that thinking in terms of behavior is better--the reason,
as I suggested in another post, is that I suspect that this
behavior is probably almost completely cultural--in humans AND
non-humans. Therefore, looking for genetics would be a dead-end
if I'm right. Clearly, then, human culture being orders of
magnitude more complex than other cultures would take any sort
of altruism basically completely out of any sort of genetic
realm, and we'd have to look for cultural indicators--does our
culture encourage acts of altruism? Well, often yes (and often
no). *Why* does our culture encourage altruism? That's pretty
tricky, but I don't think genetic determinism is the way to
go to figure it out.
-Greg