Blog #3
Richard Dawkins is more pessimistic about finding altruism in humans. I feel like this because he talks about one person dying to save one another. On page 65 he speaks about a third cousin being worth saving if the risk to me is very small. This is a pessimistic way of thinking. Thinking of how close a family member has to be in order to determine their worth saving is a horrible way to think.
Olivia Judson is more optimistic about the importance of altruistic behavior in human and animals. Olivia speaks about how among many animals a friendship is more than just “a bit of mutual scratching”. Friendship has to do with their ability to survive and reproduce in their group. She compares humans to chimps and gives examples of ways chimps and humans are very alike.
Richard Dawkins seems to stress cooperation over completion. He demonstrates how we have 1 exact gene from our mothers and that a family member has a 50% chance of also having that gene.
Judson’s evolutionary perspective challenges my understanding of human behavior because it makes me analyze chimp in a different way. It makes me realize that human are closest to chimps. We generally do many of the same things and act the same way. Dawkins makes me more uncomfortable about my understandings of why we act the way we do. We he speaks about death it makes it uncomfortable.
Yes I do think that the way each essay is written makes the authors ideas easier to accept for most readers because they explain in many details what they are trying to say. They tried to paint a mental picture for us so we can understand what they want us to know.
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