@Fred_Snerd "Your" premise? I think virtually everyone knew that long before you were even born, and that was the point of my reply. Your "conclusion" falls into the same category.

@Fred_Snerd I never said or implied you did not have an argument. However your argument is as new as Stoneage drawings and known by everyone with a brain. Get it?

@Fred_Snerd Don't assume anything

@Fred_Snerd Hence since we cannot transcend our innate nature then the best we can do, imo, is to strive to our very utmost to NOT do psychological and physical harm to others.
Would you not agree?

@Fred_Snerd If that be your own personal philosophy then so be it, however I strive to to 'transcend' my innate nature as best I can and I also strive NOT be a selfish person rather a very selfless person who will literally drop everything to aid anyone/anything in need.

@Fred_Snerd Just think of every time someone told you something about you that hurt you.

@Fred_Snerd Some of what you say is not only hurtful but may also be very psychologically damaging to the person. For instance if a parent tells a child constantly that they are not good enough when they are growing up.

@Fred_Snerd I put it wrongly and now feel tired to explain but will have a go. I don’t mean you personally. I am talking about people hurting others with words. The saying Sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words will never hurt me” is wrong.

@Fred_Snerd If that be so then , ergo do ALL in your power to ensure that you cause no psychological pain to anyone.

@Fred_Snerd ‘if we were as selfless as an animal can be’.

@Fred_Snerd i think some of us are more so, there are many animals with many characters, us included.

@Fred_Snerd haha I'm INTP, almost ENTP

It is funny how we mentally separate ourselves from animals even when we know better. Are we not animals?

Of course we are selfish, it is a necessity for our species to survive. We have to instinct to "Take care of the herd". Unconsciously we expect others to help when we are in need. So we often help others "just because we want to". Does it make you feel good to help others??? selfishness.
We ARE evolving ANIMALS trying to survive, simply because we can not help it.

@Fred_Snerd
I guess that's our disconnect; I don't believe people can be selfless. Joey and Phoebe's argument about selfless good deeds kinda sums up my feelings.

I assumed you were going for Dawkins' theory of selfishness that explains why family members sacrifice for one another. I don't know how far that extends in theory, but I don't suppose something like helping out hurricaine victims 3,000 miles away would count.

@DavidLaDeau I think our ability to defy some of our "programming" somewhat differentiates us from other animals, but in general I agree with you.

@Fred_Snerd & Jeff, it's only meant to be worded to appear as a sort of "fake" paradox. If we look after no 1 we can carry on being there for others. "Supreme sacrifices" are only an option (and never more than that) in rare circumstances.

@JeffMurray We are animals and that must not be forgotten or minimalized. Other animals have evolved in different ways. They can often accomplish task much "better" than we. Yes our higher cognitive functions do make us different than other animals.

You are not wrong here and I do realize that I am being a bit of a stickler here. The reason fo this is The Christians in The U.S. go through great lengths to make the case that "the animals" are completely different from us. Some even today deny that animals have emotions, morals or can even feel pain. They try to deny that we are genetically related to all other life here.

@DavidLaDeau If we're going to get technical, taxonomic classifications are man made, subjective, and, in my opinion, largely nonsensical. But I think we're on the same page here.

@Fred_Snerd dishonest about what?

@Fred_Snerd, @JeffMurray

Taxonomic classifications are man made, but they are based on observed and verifiable traits. There are layers of classification of course, thus the lumpers and the splitters. But I do not think it fair to call it nonsensical. That discounts the countless hours of careful observation and work by a lot of talented scientists. It true we are just another organism in the spectrum of organisms. Not better, just different with our own adaptations and specializatons.

@Fred_Snerd I remember reading those lines when I first read this post... That's all I can account for.

@t1nick
I'll grant you that a lot of work was put into it, but how much time someone spends on something in no way guarantees that thing is not nonsensical. People spent tons of time writing and editing the Bible, and that thing is pure nonsense cover to cover. It was after I spent several weeks in a grueling debate over the idiom 'what came first the chicken or the egg' dealing with the intricacies of the theoretical taxonomy needed for the discussion that I realized how imprecise and 'this is the best we got' our classification system was. There is a reason for this, though, and it's because there are no classes in the evolution of life. There are no races, no species, nothing. Just huge interwoven webs of evolutionary biology. I mean, one must only think about the fact that Chihuahuas and Great Danes are the same species, but Neanderthals and humans are not to start scratching their head about it.

@Fred_Snerd You never really answered my objection though. What makes you think animals are selfless?

@JeffMurray

IMHO there a lot of difference between the Bible and the corpus of Taxonomic work. One is an oral tradition past on by word of mouth, changing with each telling and each teller. Eventually written down as its latest teller remembers or desires it.

The corpus of taxonomic work is based on qualitative observations and quatitative measurements scrupulously labored over and cross verified over multiple specimens for their consistency and accuracy. It is not an oral tradition, but a carefully constructed body of collected knowledge.

By evutionary principles, the examples of animals exhibiting selfless behavior are exceptions rather the rule. A mother protecting their broid may be an exception and that action is guided by a selfish imperative to perpetuate the species. Even that motivation loses out if it comes down to a breeding female or the child, often the breeding female will win out out as a female can reproduce again. While a child cannot survive on its own and may imperil the others in the society. An alpha male may sacrifice itself to save the society, but again it is no su much selflessness as an evolutionary imperative to act to assure the society survives and lives to perpetuate. It's actually an evutionarily selfish act and not selflessness. In evolution the individual is not so important as the protection of the species viability.

Its too easy to anthropomorphize humans actions into other organisms. Just another kind of fairy tale.

@t1nick First of all, I'm not the one arguing that animals and/or humans can be selfless. I do not believe that to be true.
Secondly, I wasn't comparing taxonomy and the Bible, I was simply using that to point out your original objection of time spent wasn't sound. I believe the rest of what I stated about it stands on its own. We are making up dividing lines where none actually exist. You seem to know enough about evolution to know that is a fact, so I'm not sure what you're actually arguing here.

@Fred_Snerd
"If we were as selfless as an animal can be"
If you're not asserting that animals can be selfless, I have no idea what your point is.
If you are asserting that animals can be selfless, what makes you think that's possible?

@Fred_Snerd
Yeah, I don't know what you're trying to say with that...

@JeffMurray

For its worth I teach high school and college evolution. True time spent does not insure quality, just time spent.

@t1nick Glad to see someone who understands how evolution actually works is teaching it. I do not recall actually learning real evolutionary theory until I looked into it on my own.

@Fred_Snerd I honestly still can't make heads or tails of this. Does anyone else understand what he's saying that can explain it in a different way?
The original post seemed to insinuate that if humans could be as selfless as other animals are at times, then we would have transcended the inherent selfishness that has been evolutionarily bred into us. Now it seems like he's saying that's not his point, and none of the follow up questions and answers have made anything any clearer to me.

@Fred_Snerd Like I said, I thought I knew what your message was, but it's been contradicted and you have not been able to help me since...

@Fred_Snerd No, I already explained what I thought you were trying to say. I'll quote myself, "The original post seemed to insinuate that if humans could be as selfless as other animals are at times, then we would have transcended the inherent selfishness that has been evolutionarily bred into us."

@Fred_Snerd "An animal" would be one of "other animals" unless you are specifically referring to one and only one other animal on the face of the planet. In which case it is disingenuous to describe it as such instead of by name/specifics.
All of this begs the question, however, that you know I'm not understanding, you know what you mean, you think someone else deciphered your coded message already (which I'm not certain that's true), yet you won't just spell out what the hell you're trying to say. Not sure why I'm still bothering with this in light of all that...

How about it @Gwendolyn2018? What's the big secret answer to Fred's riddle?

@Gwendolyn2018 So I was right and no one here knows what he's trying too say but him. Cool. Cool cool cool.

@Fred_Snerd I'm not convinced it really matters what you're using the word "animal" to represent. If you simply replace it with the variable X, your statement would read, "If we were as selfless as X can be, we would together transcend our nature." If X represents something that can be selfless, the statement is rather obvious and seen as circular reasoning to anyone that recognizes man cannot act selflessly. (i.e. If man acted beyond his nature, he would have transcended his nature.) If X represents something that can't act selflessly, then the statement is nonsensical because the first two conditions in the statement wouldn't match, thus rendering the remainder of the statement moot. It would be akin to saying, "If the Bible were as true as a mathematics textbook, then XYZ." The remainder of that statement is largely irrelevant because the Bible necessarily isn't as true as a mathematics textbook, so it's pure nonsense to talk about what it would mean if it were. I mean, that doesn't mean people wouldn't at times engage in such nonsensical discussions, but in no way should they be treated as profound or valuable.

So I think it's clear that I've put more thought into this than anyone else, and I still can't ascertain your point. Given that no one else could either, it stands to reason that you should either explain what you mean in plain English, or admit that the point you thought you were making doesn't hold water and you have secretly abandoned it during the course of this discussion.

@Fred_Snerd That "generalization" was based on evidence, and I'm fully willing to retract it once someone posts a plausible explanation. The only person you thought knew what you were trying to say agreed that not only was your point unclear, she thinks most or all others don't know either.

I already stated that your post, as it currently stands, is how I originally read it, but that I cannot, obviously, account for it at a time before I knew it existed.

"Altruism is an illusion, but it does have real mechanisms and outcomes."

Was this the point of the OP, or a rebuttal to something I said specifically? Honestly since the OP is so indecipherable, I can't tell. Either way, I suppose I need to ask how you ascribe outcomes to an illusion?

@Fred_Snerd
YOU'RE THE ONE WASTING TIME?!? Fuck me, that's rich. Not a single person knows what the fuck you're talking about, I try WAY harder than I should have considering your posts started to sound like KWAPELL's, I lay out a correlative analogy that all but proves your OP is complete nonsense, you still refuse to tell us what you meant to prove me wrong, and I'm the one wasting your time?
Good riddance.