For a long time I tried to understand what confuses me in all these human rights organizations that for some reason only protect Hamas, but do not protect Israel, who demand that mothers who are drug addicts have money to raise their children and for drugs, and this is called humanism , and take away this money from those mothers who raise children themselves.
And you know, in the book, in my favorite book by Richard Dawkins, «The Selfish Gene», one of the central places is occupied by a concept called the «Concept of a stable evolutionary strategy», evolutionary stable strategy.
So what is a stable evolutionary strategy? Here, let’s take a simple thing. Conflict situation. So, how should a gene survival machine behave in a conflict situation? We can imagine two possible strategies — a dove and a hawk. Now they are not referring to biological pigeons, which are rather nasty creatures, but, here, the metaphorical meaning of these words. The doves are those that engage only in ritual fights, and the hawk is the one that always fights. Well, let’s imagine that 50 points are due for a won fight, 0 points for a lost one, minus 100 points for severe injuries suffered in a fight. Well, if you just wasted time — minus 10 points. Of course, points are conditional. I am retelling Dawkins how the benefits of a strategy are roughly estimated. Now, if you count by points, then the entire society will score the maximum number of points if all its members are pigeons. Well, for the simple reason that at the same time no one loses in fights by minus 100 points. For all other strategies, the total public good is lower. The problem is that if you have one hawk among these pigeons, then he will have a fantastic advantage, because he wins all the fights. The number of hawks will begin to increase until they begin to fight each other so often that, on the contrary, the dove, which evades fights, gains a points advantage.
In other words, the dove strategy is not an evolutionarily stable strategy, just like the hawk strategy, by the way. Here, the strategy that Dawkins calls retaliator is evolutionarily stable, well, let’s call a retaliator — one who behaves like a dove towards a dove, and like a hawk towards a hawk. Actually, this is how Israel behaves, because it does not deliver pinpoint strikes on London and Paris. Here, who does not attack him, Israel somehow does not attack those.
There is another classic problem. Again, it has to be solved by any machine in order to survive — this is how to reproduce in the optimal way. After all, it is not enough to multiply — you need to make sure that your children survive. And, in fact, any organism, any machine for the survival of genes is capable of producing many more children than it can raise with limited resources. And there are, of course, such organisms, there, lemmings, for example, which simply multiply uncontrollably, and then die in large numbers. But for the most part, creatures have special strategies that limit the number of offspring. There, let’s say, a significant part of the animals are territorial. Territoriality is an important part of the survival strategy, territoriality usually means that if the male has no territory, then there will be no offspring — the female will not mate with him. Here, there are species of birds in which the female, if the territory was taken away from the male, remains with the winner. Gu.e. speaking, it turns out that she was not married to a male, but to a nest, a resource that will allow her to raise children. Whose resource is that and the kids.
Approximately the same role is played by the hierarchy: there, the dominant male mates, all the rest do not.
Accordingly, in nature, an individual who has more children than he can feed is punished. If you have the resources to raise 5 chicks and you lay 7 eggs, then your chicks will simply die. In the welfare state, the situation is exactly the opposite: if an individual has more children than he personally can support, he receives a bonus from the state at the expense of the one who works. And the one who works to provide for his children, he, on the contrary, incurs penalties — they take away his children, give them to the children of the insolvent.
And the third most important part of social interaction is mutual assistance. Well, imagine that you are a bird, and you must cleanse yourself of parasites. Obviously, your beak will reach everywhere except for one single place — on your tuft. The solution is very simple — I will scratch my friend’s tuft, he will scratch my tuft. Here, too, 2 strategies are possible — sucker and scammer. A goof is one that cleans everyone’s head, and regardless of whether someone cleans it or not. Throwing anyone never cleans anything. It is obvious that the sucker is not a stable evolutionary strategy, because in the population of suckers … They are very good — they clean everything with everyone. But sooner or later, a scammer starts up, which initially has a colossal advantage — they clean it, and it means that it was put on everyone.
A stable evolutionary strategy, writes Dawkins, is retentive. The memoryful one is the one who cleans the tuft of everyone except those who do not clean in response to him.
And, in fact, why am I? So, it is not difficult to see that absolutely all the strategies that are offered to us now as democratic, human rights, peace-loving, which are offered to us by absolutely all state and supranational institutions involved in helping the poor and orphans, are evolutionarily unstable strategies. For the past 20 years, we have only heard that universal suffrage, the welfare state, the protection of human rights are the crown of development and the end of human history. So this is not only wrong, it is biologically wrong.
What is in common between Welfer, who helps drug-addicted mothers get money for drugs at the expense of healthy mothers, and the United Nations Commission for Palestine Refugees, thanks to which Palestinian refugees have multiplied by an order of magnitude in 60 years? That’s because they all offer evolutionarily unstable strategies. All of them in different ways demand from suckers to help scammers, from pigeons to help hawks. Now, it is very important to understand that none of these organizations do good. Under the guise of demanding good, it multiplies evil, and the results of the activities of any of these organizations contradict its goals, because, of course, Welfer’s formal goal is to reduce the number of children who suffer because their mother is a drug addict. But in reality, the number of such children is increasing. Formally, the goal of the UN Commission on Assistance to Palestine Refugees is to help Palestine refugees. But in reality, the number of refugees is multiplying.
And then the question arises, why do all these organizations offer such strange strategies under the guise of humanity? The answer is that all these organizations take some resource and redistribute it. And the resource can be withdrawn only from the sucker and give it only to the scammer. It is impossible to withdraw a resource from a scammer, from a scammer, because a scammer, by definition, does not have it. And all these organizations, regardless, as I said, they help a drug addict or Hamas, they are megaparasites, they, if you like, parasitize on parasites. The greater the number of parasites outside or inside the country, the greater the staff, importance or success of such organizations.
Well, how can a human rights organization or some kind of UN commission take Israel’s side in a conflict with terrorists if Israel does not demand anything in this conflict? He doesn’t ask for help. Only terrorists demand help, the Palestinians demand food, money, attention, that’s all that can be distributed.
And another very important thing is that a person has a mind, but social institutions, unfortunately, do not have a mind. And, now, each specific person is able to realize that if you constantly give money to a drug addict mother and this does not improve the situation of her children, then it would be good to change the strategy. And a social institution is not capable of realizing this — it strives to maximize its influence, it will demand only one thing — an increase in the money that society takes from worthy matter and gives to a drug addict. And that at the same time the number of drug addicts is growing, this is only a bonus for a social institution that is engaged in helping drug addicts or, there, terrorists.
There’s a thing called the prisoner’s dilemma that I won’t rehash. But the story of scratching each other’s backs is, in principle, a variant and a prisoner’s dilemma. The prisoner’s dilemma occurs when both parties, if they help each other, get a plus. If both sides betray each other, they get a minus. But the side that betrays the one who helps it gets the biggest plus.
Here, remember the joke about the frog and the scorpion? The frog carried the scorpion across the river, he stung her. Well, she dies, asks «What are you? Why did you do it? He replies, “I am like that, and I am like that.” Here, the strategy of the scorpion brings the greatest dividends in the prisoner’s dilemma — you were transported, and you also bit.
And the problem is that if there are several rounds in a social game, then usually no one wants to transport a scorpion next time. And, now, the social institutions that are engaged in Welfare, world peace, are social institutions that are forced to help scorpions. Here, notice that the message of all these nice people is always addressed to the frogs. Not a single social institution of this kind has yet said to the scorpion, «Please stop stinging the frog,» there, has not said to Hamas, «Please stop bombing Israel.» He is always turned to the frog. “Aren’t you ashamed to refuse transportation to the scorpion? He is unhappy, but no one believes him, he is offended, he lives much worse than you, his standard of living is lower.