[Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election

[rob brown]

On Dec 24, 2007 1:22 PM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> On Dec 24, 2007, at 17:34 , rob brown wrote:
>
> When a bee stings, it kills the bee.  Do you know of anything like that in
> an animal that reproduces directly?
>
> Yes, unfortunately at the very moment many soldiers at their best
> reproducing age give their lives for their country. Worker bees are likely
> to die when they sting a soft skinned large animal. Humans are not that
> radical - in most war situations individual soldiers have a reasonable
> probability to stay alive. But often sacrificing one's own life in order to
> protect others is praised and thereby encouraged, and happens in real life.
>

Well, we hear about it when it happens...that's part of it being praised and
encouraged.  I doubt it happens all that likely unless they really didn't
have the option of surviving.

In the case of the stinger, I was asking if you knew of any morphological
(not behavioral) feature of a non-eusocial animal that kills the animal when
used.  The only ones I can think of are part of the reproductive process (
i.e. male spider dies when it mates, etc).

Behaviorally....sure, there are anecdotal outliers to everything.  But the
behavior I see 1000 times as powerful in humans is one of self
preservation.  Eusocial animals only have a self preservation instinct as
far as it preserves the colony.  Period.

So what percentage of humans do you think voluntarily give their lives for
someone else that isn't direct offspring?  1 in 10 million?

I know it's all touchy feely and warms the heart to think the best of
humans, but my observation of human behaviour aligns quite well with what I
would expect based on how they reproduce.  Altruism obviously exists....when
there is a chance of reciprocation or where convincing others that being
altruistic has value in itself.  In a secret ballot situation, I'm just not
seeing it.

Regardless, it just strikes me as an incredible, irresponsible cop-out for
voting reform advocates to suggest a method that expects voters to just
play nice.  It is to me the equivalent of a computer security professional
suggesting that studies of psychology show that people generally don't want
to hack computers.  What problem are you solving again?
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