INTELLIGENCE - Koko and Robin Williams

Are humans really intelligent?  Wars, killing, hate crimes, extremism and so much more.

While Koko is a big gentle-giant.

OPINION - Should EVERYTHING be for Sale?

"'What Money Can't Buy' and What it Shouldn't Buy" PBS Newshour 6/11/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: While most of our everyday transactions are driven by the marketplace, are there some things money shouldn't be able to buy -- a spot in line, maybe a human life? As part of his Making Sen$e of financial news series, Paul Solman speaks with Harvard professor Michael Sandel about his new book, "What Money Can't Buy."

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now, is it wrong to pay to get to the head of the line?

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman explores that question and some related ones in a conversation with the author of a new book.

It's part of Paul's regular reporting Making Sense of financial news.

WOMAN: Do I think I should be able to bid for a baby? I'm not -- sure.

(LAUGHTER)

WOMAN: It's a market.

PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour): Michael Sandel has been called one of the most prominent college professors in America for his course "Justice," now online after having been taken by some 25 percent of all Harvard undergrads over the past two decades.

Sandel orchestrates a discussion among the course's 1,000 students, mixing case studies with moral stalwarts from Aristotle to John Rawls.

Early in the term, Sandel asks students if everything should be for sale, mediated by the marketplace, that is, like the value of a human life, which, posited at $200,000 in one case study, student Julia Roto thought far too low.

BEING HUMAN - Pure Altruism?

"Is Pure Altruism Possible?" by JUDITH LICHTENBERG, New York Times 10/19/2010

Excerpt

Who could doubt the existence of altruism?

True, news stories of malice and greed abound. But all around us we see evidence of human beings sacrificing themselves and doing good for others. Remember Wesley Autrey? On Jan. 2, 2007, Mr. Autrey jumped down onto the tracks of a New York City subway platform as a train was approaching to save a man who had suffered a seizure and fallen. A few months later the Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu blocked the door to his classroom so his students could escape the bullets of Seung-Hui Cho, who was on a rampage that would leave 32 students and faculty members dead. In so doing, Mr. Librescu gave his life.

Still, doubting altruism is easy, even when it seems at first glance to be apparent. It’s undeniable that people sometimes act in a way that benefits others, but it may seem that they always get something in return — at the very least, the satisfaction of having their desire to help fulfilled. Students in introductory philosophy courses torture their professors with this reasoning. And its logic can seem inexorable.

Contemporary discussions of altruism quickly turn to evolutionary explanations. Reciprocal altruism and kin selection are the two main theories. According to reciprocal altruism, evolution favors organisms that sacrifice their good for others in order to gain a favor in return. Kin selection — the famous “selfish gene” theory popularized by Richard Dawkins — says that an individual who behaves altruistically towards others who share its genes will tend to reproduce those genes. Organisms may be altruistic; genes are selfish. The feeling that loving your children more than yourself is hard-wired lends plausibility to the theory of kin selection.

These evolutionary theories explain a puzzle: how organisms that sacrifice their own “reproductive fitness” — their ability to survive and reproduce — could possibly have evolved. But neither theory fully accounts for our ordinary understanding of altruism.

The defect of reciprocal altruism is clear. If a person acts to benefit another in the expectation that the favor will be returned, the natural response is: “That’s not altruism!” Pure altruism, we think, requires a person to sacrifice for another without consideration of personal gain. Doing good for another person because something’s in it for the do-er is the very opposite of what we have in mind. Kin selection does better by allowing that organisms may genuinely sacrifice their interests for another, but it fails to explain why they sometimes do so for those with whom they share no genes, as Professor Librescu and Mr. Autrey did.

And the "argument" goes on.