Hi-Phi Nation: The Selfless Kidney Donor

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🗓️ 20 November 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Penny Lane gave up months of wages and weeks of her life to have her kidney cut out and given to someone she never knew, and who may never thank her. She is one of about 200 people in the US a year who give up a kidney altruistically. What motivates someone to do that? Evolutionary psychologist Michael McCullough believes that not only is there true altruism amongst the human species, but that it is a unique trait, an emerging and spreading trait, and it is selected for by evolution, even out-competing the more familiar traits of selfishness that drive evolution in other species. And the trait is responsible for moral progress in the world. Barry is skeptical, and calls friend of the show Kieran Setiya to talk him out of his skepticism, only to discover that, in many ways, humans are even worse than he thought. We may have evolved to demand altruism from others, but not be altruistic ourselves. This episode brought you by Scribd and Inkl. Get an enormous library of books, magazines, podcasts, and audiobooks. Try Scribd for 60 days free. try.scribd.com/hiphi Unlock reliable news sources from their paywalled sites, The Economist, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and 100 more, a $12,000 annual value for just $75 the first year. Go to inkl.com/philosophy to get this deal. God and the Space-time Manifold is a summer seminar at Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion June 13-24th, 2022. Twelve philosophers will lead discussions about God and the philosophy of time. They are looking for applicants. All professional philosophers and graduate students qualify. Sign up for Slate Plus, to receive ad-free version of this podcast and unlimited access to Slate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	That's my vision from sleep.
0:06.3	Something I learned recently is that vampire bats have a hell of a metabolism.
0:11.5	They have to eat regularly.
0:13.3	This is Michael McCullough, an evolutionary psychologist at UC San Diego.
0:18.2	They go out every night and they hunt for a sleeping mammal and drink its blood and then
0:24.0	come back well fed and go to bed and then do the same thing the next night.
0:27.9	The vampire bat naws a small incision into its victim and their saliva has this anti-coagulating
0:35.1	compound that keeps the blood from clotting so it can keep drinking until it's full.
0:40.9	But if you're an unlucky vampire bat, maybe you're young and you're really inexperienced,
0:45.6	you may come back with an empty stomach and three unlucky nights in a row and you're dead.
0:53.9	If this were any other species that'd be tough luck, survival of the fittest.
1:00.0	But vampire bats do something well nice for each other.
1:04.8	Some of these bats will come back home at night, the well fed ones and they will regurgitate
1:08.4	some blood into the mouths of one of the hungry ones.
1:11.9	I'm paying a small cost in order to provide a huge benefit to you because if you went
1:16.9	hungry two more nights you're gone.
1:18.8	Sharing is something we see a lot of in the animal kingdom.
1:22.7	Major social carnivores will share with their pack, but they're usually all related.
1:29.5	And helping out our relatives is not all that puzzling from an evolutionary point of view.
1:35.3	So you can think about this what we often call the gene's eye view.
1:38.5	The gene doesn't care who's gone ads it's in.
1:40.5	All it cares is that it's taking action in the world that increases the number of itself
	...

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