The Evolution of Altruism in Humans

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Bowles ◽  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Social Dilemmas ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on the evolution of altruism in humans. Following William Hamilton, it uses the term “helping” to describe behaviors that confer benefits on others and reserves the term “altruism” for helping in situations where the helper would benefit in fitness or other material ways by withholding help. The discussion begins with an analysis of the proximal influences on an individual action such as helping using the beliefs, preferences, and constraints approach common to economics and decision theory. According to this approach, what individuals do when restricted to a specific set of feasible actions depends on their desires and goals on the one hand, and their beliefs on the other. The chapter also considers the link between social preferences and social dilemmas before concluding with an overview of a gene-culture coevolution model of group-structured populations, one assumption of which is: an explanation of the evolution of human cooperation must be contingent upon the empirical evidence.

The Economic and Social Value of Financial Literacy

2021 ◽  
pp. 416-436
Author(s):  
José Manuel Sánchez Santos
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Financial Literacy ◽  
Social Value ◽  
The Other ◽  
Financial Instability ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Financial Decisions ◽  
The One

The main objective of this chapter is to provide new insights into the economic and social value that financial literacy has for individuals and societies. Financial literacy has implications that are relevant both at a micro (especially for households) and macro-level (for the financial system and for the national economy as a whole). On the one hand, a lack of financial literacy put households a risk from making sub-optimal financial decisions and prevent them to maximize their wellbeing. On the other hand, financial literacy favors a better allocation of resources, reduces the risks associated with episodes of financial instability, and therefore, contributes to the increase of social welfare. The analysis and the empirical evidence showing the benefits (costs) of financial literacy (illiteracy) allows to conclude that policymakers have a key role to play implementing initiatives aiming to improve financial literacy of the population at all stages of life.

scholarly journals The Milky Way: summary and outlook

1985 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 635-639
Author(s):  
Jeremiah P. Ostriker
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Oblate Spheroid ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Conspicuous Feature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Absorption Of Light ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
The One

First let me review the historical discussions presented during our symposium: the papers by Paul, Gingerich, Hoskin and Smith. I was greatly impressed by the power of abstract human thought in its confrontation with resistant reality. On the one hand we see again and again extraordinary prescience, where abstract beliefs based on little or no empirical evidence–like the island-universe hypothesis–turn out to be, in their essentials, true. Clearly, we often know more than we know that we know. On the other hand, there are repeated instances of resistance to the most obvious truth due to ingrained beliefs. These may be termed conspiracies of silence. Van Rhijn and Shapley agreed about few things. But one of them was that there was no significant absorption of light in the Galaxy. Yet the most conspicuous feature of the night sky is the Milky Way, and the second most conspicuous feature is the dark rift through its middle. What looks to the most untutored eye like a “sandwich” was modeled as an oblate spheroid. These eminent scientists must have known about the rift, but somehow wished it away in their analyses. I find that very curious. Other examples from earlier times abound. We all know that the Crab supernova was seen from many parts of the globe but, though it was bright enough to be detected by the unaided eye in daylight, its existence was never–so far as we know–recorded in Europe. It did not fit in with the scheme of things, so it was not seen.

The Rationality of Probabilities for Actions in Decision Theory

1998 ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
Marion Ledwig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Decision Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Probabilities ◽  
Newcomb’S Problem ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Given

Spohn's decision model, an advancement of Fishburn's theory, is valuable for making explicit the principle used also by other thinkers that 'any adequate quantitative decision model must not explicitly or implicitly contain any subjective probabilities for acts.' This principle is not used in the decision theories of Jeffrey or of Luce and Krantz. According to Spohn, this principle is important because it has effects on the term of action, on Newcomb's problem, and on the theory of causality and the freedom of the will. On the one hand, I will argue against Spohn with Jeffrey that the principle has to be given up. On the other, I will try to argue against Jeffrey that the decision-maker ascribes subjective probabilities to actions on the condition of the given decision situation.

scholarly journals THE LACK OF SUBJECT INVERSION IN PUERTO RICAN INFINITIVE CLAUSES.

Dialectologia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel GONZÁLEZ RODRÍGUEZ
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Puerto Rican Spanish ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This paper explores the syntactic variation in Spanish focusing on a difference between European and Puerto Rican Spanish: the lack of subject-verb inversion in Puerto Rican infinitive clauses. Whereas infinitive subjects must follow the verb in European Spanish, they can also appear in preverbal position in Puerto Rican Spanish. On the one hand, this paper provides a detailed description of the phenomenon; for example, it determines what type of subjects can occupy the preverbal position in Puerto Rican Spanish. On the other hand, it offers empirical evidence for the following claim: this asymmetry between European and Puerto Rican Spanish is derived from infinitive subjects occupying different positions in these varieties, but not from the verb moving from T(ense) to C(omplementizer) in European Spanish.

Object reference in a shared domain of conversation

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbert-Jan Beun ◽  
Anita H.M. Cremers
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Physical Access ◽  
Total Effort ◽  
Simple Block ◽  
Object Reference

In this paper we report on an investigation into the principles underlying the choice of a particular referential expression to refer to an object located in a domain to which both participants in the dialogue have visual as well as physical access. Our approach is based on the assumption that participants try to use as little effort as possible when referring to objects. This assumption is operational-ized in two factors, namely the focus of attention and a particular choice of features to be included in a referential expression. We claim that both factors help in reducing the effort needed to, on the one hand, refer to an object and, on the other hand, to identify it. As a result of the focus of attention the number of potential target objects (i.e., the object the speaker intends to refer to) is reduced. The choice of a specific type of feature determines the number of objects that have to be identified in order to be able to understand the referential expression. An empirical study was conducted in which pairs of participants cooperatively carried out a simple block-building task, and the results provided empirical evidence that supported the aforementioned claims. Especially the focus of attention turned out to play an important role in reducing the total effort. Additionally, focus acted as a strong coherence-establishing device in the studied domain.

The electoral costs of policy commitments

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timm Betz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
The Other ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The One ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Incomplete Picture

AbstractExisting arguments across political science posit that parties in government use domestic and international institutions to lock in their own policy preferences by tying the hands of successors. I demonstrate that these arguments contrast with the assumption of office-seeking parties and therefore portray an incomplete picture of the incentives of governments. The paper emphasizes the trade-off between implementing policy preferences, on the one hand, and exploiting partisan differences for electoral success, on the other hand: locking in a policy takes an issue off the table, but it also undermines a party’s ability to leverage differences to the opposition in elections. Because office-seeking parties need to take into account these electoral consequences, they have a disincentive to tie their successors’ hands. I advance this argument in the context of the establishment of independent central banks, provide empirical evidence, and suggest implications for the literature on international institutions.

scholarly journals Magnitudes of Performativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-98
Author(s):  
Teemu Paavolainen
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
Model Based ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Twin Crises ◽  
The One

The article presents the Trump presidency and the human-derived geological epoch of the Anthropocene as two arguable extremes among current notions of ‘performativity’: (1) a traditionally vertical model based on individual action and antagonism – where ‘facts’ matter less than ‘making things great’; and (2) the more extended, horizontal human performance of things like global warming (“All the world’s a stage”). Drawing freely on George Lakoff and Timothy Morton, it is argued that these models differ fundamentally in ‘magnitude’: where the one is direct, singular, vertical, and fast, the other is systemic,plural, horizontal, and slow beyond human perception. With Judith Butler and Naomi Klein, it is also argued that to actually confront the twin crises at issue, we need to acknowledge the kind of ‘plural performativity’ – of repetition, norms, and dissimulation – that brought them into being in the first place.

scholarly journals Measuring Productivity Dispersion

2018 ◽  
pp. 592-624
Author(s):  
Eric J. Bartelsman ◽  
Zoltan Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Resource Reallocation ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Or Efficiency ◽  
The One ◽  
Selection Mechanisms ◽  
Input Markets ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Selection Of

Measuring the dispersion of productivity or efficiency across firms in a market or industry is rife with methodological issues. Nevertheless, the existence of considerable dispersion now is well documented and widely accepted. Less well understood are the economic features and mechanisms underlying the magnitude of dispersion and how dispersion varies over time or across markets. On the one hand, selection mechanisms in both output and input markets should favor the most productive units through resource reallocation, thereby reducing dispersion. On the other hand, innovation and technological uncertainty tend to increase dispersion. This chapter presents a guide to the measurement of dispersion and provides empirical evidence from a selection of countries and industries using a variety of methodologies.

scholarly journals Bewertung von Ökosystemleistungen: eine Bestandsaufnahme

2017 ◽  
Vol 168 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Olschewski
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Aspects

Valuing ecosystem services: taking stock Since the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005, the number of studies on the economic valuation of ecosystem services has increased. At the same time manifold doubts are raised concerning the concept of ecosystem services. On the one hand there are knowledge gaps related to the biophysical provision of such services, on the other hand methodological problems exist concerning 1) the determination of individual and social preferences as well as 2) the valuation approach in general. The present article addresses critical aspects of economic valuation methods. It concludes that it should not be striven for the one perfect method, but rather to look for ways to improve and integrate the different approaches. Promising initiatives are the comprehensive assessment of the available knowledge within the framework of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the development of common valuation standards.

scholarly journals Human Rights and Economic Growth

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-88
Author(s):  
Aziz Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Empty Stomach ◽  
The One

Is there a conflict between development on the one hand and democracy and/or human rights on the other? The issue began to be seriously examined some forty years ago1 and the controversy has simmered because there has been empirical evidence to indicate at least some shortterm validity to those who do see a conflict and press the primacy of growth. They take off from premises like Einstein’s, “An empty stomach makes a poor political adviser.”

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