Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Reader Tom sent a gift suggestion from the estimable Archie McPhee gag company. But the items are real, and this one is on sale for $9.99. But it for a friend or for yourself; it can be used year after year. As Tom said:
“The most evolved Christmas ornament ever” from the ever-hilarious Archie McPhee in Seattle. May I also recommend the Yodeling Pickle ornament.
Click on the screenshot:
The blurb:
And the yodeling pickle, only $9.75 here. I’m sure you have friends who can’t live without this:
There are two reasons why folks are opposed to Betsy DeVos’s revised Title IX regulations for adjudicating sexual assault and harassment in colleges. The first is because the changes are proposed by a member of the Trump administration, and a particularly hated one. The second is that the general thrust of the changes protect the rights of the accused person more strongly and strengthen due process.
While the regulations aren’t perfect, I see them as a substantial improvement over the Obama-era regulation, especially the standards of guilt based on “preponderance of the evidence” (>50% likelihood of guilt) rather than “clear and convincing” evidence (roughly > 75% chance of guilt) or the court standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”. At present, if the finder of fact who collects the evidence—who is, unbelievably, also the judge and jury—finds the accuser even just a tiny bit more credible than the accused, it’s curtains for the latter: explusion and probably the ruining of one’s life. Sadly, even under DeVos’s changes colleges are still allowed the option of choosing “preponderance” of evidence above some more stringent standard, and I’m sure most will opt to keep the looser standards.
But the new regulations also eliminate the possibility of the investigator also being the judge and jury, which is good since it promotes objectivity; and they also allows the accused to see all the evidence against him (it’s usually a male), as well as allowing a companion of the accused (often a lawyer) to cross-examine the accuser. Such cross-examination was not allowed before, but is essential for even the most rudimentary form of justice.
But even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has opposed these regulations, saying, as many Leftists do, that they “favor the accused” (note the irony of the ACLU criticizing changes that strengthen civil rights). Others say that the proposed changes “are biased against survivors”, not realizing that the hearings are supposed to determine whether someone is a survivor. Remember, a “survivor” is not the same thing as “an accuser”.
It’s hard for a liberal, then, to swallow DeVos’s changes, as they come from Trumpism and supporting them also makes you seem to be someone who actually promotes rape, or at least wants rapists let off easily. (That’s not true, of course, because even in court there’s a much higher bar to convicting someone.)
Lara Bazelon, an associate professor and director of the criminal juvenile justice and racial justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law, wrote the editorial below that appeared in the New York Times two days ago. Like me, Bazelon favors the Title IX changes, largely (but not entirely) on racial grounds.
I debated about taking a public position, but in the end decided it was cowardly not to tell the truth, however inconvenient and offensive to those I would normally consider allies. https://t.co/wLSDEoYpjU
— Lara Bazelon (@larabazelon) December 5, 2018
It’s sad when someone like Bazelon—or any liberal—has to apologize for agreeing with the Title IX changes, even though objectively they seem fairer than their predecessors. But apologize we must—to placate the outrage crowd. Nevertheless, Bazelon takes a strong and principled stand, noting that the changes in regulations have in fact been tacitly approved by three appellate courts who found the present system unfair for violating due process. Here’s one ruling from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Michigan (click on screenshot to see the whole opinion):
But she adds the racial consideration, too, based on one of her clients (a black student) being unfairly suspended in the face of no evidence at all save an assertion, and after a process that had no hearing. As she notes:
The Office of Civil Rights does not collect data on race in Title IX cases, but the little we know is disturbing: An analysis of assault accusations at Colgate, for example, found that while only 4.2 percent of the college’s students were black in the 2012-13 school year, 50 percent of the sexual-violation accusations reported to the school were against black students, and blacks made up 40 percent of the students who went through the formal disciplinary process.
We have long over-sexualized, over-criminalized and disproportionately punished black men. It should come as no surprise that, in a setting in which protections for the accused are greatly diminished, this shameful legacy persists.
Of course one could claim that black students commit sexual violations at a disproportionate rate, but I don’t think many opponents of the Title IX changes would want to say that, and at any rate we have no data.
But in some sense it doesn’t matter. Title IX needs to be modified along the lines of the DeVos changes because it’s fairer to everyone, not just black men. (If there’s a bias against black men that leads them to be accused more or found guilty more often, that bias will remain, though it will be harder to instantiate if the evidentiary standards are higher.)
I really can’t see many good reasons for opposing these changes, and they’ll become almost mandatory anyway if there are more court rulings mandating due process in college. Nevertheless, here we again see a clash between liberal principles (due process vs. justice for women), and to many it seems clear that “survivors’ rights” automatically trump due process. I don’t think that’s a good way to think about the issue, but regret that Bazelon has to apologize for taking the right side:
The DeVos reforms are in their public comment period, which gives people on all sides of this debate a chance to weigh in. That is a good thing. I know my allies on the left will criticize my position, but we cannot allow our political divisions to blind us to the fact that we are taking away students’ ability to get an education without a semblance of due process. What kind of lesson is that?
Here’s Alyssa Milano using sarcasm—a Dr. Seuss-like poem—to mock and denigrate the proposed changes in Title IX. This is deeply misguided (yes, the off-campus regulation is debatable, but in general the changes are good. Note that Milano asserts that the changes “protect predators”. Here we see ideology trumping (excuse the pun) common sense.
Williams College, a very prestigious school in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is currently in the throes of a debate about free speech. In this case the professors (not all of them, but many) want Williams to adopt the Chicago Principles of Free Expression (the “Chicago Principles”). The students, however, don’t want any stinking principles; they want endless discussion about marginalization and oppression of minorities at the College and about how speech of some groups isn’t free, but “erased”. (You can read the student petition, signed by 363 undergraduates, here.) Unlike Berkeley in the Sixties, the roles are reversed here: it’s the faculty rather than the students who want free speech.
I wrote about this last week, posting an endorsement of free speech by Luana Maroja, a biology professor at the school. Now the Williams Record, the school’s student newspaper, has several articles on the controversy. Note especially items 4 and 5, in which students, including the paper’s editorial board itself, either oppose free speech or waffle about it. Each headline (click on screenshots) is followed by a quote from the article (indented).
1.) A news report by two of the paper’s editors on the latest free-speech developments, which gives a pretty objective overview.
2.) A student writes defending free speech. Good for Essence Perry! In view of statement #4, in which angry students connect free speech to racism, I’ll point out that Perry appears to be a woman of color.
To combat bigotry like racism, sexism and xenophobia – beliefs that are rooted in ignorance and fueled by fear – we must be able to tactically invalidate their fallacies and falsities. Remaining ignorant of their arguments allows these ideologies to fester. It is important to understand the roots of hate ideologies; it isn’t acceptable or useful to simply label people as irrational. Yes, at first, it will make students feel uncomfortable. But we need to use that discomfort as a fuel to convince others of our ideas. We need to challenge ourselves to take into consideration their mindset, listen to their opinions to make our own ideas stronger and approachable.
Being “right” isn’t enough anymore; we need to connect and reach people of all types. This can only happen through discourse that provokes us and forces us to reflect on how we can make change.
3.) Luana writes a letter to the paper, largely reiterating what she wrote on this site and supporting the Chicago Principles:
When we hear unfamiliar and unexpected ideas, we are often disoriented and disquieted. This disquiet is the background noise of a brain that is working. After we process and assimilate the unfamiliar idea, and ponder it with our friends, we might find it is worthless and reject it outright. And once in a great while, we might find ourselves won over by a novel idea that we have never considered. If that is not happening to you from time to time, it is a sign that you have closed your mind to all ideas you don’t already accept. I will not attempt to stop those who stick their fingers in their own ears to block out what they don’t want to hear. But I don’t want them sticking their fingers into everyone’s ears.
As I said many times before, I have learned a great deal from hearing from people I deeply disagree with (e.g., creationists and climate denialists). In the end, that is the only way to have your counterarguments become clear, logical and ready to be used when the need comes.
4.) A student group bloviates at length about the dangers of free speech.
The writers, more than 20 undergraduates, are writing under the rubric of “Coalition against racism now” (“CARE Now”). They start out simply rejecting the validity of a free-speech debate, because free speech is, to them, a ploy by racists and oppressors to silence the marginalized. Instead of a debate about free speech, they want the dismantling of racism on the Williams campus. They give no examples of such racism, and from what I hear of the place it’s extraordinarily inclusive. The piece, which you should read to hear the infusion of Marxist and postmodern rhetoric into modern undergraduate life, is a long whine by entitled students playing victims. A few quotes (my comments flush left):
It is vital to say that CARE Now is not interested in entering a debate about free speech in this current moment. A policy or committee that deals solely with free speech or expression is not the solution. Rather, we insist on recognizing the positioning of “free speech” for what it has become: moral ammunition for a conservative backlash to increasing diversity. As a grass-roots collective of student organizers, we are concerned with long-term base-building that far surpasses rebuttals to “free speech” crusaders.
This claim is ridiculous. Over 100 Williams professors signed the original statement endorsing the Chicago Principles, and it’s crazy to call them all of those professors conservatives opposed to increasing diversity.(I suspect that 90% or more of Williams professors are on the Left.) The statement goes on to assert that free speech is useless because it has no effect on dispelling the bigotry they claim to experience (but never describe). But they fail to recognize that without free speech, civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights protestors would never have brought attention to these successful movements. Just imagine where we’d be if opponents of those movements had the right to censor calls for equality!
Prejudice cannot be talked away; more “dialogue” is not the answer. Oppression can’t be fixed with rational debate because oppression is not rational. Once we all agree that bigotry simply is not an “opinion” that can be swiftly invalidated in a “two-way discourse,” that such discourse instead needs to involve dismantling the very institutional and systemic forces that demean and denigrate marginalized students, and that the faculty petition represents institutional anxiety towards a more diverse student and faculty population, then we can take steps and move forward. Perhaps the authors and signers of the faculty petition did not have the intent to harm and silence students and faculty of marginalized identities, but they have chosen to enter a national debate that is harmful, toxic and ultimately must be recognized by the faculty and administration. Intent does not equate to impact.
I will give just one more excerpt, but if you read the whole thing you’ll realize why I say that Williams is going the way of Evergreen State, becoming a place full of entitled and authoritarian students who don’t for a minute consider that they might be wrong, or even want to hear why they might be wrong. They’re too busy stringing together social justice buzzwords and feeling hurt. Have a look at the last sentence:
We do not need yet another committee to investigate how our educational environment can be made more “open and inclusive.” Again, we ask: open, and inclusive for whom? Instead, we challenge the Williams community to consider, together, the fundamental anxieties of “diversity” which underwrite the contemporary discourse of “free speech.” How might we offer forms of redress or protection to those institutionally, historically and currently imperiled bodies-in-question? We can and must make way for alternatives. Until then, all efforts at “dialogue” are but a ruse.
Beyond this statement, we have chosen to not comment on our next steps as we are focusing on building coalition and self-care.
Self-care? I don’t remember Martin Luther King and his allies withdrawing from debate to give themselves “self-care”—except perhaps to dress their wounds from police dogs and billy clubs.
These students instantiate what Stephen Fry was criticizing when he said, in a debate about political correctness (he was in favor of social justice but against its instantiation in “pc”), “My real objection is that I don’t think political correctness works. . .I believe one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective. And political correctness is always obsessed with how right it is without thinking how effective it might be.” (See his statements on the video beginning at 33:40.) These students perfectly illustrate what Fry objects to, for their anger and hectoring will not for a moment change the minds of those professors who endorsed free speech.
5.) The editorial board of the Williams Record waffles and waffles, totally unable to endorse principles of free speech while paying lip service to them. (Click on screenshot):
What is most disturbing about the anti-free speech stand of Williams undergraduates is the mealy-mouth defense of that speech by the student newspaper. While recognizing that they absolutely require free speech to operate as a newspaper, the editors can’t quite bring themselves to endorse the Chicago Principles or even the First Amendment. They want more “nuance” (always a word to raise red flags); they want a dialogue; but they don’t want Williams to endorse the Chicago Principles. They’d rather have endless discussion in which people flaunt their virtue in place of having a WRITTEN COLLEGE POLICY that codifies liberal rules for speech. Voici:
The Record values freedom of expression as the very core of the work we do. We do not intend to lay out our own comprehensive policy on speakers at the College nor to decisively settle this issue; rather, we hope to contribute several important points to this larger debate on campus and across the country. . . .
. . . The Chicago Statement is in many ways a part of a branding strategy that plays upon the attention such disinvitations get [JAC: they’re referring to disinvitations prompted by objections from the Left, particularly against people like Milo Yiannopoulos], despite their relative rarity. It in no way is, nor should be, the be all and end all of principles for free expression on campus.
Here come the “nuances”:
We reject the binary that this debate has created on campus, in which signatories feel pressure to attach their name to only one viewpoint or the other. The question of who and what is given a platform at the College is a nuanced one, and the current debate around whether or not to adopt the Chicago Statement has oversimplified the issue to the detriment of the complexities at stake. . .
. . . Rather than adopt the Chicago Statement, then, we believe that the College should work internally to think about its values on inviting and disinviting speakers, as well as broaden the conversation about freedom of expression on campus. Questions to be considered might not only include speakers on campus, but also what other barriers to freedom of expression exist. What people or perspectives are commonly denied opportunities to speak, write and otherwise express themselves on campus? What categories of people (such as students, untenured or non-voting faculty and staff) do not enjoy the same systemic protection for their speech as tenured faculty do? Freedom of expression is central to our work at the Record and at the College; valuing such freedom, however, is far more complex than endorsing an outside set of guidelines entrenched in inflammatory debate. We ought to take advantage of the College’s immense resources and talent to foster an intentional dialogue about the many facets of this issue within our community.
What evidence is there that some categories of Williams people “do not enjoy the same systemic protection for their speech as tenured faculty do”? After all, look at all the anti-free-speech stuff that the students have already published, both in the newspaper and on The Feminist Wire. Who has been denied opportunities to speak on campus? (Well, there was one right-winger mentioned in the first news report. . .).
It is shameful that a newspaper’s editors dissemble and dissimulate in this way, when what they should be doing is endorsing the First Amendment as construed by the courts. That after all, is what the Chicago Principles codify. The editors just can’t help hedging their bets by rambling on about “denial of free speech,” when in fact I strongly suspect that nobody at Williams has been denied free speech.
This craven waffling is not limited to the Williams Record. Our own student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, ignoring my letter urging them to do so, adamantly refused to endorse the free-speech principles of its own university! It doesn’t get much more risible (and depressing) than that.
Today we’re featuring the insect photos of Mark Sturtevant as well as a single photo from PCC(E). Mark’s captions are indented.
Here are more pictures of arthropods from the summer of 2017. The first pictures are of a kind of bee, and it is not being nice. It is a kind of ‘cuckoo’ bee, a parasitic bee that lays its eggs in the nests of other bees. Like many of its kind, it is not particularly fuzzy since it has no need to gather pollen for its young. Rather, it makes other bees do that for it. This one is likely in the genus Nomada, but I am not sure of the species. In any case, the cuckoo bees in this group typically parasitize Andrenid bees that nest in the ground. This one was carefully inspecting a small area, and then it dug into the ground. It later reappeared after several minutes, cleaned up, and repeated the process. Seems pretty suspicious to me!
The next two pictures are of a female blue dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) that was a regular visitor to a garden stake in my back yard. You can see that she allowed me to get surprisingly close.
One day when I was on my way out of a park, I just happened to glance down to notice a large Chinese praying mantis (Tenodera sinensis). This is a male, and isn’t he adorable? At one point a robber fly unwisely landed next to it, and so I watched with bated breath to see if the mantis had a meal. It struck a fraction of a second after the last picture, but the fly sort of slithered out from the raptorial arms and escaped.
During the summer I visited my mother, who now lives in a retirement community near our home town in Iowa. When I was growing up, my best arthropod friends included the numerous black-and-yellow argiope garden spiders (Argiope aurantia). I recalled that these were bigger than the ones where I live now, and I soon found that my recollections were true. They are bigger in Iowa! The last two pictures are of a welcome site that was very much part of my summer days while growing up: big female garden spiders next to a lake. I used to handle them and let them crawl all over me. The last picture shows what happened when a large grasshopper, disturbed by my approach, jumped and landed in the web of one of the spiders. The spider quickly wrapped it up and delicately delivered a lethal bite. The picture is one of my favorites from that summer.
I later persuaded my youngest son to come out to see the spiders. He was quite impressed as he had never seen garden spiders before. To teach him what they could do, I caught another grasshopper and casually dropped it into a web, all the while chatting about what was happening. I had done this hundreds of times while growing up, and it was always fascinating. After the spider had envenomated the prey, I glanced at my son and was surprised to see that he was slightly aghast about the whole thing.
It’s December 6, 2018, and a fasting day for me but National Gazpacho Day for others. But gazpacho isn’t American, so this is blatant cultural appropriation. Don’t you dare even eat the stuff without thinking about the oppression and suffering of the Spanish people. It’s also Independence Day in Finland and National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada.
On this day in 1534, the city of Quito, Ecuador was founded by Spanish settlers. On December 6, 1877, the first edition of The Washington Post was published. Exactly seven years later, and in the same city, the construction of the Washington Monument was completed. On December 6, 1884, the world’s first licensed taxicabs began running in the city of London.
It’s Finland Independence Day because on this date in 1917 Finland declared independence from Soviet Russia. And on that same day in the same year, the huge Halifax Explosion took place, when a ship collision detonated high explosives carried by one of them. The blast killed over 1900 people, and when I visited Halifax a few years ago I still heard about it. As Wikipedia reports:
Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius, including the community of Richmond, were obliterated. A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels (including Imo, which was washed ashore by the ensuing tsunami), and scattered fragments of Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage. A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the community of the Mi’kmaq First Nation who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations.
On this day in 1933, U.S. district court judge John M. Woolsey ruled that Joyce’s novel Ulysses was not obscene. One of several First-Amendment cases decided favorably by Woolsey, you can find his ruling here. It ends with Woolsey nothing that he’d given the book to two of his friends for their opinion:
Without letting either of my assessors know what my decision was, I gave to each of them the legal definition of obscene and asked each whether in his opinion “Ulysses” was obscene within that definition.
I was interested to find that they both agreed with my opinion: That reading “Ulysses” in its entirety, as a book must be read on such a test as this, did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts, but that its net effect on them was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men and women.
It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned. Such a test as I have described, therefore, is the only proper test of obscenity in the case of a book like “Ulysses” which is a sincere and serious attempt to devise a new literary method for the observation and description of mankind.
I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes “Ulysses” is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that, whilst in many places the effect of “Ulysses” on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.
“Ulysses” may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.
In another case of a controversial book, it was on this day in 1953 that Vladimir Nabokov finished his great novel Lolita. On December 6, 1956, the violent “blood in the water” water polo match took place between the USSR and Hungary in Melbourne, Australia (note that December is summer in the southern hemisphere). This was, of course, at the time of Hungary’s 1956 Revolution against Russian domination. Here’s a grainy video of part of that match.
On this day in 1969, during the Altamont Free Concert, a Hells Angels (the motorcycle gang was hired by the Rolling Stones as security) stabbed to death eighteen-year old man Meredith Hunter. Here’s a video of the incident, with Mick Jagger looking on, that appears in the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter. The man who stabbed Meredith was acquitted on grounds of self defense, for Meredith had a gun.
Finally, exactly 20 years ago on this day, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela. He died of cancer in 2013 while he was still President.
Notables born on this day include Alfred Eistenstaedt and Gunnar Myrdal (both 1898), Eliot Porter (1901), Baby Face Nelson (1908), Dave Brubeck (1920), Richard Speck (1941), and JoBeth Williams (1948). Porter was a great nature photographer whom I tried to imitate when I was younger. Here’s one of his works:
Those who died on December 6 include Jefferson Davis (1889), Harold Ross (1951), Honus Wagner (1955), B. R. Ambedkar (1956), Philip Berrigan (2002), and Johnny Hallyday (one year ago).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wonders why humans can’t just eat raw mice and birds instead of laboriously making a fruitcake, shown below:
Hili: I can’t overcome my astonishment.A: What about?Hili: The effort humans put into baking of cakes.
Hili: Nie mogę wyjść ze zdumienia.
Ja: Nad czym?Hili: Nad wysiłkiem jaki ludzie wkładają w pieczenie ciast.
Poor grammar of the day(with extra victimhood), from HuffPo, of course:
A tweet from reader Nilou: a baby otter drinks his bottle:
https://twitter.com/MeetAnimals/status/1070128248422576129
This tweeter’s real name is Elle Maruska, and she often produces funny and/or endearing series of tweets, like the one of the 15 best antelopes. Here are two of those:
7. Gerenuk
God: I wanna make another antelope
Angel: ok
God: but like, made out of bendy straws
Angel: what?
God: and pipe cleaners
Angel:…uh
God: AND CHILDREN'S DREAMS https://t.co/0cNnq0MoBd pic.twitter.com/qFEZKLvCMR— Elle Em (they/them) (@ellle_em) November 28, 2018
Tweets from Matthew:
Part duck, part cat? Meet the Redhead (Aythya americana). During courtship rituals, males are known for their flexible “head throw” displays: a suitor will bend his neck back toward his tail and then quickly snap it forward while making a “mee-ow” call! pic.twitter.com/dnyrmXoCxS
— American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH) December 5, 2018
Here’s the male’s vocalization; you can hear a few meows (see the head bob here):
This is a close contender for Tweet of the Month (also sent by Grania):
https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1070411841447317504
Some evidence that ichthyosaurs (and perhaps other dinosaurs) might have been warm blooded (“homeothermic”):
!?! Fossilized blubber from an ichthyosaur!! https://t.co/7e7bRzJdvf pic.twitter.com/IKyDgUTXVs
— Professor John R. Hutchinson (@JohnRHutchinson) December 5, 2018
More evidence that cats are liquid:
If I fits, then out I slips… pic.twitter.com/VkPmZczB0G
— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) December 5, 2018
Tweets from Grania. This one originated with Matthew but was forwarded to me by Grania:
Rejected verses from “A Hard Rain”. https://t.co/ORFaaearNR
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) December 5, 2018
This bald eagle seems to lose a bit of its dignity in the water:
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1070388462216466434
Have a close look at this one, which requires clicking on it and making the photos big. The tweets are real:
Reunions are so awkward pic.twitter.com/m5tvLZ075h
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 5, 2018
Well, I don’t know whether whales are grateful for being helped, but here’s a group of wonderful people who spent a lot of time cutting an exhausted humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) free from a nylon gill net. After they succeed, the whale breaches repeatedly. The narrator is sure that bespeaks gratitude, and who knows? But we should be grateful that people like this exist.
When I got my new driver’s license last week, I was asked if I still wanted to be an organ donor (that stipulation is put on the license). I said, “Of course.” There’s no reason not to be a donor: it doesn’t cost you anything since you’re dead and don’t need the organs (unless you’re the kind of Christian who thinks he needs a heart and corneas to meet Jesus), and it gives you some satisfaction that even after death you can help someone else.
People call that an “altruistic” gesture, but it isn’t, really—it isn’t “cultural”altruism” and it isn’t “biological altruism”. “Cultural altruism” is simply sacrificing something you want to help someone else, without getting anything of equal value in return for your sacrifice. Examples are people like volunteer firemen—women are included here, I just don’t know if “firepersons” is a word)—who risk their lives for no pay, and soldiers who fall on grenades to save their fellows. In such cases it’s hard to make an argument that what you get back is equal to losing your life. Another example is Lennie Skutnik, who risked his life in 1982 diving into the Potomac to save the life of a passenger in the water after the Air Florida Flight 90 crash.
But things get a bit dicier with lesser acts of “heroism”. If you tutor illiterate adults to help them learn, as I once did, was that altruistic? After all, I got a great deal of satisfaction from watching people learn to read as adults, so was what I reaped less than what I sowed? How do you know? After all, I get bragging rights (I just bragged), and even if others didn’t know about it, there’s still an internal sense of satisfaction. Those who donate big sums of money to colleges to build buildings with the donor’s name on them are in the same position: they have lots of dosh and don’t lose much—but they get to see their name on a building, and have everybody refer to that building as “Cowles Hall”. Gestures of generosity are often publicized, so they’re less “unselfish” than you think.
It’s hard to judge most acts as “altruistic” since the currency of action versus personal satisfaction aren’t comparable. One could claim, for instance, that “everyone does what they want, which is more or less a claim that you always reap at least as much as you sow. Nevertheless, you have to admire those who risk their lives, like Skutnik, to help others, for he could have died doing that, and would reap no reward. It is for these reasons that I don’t like to use the word “altruism” as shorthand for “doing something costly”.
Biological altruism is very different, and has to do with genes rather than emotional satisfaction. (People are always mixing up biological and cultural evolution, and mixing up both with kin selection, as I note below.) Biological altruism is a genetically coded behaviors for actions that lower your lifetime reproductive success while enhancing the reproductive success of some other member of your species (or even of another species). If fighting fires had a genetic component, volunteer firemen would be an example of biological altruism, for they lower (on average) their net reproductive success while enhancing that of the people whose lives they save. I doubt, though, whether there’s a genetic component to fighting fires, though there may be for risk-taking.
A better example would be a baboon risking its own life to save the life of a baboon from another troop. Or an individual warning other unrelated individuals that a predator is near, and risking its life by so doing (perhaps giving an “alarm call” focuses the predator’s attention on you). There are alarm calls, but they may incur no reproductive cost (after all, you’ve already seen the predator), or they may help save your relatives more than others, in which case their evolution could be understood by kin selection (see below).
Biologically altruistic behaviors are not expected to evolve under Darwinian natural selection, because the genes promoting them would be eliminated by selection from populations. The only way they can evolve is by group selection—groups with higher proportion of genetic altruists may do better than groups having a lower proportion. And although within each group altruists are selected against, that might be outweighed by the higher proliferation and longer persistence of groups that contain more altruists. If the “group-persistence-and-reproduction” effect is strong enough, it could outweigh selection within groups and increase the proportion of altruists in a species.
But that kind of group selection would have to be strong, and even if it did work, after the altruists come to dominate a species the genes for altruism will continue to be selected out of the species. Altruism is genetically unstable under group selection.
Because of this, we don’t expect to see much true biological altruism in animals. And we don’t: I’m not aware of any examples in which an individual reduces its lifetime reproductive success (“fitness”) to help another individual without gaining a genetic benefit. Even in cases that look like altruism (creches in which mothers suckle young of other individuals), there’s always a potential individual-selection explanation (reciprocity is one: someone may suckle your cubs if you suckle theirs). The altruism that we see in humans is almost certainly the result of social and moral conditioning rather than of genes encoding “altruistic behaviors.”
What about helping your kids at the expense of what you want to do? Well, that’s not altruism at all, but the result of a form of Darwinian selection: kin selection. Genes for behaviors that help your kids (nursing, parental care, etc.), so long as they’re not too detrimental to your own future reproduction, will spread in populations through the offspring that are helped. That’s why many animals show parental care, which isn’t a sacrifice in reproduction (though it is in energy!), but an adaptively favored trait.
The take-home lesson: “altruism” in humans isn’t the same thing as biological altruism.