cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23179461
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Ants definitely arent complex enough to have empathy but still do things "for the group". Mice are much smarter, but this behaviour doesnt necessarily require empathy just the understanding that individual survival chance goes up when you cooperate. Definitely cute tho. :)
Empathy is a useful base emotion. It's one of the mental skill sets that set mammals apart from other animals (though birds also seem to have something very similar). Ants etc can coordinate, but it's hard coded. Empathy allows for the dynamic adjustments that allow for cooperative mammals groups.
Humans are just particularly good at it, since we likely used it as a hunting method. Endurance hunting requires the ability to track, if you lose contact with the prey. Empathy allows a hunter to get into the head of the prey, and so predict their actions.
Rats could have complex logical planning thoughts on enlightened self interest. Humans generally don't, however. It's a lot easier to have a drive to take low effort actions for a large gain to another. Combine that with a basic understanding of reciprocal payoff and you have basic empathy.
I'd be interested to see an experiment into spite. Tweak the experiment so that 1 rat believes the other chose not to let it out, when given the option. Will it then help when the situation reverses? Or will it spite the other rat and leave them trapped?
Rats, not mice, the former being quite a bit smarter :) But is there any reason to assume our human empathy comes from a different base urge than theirs? If so, why can’t both situations share the term empathy?
I guess thats true, it still kinda depends on whether its an instinctual behaviour or an actual selfless decision. The outcome might be the same, but the motivation does make a difference when it comes to human relationships imo.
But how do we know humans are acting on an actual selfless decision and not instinctual behaviour? There is some evidence that, in some situations at least, our body/instinct can act first and we just end up rationalizing that we wanted to perform those actions to ourselves, as we are performing them. But that’s a bit of a thought experiment, the truth is, it’s very hard to know. And we can show empathy in very abstracted situations as well, where instinct is probably less of a factor.
Interesting! That sounds a bit like the experiment Roger Sperry did, where multiple pls brains were split and one of the half's just kept on rationalize everything the other half did even if it didn't make sense to it.
Something similar happens all the time to me. My mood drops first and my brain looks for a shitty thing to focus on as a reason for the drop
Empathy seems like it would be an easier thing to have than an understanding of the concept of self interest and thinking through how to achieve it logically
who says ants are not complex enough for empathy? most of our stuff is basically chemicals.
Seriously. Ants are one of the few animals that pass the mirror test. It's not a huge leap to believe that a species that can recognize itself, is part of a large codependent social group, and is intent on remaining in that social group (as evidenced by the mirror test), would naturally be inclined toward empathy for its fellow ants.
mirror test is bullshit. it test visual acuity more than anything. thats why animals that don't primarily use vision fail it. If it did work its about higher order thinking whereas empathy is an emotion and therefore likely chemical in nature.