![]() ![]() To illustrate this point, take cheating in rhizobia, soil bacteria that live in the roots of plants - specifically legumes. And during this ongoing evolutionary arms race, to quote Darwin, "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." As such, it spurs the emergence of counter-cheating tactics, which in turn beget counter-counter-cheating strategies, ad infinitum. The reason is simple in concept: cheating favors the cheater and hurts the cheated. Less well-known, however, is that cheating also serves as a potent selective force that drives evolution on its own. So, cheating flourishes in nature as a direct result of natural selection. As a result, even though it might seem brazen and despicable to our human social sensibilities, cheating thrives in the biological world. Furthermore, while freeing cheating from our moral consideration, evolution punishes those who forgo it as a strategic option when using it can increase their fitness. Related: Why haven't all primates evolved into humans?Īny trait - be it morphological, physiological, behavioral, or genetic - can prevail as long as it can boost its owner's Darwinian fitness, defined and measured as the number of offspring born and raised to adulthood. It certainly makes no distinction between prosocial cooperation and antisocial manipulation, because all that matters is what works to enhance survival and reproduction. It is, instead, an unmoral, heartless process that proceeds pragmatically without any concern over ethical preferences, honor codes, or value systems. ![]() Why is cheating so common in the biological world? The answer: evolution is not a Socratic philosopher. On the contrary, we find that cheating is ubiquitous in nature at all levels. How likely is it that we would find a heroic martyr, willing to die for the sake of trust and honesty, in the natural world? Extremely unlikely - in fact, no known examples exist. If you think the man's choice is foolish, congratulations! You've just saved the life of Socrates, the Greek philosopher who chose death over breaching the trust between a citizen and the state. We also share information about your use of our website with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.Why is cheating so common in the biological world? The answer: evolution is not a Socratic philosopher We use cookies to personalize content and ads, provide social media features, and analyze the use of our website. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. Microsoft Advertising uses these cookies to anonymously identify user sessions. It also serves behaviorally targeted ads on other websites, similar to most specialized online marketing companies. The Facebook cookie is used by it's parent company Meta to monitor behavior on this website in order to serve targeted ads to its users when they are logged into its services. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The purpose of Google Analytics is to analyze the traffic on our website. Security (protection against CSRF Cross-Site Request Forgery) Stores login sessions (so that the server knows that this browser is logged into a user account) which cookies were accepted and rejected). Storage of the selection in the cookie banner (i.e. being associated with traffic metrics and page response times. Random ID which serves to improve our technical services by i.e. Server load balancing, geographical distribution and redundancy ![]()
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