I'm too tired to lay my thoughts out completely and coherently, but I'll try to say what I'm wondering about. I was reading an article in the New Yorker about biologists and mathematicians wrangling over a formula to describe the evolutionary function of altruism when I read that, [paraphrased badly], "...within a group individuals without altruism have an advantage but between groups the altruistic group has the advantage over the non-altruistic group."

I thought, "Hmmm, well to me that means an altruistic group's makeup would gradually move to the non-altruistic side through genetics and mimicry and that a tipping point would be reached eventually where the group itself turns non-altruistic - then the seesaw would move in the opposite direction." Then I wondered if that explained the rise and fall of nations. As the creep burden increases in the government the nation's overall suckage would increase.

Labels: Cogitation