My research group at Harvard University focuses on altruism, or why creatures sacrifice themselves for the common good. SchrГ¶dingerвЂ™s call to action inspired his colleagues to look at the building blocks of life at all scales, from the diminutive DNA molecule to schooling fish and the construction of anthills. Seventy-five years later, the biophysics revolution is ongoing.

23 Most good is typically understood as the greatest amount of reduction in death or suffering due to lack of basic necessities (adequate food, water. See Ethical Egoism by Nathan Nobis for an introduction to egoism. The survival of altruism and the philosophical implications surrounding it.Contrast altruism with ethical egoism, an exclusive concern for oneвЂ™s own self, potentially at the expense of others. Can we explain altruism by casting humans as atoms and molecules, and societies or populations as solids, liquids or gases?This paper explores the concept of altruism and connects it to game theory.

Therefore, if both players defect, their personal balance is unchanged if both players cooperate, they each gain $4 if one cooperates and the other defects, the former loses $1 and the latter gains $5.The word altruism literally means other-ism and it is the philosophy of doing things purely for the benefit of others, without expecting to get anything.The rules at work are fairly simple, and we can easily imagine some large-scale consequences. Defecting equates to doing absolutely nothing. If Ayla cooperates with Babak, she pays a small cost, say $1, to a central bank that immediately gives $5 to Babak. Both must pick one of two options: cooperate or defect.

If a cooperator and a defector compare pots, the cooperator will always be disappointed вЂ“ a defector gets $5 per cooperator in the room, but a cooperator gets $4 per cooperator and loses $1 per defector. Next, imagine that individuals are allowed to compare their respective profits every now and again. Without any actual physical interaction, thereвЂ™s no way to recognise an individual on the вЂother sideвЂ™, so everyone picks either cooperate or defect, and sticks with it for many interactions. However, global cooperation is not so easy to attain, which is where things get interesting.Imagine a large number of individuals, interacting according to this cooperate/defect model, but unable to see or speak to one another. WhatвЂ™s good for the community as a whole also seems good for the individual.

Secondly, we might be naive about which individuals interact. Our ideas about the microscopic rules of interaction might be wrong. The first is that we donвЂ™t behave the same way around everybody: weвЂ™re more likely to cooperate with friends and family than with strangers. Citizens can make sacrifices during blackouts and droughts for the sake of maintaining the flow of electricity and water, and people will occasionally risk their lives in order to help total strangers.It turns out that our thought experiment has two fatal flaws. Despite the apparently law-like tendency towards selfishness, we still see examples of cooperation and self-sacrifice all around us, even when individuals are вЂinvisibleвЂ™ to each other.

In the thought experiment, we often encounter people we hardly know, much like a hot gas of molecules crashing into one another, or forcing our way through a crowd to board the subway. Similarly, we can think of a kind of вЂsocial temperatureвЂ™ that dictates the rate at which people interact, and how unfamiliar they are to us. The population structure of ice (where molecules are unmoving and can вЂseeвЂ™ only a few others nearby) will produce a different set of interactions to water (where molecules often вЂseeвЂ™ the same close neighbours often, but also move around and explore other neighbourhoods) or steam (where there are no familiar neighbours, and molecules careen about wildly).Raising the temperature of a solid will eventually turn it into a liquid, and then a gas. Think about H2O molecules bumping into one another. Martin Nowak is the head of our lab he says in his book SuperCooperators (2011), co-authored with Roger Highfield, that you can look at population structure as you would the phases of a physical substance.

Here individuals belong to one or more groups and can change their memberships as they like. Some networks require a reward of $1.05, for example, and are pretty great conductors of altruism some demand $100 or more, and are very difficult to activate.What about вЂliquidвЂ™ populations? In an earlier paper, we examined how cooperation conducts in supple social materials such as clubs, workplaces, coffee shops and artistic movements. Similarly, a recent paper in Nature written by my colleagues predicted how large a financial reward (the electricity) is required for altruism to вЂturn onвЂ™ and spread through a group (the semiconductor). In semiconductors, changes in the microscopic structure of a metal can affect how much electricity must be applied to вЂactivateвЂ™ it, such that the amount of current passing through jumps from zero to a particular number.

However, by studying each of these phases as physicists, we come away approaching a recipe for altruism вЂ“ rules for certain structures that might foster cooperation. We have strong ties that we occasionally form and break we join and leave organisations quite freely we have hundreds of micro-interactions with a gaseous mix of strangers in trains and airports. If moving is costly, cope with defectors for as long as you can before leaving otherwise, bail and take as many cooperators with you as possible.Of course, the real social fabric is a complex mix of populations in many phases. But when there are barriers to migration, rules-of-thumb start to appear.

Scientists still have a long way to travel to understand the physics of biological systems вЂ“ but I like to think SchrГ¶dinger might be pleased by how far we have come. Mobility and flexibility put a brake on defection, but we canвЂ™t have so much as to create a gaseous regime where cooperation is stifled.

Altruism Philosophy