My southbound East Coast (Virgin) (06:32 Darlington to Kings Cross) was delayed this morning for around 40 minutes, halted and slow-running until we got past Retford. Apparently some chav had nicked the signal cables.
Anyway, the extra 40 minutes on board meant I could listen to Start-the-Week following on from Today on BBC R4 before we pulled into KGX. A good one – despite guests from 4 different fields – the focus was altruism and the good life. Worth a listen.
The take-away for my agenda was more group-level evolution – what’s good for the group is good for the individuals, even if each and any individual takes a cost hit – small or large – for the benefit of the whole. Good to hear Sloan-Wilson pointing out Dawkins disagreement. The key was communication and group sizes. Too public do-gooding in too large a group makes if difficult to keep real account of whether the doing is really investment justifying less-good deeds less-publicly later. With many groups across multi-levels any “utilitarian” cascade of accounting is not really an objective matter.