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0 pointsgoodpoint3y ago0 comments

Many species are more social and cooperative that people think.

I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.

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nonstickcoating3y ago

I recommend Kropotkin's book about Mutual Aid regarding this topic. Disregarding his obvious political affiliation he is one of the first critics of the then-emerging social-darwinist readings of animal behaviour with regards to Evolution and therefore deals with this topic quite extensively.

He was a zoologist apart from all the other topics he had time to deal in because of his noble heritage. Here is the wikipedia article [0] since I do not know how HN regards links to e.g. libgen.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin

throwanem3y ago

That'd make him one of the last of the old-line ethologists, before the dark interregnum of the behaviorist scum began - I respect Kropotkin considerably more now than I did five minutes ago. Perhaps I'll read him after all.

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