Haldane's Principle
Updated 2026-08-05
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Associated with the geneticist J. B. S. Haldane, whose work on kin selection and altruism produced the famous remark that he would lay down his life for more than two brothers or eight cousins. The arithmetic follows from the coefficients of relatedness, since two brothers carry about as many shared genes as one's own body, and eight cousins carry the same. The core claim is that self-sacrifice can be evolutionarily rational among relatives. The qualification is that the label covers several distinct claims and must be read in context.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Use Relatedness Check: Estimate the expected benefit to shared interests before accepting personal risk. - Use Cost Comparison: Compare the number of lives saved with the relational cost of the sacrifice. - Use Context Tagging: Verify which Haldane claim is meant, since the label covers several distinct ideas.
Anchor fast decisions
Natural selection acts on genes rather than individuals, so a gene that causes sacrifice can spread if the recipients are likely to carry copies of it. The probability that a relative carries the same variant falls with the degree of relatedness, so the number of relatives that must be saved rises as kinship thins. Altruism toward close kin therefore needs no group-level explanation, since the arithmetic of shared copies makes it advantageous at the level of the gene.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldaneverified
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