I rarely post off-topic, but I feel that this is an interesting enough science fiction parable to merit note here on a genomics blog —a subject gradually stretching what it means to be ethical.

“Three World Collide,” by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

The Xenopsychologist was two hundred and fifty years old.  She looked much older, now, as as she spoke.  “In terms of evolutionary psychology… I think I understand what happened.  The ancestors of the Babyeaters were a species that gave birth to hundreds of offspring in a spawning season, like Terrestrial fish; what we call r-strategy reproduction.  But the ancestral Babyeaters discovered… crystal-tending, a kind of agriculture… long before humans did.  They were around as smart as chimpanzees, when they started farming.  The adults federated into tribes so they could guard territories and tend crystal.  They adapted to pen up their offspring, to keep them around in herds so they could feed them.  But they couldn’t produce enough crystal for all the children.

“It’s a truism in evolutionary biology that group selection can’t work among non-relatives.  The exception is if there are enforcement mechanisms, punishment for defectors – then there’s no individual advantage to cheating, because you get slapped down.  That’s what happened with the Babyeaters.  They didn’t restrain their individual reproduction because the more children they put in the tribal pen, the more children of theirs were likely to survive.  But the total production of offspring from the tribal pen was greater, if the children were winnowed down, and the survivors got more individual resources and attention afterward.  That was how their species began to shift toward a k-strategy, an individual survival strategy.  That was the beginning of their culture.

“And anyone who tried to cheat, to hide away a child, or even go easier on their own children during the winnowing – well, the Babyeaters treated the merciful parents the same way that human tribes treat their traitors.

“They developed psychological adaptations for enforcing that, their first great group norm.  And those psychological adaptations, those emotions, were reused over the course of their evolution, as the Babyeaters began to adapt to their more complex societies.  Honor, friendship, the good of our tribe – the Babyeaters acquired many of the same moral adaptations as humans, but their brains reused the emotional circuitry of infanticide to do it.

“The Babyeater word for good means, literally, to eat children.”

The Xenopsychologist paused there, taking a sip of water.  Pale faces looked back at her from around the table.

The Lady Sensory spoke up.  “I don’t suppose… we could convince them they were wrong about that?”