Finished [Pokémon 3D] Tornado9797's Pokémon Lottery

[Splitzblue]

Splitzblue should be arrested. Isn't streaking illegal? Public indecency or something?

What are you even talking about? I'm just trying to complete the incomplete PokeDex!
Other than that...
@Tornado9797
I'm in.

 

[Darklord13]

I'm getting kind of tired of posting this in parts,so here is the whole essay,unedited.I hope i'm not breaking any rules.
Have fun with this one tornado.

Spoiler

Our eyes can be powerless against visual illusions, with our underlying neural machinery leading us to predictably erroneous conclusions about the size or shape of an object (1). In a similar fashion, our empathic feelings for others, coupled with a desire to be liked, parochial feelings for our in-group, emotional contagion, motivated reasoning, selective exposure, con- firmation bias, discounting, allegiance bias, the Einstellung (“set”) effect, and even an egocentric belief that we know what is best for others, can lead us into powerful and often irrational illusions of helping (2). In other words, people’s own good intentions, coupled with a variety of cognitive biases, can sometimes blind them to the deleterious consequences of their actions. This dynamic of pathological altruism involves subjectively prosocial acts that are objectively antisocial. (Naturally, there are many objective perspectives. One seemingly objective observer’s verdict of antisocial terrorism can be another’s verdict of prosocial altruism, with the words “objective,” “antisocial,” “prosocial,” “terrorism,” and even “altruism” itself varying in meaning depending on the perspective of the putatively objective observer.) At the core of pathological altruism are actions or reactions based on incomplete access to, or inability to process, the wide range of information necessary to make prudent decisions that align with cultural values associated with altruistic behavior. Various psychological, religious, philosophical, biological, or ideological biases could lead a person or group to misinterpret, selectively discount, or overly emphasize certain aspects of relevant information. Thus, pathologically altruistic behavior can emerge from a mix of accidental, subconscious, or deliberate causes. [“Altruism,” in the context of this paper, is used to signify wellmeaning behavior intended to promote the welfare of another; thus altruistic behavior may be motivated by concern for the other, egoistic concerns for the self, or both (e.g., “it makes me feel good to help them”) (3). “Pathological” is used in the sense of being excessive or abnormal, without implying any clinical diagnosis.]Pathological altruism can be conceived as behavior in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable. More precisely, this paper defines pathological altruism as an observable behavior or personal tendency in which the explicit or implicit subjective motivation is intentionally to promote the welfare of another, but instead of overall beneficial outcomes the altruism instead has unreasonable (from the relative perspective of an outside observer) negative consequences to the other or even to the self. This definition does not suggest that there are absolutes but instead suggests that, within a particular context, pathological altruism is the situation in which intended outcomes and actual outcomes (within the framework of how the relative values of “negative” and “positive” are conceptualized), do not mesh. A working definition of a pathological altruist then might be a person who sincerely engages in what he or she intends to be altruistic acts but who (in a fashion that can be reasonably anticipated) harms the very person or group he or she is trying to help; or a person who, in the course of helping one person or group, inflicts reasonably foreseeable harm to others beyond the person or group being helped; or a person who in reasonably anticipatory way becomes a victim of his or her own altruistic actions (2). The attempted altruism, in other words, results in objectively foreseeable and unreasonable harm to the self, to the target of the altruism, or to others beyond the target. Examples at an interpersonal level include the codependent wife murdered by the husband she has refused to leave, or the overly attentive “helicopter” father who threatens to sue instructors that give well-deserved bad grades, or the mother who attempts to protect her son by refusing to vaccinate him and who consequently fuels a loss of herd immunity underpinning a local whooping cough epidemic in which an infant dies. Very different personalities can become entangled in pathologies of altruism, ranging from the sensitive hyperempath, to the normal person, to the utterly selfabsorbed narcissist. These differing personalities share genuinely good intentions that play out in detrimental ways. Sometimes there is a blurry line as to whether a problematic outcome for an altruistic action is reasonably foreseeable. This ambiguity can make it difficult to distinguish between altruism and pathological altruism. For example, let’s say that, while altruistically helping a friend move to another apartment, you accidentally dropped and broke an expensive statue. Were your actions pathologically altruistic? In the conceptions of pathological altruism outlined here, no. Your altruism would not have been pathologically altruistic, because the bad outcome—thedropped statue—arose as a very unlikely and difficult-to-predict outcome of your good intentions. In a different scenario, however, let’s say your brother becomes addicted to painkillers. When he goes through withdrawal, you get more painkillers to help him feel better, and you cover for him when his work supervisor calls. You genuinely want to help your brother, but the reality is that you are enabling his addiction. In this case, your well-meaning altruism is pathological. These examples help clarify the concept of pathological altruism, but similar situations could be more ambiguous. What if you had dropped your friend’s expensive statue after you had consumed a bottle of wine? Or what if your painkiller-addicted brother was waiting to be enrolled in a treatment program? We yearn for the definitive in conceptual definitions, but the reality is that there always will be a residual uncertainty. Motives are also important. Well-meaning intentions can lead either to altruism or to pathological altruism. Self-servingly malevolent intentions, on the other hand, often have little or nothing to do with altruism, even though such malevolence can easily be cloaked with pretensions of altruism. A con artist soliciting for a “charity” that he uses to personally enrich himself would not be a pathological altruist. Both altruism and empathy have rightly received an extraordinary amount of research attention. This focus has permitted better characterization of these qualities and how they might have evolved. However, it has also served to reify their value without realistic consideration about when those qualities contain the potential for significant harm. Part of the reason that pathologies of altruism have not been studied extensively or integrated into the public discourse appears to be fear that such knowledge might be used to discount the importance of altruism. Indeed, there has been a long history in science of avoiding paradigm-shifting approaches, such as Darwinian evolution and acknowledgment of the influence of biological factors on personality, arising in part from fears that such knowledge somehow would diminish human altruistic motivations. Such fears always have proven unfounded. However, these doubts have minimized scientists’ ability to see the widespread, vitally important nature of pathologies of altruism. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt notes, “Morality binds and blinds” (4). Relevant here are the remarks of historian of science Thomas Kuhn, who observed that when a paradigm shift occurs, scientists see data for the first time (5). Such is the case with pathologies of altruism, which are not the commonly supposed rare aberrations, “but rather a behavior that overwhelmingly occurs in human social intercourse” (6). It therefore is realistic to encourage exploration of a new, scientifically based paradigm acknowledging that, even given differing semantic parsings, subjectively altruistic feelings sometimes can be objectively problematic and even ultimately antisocial. The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests. Indeed, truly altruistic actions may sometimes appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced “helpful” behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions (7, 8). Pathological altruism can operate not only at the individual level but in many different aspects and levels of society, and between societies. Recognizing that feelings of altruism do not necessarily constitute objective altruism provides a new way of framing and understanding altruism. This previously unrecognizedperspective in turn may open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a framework to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior. The thesis of pathological altruism emphasizes the value of true altruism, self-sacrifice, and other forms of prosociality in human life. At the same time, it acknowledges the potential harm from cognitive blindness that arises whenever groups treat a concept as sacred (4). The public as a whole would benefit from knowledge that what might feel subjectively altruistic may have negative unintended consequences that both worsen the situation that was meant to be improved and impact other areas negatively. Even the government can work more efficiently when voters and legislators realize that attempts to help others come with very real costs and can have tradeoffs that worsen the very concerns that were meant to be alleviated. Along these lines, then, this paper suggests that pathologies of altruism and of empathic caring should receive concentrated research focus. Specific recommendations are outlined as well. As an underlying motivation, we should remember that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was an unparalleled improvement in public health as the entire discipline of medicine came under scientific scrutiny. Medical therapies that at one time were thought to be “obviously” beneficial, such as bloodletting and blistering, were finally subjected to review that found them wanting. In a similar vein, if we are truly to help others, this new century at last forms the time for scientists to subject altruistic modern social engineering and activism efforts, as well as academic disciplines that hinge on “helping,” and finally, altruism itself, to far more disciplined scientific scrutiny. It is time for dispassionate exploration of how altruism and empathy themselves can inadvertently bias our efforts to create truly cooperative modern, complex societies.

Evolutionary Considerations

In one sense, pathological altruism can be thought of as a pattern of nurturing or beneficial behavior with evolutionarily unsuccessful consequences. Evidence for antecedents of such behavior can be seen in the animal world; examples include the unwitting hosts of brood-parasitism, as with the wood thrush who devotes substantial resources to raising the offspring of cowbirds. Such antecedent behavior is manifest at even a genetic and molecular level. For example, beneficial replication processes within a cell can be co-opted by viruses (9). Consequent cell lysis or exocytosis allows the new viral bodies to spread the contagion. Molecular perspectives, in fact, can inform how we perceive altruism and cooperative behavior. A stable molecular bond has the property that the bound state is a lower-energy configuration than the unbound state. A physical system tends toward the configuration that minimizes potential energy. Such “cooperative” behavior often needs an initial activation energy—that is, it comes at cost—but the resulting state resides more naturally and easily at the lower energy level for the newly formed single, integrated, cooperating entity. (This entity may or may not have replicative abilities.) In these situations, pathological altruism or its antecedents might be thought of as arising in two ways. First, it can arise when other entities—systems that are not, or are no longer, integrated into the first cooperating entity—are able to tap into the lowered energy states and possible replicative abilities produced by the first cooperating entity. Tapping into those lowered energy states may weaken or destroy the first entity. (Initially, such secondary entities may be part of the first entity even as they begin their dissociation, as with precancerous cells. It also is worth noting that cooperative “entities” may be composed of different species, as with wrasses that swim with impunity into the mouths of groupers to feed off parasites, or with human intestinal flora.) Second, pathological altruism or its antecedents can arise when the lowered energy state of the first system allows the system to grow to such a size that it increases the potential for disintegration or destruction from noncooperative mechanisms affiliated with the entity. An example can be found in nuclear fission, where longerrange electrostatic repulsion between protons overcomes the attractive, albeit short-range, nuclear force between nucleons. In more complex cellular processes, the surface area-to-volume ratio limits the cell size. Doubling the size of the cell, for example, requires eight times more nutrients and would have eight times more waste, even though the surface area increased only by a factor of four. We see these same cooperative versus noncooperative balances playing out on a larger, social scale. For example, the Amazonian Ya¸nomamö villagers preferred to live in small villages of around 40 people, which seemed to provide an optimal reduction in energy costs affiliated with daily needs for food and safety versus internal strife. However, villages of larger size provided more safety against other, potentially hostile villages. In other words, larger villages could, in some environments, be better at minimizing overall energy costs. Thus, some villages grew to more than 100 inhabitants in size. However, internal repulsive forces increased in the form of disputes that arose as the number of inhabitants in a village increased. Larger villages eventually fissioned, thus beginning the process anew (10). At a much higher level of social complexity, there was an initial economic boom as the European Union was first established. This boom has become tempered as internal nominally altruistic and cooperative efforts—the type of efforts that work fairly effectively in less complex social systems—are ultimately proving disputatious and disruptive. As entities move to higher levels of complexity, the yin and yang of lowered energy states resulting from cooperation, versus noncooperative internal and external forces and effects, can cause boom-and-bust behavior on evolutionary timescales. How entities resolve these issues of cooperation versus noncooperation is a factor in determining whether entities self-destruct, proceed through cycles of growth versus decline, or are able to move successfully to still higher levels of complexity. Whenever higher levels of complexity are achieved, new issues of cooperation versus noncooperation develop, and the cycle begins anew. One issue is clear. As entities become more complex, they generally develop evolving “guardian” type feedback mechanisms that allow not only the detection and mitigation of the effects of noncooperative mechanisms (“defectors”) but also adaptation to changes in those noncooperative mechanisms. Without such flexible guardian systems, entities fall prey to other entities or to their own inherent noncooperative features. On a cellular level, we see that guardian immune systems have evolved from the rudimentary enzyme systems of unicellular organisms, which protect against bacteriophage infections, to the extraordinarily sophisticated immunological defense mechanisms seen in vertebrates. Similarly, social systems of cooperative behavior must devise effective immunological guardian functions against efforts to siphon away the energetic advantages of cooperative behavior. Such immune guardian functions also must serve to mitigate disruptive internal forces and effects. (Of course, on a biological level, we see from the many varieties of autoimmune disease that immune-type guardian systems, even when designed with care, can create their own host of difficulties and can be hijacked by noncooperative elements, as with leishmaniasis or AIDS. Similar issues would appear to hold true for complex social systems.) Thus, to the five mechanisms that have been posited for the evolution of cooperation—kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection (11)— must be added a sixth, guardian function. For cooperative behavior to continue in complex biological or sociological entities, that is, for entities not to fall prey to ever-present, ever-evolving defectors, some form of evolving active guardian function must be present that detects when debilitating or destructive advantage is being taken of cooperative or altruistic behavior. The guardian system must not only detect but also disable such noncooperative behavior or render the entity immune to the pernicious effects. Without such detection and mitigation mechanisms, we see modeled evolutionary entities that are wiped out by defectors (12). Virtually all the mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation have some degree of overlap. Direct reciprocity, for example, perforce plays a role in indirect reciprocity. In a similar fashion, guardian functions overlap with the other five evolutionary cooperative mechanisms. Reciprocal strategies,such as tit-for-tat, for example, inherently contain what might be thought of as rudimentary and passive guardian functions: If you defect, I will defect. Differences in guardian function between groups could reinforce group selection mechanisms. Guardian functions also could relate to the reputational effects of indirect reciprocity in enhancing cooperation: I may report anyone who does not support the leader, because my family can suffer if I don’t. By separating out guardian functions, which address the potential for support or damage to cooperative processes, vitally important mechanisms can be understood and more carefully modeled. Moreover, counterintuitive findings in complex cooperative social systems, such as the importance of selfish behavior and the tradeoffs of religious and ideological mechanisms in inducing and enforcing cooperation, can be clarified (13, 14). For example, poorly designed guardian functions that do not adequately account for Machiavellian leadership and behavior, might play an important role in the failure of social structures. In another example, strong guardian functions that might protect against some internal threats could simultaneously create stifling rigidity that renders the society less able to cope with other challenges. Over previous decades, medical science has come to appreciate the over arching importance of immune systems (themselves examples of guardian systems) in biology. Similarly, awareness of pathological altruism allows those analyzing the evolution of cooperation to appreciate the importance of the full panoply of guardian systems at the many different levels of complexity.

Implications

Let us step back briefly to explore how pathologies of altruism arise at an individual level. Naturally, the small percentage of toddlers and young children who show little concern for others seem predisposed for antisocial behavior as they mature (15). On the other hand, children who manifest altruistic behavior are generally well-adjusted. However, there is a small group of pathologically altruistic children who rate high on altruistic behavior but low on self-actualizing behavior such as showing pleasure at success or doing something on their own. For such children, a psychological cost can arise even at an early age, as shown by high scores in emotional symptoms, including unhappiness, worries, fear, nervousness, and somatization (16). As neuroscience and genetics are beginning to elucidate the biological as well as cultural basis of altruistic and empathic behavior, it has become clear that individuals vary in their innate underpinnings involving empathy and altruism (17). Therefore an educational, religious, and societal “one size fits all” approach to enculturation that uniformly affirms the importance of altruistic caring, without a tempered acknowledgment of the tradeoffs, may inadvertently be harmful for some children in the long run. (In other words, social attempts to blindly encourage altruism become themselves a perfect example of pathological altruism.) Without insight into the undesirable effects arising from empathy and altruistic intentions, children and adults with an existing hypersensitivity toward others find it more difficult to detect and react appropriately to manipulation or to situations in which natural feelings of empathy could lead to undesirable outcomes. Indeed, it seems that caring for others, helpful as it sometimes may be to those receiving or demanding that care, can have pernicious long-term consequences for the care giver, including guilt, burnout, depression, and stress disorders (18, 19). Stress resulting from empathic caring has been shown to produce errors in medical treatment (20). Feelings of empathic caring also appear to lie at the core of dependent personality disorder, codependent behavior, and even anorexia (2). Caring, empathic, helicopter parents can, with the best of intentions, inflict lasting damage on their children (21). Empathy is not a uniformly positive attribute. It is associated with emotional contagion; hindsight bias; motivated reasoning; caring only for those we like or who comprise our in-group (parochial altruism); jumping to conclusions; and inappropriate feelings of guilt in noncooperators who refuse to follow orders to hurt others (22–29). Oxytocin, the “goody-goody hormone” that underlies maternal bonding and many aspects of empathy, also increases both envy and gloating (30). Empathy also can be used by the self-serving, including psychopaths, to deduce how to further their own ends (31). Being emotionally close to someone who is selfish or dishonest has been found to lead people to becoming more selfish and dishonest themselves (32). Allegiance bias causes forensic scientists to call their findings for the team they believe has hired them (33). [Indeed, the reliability of all types of forensic science evidence, including ostensibly objective techniques such as DNA typing and fingerprint analysis, has been called to question (34).] Judges, almost all of whom are lawyers, favor the legal system in their decisions; this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law (35). Quietly going along with the flow—refusing to blow the whistle on objectively criminal behavior, for example—also sometimes may be a form of pathological altruism that grows from our feelings of empathy. In other words, the altruism and empathy we feel often isn’t really about the person or group ostensibly being helped but instead often are about us. Sometimes they relate to the pain we might feel at being ostracized or shunned for thinking or acting differently. Or they relate to building our reputation—we wish to be publicly perceived as being altruistic, whether or not our efforts are truly altruistic, so that we can receive the reputational benefits of indirect reciprocity. (Juries are notoriously magnanimous with other peoples’ money.) Some would say that, once egoism is involved, the result is no longer altruism, so there is no such thing as pathological altruism. However, such an interpretation would also mean there is no altruism, because egoistic reward circuitry appears to be an important determinant of altruistic behavior. As the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and others has shown, humans possess both intuitive fast and rational slow cognitive processes (4, 36, 37). Intuitions come first; reasoning follows to support that intuition (38, 39). Empathy is driven by fast processes. We often make snap judgments as a result of empathy and superficial notions of altruism [related to the “moral heuristics” described by Sunstein (40)]. Then, as both Kahneman and Haidt have explored in depth, we are experts at justifying emotionally based decisions with back-filled rationality. Einstellung, the inability to see another solution once an initial solution is prefixed in mind (41), means that a superfi- cially helpful approach can become reified, further reinforced by motivated reasoning, selective exposure, belief perseverance, and growing overconfidence (42), along with moral heuristics such as those involving omission bias and outrage (40). However, surprisingly, an individual can be oblivious to the consequences of these interwoven effects as a consequence of “bias blind spot” (43). In this fashion, an initial snap, commonsense judgment about what seems right in helping others can gel quickly into formidable certitude without consideration of important relevant facts. As noted by Mercier and Sperber, “there is considerable evidence that when reasoning is applied to the conclusions of intuitive inference, it tends to rationalize them rather than to correct them ... reasoning pushes people not towards the best decisions but towards decisions that are easier to justify” (42). Intelligence is no safeguard regarding these confirmation bias-related issues. Highly intelligent people, for example, do not reason more even-handedly and thoroughly;they simply are able to present more arguments supporting their own beliefs (44). As Columbia’s Mark Lilla has pointed out “Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach” (45). In fact, combating extreme confirmation bias has been called one of psychology’s most pressing research priorities (46). Sometimes it is appropriate to turn off or distance oneself from feelings of empathy, and it appears such emotional distancing can be learned (47, 48). In fact, it is clear that turning off empathy—becoming dispassionate—is normal in certain conditions, such as a surgeon performing surgery. Indeed, many hospitals have policies forbidding surgeons from operating on family members, a circumstance in which it would be more dif- ficult to maintain a dispassionate stance. In psychology, lack of awareness of limitations and tradeoffs regarding empathy has spilled over into the therapeutic process itself. Older therapists remember sayings such as “empathy defeats therapy” (49), but such attitudes have fallen away as psychologists increasingly have placed a premium on empathic care during the therapeutic process. In a related vein, within the field of nursing, the importance of empathy and compassion for patients is emphasized so unrelentingly that it would be reasonable to explore the possibility of a causal relationship between the unilateral focus on caring and the severe issue of burnout among nurses (50). Health care workers are not taught about the potential hazards of excessive or misplaced empathy; consequently, a gradual dehumanization process unfolds (51). An unconditional support of empathy and altruism makes matters so difficult for some members of general society that a counterculture of popular literature and support groups involving codependency has arisen. However, such approaches suffer from a lack of scientific merit or rigor (52). It is clear that, without the support of science, it is impossible to steer societal mores toward a more nuanced understanding of altruism and empathy that ultimately can benefit everyone.

 

[Darklord13]

The rest of it

Spoiler

Extended Implications

There are broader implications related to these issues, particularly regarding the policy aspects of the scientific enterprise. Good government is a foundation of large-scale societies; government programs are designed to minimize a variety of social problems. Although virtually every program has its critics, welldesigned programs can be effective in bettering people’s lives with few negative tradeoffs. From a scientifically-based perspective, however, some programs are deeply problematic, often as a result of superficial notions on the part of program designers or implementers about what is genuinely beneficial for others, coupled with a lack of accountability for ensuing programmatic failures (53). In these pathologically altruistic enterprises, confirmation bias, discounting, motivated reasoning, and egocentric certitude that our approach is the best—in short, the usual biases that underlie pathologies of altruism—appear to play important roles. For example, teen pregnancy has received substantive focus in recent years. Teenagers in the United States become pregnant, contract sexually transmitted diseases, and have abortions at much higher rates than teenagers in most other industrialized countries. However, the most effective, scientifically proven approaches to reducing teen pregnancy are often ignored. As psychologist Timothy Wilson noted in summarizing the many problematic efforts in this area: “The fact that policy makers learned so little from past research—at huge human and financial cost—is made even more mind-boggling by being such a familiar story. Too often, policy makers follow common sense instead of scientific data when deciding how to solve social and behavioral problems” (54). Policy-makers and policy-supporters in other words, are shaped by cohesive cognitive biases regarding their intentions to help others. In yet another area, ostensibly well-meaning governmental policy promoted home ownership, a beneficial goal that stabilizes families and communities. The government-sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae allowed less-than-qualified individuals to receive housing loans and encouraged more-qualified borrowers to overextend themselves. Typical risk–reward considerations were marginalized because of implicit government support (55). The government used these agencies to promote social goals without acknowledging the risk or cost. When economic conditions faltered, many lost their homes or found themselves with properties worth far less than they originally had paid. Government policy then shifted to the cost of this “altruism” to the public, to pay off the too-big-to-fail banks then holding securitized subprime loans. For those who care about helping the needy in this country, or those who object to corporate bail outs, these trillion-dollar costs bring into high relief the immediate need for scientifically informed planning and evidence-based reevaluation. What is of primary concern here is that altruistic intentions played a critical role in the development and unfolding of the housing bubble in the United States, which in turn had enormous impact on the US economy. This recent history emphasizes the importance of studying not only altruism but also its biases and the consequences of those biases. In foreign aid, $2 trillion dollars have been provided to Africa over the past 50 years. As chronicled by economist and former World Bank consultant Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia, such aid has resulted in measurably worsened outcomes in a broad variety of areas, supporting despotism and increasing corruption and a sense of dependency in Africans (56). In some cases, the money has been directly responsible for extraordinary damage (57, 58). Experienced foreign aid worker Ernesto Sirolli echoes many when he notes that much Western aid arises from narcissistic paternalism and patronization (59). We see here yet another situation where preconceived altruistic notions render it more difficult to focus on and react to indications supplied by data. Viewing altruistic behavior as a source of both potentially positive and potentially negative influences may provide a framework for understanding better a variety of complex challenges. For example, one of the most important national issues of our time, as outlined in the National Academy Press publication Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future, is the looming federal deficit (60). Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences, and Jennifer Dorn, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Academy of Public Administration, jointly wrote: “Much is at stake. If we as a nation do not grapple promptly and wisely with the changes needed to put the federal budget on a sustainable course, all of us will find that the public goals we most value are at risk.” How can such budgetary policies arise and continue? Arguably, their establishment and growth is cultivated by broadly JudeoChristian cultural values and educational processes related to empathy and altruism. [Cultures can conceptualize empathy, altruism, and associated values in different ways (4, 61).] In this cultural perspective, empathy and altruistic intentions often are viewed as monolithically positive, nearly sacred qualities with negligible tradeoffs, whether or not the empathy is genuinely beneficial or the outcome of the altruistic intentions is truly altruistic. “It’s the thought that counts,” as the saying goes when discounting negative consequences of altruism. A supportive bias for claimed altruistic efforts appears to have contributed not only to a plethora of economic woes but also to a continuing record of difficulties in the social sciences, where programs, theories, and therapies with altruistic intent—particularly those which coincide with preconceived “obviously beneficial” notions of helping—do not appear to receive the same careful scientific scrutiny as less obviously well-intentioned programs (54, 62, 63). This lack of critical appraisal has been seen in vitally important areas such as the mitigation of posttraumatic stress disorder, the reduction of family violence, the elimination of racial prejudice, the reduction of sex differences in mathematics, and the lessening of adolescent behavior problems and drug use (64–71). In one example, a therapy called “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing” was broadly implemented throughout the United States to reduce posttraumatic stress disorder, even though this costly program simply did not work and, in fact, sometimes worsened the very stress it was meant to resolve (67). Well-meaning but unscientific approaches toward altruistic helping can have the unwitting effect of ensuring that the benefits of science and the scientific method are kept away from those most in need of help. In the final analysis, it is clear that when altruistic efforts in science are presented as being beyond reproach, it becomes all too easy to silence rational criticism (62, 70, 72–78). Few wish to run the gauntlet of criticizing poorly conducted, highly subjective “science” which is purported to help, or indeed, of daring to question the basis of problematic scientific paradigms that arise in part from good intentions. Edward O. Wilson ran into just such a well-meaning buzz saw with the publication of his Sociobiology, as did Judith Rich Harris with The Nurture Assumption and Napoleon Chagnon with his studies of rates of violence among the Amazonian Ya¸nomamö (10, 79, 80). To object to a scientific theory is one thing, but to object to a scientific theory that connects however tenuously to feelings of morality is quite another. Once morality plays a role, even at the most subliminal level, the formidable cognitive biases of altruism and its pathologies can swing into play. Perhaps for that reason different academic disciplines and specific topics within those disciplines show differing requirements for rigor. In disciplines related to helping people (which can encompass a surprisingly broad swathe of even hard-science topics), scientists’ differing treatment of research findings that elicit altruism bias can skew the findings of seemingly objective science (81). As Robert Trivers has noted: “It seems manifest that the greater the social content of a discipline, especially human, the greater will be the biases due to self-deception and the greater the retardation of the field compared with less social disciplines” (82). One of the most valuable characteristics of science is that, despite the obvious imperfection of biases in ostensibly objective scientists, it provides a potential mechanism for overcoming those biases. At the same time, altruism bias may be one of the most pernicious, hard-to-eradicate biases in science, because it involves even-handed examination of what groups of seemingly objective rational scientists subliminally have come to regard as sacred. [Biases and belief systems can have a sense of the sacred even when not formalized as religions (4).] As noted previously, many government programs are indeed beneficial, and some are invaluable in allowing the population as a whole to live meaningful lives supported by a safety net for life’s inevitable difficulties. However, the National Academy Press publication Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future documents that the federal deficit is clearly heading for a crisis. In other words, as a result of manifold individual decisions, many of which were based on very real intentions to help others, everyone is at risk for serious harm. Such crises may arise, not as a tragedy of the commons, but rather, as a tragedy of altruism. In the small social groups which characterized most of human history, altruism bias and pathologies of altruism would have had few means for extending broad influence. In modern times, with the mass outreach potential of a few well-intentioned individuals or influential groups, who often have little or no ultimate accountability for programmatic failures or other detrimental effects, pathologies of altruism can assume enormous importance. It is reasonable to help shift the scientific and cultural paradigm and set the stage so that it becomes culturally acceptable, even expected, that one should attempt to quantify objectively purported claims of altruism. This paradigm shift is particularly important with regards to the budgetary tradeoffs and planning that form important aspects of effective government that promotes cooperative behavior. The reality is, as made clear in the jointstatement by the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration, that unless these types of considerations are made expeditiously, extraordinary cuts must be made in even the most genuinely beneficial programs (60). A voting public encouraged to follow a short-term, superficial, “feel good,” emotionally-based heuristic for helping others is a voting public that much more easily can make poor long-term decisions.

Toward a Conceptual Framework

As scientists and engineers know well, “all models are wrong, but some are useful” (83). Embedded in any model is perspective, that is, the framework perceived by the developer. In the past, altruism (or cooperation) generally has been conceived and modeled as lying on a continuum between nonexistent and existent, much like the concept of eusociality (in which the opposite of eusociality is asociality; that is, no tendencies for grouping or socializing at all (84–87). (“Asocial” may also be considered, in some conceptions, to be “selfish” or “egoistic.”) More recently, altruism has been conceived on a positive-to-negative continuum where negative altruism involves malevolent intentions, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (88). However, altruism can be framed in a third way, as a positiveto-negative continuum where negative altruism is altruism with antithetical consequences, i.e., pathological altruism. Viewing altruism in this way provides insights that relate to both individual personality traits and to large-scale modeling. There are tradeoffs to virtually all forms of altruism, and considering altruism as possessing both positive and negative aspects allows one to take more careful consideration of who is helped (the beneficiary) and who is harmed (the victim). Sometimes the same individual or group may be both helped and harmed. Parochial altruism—the combination of in-group altruism and out-group hostility—is positive altruism within one group but negative altruism for another. High taxes, for example, may be considered as positive altruism for one group and as negative altruism for another. It should be noted that these conceptions formulate the problem primarily in terms of the altruism provider and stress the liability arising from, among other things, empathy and identification. It also is possible to formulate altruism as a dynamic process controlled in part by the altruism seeker (89). Moreover, the entitlements pressed for by the altruism-seeker may be either objectively helpful (for example, a scholarship sought by a hardworking student) or harmful (for example, alcohol sought by an alcoholic). In other cases, the altruism-seeker may desire seemingly infinitesimal acts of altruism that ultimately play a role in widespread long-term negative outcomes, as seen with grade inflation and social promotion. Jean Twenge and her research group have pointed toward substantive increases in narcissism in the population over the past decades, “Trends in positive self-views are correlated with grade inflation ... but are not explained by changes in objective performance” (90, 91). It also may be that the actual help needed by those seeking or expecting help, as with Munchausen by Internet (in which Internet users feign a variety of ills to draw attention), involves something entirely different from what is sought. Studies suggest that those involved in altruistic transactions benefit differentially from them, and egoism can play surprising roles. For example, sensitive children may have better personal outcomes if they behave egoistically in some instances. However, as shown with Twenge’s work, other children appear to have unrealistic expectations when egoistic considerations are encouraged. The question thus arises: When and for whom is egoistic behavior beneficial or harmful? What is the relationship of egoism to altruism and—most importantly for our purposes—to pathologies of altruism? Further, how can we study these issues scientifically without our own judgments and moral righteousness intruding, guiding answers toward what we are certain will be helpful for others to hear rather than toward what the data actually reveal? We can find clues as to how to proceed by examining prospect theory, where outcomes are assigned differing values depending on whether there are gains or losses. Losses hurt more than “feel good” gains. With altruism bias, it appears that people assign varying values to outcomes based on their underlying moral assessment. An example of such altruism bias was seen in subjects who were given a posthypnotic suggestion to feel a flash of disgust (an intimate part of moral judgment) when hearing a particular arbitrary word. Moral judgment—that sense of whether something is or is not helpful for others—could be made more severe by the presence of the arbitrary word (92). Researchers were surprised to find that even in a control situation where there was no apparent moral issue, the arbitrary words caused some subjects to make more negative moral judgments; later, the subjects confabulated stories to explain their behavior. Many factors have been shown to influence moral judgment at a subconscious level (4). It appears that when a person attempts rationally (using the “slow” system) to calculate the utility of something that he or she already has judged through “fast” cognitive processes to be morally beneficial, skewed judgments are made, inflating the good outcomes and deflating the bad. Analogously, one can imagine that if malevolence was the goal, as with ill-intentions by a parochial in-group toward an out-group, benefits would be deflated and harms inflated.
A Path Forward

Personal-Scale Studies. Pathologies arising from altruism can be studied on an individual level. For example, many of the errors of judgment cited in the extensive listing in ref. 93 could result in altruism bias, or altruism bias could underlie and help lead to those judgment errors. In this regard, does the brain use a simple underlying “thumbs up” moral heuristic that leads “rational” thought processes to a foregone conclusion, as with the allegiance effect? Can such a heuristic be seen as a characteristic signature in medical imaging? Do individuals vary in their ability to influence their underlying moral heuristics? Are some individuals addicts of their feelings of self-righteousness?What varying effect does culture have on different individual’s moral heuristics? On a side note, it appears that altruism bias, like many such biases, is a Jamesian fringe phenomenon of consciousness, much like the feeling of familiarity. It seems to grow from or relate to that little studied sense of rightness, of certitude—a tip-of-the-tongue feeling built on a web of biases, influences, and perceptions that one thing is beneficial, whereas another is not (94–96). Self-righteousness and pathologies of certitude have received almost no research emphasis (94, 95). Narcissism, one of the most strongly heritable of all personality traits (97), has been similarly neglected. Narcissism is comorbid with many of the most troublesome personality disorders and dysfunctions, including psychopathy, borderline personality disorder, and bipolar disorder. So it comes as a surprise to learn that there are almost no hard-science imaging studies focusing on narcissism, although many other syndromes, as well as the positive aspects of empathy, have received keen research focus (98–100). Narcissism, in other words, deserves priority in imaging research. Similarly, the vital topic of codependency has received almost no hard-science research focus, leaving “research” to those with limited or no scientific research qualifications (52). An indication of the popular need for and interest in this area is that a single book, Codependent No More, has sold more than five million copies over several decades. It is reasonable to wonder if the lack of scientific research involving codependency may relate to the fact that there is a strong academic bias against studying possible negative outcomes of empathy. Codependency, like narcissism, would thus be an important area of research in the elucidation of pathologies of altruism.
Broad-Scale Studies. At a larger scale, almost any data-driven model or projection in any discipline or government enterprise that even indirectly impacts an area of fairness or morality, or which contains significant potential for disciplinary bias, can be examined to see how well it actually has performed in the context of unfolding real-world data. Unexpected performance of the model or projection could be an indicator of altruism bias, and the bias could be quantified as to when, where, why, how, and to what extent it occurred. For example, a better understanding of altruism bias in data analysis and program development and implementation may provide insights regarding a great variety of phenomena, including the artificially inflated values of economic bubbles or various inadequate statistical measures (for example, those involving unemployment and economic growth) that can falsely boost the effects of well-meaning efforts. Concepts of pathological altruism thus can serve a normative purpose, helping us create better policies. Knowledge of how altruism bias distorts objective scientific inquiry can and should be considered a confounding factor when developing formal models. It should be noted, however, that those possessing altruism bias would be most strongly biased to object to the very concept of altruism bias (101). Research has shown the near impossibility of reaching biased individuals using rational approaches, no matter their level of education or intelligence; such attempts can be likened to squaring the circle (44, 46). In another vein, researchers from outside a given discipline, and who are thus less vested in the theories of that domain themselves, could initiate studies to determine whether insufficient statistics, exaggerated claims, drawing the wrong conclusions from other papers, or using data selectively to confirm hypotheses might differ among studies that relate to disciplinary biases or moral issues (many hard-science topics ultimately impact issues of deep moral concern) versus those that do not. Within scientific disciplines, the appearance of group-norm–enforcing signed petitions could be used as indicators of the potential for pathologies of altruism; such petitions might communicate important, albeit unintended, information about the health of a discipline. Are entire disciplines shaped by papers that are not submitted because of legitimate fears of rejection? As Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, perceptively wrote: “...the good will of scientists is usually so paradoxical that they are more pleased by the defence of an obvious error which has become wide-spread than by the establishment of a new fact.” (102) These thoughts were echoed recently in a predictably controversial paper by John Ioannidis pointing toward the shockingly high publication rate of false research findings. Iaonnidis noted: “...for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias” (103). Can disciplinary biases be quantified, perhaps in studies put forth by interdisciplinary groups (including nonacademics) from largely outside the discipline in question? Group-think within disciplines, particularly in regards to differing editorial standards of proof required for studies that do not hold to a discipline’s underlying moral paradigm, would be a particularly rich, important, and provocative area of study. Lilienfeld points toward psychological treatments that “may produce harm in relatives or friends of clients in addition to, or instead of, clients themselves. For example, some treatments that are otherwise innocuous or even effective with clients could produce a heightened risk of false abuse allegations against family members” (67). Is it possible that some social advocacy and social justice efforts result in the same types of pernicious effects on a societal scale so that efforts to build cooperation instead inhibit it? We often do not know, because well-meaning advocates have made raising those questions a taboo. Framing issues in the form of pathologies of altruism and altruism bias forms a mechanism for breaking through the taboo and making dispassionate studies of when helping is truly helping and when it is contributing inadvertent harm. Forensic studies of allegiance bias (33) could profitably inform academic disciplines as to how to examine the effects of altruism bias both within and outside academia, and indeed, in regards to greater academia itself. In the later regard, it seems academia is reaching multiple crises, often arising from well-meaning efforts; such crises include administrative bloat, college tuitions that have vastly outpaced inflation, and students who are left academically adrift (104).
Potential Steps to Address Altruism Bias in Academic Disciplines and the Scientific Enterprise. There are active steps that could be taken to prevent the potential for altruism bias within the scientific enterprise. In all-important journal review processes, for example, mixed panels of reviewers (e.g., cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists reviewing social psychological papers) could become standard practice (105). Doctoral programs can place heavier emphasis on the scientific method and careful use of statistics so that graduate students, who are themselves future journal reviewers, can learn to spot problematic submissions more easily and perhaps be less likely to conduct problematic research themselves. The many aspects of altruism bias and the problems as well as benefits of empathy can be much more broadly discussed and emphasized in textbooks, beginning even in high school and the early years of college. Disciplines heavily involved in social advocacy, whose primary goal involves truly benefitting others, should be among the first to take interest in incorporating these concepts and approaches into research and training programs, editorial efforts, and textbooks.

Conclusions

Science has put extraordinary emphasis on studying the helpful aspects of altruism, and this emphasis has helped reify altruism’s benefits among the general population. However, if science is truly to serve as an ultimately altruistic enterprise, then science must examine not only the good but also the harm that can arise from our feelings of altruism and empathetic caring for others. In support of this idea, it is important to note that during the twentieth century, tens of millions individuals were killed under despotic regimes that rose to power through appeals to altruism (106–110). The study of pathological altruism, in other words, is not a minor, inconsequential offshoot of the study of altruism but instead is a topic of overwhelming scientific and public importance.

 

[Fanta]

For Scientific purposes...
Our eyes can be powerless against visual illusions, with our underlying neural machinery leading us to predictably erroneous conclusions about the size or shape of an object (1). In a similar fashion, our empathic feelings for others, coupled with a desire to be liked, parochial feelings for our in-group, emotional contagion, motivated reasoning, selective exposure, con- firmation bias, discounting, allegiance bias, the Einstellung (“set”) effect, and even an egocentric belief that we know what is best for others, can lead us into powerful and often irrational illusions of helping (2). In other words, people’s own good intentions, coupled with a variety of cognitive biases, can sometimes blind them to the deleterious consequences of their actions. This dynamic of pathological altruism involves subjectively prosocial acts that are objectively antisocial. (Naturally, there are many objective perspectives. One seemingly objective observer’s verdict of antisocial terrorism can be another’s verdict of prosocial altruism, with the words “objective,” “antisocial,” “prosocial,” “terrorism,” and even “altruism” itself varying in meaning depending on the perspective of the putatively objective observer.) At the core of pathological altruism are actions or reactions based on incomplete access to, or inability to process, the wide range of information necessary to make prudent decisions that align with cultural values associated with altruistic behavior. Various psychological, religious, philosophical, biological, or ideological biases could lead a person or group to misinterpret, selectively discount, or overly emphasize certain aspects of relevant information. Thus, pathologically altruistic behavior can emerge from a mix of accidental, subconscious, or deliberate causes. [“Altruism,” in the context of this paper, is used to signify wellmeaning behavior intended to promote the welfare of another; thus altruistic behavior may be motivated by concern for the other, egoistic concerns for the self, or both (e.g., “it makes me feel good to help them”) (3). “Pathological” is used in the sense of being excessive or abnormal, without implying any clinical diagnosis.]Pathological altruism can be conceived as behavior in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable. More precisely, this paper defines pathological altruism as an observable behavior or personal tendency in which the explicit or implicit subjective motivation is intentionally to promote the welfare of another, but instead of overall beneficial outcomes the altruism instead has unreasonable (from the relative perspective of an outside observer) negative consequences to the other or even to the self. This definition does not suggest that there are absolutes but instead suggests that, within a particular context, pathological altruism is the situation in which intended outcomes and actual outcomes (within the framework of how the relative values of “negative” and “positive” are conceptualized), do not mesh. A working definition of a pathological altruist then might be a person who sincerely engages in what he or she intends to be altruistic acts but who (in a fashion that can be reasonably anticipated) harms the very person or group he or she is trying to help; or a person who, in the course of helping one person or group, inflicts reasonably foreseeable harm to others beyond the person or group being helped; or a person who in reasonably anticipatory way becomes a victim of his or her own altruistic actions (2). The attempted altruism, in other words, results in objectively foreseeable and unreasonable harm to the self, to the target of the altruism, or to others beyond the target. Examples at an interpersonal level include the codependent wife murdered by the husband she has refused to leave, or the overly attentive “helicopter” father who threatens to sue instructors that give well-deserved bad grades, or the mother who attempts to protect her son by refusing to vaccinate him and who consequently fuels a loss of herd immunity underpinning a local whooping cough epidemic in which an infant dies. Very different personalities can become entangled in pathologies of altruism, ranging from the sensitive hyperempath, to the normal person, to the utterly selfabsorbed narcissist. These differing personalities share genuinely good intentions that play out in detrimental ways. Sometimes there is a blurry line as to whether a problematic outcome for an altruistic action is reasonably foreseeable. This ambiguity can make it difficult to distinguish between altruism and pathological altruism. For example, let’s say that, while altruistically helping a friend move to another apartment, you accidentally dropped and broke an expensive statue. Were your actions pathologically altruistic? In the conceptions of pathological altruism outlined here, no. Your altruism would not have been pathologically altruistic, because the bad outcome—thedropped statue—arose as a very unlikely and difficult-to-predict outcome of your good intentions. In a different scenario, however, let’s say your brother becomes addicted to painkillers. When he goes through withdrawal, you get more painkillers to help him feel better, and you cover for him when his work supervisor calls. You genuinely want to help your brother, but the reality is that you are enabling his addiction. In this case, your well-meaning altruism is pathological. These examples help clarify the concept of pathological altruism, but similar situations could be more ambiguous. What if you had dropped your friend’s expensive statue after you had consumed a bottle of wine? Or what if your painkiller-addicted brother was waiting to be enrolled in a treatment program? We yearn for the definitive in conceptual definitions, but the reality is that there always will be a residual uncertainty. Motives are also important. Well-meaning intentions can lead either to altruism or to pathological altruism. Self-servingly malevolent intentions, on the other hand, often have little or nothing to do with altruism, even though such malevolence can easily be cloaked with pretensions of altruism. A con artist soliciting for a “charity” that he uses to personally enrich himself would not be a pathological altruist. Both altruism and empathy have rightly received an extraordinary amount of research attention. This focus has permitted better characterization of these qualities and how they might have evolved. However, it has also served to reify their value without realistic consideration about when those qualities contain the potential for significant harm. Part of the reason that pathologies of altruism have not been studied extensively or integrated into the public discourse appears to be fear that such knowledge might be used to discount the importance of altruism. Indeed, there has been a long history in science of avoiding paradigm-shifting approaches, such as Darwinian evolution and acknowledgment of the influence of biological factors on personality, arising in part from fears that such knowledge somehow would diminish human altruistic motivations. Such fears always have proven unfounded. However, these doubts have minimized scientists’ ability to see the widespread, vitally important nature of pathologies of altruism. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt notes, “Morality binds and blinds” (4). Relevant here are the remarks of historian of science Thomas Kuhn, who observed that when a paradigm shift occurs, scientists see data for the first time (5). Such is the case with pathologies of altruism, which are not the commonly supposed rare aberrations, “but rather a behavior that overwhelmingly occurs in human social intercourse” (6). It therefore is realistic to encourage exploration of a new, scientifically based paradigm acknowledging that, even given differing semantic parsings, subjectively altruistic feelings sometimes can be objectively problematic and even ultimately antisocial. The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests. Indeed, truly altruistic actions may sometimes appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced “helpful” behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions (7, 8). Pathological altruism can operate not only at the individual level but in many different aspects and levels of society, and between societies. Recognizing that feelings of altruism do not necessarily constitute objective altruism provides a new way of framing and understanding altruism. This previously unrecognizedperspective in turn may open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a framework to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior. The thesis of pathological altruism emphasizes the value of true altruism, self-sacrifice, and other forms of prosociality in human life. At the same time, it acknowledges the potential harm from cognitive blindness that arises whenever groups treat a concept as sacred (4). The public as a whole would benefit from knowledge that what might feel subjectively altruistic may have negative unintended consequences that both worsen the situation that was meant to be improved and impact other areas negatively. Even the government can work more efficiently when voters and legislators realize that attempts to help others come with very real costs and can have tradeoffs that worsen the very concerns that were meant to be alleviated. Along these lines, then, this paper suggests that pathologies of altruism and of empathic caring should receive concentrated research focus. Specific recommendations are outlined as well. As an underlying motivation, we should remember that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was an unparalleled improvement in public health as the entire discipline of medicine came under scientific scrutiny. Medical therapies that at one time were thought to be “obviously” beneficial, such as bloodletting and blistering, were finally subjected to review that found them wanting. In a similar vein, if we are truly to help others, this new century at last forms the time for scientists to subject altruistic modern social engineering and activism efforts, as well as academic disciplines that hinge on “helping,” and finally, altruism itself, to far more disciplined scientific scrutiny. It is time for dispassionate exploration of how altruism and empathy themselves can inadvertently bias our efforts to create truly cooperative modern, complex societies.

Evolutionary Considerations

In one sense, pathological altruism can be thought of as a pattern of nurturing or beneficial behavior with evolutionarily unsuccessful consequences. Evidence for antecedents of such behavior can be seen in the animal world; examples include the unwitting hosts of brood-parasitism, as with the wood thrush who devotes substantial resources to raising the offspring of cowbirds. Such antecedent behavior is manifest at even a genetic and molecular level. For example, beneficial replication processes within a cell can be co-opted by viruses (9). Consequent cell lysis or exocytosis allows the new viral bodies to spread the contagion. Molecular perspectives, in fact, can inform how we perceive altruism and cooperative behavior. A stable molecular bond has the property that the bound state is a lower-energy configuration than the unbound state. A physical system tends toward the configuration that minimizes potential energy. Such “cooperative” behavior often needs an initial activation energy—that is, it comes at cost—but the resulting state resides more naturally and easily at the lower energy level for the newly formed single, integrated, cooperating entity. (This entity may or may not have replicative abilities.) In these situations, pathological altruism or its antecedents might be thought of as arising in two ways. First, it can arise when other entities—systems that are not, or are no longer, integrated into the first cooperating entity—are able to tap into the lowered energy states and possible replicative abilities produced by the first cooperating entity. Tapping into those lowered energy states may weaken or destroy the first entity. (Initially, such secondary entities may be part of the first entity even as they begin their dissociation, as with precancerous cells. It also is worth noting that cooperative “entities” may be composed of different species, as with wrasses that swim with impunity into the mouths of groupers to feed off parasites, or with human intestinal flora.) Second, pathological altruism or its antecedents can arise when the lowered energy state of the first system allows the system to grow to such a size that it increases the potential for disintegration or destruction from noncooperative mechanisms affiliated with the entity. An example can be found in nuclear fission, where longerrange electrostatic repulsion between protons overcomes the attractive, albeit short-range, nuclear force between nucleons. In more complex cellular processes, the surface area-to-volume ratio limits the cell size. Doubling the size of the cell, for example, requires eight times more nutrients and would have eight times more waste, even though the surface area increased only by a factor of four. We see these same cooperative versus noncooperative balances playing out on a larger, social scale. For example, the Amazonian Ya¸nomamö villagers preferred to live in small villages of around 40 people, which seemed to provide an optimal reduction in energy costs affiliated with daily needs for food and safety versus internal strife. However, villages of larger size provided more safety against other, potentially hostile villages. In other words, larger villages could, in some environments, be better at minimizing overall energy costs. Thus, some villages grew to more than 100 inhabitants in size. However, internal repulsive forces increased in the form of disputes that arose as the number of inhabitants in a village increased. Larger villages eventually fissioned, thus beginning the process anew (10). At a much higher level of social complexity, there was an initial economic boom as the European Union was first established. This boom has become tempered as internal nominally altruistic and cooperative efforts—the type of efforts that work fairly effectively in less complex social systems—are ultimately proving disputatious and disruptive. As entities move to higher levels of complexity, the yin and yang of lowered energy states resulting from cooperation, versus noncooperative internal and external forces and effects, can cause boom-and-bust behavior on evolutionary timescales. How entities resolve these issues of cooperation versus noncooperation is a factor in determining whether entities self-destruct, proceed through cycles of growth versus decline, or are able to move successfully to still higher levels of complexity. Whenever higher levels of complexity are achieved, new issues of cooperation versus noncooperation develop, and the cycle begins anew. One issue is clear. As entities become more complex, they generally develop evolving “guardian” type feedback mechanisms that allow not only the detection and mitigation of the effects of noncooperative mechanisms (“defectors”) but also adaptation to changes in those noncooperative mechanisms. Without such flexible guardian systems, entities fall prey to other entities or to their own inherent noncooperative features. On a cellular level, we see that guardian immune systems have evolved from the rudimentary enzyme systems of unicellular organisms, which protect against bacteriophage infections, to the extraordinarily sophisticated immunological defense mechanisms seen in vertebrates. Similarly, social systems of cooperative behavior must devise effective immunological guardian functions against efforts to siphon away the energetic advantages of cooperative behavior. Such immune guardian functions also must serve to mitigate disruptive internal forces and effects. (Of course, on a biological level, we see from the many varieties of autoimmune disease that immune-type guardian systems, even when designed with care, can create their own host of difficulties and can be hijacked by noncooperative elements, as with leishmaniasis or AIDS. Similar issues would appear to hold true for complex social systems.) Thus, to the five mechanisms that have been posited for the evolution of cooperation—kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection (11)— must be added a sixth, guardian function. For cooperative behavior to continue in complex biological or sociological entities, that is, for entities not to fall prey to ever-present, ever-evolving defectors, some form of evolving active guardian function must be present that detects when debilitating or destructive advantage is being taken of cooperative or altruistic behavior. The guardian system must not only detect but also disable such noncooperative behavior or render the entity immune to the pernicious effects. Without such detection and mitigation mechanisms, we see modeled evolutionary entities that are wiped out by defectors (12). Virtually all the mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation have some degree of overlap. Direct reciprocity, for example, perforce plays a role in indirect reciprocity. In a similar fashion, guardian functions overlap with the other five evolutionary cooperative mechanisms. Reciprocal strategies,such as tit-for-tat, for example, inherently contain what might be thought of as rudimentary and passive guardian functions: If you defect, I will defect. Differences in guardian function between groups could reinforce group selection mechanisms. Guardian functions also could relate to the reputational effects of indirect reciprocity in enhancing cooperation: I may report anyone who does not support the leader, because my family can suffer if I don’t. By separating out guardian functions, which address the potential for support or damage to cooperative processes, vitally important mechanisms can be understood and more carefully modeled. Moreover, counterintuitive findings in complex cooperative social systems, such as the importance of selfish behavior and the tradeoffs of religious and ideological mechanisms in inducing and enforcing cooperation, can be clarified (13, 14). For example, poorly designed guardian functions that do not adequately account for Machiavellian leadership and behavior, might play an important role in the failure of social structures. In another example, strong guardian functions that might protect against some internal threats could simultaneously create stifling rigidity that renders the society less able to cope with other challenges. Over previous decades, medical science has come to appreciate the over arching importance of immune systems (themselves examples of guardian systems) in biology. Similarly, awareness of pathological altruism allows those analyzing the evolution of cooperation to appreciate the importance of the full panoply of guardian systems at the many different levels of complexity.

Implications

Let us step back briefly to explore how pathologies of altruism arise at an individual level. Naturally, the small percentage of toddlers and young children who show little concern for others seem predisposed for antisocial behavior as they mature (15). On the other hand, children who manifest altruistic behavior are generally well-adjusted. However, there is a small group of pathologically altruistic children who rate high on altruistic behavior but low on self-actualizing behavior such as showing pleasure at success or doing something on their own. For such children, a psychological cost can arise even at an early age, as shown by high scores in emotional symptoms, including unhappiness, worries, fear, nervousness, and somatization (16). As neuroscience and genetics are beginning to elucidate the biological as well as cultural basis of altruistic and empathic behavior, it has become clear that individuals vary in their innate underpinnings involving empathy and altruism (17). Therefore an educational, religious, and societal “one size fits all” approach to enculturation that uniformly affirms the importance of altruistic caring, without a tempered acknowledgment of the tradeoffs, may inadvertently be harmful for some children in the long run. (In other words, social attempts to blindly encourage altruism become themselves a perfect example of pathological altruism.) Without insight into the undesirable effects arising from empathy and altruistic intentions, children and adults with an existing hypersensitivity toward others find it more difficult to detect and react appropriately to manipulation or to situations in which natural feelings of empathy could lead to undesirable outcomes. Indeed, it seems that caring for others, helpful as it sometimes may be to those receiving or demanding that care, can have pernicious long-term consequences for the care giver, including guilt, burnout, depression, and stress disorders (18, 19). Stress resulting from empathic caring has been shown to produce errors in medical treatment (20). Feelings of empathic caring also appear to lie at the core of dependent personality disorder, codependent behavior, and even anorexia (2). Caring, empathic, helicopter parents can, with the best of intentions, inflict lasting damage on their children (21). Empathy is not a uniformly positive attribute. It is associated with emotional contagion; hindsight bias; motivated reasoning; caring only for those we like or who comprise our in-group (parochial altruism); jumping to conclusions; and inappropriate feelings of guilt in noncooperators who refuse to follow orders to hurt others (22–29). Oxytocin, the “goody-goody hormone” that underlies maternal bonding and many aspects of empathy, also increases both envy and gloating (30). Empathy also can be used by the self-serving, including psychopaths, to deduce how to further their own ends (31). Being emotionally close to someone who is selfish or dishonest has been found to lead people to becoming more selfish and dishonest themselves (32). Allegiance bias causes forensic scientists to call their findings for the team they believe has hired them (33). [Indeed, the reliability of all types of forensic science evidence, including ostensibly objective techniques such as DNA typing and fingerprint analysis, has been called to question (34).] Judges, almost all of whom are lawyers, favor the legal system in their decisions; this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law (35). Quietly going along with the flow—refusing to blow the whistle on objectively criminal behavior, for example—also sometimes may be a form of pathological altruism that grows from our feelings of empathy. In other words, the altruism and empathy we feel often isn’t really about the person or group ostensibly being helped but instead often are about us. Sometimes they relate to the pain we might feel at being ostracized or shunned for thinking or acting differently. Or they relate to building our reputation—we wish to be publicly perceived as being altruistic, whether or not our efforts are truly altruistic, so that we can receive the reputational benefits of indirect reciprocity. (Juries are notoriously magnanimous with other peoples’ money.) Some would say that, once egoism is involved, the result is no longer altruism, so there is no such thing as pathological altruism. However, such an interpretation would also mean there is no altruism, because egoistic reward circuitry appears to be an important determinant of altruistic behavior. As the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and others has shown, humans possess both intuitive fast and rational slow cognitive processes (4, 36, 37). Intuitions come first; reasoning follows to support that intuition (38, 39). Empathy is driven by fast processes. We often make snap judgments as a result of empathy and superficial notions of altruism [related to the “moral heuristics” described by Sunstein (40)]. Then, as both Kahneman and Haidt have explored in depth, we are experts at justifying emotionally based decisions with back-filled rationality. Einstellung, the inability to see another solution once an initial solution is prefixed in mind (41), means that a superfi- cially helpful approach can become reified, further reinforced by motivated reasoning, selective exposure, belief perseverance, and growing overconfidence (42), along with moral heuristics such as those involving omission bias and outrage (40). However, surprisingly, an individual can be oblivious to the consequences of these interwoven effects as a consequence of “bias blind spot” (43). In this fashion, an initial snap, commonsense judgment about what seems right in helping others can gel quickly into formidable certitude without consideration of important relevant facts. As noted by Mercier and Sperber, “there is considerable evidence that when reasoning is applied to the conclusions of intuitive inference, it tends to rationalize them rather than to correct them ... reasoning pushes people not towards the best decisions but towards decisions that are easier to justify” (42). Intelligence is no safeguard regarding these confirmation bias-related issues. Highly intelligent people, for example, do not reason more even-handedly and thoroughly;they simply are able to present more arguments supporting their own beliefs (44). As Columbia’s Mark Lilla has pointed out “Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach” (45). In fact, combating extreme confirmation bias has been called one of psychology’s most pressing research priorities (46). Sometimes it is appropriate to turn off or distance oneself from feelings of empathy, and it appears such emotional distancing can be learned (47, 48). In fact, it is clear that turning off empathy—becoming dispassionate—is normal in certain conditions, such as a surgeon performing surgery. Indeed, many hospitals have policies forbidding surgeons from operating on family members, a circumstance in which it would be more dif- ficult to maintain a dispassionate stance. In psychology, lack of awareness of limitations and tradeoffs regarding empathy has spilled over into the therapeutic process itself. Older therapists remember sayings such as “empathy defeats therapy” (49), but such attitudes have fallen away as psychologists increasingly have placed a premium on empathic care during the therapeutic process. In a related vein, within the field of nursing, the importance of empathy and compassion for patients is emphasized so unrelentingly that it would be reasonable to explore the possibility of a causal relationship between the unilateral focus on caring and the severe issue of burnout among nurses (50). Health care workers are not taught about the potential hazards of excessive or misplaced empathy; consequently, a gradual dehumanization process unfolds (51). An unconditional support of empathy and altruism makes matters so difficult for some members of general society that a counterculture of popular literature and support groups involving codependency has arisen. However, such approaches suffer from a lack of scientific merit or rigor (52). It is clear that, without the support of science, it is impossible to steer societal mores toward a more nuanced understanding of altruism and empathy that ultimately can benefit everyone.

 

[Fanta]

Wow, 43.68p, that's like....40.68p more than I expected!

 

[Tornado9797]

you mean to tell me you don't have

quote couldnt even hold all of that

same with your quote

Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT (the cute green-eyed Victini) has acknowledged to the fullest extent of the English language, as well as all of the other accepted languages on this site, such as gracefully and majestically and with pride, and has successfully assimilated these users as a part of the lottery collective. All of these unique players (who happens to be known as Splitzblue, Darklord13, and Fanta on the website known as Pokémon 3D's forums) have been applied well to the digital spoiler several posts above this post that contains the chronological list of GameJolt Online Pokémon three-d Indev zero-point-fifty-three (and GameJolt Online Pokémon three-dee debug mode testers) unique players participating in Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-eighth lottery entry for the regularly-colored Marowak that is obtainable through normal game-play that holds nothing. The cute green-eyed Victini (who was freed from imprisonment by the scary robot Victini) has confirmed these facts to be true.

Six unique players (SViper, Magi, Gamer13, Splitzblue, Darklord13, and Fanta) are now participating in this lottery entry, of which one will be randomly selected by the random number generator known as random.org and claim victory. Zero unique players are not allowed to join this lottery entry. Details for this specific lottery entry can be found on page 456 (four-hundred-and-fifty-six) of this thread, or more specifically, here, if the link decides to work properly.

The winner of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-eighth lottery entry for the obtainable regularly-colored Marowak that holds nothing will be announced in a relatively unknown amount of time (ordinarily attempts around noon the day after this lottery entry's reveal) using Houston, Texas, The United States of America time (Daylight Savings Time) from the entry announcement post, assuming Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's new computer doesn't do any weird Windows 8.1 stuff, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's debug testing hasn't gone horribly wrong, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is somewhere away from Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's computer, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT won't stop playing his new Nintendo Wii U, anonymous friends of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT force Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT to play silly computer games, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is in the process of winning the new Pokémon and Smash Brothers games, the GameJolt log in servers are acting silly, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT feels to guilty for trading his water polo shirt for a Sega Genesis, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy fixing the annoying errors and typos that may accompany an acknowledge post such as this one, and/or Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy testing out a new bold feature to help clarify to passing users why the announcement of a lottery winner might be delayed, and/or this is one of those special three-day lottery entries.

Good luck!

The winner of Tornado9797's Pokémon Lottery for the day has been selected!

Because six unique players have entered this lottery entry, random.org was needed. The random number generator has selected the number one, which means the winner is...

SViper

Congratulations on being promoted to Level 36! Be sure to obtain your Marowak that holds nothing in your Inbox in the Global Trade Station in your PokéGear in Pokémon three-D Indev zero-point-fifty-three on your electronic apparatus somewhere on Earth (going to assume Antarctica), which happens to be orbiting the Sun, which happens to be in the Local Group, which happens to be in the Milky Way Galaxy, which happens to be in the Local Cluster, within the Local Supercluster, in our Observable Universe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spoiler

The

Spoiler

five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth

Spoiler

entry to Tornado9797's Pokémon Lottery has been chosen! After this Pokémon, there will be twenty-five

Spoiler

Pokémon remaining in the Overflow Box.

Today, your friendly randomizer website (random.org) has outputted the numerical positive integer of seven (out of twenty-six). That means your potential prize becomes a Lairon!

Spoiler

I think I'll just remove this line of text next time. I have no more creative thoughts.

In order to enter the lottery for a chance to win the prize described above, all you need to do is post under this thread...yep, that's it.

Spoiler: This hiding spoiler contains the chronological list of unique Pokémon three-dee Indev zero-point-fifty-three players who are currently entered under Tornado9797's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the obtainable regularly-colored Lairon that holds nothing:

1. Magi
2. Duck Tard
3. SViper
4. NumseFisk
5. Splitzblue
6. Darklord13
7. DavidChampion

Good luck!

 

[Magi]

I've got like, legendaries left for the Dex. I'm so cool.

 

[Tornado9797]

o noes now im only tied for highest level

Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT (the cute green-eyed Victini) has acknowledged to the fullest extent of the English language, as well as all of the other accepted languages on this site, such as gracefully and majestically and with pride, and has successfully assimilated these users as a part of the lottery collective. This single unique player (who happens to be known as Magi on the website known as Pokémon 3D's forums) has been applied well to the digital spoiler several posts above this post that contains the chronological list of GameJolt Online Pokémon three-d Indev zero-point-fifty-three (and GameJolt Online Pokémon three-dee debug mode testers) unique players participating in Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the regularly-colored Lairon that is obtainable through normal game-play that holds nothing. The cute green-eyed Victini (who was freed from imprisonment by the scary robot Victini) has confirmed these facts to be true.

One unique player (Magi) is now participating in this lottery entry, of which one will be randomly selected by the random number generator known as random.org and claim victory. Zero unique players are not allowed to join this lottery entry. Details for this specific lottery entry can be found on page 457 (four-hundred-and-fifty-seven) of this thread, or more specifically, here, if the link decides to work properly.

The winner of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the obtainable regularly-colored Lairon that holds nothing will be announced in a relatively unknown amount of time (ordinarily attempts around noon the day after this lottery entry's reveal) using Houston, Texas, The United States of America time (Daylight Savings Time) from the entry announcement post, assuming Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's new computer doesn't do any weird Windows 8.1 stuff, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's debug testing hasn't gone horribly wrong, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is somewhere away from Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's computer, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT won't stop playing his new Nintendo Wii U, anonymous friends of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT force Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT to play silly computer games, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is in the process of winning the new Pokémon and Smash Brothers games, the GameJolt log in servers are acting silly, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT feels to guilty for trading his water polo shirt for a Sega Genesis, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy fixing the annoying errors and typos that may accompany an acknowledge post such as this one, and/or Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy testing out a new bold feature to help clarify to passing users why the announcement of a lottery winner might be delayed, and/or this is one of those special three-day lottery entries.

Good luck!

 

[Duck Tard]

i'm in for a level up

 

[SViper]

I'm in, I guess.
Oh, I didn't noticed that I won Marowak.

 

[NumseFisk]

I'm in

 

[Splitzblue]

More Hoenn Pokemon? I'm in!

 

[Tornado9797]

that has never been in the lottery before

still tied... what is life...

I'm no content

More Kalos Pokemon? Nope!

Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT (the cute green-eyed Victini) has acknowledged to the fullest extent of the English language, as well as all of the other accepted languages on this site, such as gracefully and majestically and with pride, and has successfully assimilated these users as a part of the lottery collective. All of these unique players (who happen to be known as Duck Tard, SViper, NumseFisk, and Splitzblue on the website known as Pokémon 3D's forums) have been applied well to the digital spoiler several posts above this post that contains the chronological list of GameJolt Online Pokémon three-d Indev zero-point-fifty-three (and GameJolt Online Pokémon three-dee debug mode testers) unique players participating in Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the regularly-colored Lairon that is obtainable through normal game-play that holds nothing. The cute green-eyed Victini (who was freed from imprisonment by the scary robot Victini) has confirmed these facts to be true.

Five unique players (Magi, Duck Tard, SViper, NumseFisk, and Splitzblue) are now participating in this lottery entry, of which one will be randomly selected by the random number generator known as random.org and claim victory. Zero unique players are not allowed to join this lottery entry. Details for this specific lottery entry can be found on page 457 (four-hundred-and-fifty-seven) of this thread, or more specifically, here, if the link decides to work properly.

The winner of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the obtainable regularly-colored Lairon that holds nothing will be announced in a relatively unknown amount of time (ordinarily attempts around noon the day after this lottery entry's reveal) using Houston, Texas, The United States of America time (Daylight Savings Time) from the entry announcement post, assuming Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's new computer doesn't do any weird Windows 8.1 stuff, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's debug testing hasn't gone horribly wrong, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is somewhere away from Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's computer, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT won't stop playing his new Nintendo Wii U, anonymous friends of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT force Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT to play silly computer games, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is in the process of winning the new Pokémon and Smash Brothers games, the GameJolt log in servers are acting silly, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT feels to guilty for trading his water polo shirt for a Sega Genesis, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy fixing the annoying errors and typos that may accompany an acknowledge post such as this one, and/or Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy testing out a new bold feature to help clarify to passing users why the announcement of a lottery winner might be delayed, and/or this is one of those special three-day lottery entries.

Good luck!

 

[Darklord13]

Great,now i'm out of things to post for tornado to read.
I guess Homer's odyssey will do,for now.

Spoiler: Odyssey Book 1 out of 24

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.

So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Ulysses, and he, though he was longing to return to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry him. But as years went by, there came a time when the gods settled that he should go back to Ithaca; even then, however, when he was among his own people, his troubles were not yet over; nevertheless all the gods had now begun to pity him except Neptune, who still persecuted him without ceasing and would not let him get home.

Now Neptune had gone off to the Ethiopians, who are at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East. He had gone there to accept a hecatomb of sheep and oxen, and was enjoying himself at his festival; but the other gods met in the house of Olympian Jove, and the sire of gods and men spoke first. At that moment he was thinking of Aegisthus, who had been killed by Agamemnon's son Orestes; so he said to the other gods:

"See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly. Look at Aegisthus; he must needs make love to Agamemnon's wife unrighteously and then kill Agamemnon, though he knew it would be the death of him; for I sent Mercury to warn him not to do either of these things, inasmuch as Orestes would be sure to take his revenge when he grew up and wanted to return home. Mercury told him this in all good will but he would not listen, and now he has paid for everything in full."

Then Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, it served Aegisthus right, and so it would any one else who does as he did; but Aegisthus is neither here nor there; it is for Ulysses that my heart bleeds, when I think of his sufferings in that lonely sea-girt island, far away, poor man, from all his friends. It is an island covered with forest, in the very middle of the sea, and a goddess lives there, daughter of the magician Atlas, who looks after the bottom of the ocean, and carries the great columns that keep heaven and earth asunder. This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys. You, sir, take no heed of this, and yet when Ulysses was before Troy did he not propitiate you with many a burnt sacrifice? Why then should you keep on being so angry with him?"

And Jove said, "My child, what are you talking about? How can I forget Ulysses than whom there is no more capable man on earth, nor more liberal in his offerings to the immortal gods that live in heaven? Bear in mind, however, that Neptune is still furious with Ulysses for havingblinded an eye of Polyphemus king of the Cyclopes. Polyphemus is son to Neptune by the nymph Thoosa, daughter to the sea-king Phorcys; therefore though he will not kill Ulysses outright, he torments him by preventing him from getting home. Still, let us lay our heads together and see how we can help him to return; Neptune will then be pacified, for if we are all of a mind he can hardly stand out against us."

And Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, if, then, the gods now mean that Ulysses should get home, we should first send Mercury to the Ogygian island to tell Calypso that we have made up our minds and that he is to return. In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Ulysses' son Telemachus; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return of his dear father- for this will make people speak well of him."

So saying she bound on her glittering golden sandals, imperishable, with which she can fly like the wind over land or sea; she grasped the redoubtable bronze-shod spear, so stout and sturdy and strong, wherewith she quells the ranks of heroes who have displeased her, and down she darted from the topmost summits of Olympus, whereon forthwith she was in Ithaca, at the gateway of Ulysses' house, disguised as a visitor, Mentes, chief of the Taphians, and she held a bronze spear in her hand. There she found the lordly suitors seated on hides of the oxen which they had killed and eaten, and playing draughts in front of the house. Men-servants and pages were bustling about to wait upon them, some mixing wine with water in the mixing-bowls, some cleaning down the tables with wet sponges and laying them out again, and some cutting up great quantities of meat.

Telemachus saw her long before any one else did. He was sitting moodily among the suitors thinking about his brave father, and how he would send them flying out of the house, if he were to come to his own again and be honoured as in days gone by. Thus brooding as he sat among them, he caught sight of Minerva and went straight to the gate, for he was vexed that a stranger should be kept waiting for admittance. He took her right hand in his own, and bade her give him her spear. "Welcome," said he, "to our house, and when you have partaken of food you shall tell us what you have come for."

He led the way as he spoke, and Minerva followed him. When they were within he took her spear and set it in the spear- stand against a strong bearing-post along with the many other spears of his unhappy father, and he conducted her to a richly decorated seat under which he threw a cloth of damask. There was a footstool also for her feet, and he set another seat near her for himself, away from the suitors, that she might not be annoyed while eating by their noise and insolence, and that he might ask her more freely about his father.

A maid servant then brought them water in a beautiful golden ewer and poured it into a silver basin for them to wash their hands, and she drew a clean table beside them. An upper servant brought them bread, and offered them many good things of what there was in the house, the carver fetched them plates of all manner of meats and set cups of gold by their side, and a man-servant brought them wine and poured it out for them.

Then the suitors came in and took their places on the benches and seats. Forthwith men servants poured water over their hands, maids went round with the bread-baskets, pages filled the mixing-bowls with wine and water, and they laid their hands upon the good things that were before them. As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink they wanted music and dancing, which are the crowning embellishments of a banquet, so a servant brought a lyre to Phemius, whom they compelled perforce to sing to them. As soon as he touched his lyre and began to sing Telemachus spoke low to Minerva, with his head close to hers that no man might hear.

"I hope, sir," said he, "that you will not be offended with what I am going to say. Singing comes cheap to those who do not pay for it, and all this is done at the cost of one whose bones lie rotting in some wilderness or grinding to powder in the surf. If these men were to see my father come back to Ithaca they would pray for longer legs rather than a longer purse, for money would not serve them; but he, alas, has fallen on an ill fate, and even when people do sometimes say that he is coming, we no longer heed them; we shall never see him again. And now, sir, tell me and tell me true, who you are and where you come from. Tell me of your town and parents, what manner of ship you came in, how your crew brought you to Ithaca, and of what nation they declared themselves to be- for you cannot have come by land. Tell me also truly, for I want to know, are you a stranger to this house, or have you been here in my father's time? In the old days we had many visitors for my father went about much himself."

And Minerva answered, "I will tell you truly and particularly all about it. I am Mentes, son of Anchialus, and I am King of the Taphians. I have come here with my ship and crew, on a voyage to men of a foreign tongue being bound for Temesa with a cargo of iron, and I shall bring back copper. As for my ship, it lies over yonder off the open country away from the town, in the harbour Rheithron under the wooded mountain Neritum. Our fathers were friends before us, as old Laertes will tell you, if you will go and ask him. They say, however, that he never comes to town now, and lives by himself in the country, faring hardly, with an old woman to look after him and get his dinner for him, when he comes in tired from pottering about his vineyard. They told me your father was at home again, and that was why I came, but it seems the gods are still keeping him back, for he is not dead yet not on the mainland. It is more likely he is on some sea-girt island in mid ocean, or a prisoner among savages who are detaining him against his will I am no prophet, and know very little about omens, but I speak as it is borne in upon me from heaven, and assure you that he will not be away much longer; for he is a man of such resource that even though he were in chains of iron he would find some means of getting home again. But tell me, and tell me true, can Ulysses really have such a fine looking fellow for a son? You are indeed wonderfully like him about the head and eyes, for we were close friends before he set sail for Troy where the flower of all the Argives went also. Since that time we have never either of us seen the other."

"My mother," answered Telemachus, tells me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father. Would that I were son to one who had grown old upon his own estates, for, since you ask me, there is no more ill-starred man under heaven than he who they tell me is my father."

And Minerva said, "There is no fear of your race dying out yet, while Penelope has such a fine son as you are. But tell me, and tell me true, what is the meaning of all this feasting, and who are these people? What is it all about? Have you some banquet, or is there a wedding in thefamily- for no one seems to be bringing any provisions of his own? And the guests- how atrociously they are behaving; what riot they make over the whole house; it is enough to disgust any respectable person who comes near them."

"Sir," said Telemachus, "as regards your question, so long as my father was here it was well with us and with the house, but the gods in their displeasure have willed it otherwise, and have hidden him away more closely than mortal man was ever yet hidden. I could have borne it better even though he were dead, if he had fallen with his men before Troy, or had died with friends around him when the days of his fighting were done; for then the Achaeans would have built a mound over his ashes, and I should myself have been heir to his renown; but now the storm-winds have spirited him away we know not wither; he is gone without leaving so much as a trace behind him, and I inherit nothing but dismay. Nor does the matter end simply with grief for the loss of my father; heaven has laid sorrows upon me of yet another kind; for the chiefs from all our islands, Dulichium, Same, and the woodland island of Zacynthus, as also all the principal men of Ithaca itself, are eating up my house under the pretext of paying their court to my mother, who will neither point blank say that she will not marry, nor yet bring matters to an end; so they are making havoc of my estate, and before long will do so also with myself."

"Is that so?" exclaimed Minerva, "then you do indeed want Ulysses home again. Give him his helmet, shield, and a couple lances, and if he is the man he was when I first knew him in our house, drinking and making merry, he would soon lay his hands about these rascally suitors, were he to stand once more upon his own threshold. He was then coming from Ephyra, where he had been to beg poison for his arrows from Ilus, son of Mermerus. Ilus feared the ever-living gods and would not give him any, but my father let him have some, for he was very fond of him. If Ulysses is the man he then was these suitors will have a short shrift and a sorry wedding.

"But there! It rests with heaven to determine whether he is to return, and take his revenge in his own house or no; I would, however, urge you to set about trying to get rid of these suitors at once. Take my advice, call the Achaean heroes in assembly to-morrow -lay your case before them, and call heaven to bear you witness. Bid the suitors take themselves off, each to his own place, and if your mother's mind is set on marrying again, let her go back to her father, who will find her a husband and provide her with all the marriage gifts that so dear a daughter mayexpect. As for yourself, let me prevail upon you to take the best ship you can get, with a crew of twenty men, and go in quest of your father who has so long been missing. Some one may tell you something, or (and people often hear things in this way) some heaven-sent message may direct you. First go to Pylos and ask Nestor; thence go on to Sparta and visit Menelaus, for he got home last of all the Achaeans; if you hear that your father is alive and on his way home, you can put up with the waste these suitors will make for yet another twelve months. If on the other hand you hear of his death, come home at once, celebrate his funeral rites with all due pomp, build a barrow to his memory, and make your mother marry again. Then, having done all this, think it well over in your mind how, by fair means or foul, you may kill these suitors in your own house. You are too old to plead infancy any longer; have you not heard how people are singing Orestes' praises for having killed his father's murderer Aegisthus? You are a fine, smart looking fellow; show your mettle, then, and make yourself a name in story. Now, however, I must go back to my ship and to my crew, who will be impatient if I keep them waiting longer; think the matter over for yourself, and remember what I have said to you."

"Sir," answered Telemachus, "it has been very kind of you to talk to me in this way, as though I were your own son, and I will do all you tell me; I know you want to be getting on with your voyage, but stay a little longer till you have taken a bath and refreshed yourself. I will then give you a present, and you shall go on your way rejoicing; I will give you one of great beauty and value- a keepsake such as only dear friends give to one another."

Minerva answered, "Do not try to keep me, for I would be on my way at once. As for any present you may be disposed to make me, keep it till I come again, and I will take it home with me. You shall give me a very good one, and I will give you one of no less value in return."

With these words she flew away like a bird into the air, but she had given Telemachus courage, and had made him think more than ever about his father. He felt the change, wondered at it, and knew that the stranger had been a god, so he went straight to where the suitors weresitting.

Phemius was still singing, and his hearers sat rapt in silence as he told the sad tale of the return from Troy, and the ills Minerva had laid upon the Achaeans. Penelope, daughter of Icarius, heard his song from her room upstairs, and came down by the great staircase, not alone, butattended by two of her handmaids. When she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing posts that supported the roof of the cloisters with a staid maiden on either side of her. She held a veil, moreover, before her face, and was weeping bitterly.

"Phemius," she cried, "you know many another feat of gods and heroes, such as poets love to celebrate. Sing the suitors some one of these, and let them drink their wine in silence, but cease this sad tale, for it breaks my sorrowful heart, and reminds me of my lost husband whom I mourn ever without ceasing, and whose name was great over all Hellas and middle Argos."

"Mother," answered Telemachus, "let the bard sing what he has a mind to; bards do not make the ills they sing of; it is Jove, not they, who makes them, and who sends weal or woe upon mankind according to his own good pleasure. This fellow means no harm by singing the ill-fated return of the Danaans, for people always applaud the latest songs most warmly. Make up your mind to it and bear it; Ulysses is not the only man who never came back from Troy, but many another went down as well as he. Go, then, within the house and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for speech is man's matter, and mine above all others- for it is I who am master here."

She went wondering back into the house, and laid her son's saying in her heart. Then, going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she mourned her dear husband till Minerva shed sweet sleep over her eyes. But the suitors were clamorous throughout the covered cloisters, and prayed each one that he might be her bed fellow.

Then Telemachus spoke, "Shameless," he cried, "and insolent suitors, let us feast at our pleasure now, and let there be no brawling, for it is a rare thing to hear a man with such a divine voice as Phemius has; but in the morning meet me in full assembly that I may give you formalnotice to depart, and feast at one another's houses, turn and turn about, at your own cost. If on the other hand you choose to persist in spunging upon one man, heaven help me, but Jove shall reckon with you in full, and when you fall in my father's house there shall be no man to avenge you."

The suitors bit their lips as they heard him, and marvelled at the boldness of his speech. Then, Antinous, son of Eupeithes, said, "The gods seem to have given you lessons in bluster and tall talking; may Jove never grant you to be chief in Ithaca as your father was before you."

Telemachus answered, "Antinous, do not chide with me, but, god willing, I will be chief too if I can. Is this the worst fate you can think of for me? It is no bad thing to be a chief, for it brings both riches and honour. Still, now that Ulysses is dead there are many great men in Ithaca both old and young, and some other may take the lead among them; nevertheless I will be chief in my own house, and will rule those whom Ulysses has won for me."

Then Eurymachus, son of Polybus, answered, "It rests with heaven to decide who shall be chief among us, but you shall be master in your own house and over your own possessions; no one while there is a man in Ithaca shall do you violence nor rob you. And now, my good fellow, I want to know about this stranger. What country does he come from? Of what family is he, and where is his estate? Has he brought you news about the return of your father, or was he on business of his own? He seemed a well-to-do man, but he hurried off so suddenly that he was gone in a moment before we could get to know him."

"My father is dead and gone," answered Telemachus, "and even if some rumour reaches me I put no more faith in it now. My mother does indeed sometimes send for a soothsayer and question him, but I give his prophecyings no heed. As for the stranger, he was Mentes, son of Anchialus, chief of the Taphians, an old friend of my father's." But in his heart he knew that it had been the goddess.

The suitors then returned to their singing and dancing until the evening; but when night fell upon their pleasuring they went home to bed each in his own abode. Telemachus's room was high up in a tower that looked on to the outer court; hither, then, he hied, brooding and full of thought. A good old woman, Euryclea, daughter of Ops, the son of Pisenor, went before him with a couple of blazing torches. Laertes had bought her with his own money when she was quite young; he gave the worth of twenty oxen for her, and shewed as much respect to her in his household as he did to his own wedded wife, but he did not take her to his bed for he feared his wife's resentment. She it was who now lighted Telemachus to his room, and she loved him better than any of the other women in the house did, for she had nursed him when he was a baby. He opened the door of his bed room and sat down upon the bed; as he took off his shirt he gave it to the good old woman, who folded it tidily up, and hung it for him over a peg by his bed side, after which she went out, pulled the door to by a silver catch, and drew the bolt home by means of the strap. But Telemachus as he lay covered with a woollen fleece kept thinking all night through of his intended voyage of the counsel that Minerva had given him.

 

[Tornado9797]

You could also just said I'm in.

Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT (the cute green-eyed Victini) has acknowledged to the fullest extent of the English language, as well as all of the other accepted languages on this site, such as gracefully and majestically and with pride, and has successfully assimilated these users as a part of the lottery collective. This single unique player (who happens to be known as Darklord13 on the website known as Pokémon 3D's forums) has been applied well to the digital spoiler several posts above this post that contains the chronological list of GameJolt Online Pokémon three-d Indev zero-point-fifty-three (and GameJolt Online Pokémon three-dee debug mode testers) unique players participating in Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the regularly-colored Lairon that is obtainable through normal game-play that holds nothing. The cute green-eyed Victini (who was freed from imprisonment by the scary robot Victini) has confirmed these facts to be true.

Six unique players (Magi, Duck Tard, SViper, NumseFisk, Splitzblue, and Darklord13) are now participating in this lottery entry, of which one will be randomly selected by the random number generator known as random.org and claim victory. Zero unique players are not allowed to join this lottery entry. Details for this specific lottery entry can be found on page 457 (four-hundred-and-fifty-seven) of this thread, or more specifically, here, if the link decides to work properly.

The winner of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's five-hundred-and-thirty-ninth lottery entry for the obtainable regularly-colored Lairon that holds nothing will be announced in a relatively unknown amount of time (ordinarily attempts around noon the day after this lottery entry's reveal) using Houston, Texas, The United States of America time (Daylight Savings Time) from the entry announcement post, assuming Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's new computer doesn't do any weird Windows 8.1 stuff, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's debug testing hasn't gone horribly wrong, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is somewhere away from Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT's computer, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT won't stop playing his new Nintendo Wii U, anonymous friends of Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT force Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT to play silly computer games, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is in the process of winning the new Pokémon and Smash Brothers games, the GameJolt log in servers are acting silly, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT feels to guilty for trading his water polo shirt for a Sega Genesis, Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy fixing the annoying errors and typos that may accompany an acknowledge post such as this one, and/or Tornado9797 and/or 7979odanroT is too busy testing out a new bold feature to help clarify to passing users why the announcement of a lottery winner might be delayed, and/or this is one of those special three-day lottery entries.

Good luck!