Killed By Kindness

George Price was a chemist and geneticist who moved to London in 1967 to do some work in theoretical biology. With no formal training in the fields of population genetics or statistics, Price was still able to formulate an equation that mathematically disproved the idea of true altruism. No theory had ever had the sheer number of applications in evolution, biology, and mathematics that Price’s theory on kin selection did. In a nutshell, his theory stated that people are most likely to show altruism to an organism whose genetic makeup is most similar to their own (like a parent or child perhaps) because in doing so, their genetic heritage would be most likely to live on.

Price also theorized that, in the same way an organism would “sacrifice” itself to further its genetic line, it would also sacrifice itself to eliminate others closely related to it if that meant that the organism’s genes would better propagate. The implication is that kindness is never truly selfless if it’s actually a survival adaptation.

As mind-blowing as that is, the more interesting part of the story is what the theory did to its creator: Price could not emotionally handle the idea that he belonged to an exclusively selfish species. He began partaking in increasingly random acts of kindness towards both strangers and the homeless, only to have his hopeful altruism continuously disproven by his own theory. He gave up all of his belongings and allowed homeless people to live in his house. Eventually, people began stealing his things until he himself was both homeless and sick with depression.

In the end, he lost everything in his effort to disprove his own theory. George Price committed suicide in January of 1975!