random musings

I was just walking back to my apartment tonight and suddenly a question popped into my head.

Does altruistic behavior in human beings truly exist?

Biologically speaking, altruism is an act or behavior that decreases the biological fitness of the actor in exchange for the increase of the biological fitness of the recipient.

From an evolutionary perspective, this type of behavior doesn't seem to be genetic, seeing as something that would decrease your likelihood of passing on your genes would go directly against the theory of evolution. Basically, if this was genetic, the gene pool of individuals with this characteristic would decrease over time and eventually be eliminated from the population.

But let's focus on human behavior in social situations where it isn't necessarily fitness that is adversely affected. Rather, the actor simply does something for the benefit of another while taking a net loss.

People do nice stuff for other people all the time. Sometimes I feel like I do things that would appear to be altruistic. For instance, I'm an RA at my university. One of the responsibilities of an RA is to be "on duty" on certain assigned nights of the month. Out of my staff of 11, I was lucky enough to draw the 3rd pick of duty nights. However, my friend who was 10th was stuck with Halloween night. Without her directly asking me, I exchanged one of my easy duty nights for Halloween night. In this interaction, I gave up my early pick and easy duty night in exchange for one of the worst duty nights and a loss in opportunity to go to the many Halloween parties.

On the surface this seems like an altruistic behavior. But is it really? Even though I did this, in the back of my mind I feel like I expect her to reciprocate and do a favor for me in the future, so in this sense it isn't altruism, but rather a type of mutualism.

Do people always have some sort of ulterior motive? Or are there examples of true altruism in action?

Is altruism genetically inherited or not? If it does, how does it still exist after this many generations? If not, how does altruism exist today? Could it be due to a result of the actor's environment? But society in general appears to praise non-altruistic actions (ideology such as capitalism, etc. are all about individual success/familial). Under the assumption that altruistic behavior is rare compared to selfish/mutualistic/commensalistic behavior, why and how are these traits present?

Poll: Does altruistic behavior in human beings truly exist?
(Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
+ Show Spoiler +

This is currently the biggest news in the kpop world. I would usually put this in the kpop thread, but I think it deserves its own blog.

Remember, this is not just about DBSK. If this is the case for Asia's most popular boyband, this is likely the case for all the other kpop stars out there.

DBSK Hero, Micky and Xiah’s official stand about their discord with SM

Idol group Dong Bang Shin Ki’s members Micky YooChun, Hero JaeJoong and Xiah JunSu finally revealed their stand about their problems with SM Entertainment.

Their representative revealed through news media on 3rd August, “The 5 years period after they debuted, the 3 of them felt that their minds and their bodies are tired having to follow the tight schedule that the company put up unilaterally.”

They continued, “Kim JunSu, Kim JaeJoong and Park YooChun has been following SM’s instruments from the beginning of 2004 till now, going back and forth promoting in Korea, Japan, China etc, and in a year except for 1 week they get only 3-4 hours of sleep a day to do our schedule.”

Also, “In the process the health of the 3 members are very much deteriorated, they are also suffering from mental fatigue, and as time went SM continue to established on their own decision for Dong Bang Shin Ki to advance into other countries. In the end the 3 members felt that as compared to be fulfilling their dreams to be singers, they are used more as a tool by the compared to earn profits, and they wish to use each of the members to also go into other entertainers’ activities.”

The 3 members’ representative also added, “It is a 13 years contract but in reality it is a lifetime contract. With the exclusive rights clause in the contract, the 13 years also include the time the members are serving their military service, hence it will go for more than 15 years. And now it has not even been near to 10 years since the group’s debut, hence it seems like the contract will last until the members’ retirement from the entertainment zone. The penalty for retracting the exclusive right clause is 3 times the investment cost and 2 times the lost in earnings. They also asked about the penalty of cancelling the whole contract but it will involve several hundred billions KRW of penalty, hence in reality there is no way out but to be tied down to SM because of the contract.”

Also, “The members did not receive the right treatment even from SM. Without getting any contract fees, the initial contract was that if their album sells more than 500K copies, each member will get about 10 million KRW (~$8,000 USD) during the next album release. If they sell less than 500K copies of album, they will get nothing.”***

The 3 members had went down to Seoul Central District Court to file for a retractile of their exclusive belonging rights with SM Entertainment on 31st July, causing an outrage of speculations about the group’s disbanding and also problems between the members and SM.

Credit: sookyeong@wordpress

1. 5 years after their debut, the three members are physically and emotionally fatigued from the company’s one-sided orders.
-Kim Junsu, Kim Jaejoong, and Park Yoochun debuted as DBSK members in 2004. Since then, they have followed SM’s orders to go from Korea, Japan, to China. With the exception of 1 week for year, they were only able to get 3-4 hours of sleep and had to go through schedules. During this period, the health of the three members deteriorated and they were mentally fatigued. However, SM pushed DBSK into foreign markets which resulted in excess performance plans. In result, the three members felt that they would not be able to achieve their dreams in SM and would be just tools for the company’s profit. They wished to participate in entertainment activities according to their individual visions.

2.In reality, 13 years of contract meant a contract for life.
-According to the contract, the period of the contract was 13 years, but when including military service, would exceed over 15 years. This meant that there was still 10 years to go with the current contract and in reality, meant until retirement. In the instance that the contract would be breached, the penalty would be to pay 3 times the total investment, 2 times the lost earnings. Even in the case that the contract is canceled when agreed by both parties, the members were required to pay penalty. Therefore, due to the millions of wons required by the contract upon cancellation, contract cancellation was realistically impossible and the members had no choice but to remain in SM

3. The members did not receive adequate treatment from SM for their efforts.
-Despite all this, during the duration of their contract, they did not receive adequate treatment from SM. They did not receive any earnest money from the contract, and according to the initial contract for album profit allotment clause, only when an album sold 500,000 copies, could they get $10,000 per member for the next album, and when albums sold less than 500,000 copies, the members could not receive any earnings.*** This clause was revised in 2009, February 6th, but even after the revision, earnings that each member would receive for the album sales were 0.4%-1% depending on the album sales.

4. The members requested for corrections to the unreasonable contract, but SM did not listen to the member’s opinions.
-In this situation, the three members pointed out the unreasonable parts in the contract and asked multiple times to be freed from the contract’s boundary and work according to their visions but in response to the current situation, SM discussed issues dealing with their investments in the makeup company, not responding to the true nature of the problem. Despite all this, the three members wanted to find a way to deal with the situation and requested for a conference where both parties could find a solution but SM did not respond. During this process, by the attitudes shown by SM, the three members realized that there was no point in hoping for a settlement and resorted to the court of justice to execute a solution for the problems.

5. The investment in makeup company does not have any relation to entertainment activities and does not have any relation to the applied provisional disposition. The nature of this incident is the contract.
-SM stated that the disposition was submitted due to the investment but the members’ investments in the makeup company do not have anything to do with the provisional disposition. The makeup company SM discussed planned to export to China, and the three members invested as stockholders, having no relation with their entertainment activities. Just by common sense, it does not make sense that the members would give up all their efforts and results as DBSK in order to invest $100,000 to the company. The core of the problems presented by the members is contract injustice, and SM’s attempts to blur the true problems by bring up the investments must stop now.

6. The members do not want DBSK to break up and just hope to free themselves from contract restraints.
-Many fans are worried that the disposition would result in DBSK’s break up. However, this disposition was not intended for DBSK to end. Right now, due to differences in how the members wish to overcome problems, only 3 members have participated in the lawsuit. However, there is no problems within the members and they all have the same wishes to keep their promises with their fans to always remain as one. After this incident, if contract injustice is corrected and the members are given conditions to freely perform their music, they feel that everyone can be one and can stand in front of fans as one.

7. We will take this as an opportunity to mature.
-The members realize how much DBSK fans must be surprised and be disappointed about this incident and are distressed and sorry. If the fans could think of this as a jump to bigger dreams and continue to cheer, the members promise to respond to the fans as better musicians.

Credit: j'adore@soompi.com

remember this pic from boesthius's blog?

well they just released their solo shots!

i'll post these in order of most to least favorite

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+ Show Spoiler [ruins the gorup] +

DBSK (Yoochun and Jaejoong)

@ 0:13 SHOW ME THE MONEY (lol)

Super Junior (Kyuhyun and Heechul)

@ 0:12

Shinhwa (Hyesung and Andy)

@ 2:20

Actually, Hyesung is known for being actually pretty decent at SC. Here are some videos of him playing vs progamers.

Hyesung vs Ruby

Hyesung vs Shark

That Korean noob you just crushed on west might have been a K-Pop star!

*spoiler alert*

i would like to request that we call kespa dogspa or at least gespa in reference to how the koreans call it 개스파 instead of 케스파, where 개 means "dog" in korean and 케 is the sound "ke".

after the last couple incidents involving kespa DQing people for stupid reasons, kespa's message board has been flooded with a lot of hate from the netizens.

here are the (loosely translated) names of some of the various threads. note that these are only some of the hundreds if not thousands of complaints.

"thanks kespa. because of you i am quitting starcraft"
"why is the kespa organization so stupid"
"what do the old guys at the top do? they have no relation with the game"
"CONGRATS: KESPA 2, PLAYERS 0"
"why do refs exist?"
"why does kespa exist?"
"what exactly do you guys do other than make money?"
"are you retards trying to get the refs killed?"
"i thought the point of kespa was to further the development of esports?"
"kespa is cancerous to esports"
"why is the punishment to all your rules a full DQ?"
"is your brain able to comprehend the word "concept"?"
"개스파"
"whats wrong with a regame?"
"you still don't offer an official apology?"
"you guys are an embarrassment"

They wrote and composed the song. If you guys remember the beatboxing group iM, this group is composed of 2 of the 3 members.

Well hey, one outcome might be that korean starcraft highlight videos will have Happy Face rather than Linkin Park as the bg music.

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Poll: What do you think?
(Vote): Good
(Vote): Bad

i logged onto west and saw a guy spamming "1v1 any??". i say "1v1 python?" and he says no. turns out he's a FMP player. anyway, this other guy "cakeman[stfu]" says that he'll 1v1 me.

basically the game is super sloppy. tvp on python, me T9 him P12. i scout only 1 pylon on his base so i suspect something proxy so i get a fast ebay but i still get reaver dropped because i'm stupid. after a few skirmishes here and there he makes a bad attack into my sieged crap and then proceeds to lose 2 nexus at his min only and 3 main. and shortly after he gg's out. now i know this was a SUPER crappy game (even for my low standards), but i somehow managed to win thanks to my hidden expo at 5.

the reason why i made this blog is because when i asked him what iccup rank he was in the channel afterwards, and he says B-. i really really don't believe him, but when i asked for his iccup account he said it was ig.voltron. i'm checking his stats and he's currently C, and indeed in seasons 9 and 10 he was B-.

now i can see from his iccup page that he's a zerg user. my question is would the average B- user lose to a D level player with an offrace? also keep in mind that in the game lobby i asked him what race he plays with and he said z/p.

rep for those who want to lol at how bad i am

click for full-size
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In a different forum a lot of people think member X and Y are soooooo pretty/cute/whatever but I really don't see it. I'm curious to see if TL agrees w/ me or not.

+ Show Spoiler [My Ranking] +