Rules of altruism

Argh, I'm kind of edgy after experiencing 6 consecutive days of renovation works in the apartment next to me, barring Thursday's holiday. It is so bad that my sister and I decided to come up with a sport to irritate them back, I won't say anything about it except that it has got to do with ice.

Society is established on the grounds of reciprocal altruism, which means "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" in monkey language or "you pick my ticks and I pick yours" in bird language. And for us humans, you don't operate that irritating drill in your house, and I won't operate mine, or find some other innovative way to irritate you. Of course, every now and then someone would like to cheat these unwritten rules, so others have to gang up to punish them so that others can enjoy a peace of mind. That's why there are written rules, and law enforcement agency to enforce the rules, and sometimes that gets out of control. Of course, that isn't the point, the point I'm going to talk about is about the unwritten rules.

Obviously, every now and then you might need a house renovation that needs a lot of drilling, so you're going to have to break the unwritten rules from time to time, so how should you do it? Well, first thing you should do is to inform anyone that it affects so that schedules could be rearranged and generally people aren't so mad at you, something my neighbour didn't do. That is one reason why most animals usually have courtship rituals before actually mating.

Second, you try to space out the time interval before breaking the rule again. For evolutionary reasons, all advanced animals have a tendency to forgive a rule breaker that occurs infrequently, since benefits probably outweigh costs, and as we all know, more benefits, more survival. Breaking a rule six consecutive times will put you into the bad books of any animal.

Third, you try to be smart at how you break the rule. For example, arranging the renovation once weekly. Or renovate opposites sites of the house on consecutive days, or putting the really irritating parts on alternate days. There is a wide variety of ways to break rules, so make sure you break yours correctly before someone gets mad at you and start shoving ice down your mouth (metaphorically of course).