People almost never commit suicide for "leaving more resources to the tribe". They do because they are complex persons living in a complex environment that is radically different from the savannahs for which our genes evolved.

Likewise, your evolutionary arguments for motivation are equally useless. Evolution takes place on much larger timescales than the changes in our environment. 3000 years is almost nothing in terms of meaningful evolution through natural selection, and the world has drastically changed in the last 400, or 150, or even 70!

> People almost never commit suicide for "leaving more resources to the tribe". They do because they are complex persons living in a complex environment that is radically different from the savannahs for which our genes evolved.

We are not talking about why people might be committing suicide now, we are talking about how the genetic disposition for suicadility might have passed along. To give context, 50% of the people will seriously have suicidal thoughts in their lifetime for about a week or two (so few actually do).

> Likewise, your evolutionary arguments for motivation are equally useless.

You misunderstand. We are not talking about an environment - gene mismatch, therefore the timescales are not relevant at all. I am positing a near impossibility of complete lack of intrinsic motivation to have passed genetically, regardless of timescale or even species.

Have you seen “natural” watermelons?

But identical arguments to the suicide-logic can be made about a lack of intrinsic motivation - someone without intrinsic motivation but who is easily externally motivated could be a great asset to a group with more plans than people to enact them. I could imagine plenty of situations where strong intrinsic motivation relative to external motivation could be detrimental to either the individual or the group.

That is a fair point. But wouldn't an intrinsic motivation for group conformity be a competitive advantage here, instead of being coerced or convinced for it? For example ants must have high intrinsic motivation for following the group, they don't need to be motivated or convinced. Likewise, humans come with factory settings for many prosocial behaviors somewhat instinctively (e.g. mother-infant behavior), therefore the group benefit and intrinsic motivations being in alignment can be a selective advantage.

Can be certainly, but I'm not convinced it would be a selective advantage in all situations - when being coerced by a more powerful human or group of humans for example, it may be most adaptive to be pliant to the extrinsic motivation for co-operation but maintain an intrinsic motivation to act against the coercer's interest.