PAX was a chemical to calm the population on the planet Miranda in the 2005 movie Serenity Sweet. I didn't even catch that one. Pax is Latin for "peace", btw. I am sure you knew that, but just in case...
I said I would stop arguing about this, but I just realized that I didn't address this point at all.
I'm afraid the "those people are an extension of myself" argument is not very helpful. Why not extend that same feeling, at a weaker level, to others who you're less desperately and unavoidably in love with? Besides, whether you can help it or not, if it's destructive it's still not something a perfectionist would want to accept. I sidestepped it, so here's an opinion. And it's just that. I can't say this with any degree of certainty. It is because it is destructive to distribute resources in such a way that they go towards non-constructive goals that we have learned to limit (maybe in some evolutionary manner) our view of our extended family. Caring for the children is not a destructive endeavor, by the way. Part of caring for them is trying to provide them with a good education. Which is really a way to enable them to become more constructive.
Seriously? You are one scary freak. I was pondering whether it's ever worth it responding to a smear by an anonymous troll enjoying his false sense of security behind his keyboard. But why not? You do, after all, claim to put your name on the line, which is more than I can risk doing given the vindictive tendencies of the "peace-loving" shills such as yourself. But then again, that which begins in anger end in shame.
As recent headlines indicate, they're blunt, inelegant tools that we don't understand as well as we thought. No recent headline indicates that. If you believe that the latest economic crisis is due to some misunderstanding, you believe what you read in the newspapers too much. It is fairly easily shown (almost with the certainty of causality) that it is the stepping away from the metrizable tokens and towards the ones that had to do when we did "fall off trees" that is causing the global economic crisis. If we don't take steps back to the solution that we already know -- calculable (and therefore easily negotiable) exchange tokens -- we'll keep ceding power to the politicos and keep devaluing merit. And the world that politicos dream of is 1984. Whereas the world that the people of merit dream of is the world in which the promises of science fictions are fulfilled. I suppose we do have a choice.
The way you describe the pitfalls of "sensitivity", it seems to me that you have some real difficulties with what they call "emotional intelligence". Not at all. I am not autistic. I have to suppress my sensitivity to make myself more effective.
People are often frustrating and confusing to me. But rather than recognize that there may be a useful skill that you're deficient in, you've adopted a world view where your weakness is twisted into a perceived strength, and the skill you lack is a moral impediment that causes lesser people to corrupt ideal systems with their well-intended incompetence. There are 2 possibilities here. Either you are going for the "admit you have a problem, because it's ok I have it, too" line or you have indeed bought into the idea that you must be "fixed". Both are absurd. Free society (and that means people personally invested in treating each other fairly rather than nicely is a better world than a communist(capitalization intentional) society. It encourages cooperation by making it unavoidable (due to efficiencies of specialization). Whereas the emotional-investment society that you are trying to sell here encourages whimsical bickering. You can talk all you want about how love your parents, but most people would prefer the semi-cold work environment of an office to the agony of a Thanksgiving dinner.
No, really, it could happen. But you may want to put yourself into cryofreeze until then, because I don't think that being on the bleeding edge of this trend is going to work to your advantage today. You seem to have adopted the world view that community is above the money. It isn't. And societies (and even microcosms) that attempt this view fall apart rather quickly. The delusion of a global village that you think you live in is just that. We live in the world of money. It just happens to be so efficient that it tolerates occasional local lapses into the Neanderthal exchange that you prefer as modus operandus. But all the hippie movements die out. God help us if their insanity ever captures the imagination long enough to be set in any sort of stone. Because after we wake up from the somber giddiness of it all, we'll have a lot of stones to unturn.
We have various instincts regarding social exchange that make it a superior system in some contexts--most notably that we tend to get stronger feelings that we should act a certain way, and that motivates us; when that way is a way that solves PD problems, it's a great benefit.
Ok, I am going to make the last attempt to explain why your standing that the system of exchange based on emotional connections is less efficient. You keep basing all of your argument on the assumption that it isn't. So if you don't see what I mean, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
The reason we moved away from this token and introduced the more precise token based on numbers is twofold. First, it allows for much more metrizable exchanges. And without metrics, all but the most primitive exchanges will produce waste of resources (natural resources and the human effort of transforming the natural resources into that which we can use to alleviate the harshness of mother nature). This alone is reason enough to stick to the metrizable exchange tokens. Because introducing waste where waste is not necessary is destructive. The second reason is the crux of meritocracy vs nepotism argument. When the token of exchange is measured in personal affection, those who accumulate the most of those tokens are the ones who are the most politically adroit. So this system (almost by definition) has a bias based on personality types. It abuses those who are able to aptly produce value with their own skills by devaluing the credit they receive for their contribution and concentrating the benefits of production in the hands of the most politically apt.
Perhaps, this is a more precise answer to your original question. Why was the reaction to the "finding" so visceral? Because it was rooted in the assumption that the system of exchange that values political skills over production skills (ie altruism) is a better system than the one that credits people for their respective contributions fairly. And the people that view themselves as producers see this as the context used to justify their ridicule and abuse. Naturally, they don't see anything wrong with themselves.... all they try to do is produce good work. And they are being essentially called dirty names by the people who consume the products of their work.
Again, PD has nothing to do with this. It evaluates benefits of honest vs corrupt behavior -- not selfish vs selfless. I realize that I didn't decouple the two very well, but I invite you to do that on your own. Think of how selfish mindset can lead to the frame of mind that "I am what I chose to be and what others do to me is a statement about them rather than about me... meanwhile, I want to create things because they are cool and the hell with what anyone thinks" and yet it can also lead to the mind set "all people are bastards so I might as well take advantage of them." I'll let you figure out other examples of trains of thought that lead a selfish person to honest vs dishonest behavior. And similarly with the selfless people (hint: "if my goals are noble, they justify the means").
I agree that businesses are in danger of nepotism, but that's a danger regardless of the system used.
Yes, but in the case of a business partnership based on "win/win or no deal", the nepotism is a remote danger. In the case of making a business with friends, nepotism (well near-nepotism) is one of the underlying assumptions of the business.
Another way is to collect people who are less selfish.
To run a business? Honestly, have you been in business? You would trust business partners who proclaim not to care about themselves and work for the good of others? I am sorry, but the suggestion is absurd.
Why not extend that same feeling, at a weaker level, to others who you're less desperately and unavoidably in love with?
Because (for the most part) we don't chose how to feel towards our friends and loved ones. Perhaps,
I just thought of the most clear way (well, the most colloquial way) of saying what you are attempting to do in business. You are attempting to substitute meritocracy for an illusion of nepotism (supposing that the business partners are not actually your family). And nepotism is actually how every corruption of a every meritocracy begins (because we just can't deny our family). So the relationship structure you try to form expedites disintegration into corruption that will result in necessitating PD considerations. Had you kept the relationships "professional" (ie, everyone acted selfishly but honestly), the corruption would not be of benefit and when it did occur, it would have been quickly stemmed out by those trying to honestly accomplish the mandate that the business had set for itself.
Ok, don't you see that all you are doing is introducing a second token of exchange? Instead of having universal token of promise of future performance (money) you also introduce a second token (personal investment). And whereas money is easy to calculate and (relatively) easy to maintain, investment in personal relationships is less guaranteed and more difficult to maintain? You complicate all transactions by introducing 2 token systems, so everyone is forced to guess a the conversion ratio during each particular transaction.... "should I give him a 20% discount because he is my friend?", "do I pay my friend extra 15% because he needs the money?", etc. But in the end you siphon resources from constructive behavior (remember we defined constructive objectively) and allow them to go to destructive behaviors. Eg: this woman really needs a job because she has a young child, so I'll tell my boss that her interview went just fine; but I know full-well that she can't really do the job (I hope she learns as she goes); oh, well, I am sure that the fully competent person whom I denied this job won't have to settle for lower wages because he didn't get a chance to interview for this job. This is anecdotal (as you probably guessed). But the friend who gave that woman the job conveniently skipped on that last part of the logic.
I still insist that PD doesn't apply because selfish and selfless behavior (towards strangers) can produce dishonest dealings. And PD only models a situation in which one chooses to maximize intended reward by screwing the other person. So I would argue that it is an honest selfish person that maximizes his reward. Btw, contracts serve the purpose of removing from each party the risk of other parties' default. By the virtue of the fact that they are enforceable by law, they allow to recover damages from an attempted cheater. So this is a bit mood when talking about business partnership (not fully, but largely). Here's where I disagree to the utmost: PD deals with the choice of honest vs corrupt behavior. And both honest and corrupt behavior can result from selfish and selfless acts. So it doesn't quite apply to this discussion.
But (as I said) introducing a system of a vaguely-defined second token of exchange (niceness, comradery, etc.) makes estimating of values during transactions more difficult and when estimating value is more difficult, it is the crooks that benefit the most. You probably want to argue that personal investment that doesn't require reciprocity is not a token of exchange. But it creates situations in which this personal investment reduced or increases the amount of money spent. So it is exchanged (without calling it that) for the other token.
Here's why spending money on those you love (truly love -- can't help but love) should not be part of this argument: you view those people as extension of yourself (so spending money on them feels like spending money on yourself). Sorry, this was very ad hoc, but I am too lazy to structure it right now. If you think I am unclear on something, please, let me know.
This makes me think that I should just put it in my journal. Because the number of times I've had to explain the same idea is getting to be staggering.
Whether it is useful or not depends on your motivations.
This is not exactly true. It depends on how you define "useful", sure. But there is an objective standard, too. Something is constructive if it alleviates the harshness of mother nature (and thus promotes pleasantness of life) and destructive if it does the opposite. Under this standard (which you are at least tempted to consider right now), exchanging lesser value for higher value is destructive. Because the assumption has to be made that those who create value have value to exchange and those who consume it (and don't create) require sacrifice. Extroverts would be the people that seek interaction. A human being creates value by thinking (doing physical work is also result of some thought process, so, yes, even a human being performing manual labor). What is established during interaction with other human beings is a good will (a feeling of family, comradery, tribalism, etc) that allows for an honest exchange at a future time. But the value which can be exchanged (the one that results from tranformation of pristine natural things into human-usable things) must still be created by individuals alone with their perception. Perfectionism must necessitate introverted effort of keeping ones concentration on the subjects of ones imagination. "Sensitivity" to others means allowing consideration of how other people feel to interrupt ones own train of thought on persistent basis. One so easily distracted cannot be so deeply concentrated.
It is good, by any reasonable definition of the word, to have the capacity for unselfish behavior, since if one fails to have that capacity, one is considerably less likely to gain the support of others.
Self-confident people who need each other for personal gains cooperate all the time.
Sure. But there are certain regimes where this works well, and others where it works poorly. For example, it's a dreadful way to try to raise children. It's also typically not a good way to run a business with ongoing partners, actually, since you have to devote considerable extra resources to policing. Businesses generally realize this, and tend to try to be perceived as "trusted", "honest", etc., even though it temporarily hurts their bottom line; even from a purely selfish perspective, it's a good idea to fake selfishness/caring.
Raising children and caring for loved ones actually doesn't fit this discussion at all. As they say, even Hitler had his dog. "Sociopath" is how we describe the people who do not show sensitivity to the considerations of strangers (or relative strangers). And humans are hard-wired to love their young (I would argue that evolution wouldn't let be any other way). Caring for the ones we love is always a loss (in terms of resources -- not in terms of emotional rewards). So the considerations under discussion don't really apply. Short story: we are talking about caring for those we don't have to care for rather than those we are hard-wired to care for.
As for running a business, I would disagree that it has to disintergrate into a paranoid situation where a large deal of effort is dedicated to policing. If a partnership is formed out of necessity, then compartmentalization of effort is naturally present. And with effort being compartmentalized there is no need to worry about getting screwd -- you know that your partners are partnering with you because they can benefit from it (and by extension will lose by the loss of partnership). So there is no need to worry about someone "screwing you" -- if a need for each other is not there, then people can simply walk their separate ways. It's what Covey calls "win/win or no deal". And this is precisely the scenario that the Prisoner's dilemma doesn't consider (it only considers loss/loss
embarrassing health care system That's quite subjective. You might be embarrassed of it. I am not. There. That's why it's subjective -- it's a matter of personal preference of priorities.
"Inventing most cures for diseases in the world" isn't the same as having a good health care system. And yet without the cures no system would even be possible.
Because Messianic Complex is not the typical personality trait of a dictator? All part of narcissism, which is an inherently selfish disorder. Umm, no, sorry. Narcissism could be the cause. But, in this case, selfless behavior (ie, taking actions with the explicit intent of benefiting others) is the effect. And you won't establish causality between narcissism and selflessness. It is entirely plausible for narcissism to result in selfish behavior (which is why you confuse being narcissistic and being selfish) and (as you just pointed out) narcissism could result in selfless behavior. Further, both selfishness and selflessness could result from self-hate. So there is no way to establish causality whatsoever.
To a narcissist, just as they feel nobody else is capable, nobody else really matters either. But feeling that noone is capable is not, at all, what dictators do. They approach the world in quite the opposite manner -- by trying to achieve power over others in order to take advantage of their abilities.
I don't see why, if a strong motivation for personal gain can lead to perfectionism, a strong motivation for the well-being of others cannot also. Because it necessitates sacrifice. And sacrifice is exchange of useless for useful. That is not optimal behavior (as anyone emotionally unattached can see). Putting value on such behavior conditions one away from valuing optimal behavior in other areas of one's life.
It is good, by any reasonable definition of the word, to have the capacity for unselfish behavior, since if one fails to have that capacity, one is considerably less likely to gain the support of others. You keep elevating selfless to the level of almost divine. If you don't step away from that paradigm and examine this in an unattached manner, then you won't get the argument. Self-confident people who need each other for personal gains cooperate all the time. That's how business partnerships are formed... and as you might know forming a business partnership with friends is actually a bad idea. When doing work (rather than socializing) people cooperate all the time to achieve their own selfish needs. They don't do it because they want to take advantage of each other -- they do it because it allows them to be more effective as individuals (so it fulfills their selfish ambitions). This is how specialization comes about. Cooperation for the sake of cooperation actually comes out of desire to mix social and professional and occurs between those of like skills and minds. And it is that likeness of skills that allows for less specialization.
why is it tyrannical to encourage personality traits that aid social interaction? Because that produces forced interactions. Interactions that are natural do not need to be encouraged. They occur out of necessity.
Surely you've heard of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Umm... yeah. Do you happen to know what the solution is? Better yet, do you happen to know why it doesn't apply? I'll answer the second question and let you ponder the first. It doesn't apply because many situations in life have the distribution of weights that is different. The prisoner's dilemma relies on the profit from confess/confess (both people acting selfishly) configuration to be lower than the profit from the do-not-confess/do-not-confess (both people act selflessly) configuration. But this makes some assumptions which do not hold in the real world. One of those assumptions are that work is a zero-sum game. Ie, it assumes that work not done by one person must be done by another. But that's not the case. Specialization allows everyone to do someone else's work, but more efficiently. And "shoving off" your work in the direction of an expert is something that both people do in the case of confess/confess scenario. But in that case, in the real world, the end-result is more profitable for both people. Of course, the only way to "shove off" work in the real world is by paying someone with the money gained from your own work. So you have a situation where both people act selfishly (try to maximize their gain without regard for the gain of the other party) and yet both end up with higher reward than if they acted selflessly (and did their own work).
This is partly the reason why true geeks hate corporate meetings. They are situations in which a cooperation is attempted to establish. But geeks are uber-specializers. So they would rather figure out how to divide the tasks that need to be done without the involvement of the central-planning manager by shoving work in the direction of the people who are most expert at it.
"Selflessly" suggests they are disregarding their actions impact on themselves; which selfish people like dictators never do. Yeah, right. Because Messianic Complex is not the typical personality trait of a dictator? Only those who believe that they are doing good are capable of the utmost horrors. You attribute cynicism to them (which is your own opinion) and that's why you assume that they must be selfish. But most of them are simply driven by the unshakable desire to do what's right and not have anyone stop them. Lenin and Hitler produced their most influential work while they were living in the most inhuman of conditions. When they did so they had no hope of their work ever becoming influential. They simply did it out of a drive to write down what's "right". So did Marx (his wife had borrow money from a neighbor to bury one of their children -- true story).
But the nearly universal negative reaction suggests to me that something else is going on too--some sort of visceral objection to the content, perhaps? Yes, the visceral reaction is to the fact that the philosophical extrapolation that selfishness necessitates cruelty and violent behavior does not hold. It can also become the reason for perfectionism (among other personality traits). Whereas altruism cannot.
maybe you should realize it's a little harder for them to be unselfish, so they need a little more encouragement for it to become a habit
You assume that unselfish behavior is the "good". That's (at the very least) debatable. The argument that altruism turns human beings into a herd and suppresses our individual uniqueness clearly has some weight. To put it simply, the extroverts think that selfish people are sociopathic pricks while the introverts think that pro-social people are soft-spoken tyrants. Most people alternate between two positions depending on the context, but these are the extremes that clarify the position. Btw, your response (to an introvert) reads something like "it's ok to be different, we'll find a way for you to fit into our tyrannical system because we care".
Embryo diagnostics for Libertarianism!! Finally. I knew there is something physiologically wrong with them:) Umm, <sarcasm>I like your methods</sarcasm>. Naturally, not your goals. We'll pick libertarians as the ones to keep. And the specie gets to survive. Everyone wins.
Why bother running a DNA test? An advanced degree of most any sort is a dead giveaway that they've been ruthless at some point. I mean, seriously, have you ever worked with PhDs before? Yes, on daily basis. They treat incompetence with disdain and competence with respect (and often adoration). Some call that ruthlessness some call it fairness. I wonder which ones lie in the former category and which in the latter...
This from someone who lives in a country home to the world's worst health care system and highest incarceration rates. The country that invents most cures for diseases in the world can hardly be claimed to have the worst health care system. And the highest incarceration rate must be considered in conjunction with the fact that we have the lowest crime rate in the free world (yeah, China and Saudi Arabia have a lower rate, but only because you can't do anything fun there). So we develop cures for the people who pay for it and keep in jail the people who commit crimes. Yeah, we all need shrinks cause we are crazy and antisocial.
ethics aside, the selfish vs altruistic behavior is not necessarily a subconscious response. The topic of "goodness" vs "badness" of the two views has dominated the debate of the last century. So different cultural trends have emerged that surround both views. It is entirely possible that someone more wired for selfish behavior has learned to value cooperation over self-achievement through cultural pressure (ok, peer pressure) or that someone wired for altruistic behavior has been exposed to the argument that only by acting in self-interest (but doing so without resorting to deception) can we all deal with each other fairly. Without starting a debate on which one is more valuable or more "human" or "will win in the end", this seems like an experiment that tried to establish the "nature" of the beast by simple behavior observation. But behavior-observation experiments can never explain away "nurture" bias.
Wait - so your argument is for me to come up with my own counter argument? Welcome to the twilight zone... My point rather than my argument is that counter arguments on this point are much too easy to come up with. And neither what you say nor what I say can be stated with absolute certainty of causality. There are contributing circumstances only here. If you want to understand the situation, then, yes, think of the counter points yourself. Otherwise, this will degenerate into both of us stating pros of our positions and considering the cons. And then you will (and I won't) get frustrated because you will think that I "just don't get it". When the reality is that none of the contributing factor is causality-forming. If you just want to yell into the empty space of the Internet, I don't care to be your punching bag. If you want to understand what's going on, this issue is simple enough that you can probably analyze on your own.
They forced the providers to pay through the teeth, who now have to manage it, and google still get's access to it? Umm, I fail to see how Google "took a beating" ? Every argument has pros and cons for both positions. You just repeated Google-claimed pros. Now go ahead and exhibit some independent thought and list all the cons.
(i) you can't sue the Federal Government IANAL, but "sue federal government" on Google links to a great deal of news articles, including from LexisNexis, involving that very action. Btw, there is a rather simple reason why a federal government cannot be sued for damages. It would give the courts a power to spend federal government's money. And the Constitution is very clear that the power of the purse will be with the Congress.
has beePosession is 9/10 of the law. A "lawsuit or two" can be dragged out for years until the market is manipulated to the point where paying the damages for the past instances of non-compliance will become irrelevant -- a monopoly will have been established.
Google is so happy about all that openness. That they keep talking about. Why not just come out and admit that they took a beating? Now that Verizon got the spectrum (and doesn't have to fear last-mile competition) they are trying to consolidate all access. And Google is trying to claim that possession of the spectrum doesn't give them complete control. Right.... It's only a matter of time until the Bells re-consolidate. Google loss was a huge loss for everyone. No matter how many "don't panic, we are happy" press releases they put out.
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We have various instincts regarding social exchange that make it a superior system in some contexts--most notably that we tend to get stronger feelings that we should act a certain way, and that motivates us; when that way is a way that solves PD problems, it's a great benefit.
Ok, I am going to make the last attempt to explain why your standing that the system of exchange based on emotional connections is less efficient. You keep basing all of your argument on the assumption that it isn't. So if you don't see what I mean, we'll just have to agree to disagree. The reason we moved away from this token and introduced the more precise token based on numbers is twofold. First, it allows for much more metrizable exchanges. And without metrics, all but the most primitive exchanges will produce waste of resources (natural resources and the human effort of transforming the natural resources into that which we can use to alleviate the harshness of mother nature). This alone is reason enough to stick to the metrizable exchange tokens. Because introducing waste where waste is not necessary is destructive. The second reason is the crux of meritocracy vs nepotism argument. When the token of exchange is measured in personal affection, those who accumulate the most of those tokens are the ones who are the most politically adroit. So this system (almost by definition) has a bias based on personality types. It abuses those who are able to aptly produce value with their own skills by devaluing the credit they receive for their contribution and concentrating the benefits of production in the hands of the most politically apt.
Perhaps, this is a more precise answer to your original question. Why was the reaction to the "finding" so visceral? Because it was rooted in the assumption that the system of exchange that values political skills over production skills (ie altruism) is a better system than the one that credits people for their respective contributions fairly. And the people that view themselves as producers see this as the context used to justify their ridicule and abuse. Naturally, they don't see anything wrong with themselves.... all they try to do is produce good work. And they are being essentially called dirty names by the people who consume the products of their work.
Again, PD has nothing to do with this. It evaluates benefits of honest vs corrupt behavior -- not selfish vs selfless. I realize that I didn't decouple the two very well, but I invite you to do that on your own. Think of how selfish mindset can lead to the frame of mind that "I am what I chose to be and what others do to me is a statement about them rather than about me... meanwhile, I want to create things because they are cool and the hell with what anyone thinks" and yet it can also lead to the mind set "all people are bastards so I might as well take advantage of them." I'll let you figure out other examples of trains of thought that lead a selfish person to honest vs dishonest behavior. And similarly with the selfless people (hint: "if my goals are noble, they justify the means").
I agree that businesses are in danger of nepotism, but that's a danger regardless of the system used.
Yes, but in the case of a business partnership based on "win/win or no deal", the nepotism is a remote danger. In the case of making a business with friends, nepotism (well near-nepotism) is one of the underlying assumptions of the business.
Another way is to collect people who are less selfish.
To run a business? Honestly, have you been in business? You would trust business partners who proclaim not to care about themselves and work for the good of others? I am sorry, but the suggestion is absurd.
Why not extend that same feeling, at a weaker level, to others who you're less desperately and unavoidably in love with?
Because (for the most part) we don't chose how to feel towards our friends and loved ones. Perhaps,
I just thought of the most clear way (well, the most colloquial way) of saying what you are attempting to do in business. You are attempting to substitute meritocracy for an illusion of nepotism (supposing that the business partners are not actually your family). And nepotism is actually how every corruption of a every meritocracy begins (because we just can't deny our family). So the relationship structure you try to form expedites disintegration into corruption that will result in necessitating PD considerations. Had you kept the relationships "professional" (ie, everyone acted selfishly but honestly), the corruption would not be of benefit and when it did occur, it would have been quickly stemmed out by those trying to honestly accomplish the mandate that the business had set for itself.
Ok, don't you see that all you are doing is introducing a second token of exchange? Instead of having universal token of promise of future performance (money) you also introduce a second token (personal investment). And whereas money is easy to calculate and (relatively) easy to maintain, investment in personal relationships is less guaranteed and more difficult to maintain? You complicate all transactions by introducing 2 token systems, so everyone is forced to guess a the conversion ratio during each particular transaction.... "should I give him a 20% discount because he is my friend?", "do I pay my friend extra 15% because he needs the money?", etc. But in the end you siphon resources from constructive behavior (remember we defined constructive objectively) and allow them to go to destructive behaviors. Eg: this woman really needs a job because she has a young child, so I'll tell my boss that her interview went just fine; but I know full-well that she can't really do the job (I hope she learns as she goes); oh, well, I am sure that the fully competent person whom I denied this job won't have to settle for lower wages because he didn't get a chance to interview for this job. This is anecdotal (as you probably guessed). But the friend who gave that woman the job conveniently skipped on that last part of the logic.
I still insist that PD doesn't apply because selfish and selfless behavior (towards strangers) can produce dishonest dealings. And PD only models a situation in which one chooses to maximize intended reward by screwing the other person. So I would argue that it is an honest selfish person that maximizes his reward. Btw, contracts serve the purpose of removing from each party the risk of other parties' default. By the virtue of the fact that they are enforceable by law, they allow to recover damages from an attempted cheater. So this is a bit mood when talking about business partnership (not fully, but largely). Here's where I disagree to the utmost: PD deals with the choice of honest vs corrupt behavior. And both honest and corrupt behavior can result from selfish and selfless acts. So it doesn't quite apply to this discussion.
But (as I said) introducing a system of a vaguely-defined second token of exchange (niceness, comradery, etc.) makes estimating of values during transactions more difficult and when estimating value is more difficult, it is the crooks that benefit the most. You probably want to argue that personal investment that doesn't require reciprocity is not a token of exchange. But it creates situations in which this personal investment reduced or increases the amount of money spent. So it is exchanged (without calling it that) for the other token.
Here's why spending money on those you love (truly love -- can't help but love) should not be part of this argument: you view those people as extension of yourself (so spending money on them feels like spending money on yourself). Sorry, this was very ad hoc, but I am too lazy to structure it right now. If you think I am unclear on something, please, let me know.
McCain got his highest percentage of votes in NJ.
This makes me think that I should just put it in my journal. Because the number of times I've had to explain the same idea is getting to be staggering.
Whether it is useful or not depends on your motivations.
This is not exactly true. It depends on how you define "useful", sure. But there is an objective standard, too. Something is constructive if it alleviates the harshness of mother nature (and thus promotes pleasantness of life) and destructive if it does the opposite. Under this standard (which you are at least tempted to consider right now), exchanging lesser value for higher value is destructive. Because the assumption has to be made that those who create value have value to exchange and those who consume it (and don't create) require sacrifice. Extroverts would be the people that seek interaction. A human being creates value by thinking (doing physical work is also result of some thought process, so, yes, even a human being performing manual labor). What is established during interaction with other human beings is a good will (a feeling of family, comradery, tribalism, etc) that allows for an honest exchange at a future time. But the value which can be exchanged (the one that results from tranformation of pristine natural things into human-usable things) must still be created by individuals alone with their perception. Perfectionism must necessitate introverted effort of keeping ones concentration on the subjects of ones imagination. "Sensitivity" to others means allowing consideration of how other people feel to interrupt ones own train of thought on persistent basis. One so easily distracted cannot be so deeply concentrated.
It is good, by any reasonable definition of the word, to have the capacity for unselfish behavior, since if one fails to have that capacity, one is considerably less likely to gain the support of others.
Self-confident people who need each other for personal gains cooperate all the time.
Sure. But there are certain regimes where this works well, and others where it works poorly. For example, it's a dreadful way to try to raise children. It's also typically not a good way to run a business with ongoing partners, actually, since you have to devote considerable extra resources to policing. Businesses generally realize this, and tend to try to be perceived as "trusted", "honest", etc., even though it temporarily hurts their bottom line; even from a purely selfish perspective, it's a good idea to fake selfishness/caring.
Raising children and caring for loved ones actually doesn't fit this discussion at all. As they say, even Hitler had his dog. "Sociopath" is how we describe the people who do not show sensitivity to the considerations of strangers (or relative strangers). And humans are hard-wired to love their young (I would argue that evolution wouldn't let be any other way). Caring for the ones we love is always a loss (in terms of resources -- not in terms of emotional rewards). So the considerations under discussion don't really apply. Short story: we are talking about caring for those we don't have to care for rather than those we are hard-wired to care for.
As for running a business, I would disagree that it has to disintergrate into a paranoid situation where a large deal of effort is dedicated to policing. If a partnership is formed out of necessity, then compartmentalization of effort is naturally present. And with effort being compartmentalized there is no need to worry about getting screwd -- you know that your partners are partnering with you because they can benefit from it (and by extension will lose by the loss of partnership). So there is no need to worry about someone "screwing you" -- if a need for each other is not there, then people can simply walk their separate ways. It's what Covey calls "win/win or no deal". And this is precisely the scenario that the Prisoner's dilemma doesn't consider (it only considers loss/loss
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andhttp://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/06/1917259
on the day that Charlton Heston died, we can justhttp://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/06/1641201
and welcome our true new overlords -- our old overlords.Umm... yeah. Do you happen to know what the solution is? Better yet, do you happen to know why it doesn't apply? I'll answer the second question and let you ponder the first. It doesn't apply because many situations in life have the distribution of weights that is different. The prisoner's dilemma relies on the profit from confess/confess (both people acting selfishly) configuration to be lower than the profit from the do-not-confess/do-not-confess (both people act selflessly) configuration. But this makes some assumptions which do not hold in the real world. One of those assumptions are that work is a zero-sum game. Ie, it assumes that work not done by one person must be done by another. But that's not the case. Specialization allows everyone to do someone else's work, but more efficiently. And "shoving off" your work in the direction of an expert is something that both people do in the case of confess/confess scenario. But in that case, in the real world, the end-result is more profitable for both people. Of course, the only way to "shove off" work in the real world is by paying someone with the money gained from your own work. So you have a situation where both people act selfishly (try to maximize their gain without regard for the gain of the other party) and yet both end up with higher reward than if they acted selflessly (and did their own work).
This is partly the reason why true geeks hate corporate meetings. They are situations in which a cooperation is attempted to establish. But geeks are uber-specializers. So they would rather figure out how to divide the tasks that need to be done without the involvement of the central-planning manager by shoving work in the direction of the people who are most expert at it.
You assume that unselfish behavior is the "good". That's (at the very least) debatable. The argument that altruism turns human beings into a herd and suppresses our individual uniqueness clearly has some weight. To put it simply, the extroverts think that selfish people are sociopathic pricks while the introverts think that pro-social people are soft-spoken tyrants. Most people alternate between two positions depending on the context, but these are the extremes that clarify the position. Btw, your response (to an introvert) reads something like "it's ok to be different, we'll find a way for you to fit into our tyrannical system because we care".
ethics aside, the selfish vs altruistic behavior is not necessarily a subconscious response. The topic of "goodness" vs "badness" of the two views has dominated the debate of the last century. So different cultural trends have emerged that surround both views. It is entirely possible that someone more wired for selfish behavior has learned to value cooperation over self-achievement through cultural pressure (ok, peer pressure) or that someone wired for altruistic behavior has been exposed to the argument that only by acting in self-interest (but doing so without resorting to deception) can we all deal with each other fairly. Without starting a debate on which one is more valuable or more "human" or "will win in the end", this seems like an experiment that tried to establish the "nature" of the beast by simple behavior observation. But behavior-observation experiments can never explain away "nurture" bias.
...being normal is not normal. People must be changed and medicated to live up to act like normal human beings.
has beePosession is 9/10 of the law. A "lawsuit or two" can be dragged out for years until the market is manipulated to the point where paying the damages for the past instances of non-compliance will become irrelevant -- a monopoly will have been established.
Google is so happy about all that openness. That they keep talking about. Why not just come out and admit that they took a beating? Now that Verizon got the spectrum (and doesn't have to fear last-mile competition) they are trying to consolidate all access. And Google is trying to claim that possession of the spectrum doesn't give them complete control. Right.... It's only a matter of time until the Bells re-consolidate. Google loss was a huge loss for everyone. No matter how many "don't panic, we are happy" press releases they put out.