From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 14:14:23 MDT
In a message dated 5/24/02 8:04:49, sentience@pobox.com writes:
>Arguably the situation is viewed as an iterated Prisoner's
>Dilemna in which we agree not to prejudge in exchange for not being
>prejudged by others. To put it another way, being judged only by your
>actual, personal actions and not your statistical associations with the
>actions of others is a public good; it helps preserve the ethical structure
>of reciprocal altruism, which requires that you adjust your treatment of an
>agent based on those actions that are subject to the judged agent's control.
Assuming group identity is informative, most people will be treated more
accurately most of the time if others use group identity to inform actions.
What's the ethical problem with that? And how does it impair reciprocal
altruism? "People who have been nice to you in the past", after all, is
just another group. Reciprocal altruism depends on using that group
identity to provide information on otherwise unknowable internal processes.
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