From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 00:29:25 MDT
> However a rational Bayesian probably does not behave cooperatively in
> an n-party prisoner's dilemma of this kind. This leads to
> the familiar
> paradox that hard-core rationalists live in a miserable, cut-throat
> society, while weak-minded pragmatists are able to set up forms of
> cooperative behavior that are technically irrational.
>
> The situation is analogous to the tragedy of the commons, in that
> each person individually has an incentive to take advantage of others,
> but when everyone does so, all are worse off. We solve that case by
> introducing property rights. Handling prejudice has been solved by
> making it illegal in certain ways (employment for example), which in
> the long run benefits everyone. I don't know if there could be a way
> to solve it that was more analogous to property rights.
>
> Hal
Using laws to ameliorate the miserable, cut-throat society is a nasty
patching job, imo. You still have the same cut-throat behaviour at core,
it's just banned in all instances in which we can legislate, with the
desired effect if lucky, with weird side effects, and always missing a bunch
of cases which are either too new, too dynamic, or too weird to be covered.
I think there's a damned good reason that many societies have evolved to
favour irrational altruism... it makes the society a nicer place to be.
Sure, you can then take advantage by not being altruistic, by ignoring the
polite conventions, etc, but that is kept to a minimum by the greater mass
of the population being willing to kick your butt in many different ways to
discourage that behaviour. The tradgedy of the commons can be addressed by
not abusing the commons in the first place, and cooperating in strategies
with other likeminded individuals to encourage others to not abuse them, and
to punish those who do.
I realise many people here think that such a society would be a bummer of a
place to live, but there are worse things. For instance, you could live in a
hard edged dog-eat-dog culture where there is no spirit to the laws, only
the letter; litiguous, tribal, and brutal.
Whoops, some of you do live there. Apologies.
Emlyn
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