From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 10:05:30 MST
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:59:29AM +1100, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>
> Me either. I don't think there are moral absolutes, but maybe
> there are moral "universals". A universal would not be true for
> all time or in all situatuations (it would not be an absolute)
> but we may safelty be able to apply it or assume its true for
> nearly all persons.
This is a good point. We can leave the realm of untouchable
abstractions and instead look at what empirically produces the
best expected returns. This doesn't rule out using abstractions to
neatly chunk our knowledge in flexible mental tools, but the goal
is to make living our lives better.
> > I strongly suspect that the truth lies somewhere in the analysis and
> > application of game theory.
>
> Me too.
Me too. Game theory (especially the iterated prisoners' dilemma)
was what made me libertarian in the first place. I began to see
the power of self-organization and how constructive orders could
be created by free agents.
> An interesting thing about tit for tat is that it seems that
> once one understands it one can benefit by teaching it or
> showing it to others.
I have always thought there should be a children's book about it.
> I think this sort of thinking was behind Mutually Assured
> Destruction (MAD) in the cold war. Seems to me we got through 50
> years without a global war so maybe it worked. Or maybe we just
> got lucky and in 999 other universes we all died :-)
Actually, MAD is a slightly different game than the PD:
Cooperate Defect
Cooperate 1,1 -100,-100
Defect -100, -100 -100, -100
The whole point in MAD is that the only rational move is to
cooperate - if I launch my nukes, you launch yours. Note that if
there was no retaliation capacity the game would be "winnable" by
striking first, so both players would have an incentive to strike.
If there are many players things get more unstable, especially if
we assume there is a finite chance of mistakes. Unilateral ABMs
makes the cost of defection assymmetric, which in itself doesn't
destabilize the game but makes attacks more tempting if other
factors play in.
> > It is amusing that the strongest religions are those where the
> > ethics system acually works in the real world.
>
> I can't agree with this. Christianity is a pretty "strong
> religion" by most accounts but many of the christian moral
> precepts seem ideally designed to increase the number of "cheek
> slappers" (turn the other cheek if someone slaps you on one) and
> "shirt and cloak freeloaders" (if someone takes your cloak offer
> them also your shirt) in the world.
There are more things to this than game theory. People enjoy
living in the high trust communities Christianity creates
(remember that the late Roman empire was definitely a low-trust
society) and get social benefits from them. Rulers are also highly
motivated to promote such views, since they secure their temporal
power better. Finally, in practice people seldom behave like cheek
slappers even when devout, but rely on social institutions
embodying various forms of retribution (if you slap me, I report
you to the cops).
> > Very often it turns out that these ethics are based on what is
> > also a stable system in game theory.
>
> Maybe. Can't think of an example. "Eye for an eye" seems closer
> to "tit for tat" than "turn the other cheek".
Yes, but EFAE is too retaliatory. It produces endless,
non-constructive vendettas. TFT and Pavlov are more forgiving.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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