From: Felix Ungman (felix@objectzone.se)
Date: Wed Jul 15 1998 - 15:52:55 MDT
Reply to: Re: Ethics
Daniel Fabulich wrote:
>Put simply, in a small number of cases, it is good from
>the egoistic perspective to hurt others for profit. Since utilitarianism
>and egoism agree the rest of the time, and since we are made worse off
>when we hurt each other in this way, we should reject egoism and adopt
>utilitarianism instead.
It's not egoism that is wrong. You can't blame anyone for being an egoist. It's the prisoner's dilemma that should be avoided. In real world situations you often have some control over the rules of the game. If you choose a system (economical, social, political, etc.) based on ill-formed game theories, you'll get what you ask for.
Or as Sun Tzu put it:
"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory."
FELIX'98 - CITIUS . ALTIUS . FORTIUS
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