On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Thomas Lyon Gideon wrote:
The point about emergent behavior is excellently made. A corollary that occurs to me is that one of the prime motivators in the emergent quality of human society may well be the pursuit of non-zero sum games.
Of course people want to take advantage of others. This realization is what is behind the CACL objection to 'government' (which after all is an emergent behaviour - ponder that one for a moment and your thrill may fall away quickly). Their failure is recognizing that the 'government' is itself an emergent behaviour (albeit an intentional one now - one can't really speak to how they first came about, it very well could have been very ant-like with respect to large family groups).
This assumption is based on my reading of Robert Wright's _Non Zero_. I think Sunder hits this on the head as well when he goes off about how self interest does not necessarily harm others, that as humans we are not typically bound by win-lose scenarios. Rather some behavior may result in poor or no gains on a societal scale and others may result in increased benefits for all.
Actually it isn't a well made point at all. To compare programmed behaviour and biological caste systems to a bunch of humans with self-referential views is the worst case of begging the question. He's certainly made a hypothesis, no evidence has been forthcoming for it and there is a very large body that would argue against it. In addition, emergent behavior may or may not actually help the individual components of the population. Remember the concept of 'evolution'. To get the ants and bees we have now required a bunch of ants and bees which didn't survive because their programming didn't work. It's also worth noting that the understanding we have of emergent systems are for reletively simple systems. Something that can't be said about any group of humans irrespective of size. This 'evolution' argument could actually be used against CACL theories because governments didn't always exist, at some point they emerged. Sunders comparison is fundamentaly flawed, the only thing he hit on the head was himself.
In this light, seemingly altruistic behavior can be re-interpreted as banking favors against future need. One of Wright's better examples is the practice in certain tribal societies of giving away excess food. Usually the food wouldn't keep long, anyway, and by helping a neighbor out today help is usually secured against future need when a neighbor may be the one with the excess.
Altruistism is cloaked self-interest. The only reason one helps another is because at some level it helps themselves (you can talk about % of genes passed to next generations, getting laid after the prom, or you can talk about helping another buy a car and getting rides as a result - makes no diff). -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------