At 12:16 PM -0800 on 1/10/02, John Young wrote:

Idiot sigs, calls for killing and killfiling are shit for eaters.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020107/020107-6.html Prosperity through punishment Retribution can breed cooperation. 10 January 2002 JOHN WHITFIELD Notions of fairness may outweigh selfish considerations. ) Corbis Cooperation can flourish if the public-spirited majority can punish freeloaders, say Swiss economists. People will pay to punish - suggesting that their notions of fairness outweigh selfish considerations. The work may help explain why people cooperate in society. In an investment game with shared profits, players punish those who do not contribute to the group's good, despite the personal cost. The emotional satisfaction of dispensing justice seems to spur them on: "People say, 'I like to punish'," says Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich. The fear of being fined keeps potential defectors in line, and the power to punish gives willing cooperators a sense of security. These dynamics may explain why early humans banded together into cooperative groups for hunting or warfare. Explanations of cooperation have tended to focus on what the altruist gets out of it, either through the swapping of good turns or the benefits to family members. "For a very long time in economics and biology there's been an assumption of self-interest," says economist Herbert Gintis of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Instead, he says, it seems that egalitarianism is "a basic part of human behaviour". <snippage...> -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'