From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sat Mar 22 2003 - 23:16:58 MST
--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal@smigrodzki.org> wrote:
> In the very long run, maintenance of stable
> societies made of
> potentially immortal persons is probably possible
> using strictly
> rational reasoning. If your attention-span is
> capable of encompassing
> very long time spans, you will be able to act
> according to your
> interests, and this will include cooperation, as
> well as discouragement
> of non-cooperation. Since a failure to discourage
> non-cooperation can in
> some cases bring about significant losses, it has to
> be discouraged as
> well, as a second-order consideration. Shirking a
> duty to punish a
> cheater puts a burden on other participants in the
> game, and is
> second-order cheating, calling for second-order
> punishment. A concept
> easy to grasp for a mind looking far forward,
> without the need for the
> emotional crutches that we rely on.
Hear, hear. "Eat what you need, and no more: for the
same sack of grain can be made into bread, or can be
made into next year's crops, but not both." So many,
it seems, only do (only can? Or are just trained only
to?) spare the bandwidth to look to immediate
concerns,
with little eye even for the future they already
rationally believe they will definitely see, even
without our arguments that they may live multiple
centuries. It may be that believing one will live for
200, or 1000, years is a self-fulfilling prophecy,
just
like believing that what one presently cares about
will
cease to matter within a year's time.
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