I opened a tab with this comment as something I want to answer too, when an opportunity arise for that. it was two years now, and the tab remain open. I wrote twopost about that in my blog, and clarified my thinking about the issue a lot. and yet, I still believe what I believed then, although hopefully I’m more capable to express this. not sure if that, English is hard. but, it’s worth trying.
here is my opinion, in its most simple form: one should not be cooperation bot.
if I have repeated opportunities to pay 1 unit to get someone 10 units, and they have the same option, it’s better for us both to make those trades. but if the other people refuse to do that, they take happily the provided 10 units and then not give up 1 unit to give me 1, I should stop.
and this is what I remember I want to write to you, 2 years ago, and didn’t succeeded on the first try. you call for Civic Duty look to me as call to cooperate even if the other side defect, call to create cooperation-cooperation equilibrium, while ignoring that other people not cooperating.
there is no such thing as acceptable exchange rate, that is the wrong category. there is an option to enter agreement to cooperate, to exchange 1 unit of mine for 10 or 100 or 1000000 of yours if the opportunity arise. and the right thing to do is tit-for-tat with forgiveness. and it’s definitely not being cooperation bot. and deciding that if the exchange rate is high enough you must take it, it’s you civic duty, is just calling people to be cooperation bots, and punish those who don’t do that, while ignoring the important difference between those who enter the agreement and those who don’t.
***
I don’t really engage with this comment. I don’t think it react to the concept I tried, and failed, to communicate, so I tried again.
but I can say that from my current ontology, when I see Morality-as-Coordination and Morality-as-Do-Gooding as two very different things, the claims about local governments look confused to me. there is “charity” that is coordination, and there is charity that is do-gooding, and those are different things.
most of that governments do is not do-gooding, it’s coordination, with elements on insurance.
I opened a tab with this comment as something I want to answer too, when an opportunity arise for that. it was two years now, and the tab remain open. I wrote two post about that in my blog, and clarified my thinking about the issue a lot. and yet, I still believe what I believed then, although hopefully I’m more capable to express this. not sure if that, English is hard. but, it’s worth trying.
here is my opinion, in its most simple form: one should not be cooperation bot.
if I have repeated opportunities to pay 1 unit to get someone 10 units, and they have the same option, it’s better for us both to make those trades. but if the other people refuse to do that, they take happily the provided 10 units and then not give up 1 unit to give me 1, I should stop.
that is the Morality as “Coordination”, vs “Do-Gooding” distinction.
and this is what I remember I want to write to you, 2 years ago, and didn’t succeeded on the first try. you call for Civic Duty look to me as call to cooperate even if the other side defect, call to create cooperation-cooperation equilibrium, while ignoring that other people not cooperating.
there is no such thing as acceptable exchange rate, that is the wrong category. there is an option to enter agreement to cooperate, to exchange 1 unit of mine for 10 or 100 or 1000000 of yours if the opportunity arise. and the right thing to do is tit-for-tat with forgiveness. and it’s definitely not being cooperation bot. and deciding that if the exchange rate is high enough you must take it, it’s you civic duty, is just calling people to be cooperation bots, and punish those who don’t do that, while ignoring the important difference between those who enter the agreement and those who don’t.
***
I don’t really engage with this comment. I don’t think it react to the concept I tried, and failed, to communicate, so I tried again.
but I can say that from my current ontology, when I see Morality-as-Coordination and Morality-as-Do-Gooding as two very different things, the claims about local governments look confused to me. there is “charity” that is coordination, and there is charity that is do-gooding, and those are different things.
most of that governments do is not do-gooding, it’s coordination, with elements on insurance.