In a world with more than one person capable of Love, it makes sense to also include yourself in the set of people you love (see the exact words in Mark 12:31), otherwise we get a reverse Prisonner’s Dilemma:
If you care about me so much that you would accept 10 years of torture just to get me an ice-cream; and if I care about you so much that I would accept 10 years of torture just to get you an ice-cream… then if we both act on our preferences, we each get 10 years of torture and 1 ice-cream… which is an outcome horrifying to both of us.
Another constraint is the convergent goals: Suppose that the only thing I care about is that you get an ice-cream. I would gladly kill myself now just to give you an ice-cream. But before I pull the trigger, I realize that if I kill myself now, there will be no one to give you an ice-cream tomorrow. But I deeply care about you getting an ice-cream tomorrow… therefore, I must keep living. And if there is a threat to my life, I need to defend myself. Also, I need to make some money, because the ice-cream costs money. Maybe I should buy a large freezer and stock up with ice-creams, just to be sure you won’t miss your daily ice-cream in case of COVID-19 lockdown. Freezers aren’t cheap. Another expensive thing is a private power plant, to make extra sure the freezer keeps running. Also, I need to work hard on preventing an unfriendly AI, because it could convert the ice-cream to paperclips.
Or maybe there are other people who care about you as much as I do, in which case it would be okay for myself to die, if the others will keep the mission going. But that still means I need to make sure that I don’t kill the meme of Love. So I would be more likely to sacrifice my life for people who share my values. As you wrote:
The goal is not to win, it is to continue to play, and to bring in more players.
But that is exactly what it means for the meme to win, isn’t it?
In a world with more than one person capable of Love, it makes sense to also include yourself in the set of people you love (see the exact words in Mark 12:31), otherwise we get a reverse Prisonner’s Dilemma:
If you care about me so much that you would accept 10 years of torture just to get me an ice-cream; and if I care about you so much that I would accept 10 years of torture just to get you an ice-cream… then if we both act on our preferences, we each get 10 years of torture and 1 ice-cream… which is an outcome horrifying to both of us.
Another constraint is the convergent goals: Suppose that the only thing I care about is that you get an ice-cream. I would gladly kill myself now just to give you an ice-cream. But before I pull the trigger, I realize that if I kill myself now, there will be no one to give you an ice-cream tomorrow. But I deeply care about you getting an ice-cream tomorrow… therefore, I must keep living. And if there is a threat to my life, I need to defend myself. Also, I need to make some money, because the ice-cream costs money. Maybe I should buy a large freezer and stock up with ice-creams, just to be sure you won’t miss your daily ice-cream in case of COVID-19 lockdown. Freezers aren’t cheap. Another expensive thing is a private power plant, to make extra sure the freezer keeps running. Also, I need to work hard on preventing an unfriendly AI, because it could convert the ice-cream to paperclips.
Or maybe there are other people who care about you as much as I do, in which case it would be okay for myself to die, if the others will keep the mission going. But that still means I need to make sure that I don’t kill the meme of Love. So I would be more likely to sacrifice my life for people who share my values. As you wrote:
But that is exactly what it means for the meme to win, isn’t it?