Good categorizations! Perhaps this fits in with your “limited self-modification” point, but another big reason why humans seem “aligned” with each other is that our capability spectrum is rather narrow. The gap in capability (if we include both mental intelligence and physical capabilities) between the median human and the most capable human is not so big that ~5 median humans can’t outmatch/outperform the most capable human. Contrary to what silly 1980s action movies might suggest where goons attack the hero one at a time, 5 median humans could probably subdue prime-age Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dark alley if need be. This tends to force humans to play iterated prisoners’ dilemma games with each other.
The times in history when humans have been the most mis-aligned is when humans became much more capable by leveraging their social intelligence / charisma stats to get millions of other humans to do their bidding. But even there, those dictators still find themselves in iterated prisoners’ dilemmas with other dictators. We have yet to really test just how mis-aligned humans can get until we empower a dictator with unquestioned authority over a total world government. Then we would find out just how intrinsically aligned humans really are to other humans when unshackled by iterated prisoners’ dilemmas.
Good categorizations! Perhaps this fits in with your “limited self-modification” point, but another big reason why humans seem “aligned” with each other is that our capability spectrum is rather narrow. The gap in capability (if we include both mental intelligence and physical capabilities) between the median human and the most capable human is not so big that ~5 median humans can’t outmatch/outperform the most capable human. Contrary to what silly 1980s action movies might suggest where goons attack the hero one at a time, 5 median humans could probably subdue prime-age Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dark alley if need be. This tends to force humans to play iterated prisoners’ dilemma games with each other.
The times in history when humans have been the most mis-aligned is when humans became much more capable by leveraging their social intelligence / charisma stats to get millions of other humans to do their bidding. But even there, those dictators still find themselves in iterated prisoners’ dilemmas with other dictators. We have yet to really test just how mis-aligned humans can get until we empower a dictator with unquestioned authority over a total world government. Then we would find out just how intrinsically aligned humans really are to other humans when unshackled by iterated prisoners’ dilemmas.