As in, if you extrapolate what an individual wants, that’s basically a world optimized for that individual’s selfishness; then there is what groups can agree on by rational negotiation, which is a kind of group selfishness, cutting out everyone who’s weak enough
I think it’s important to frame values around scopes of optimization, not just coalitions of actors. An individual then wants first of all their own life (rather than the world) optimized for that individual’s preferences. If they don’t live alone, their home might have multiple stakeholders, and so their home would be subject to group optimization, and so on.
At each step, optimization is primarily about the shared scope, and excludes most details of the smaller scopes under narrower control enclosed within. Culture and “good” would then have a lot to say about the negotiations on how group optimization takes place, but also about how the smaller enclosed scopes within the group’s purview are to be relatively left alone to their own optimization, under different preferences of corresponding smaller groups or individuals.
It may be good to not cut out everyone who’s too weak to prevent that, as the cultural content defining the rules for doing so is also preference that wants to preserve itself, whatever its origin (such as being culturally developed later than evolution-given psychological drives). And individuals are in particular carriers of culture that’s only relevant for group optimization, so group optimization culture would coordinate them into agreement on some things. I think selfishness is salient as a distinct thing only because the cultural content that concerns group optimization needs actual groups to get activated in practice, and without that activation applying selfishness way out of its scope is about as appropriate as stirring soup with a microscope.
I think it’s important to frame values around scopes of optimization, not just coalitions of actors. An individual then wants first of all their own life (rather than the world) optimized for that individual’s preferences. If they don’t live alone, their home might have multiple stakeholders, and so their home would be subject to group optimization, and so on.
At each step, optimization is primarily about the shared scope, and excludes most details of the smaller scopes under narrower control enclosed within. Culture and “good” would then have a lot to say about the negotiations on how group optimization takes place, but also about how the smaller enclosed scopes within the group’s purview are to be relatively left alone to their own optimization, under different preferences of corresponding smaller groups or individuals.
It may be good to not cut out everyone who’s too weak to prevent that, as the cultural content defining the rules for doing so is also preference that wants to preserve itself, whatever its origin (such as being culturally developed later than evolution-given psychological drives). And individuals are in particular carriers of culture that’s only relevant for group optimization, so group optimization culture would coordinate them into agreement on some things. I think selfishness is salient as a distinct thing only because the cultural content that concerns group optimization needs actual groups to get activated in practice, and without that activation applying selfishness way out of its scope is about as appropriate as stirring soup with a microscope.