Part of my interest behind this question is that recently I’ve been noticing the subtle (but also not so subtle) ways our choices affect the people and the social fabric around us. Also, listening to Jordan Peterson highlight historical cases where the moral fabric of society fails (e.g. Nazi Germany and Soviet Union). It makes me think there’s a lot of under-appreciated value in being a morally upright person. Some of the value is in directly impacting the people around you, but the majority is in signaling that “this is the kind of society we live in.”
I expect there is also a nonlinear network effect going on here, where one person defecting isn’t much of a problem but if 20% of the population isn’t nice enough then it just erodes down to a worse equilibrium. Something like the social fabric is delivering a lot of value and it’s hard to attribute that to any one individual, and if it breaks or changes in ways that lead to everyone’s lives being worse it’s hard to also account for who should be responsible for those loses and in what amounts.
Part of my interest behind this question is that recently I’ve been noticing the subtle (but also not so subtle) ways our choices affect the people and the social fabric around us. Also, listening to Jordan Peterson highlight historical cases where the moral fabric of society fails (e.g. Nazi Germany and Soviet Union). It makes me think there’s a lot of under-appreciated value in being a morally upright person. Some of the value is in directly impacting the people around you, but the majority is in signaling that “this is the kind of society we live in.”
I expect there is also a nonlinear network effect going on here, where one person defecting isn’t much of a problem but if 20% of the population isn’t nice enough then it just erodes down to a worse equilibrium. Something like the social fabric is delivering a lot of value and it’s hard to attribute that to any one individual, and if it breaks or changes in ways that lead to everyone’s lives being worse it’s hard to also account for who should be responsible for those loses and in what amounts.