Maybe there is a deeper issue here. Maybe it’s that we are the kind that can’t cooperate. [...] If we were able to solve this problem of a lack of cooperation it’d have impacts far beyond explorable explanations.
I agree. Cooperation (specifically of good people, as opposed to e.g. lynch mobs) seems like a problem worth solving; I wish I knew how. It seems that many people are generally willing to do good things, even for complete strangers, it’s just difficult to collect all that energy into something coordinated that could shine like laser. Some problems I noticed:
smart people are potentially more useful to cooperate with, but they are also more likely to have their own strong opinions (and therefore less likely to agree to do the same thing), and their opportunity cost is often high (because they are already doing something important)
also the smarter people you need, the fewer such people exist, so we have the problem of them living far away from each other, not knowing each other, etc.
in business, you achieve cooperation by having a plan how to achieve profit, and paying the other people to pay their part in the plan; if your plan is to do something that is not financially profitable, this standard strategy falls apart...
unless the altruistic people donate the money, so that you can pay people who don’t care about the original goal (problem is, donating money doesn’t feel good)
or you find a non-financial way to reward people for participation
if there are too many altruistic people at the same place, this seems to attract predators
I agree. Cooperation (specifically of good people, as opposed to e.g. lynch mobs) seems like a problem worth solving; I wish I knew how. It seems that many people are generally willing to do good things, even for complete strangers, it’s just difficult to collect all that energy into something coordinated that could shine like laser. Some problems I noticed:
smart people are potentially more useful to cooperate with, but they are also more likely to have their own strong opinions (and therefore less likely to agree to do the same thing), and their opportunity cost is often high (because they are already doing something important)
also the smarter people you need, the fewer such people exist, so we have the problem of them living far away from each other, not knowing each other, etc.
in business, you achieve cooperation by having a plan how to achieve profit, and paying the other people to pay their part in the plan; if your plan is to do something that is not financially profitable, this standard strategy falls apart...
unless the altruistic people donate the money, so that you can pay people who don’t care about the original goal (problem is, donating money doesn’t feel good)
or you find a non-financial way to reward people for participation
if there are too many altruistic people at the same place, this seems to attract predators