[ExI] nature's indifference to survival

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 27/10/2026 08:44, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2026 at 6:25 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> On 24/10/2026 17:33, Adrian Tymes wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 24, 2026 at 11:11 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
>>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>> 'Mostly trying to survive and improve your own life' and 'mostly trying to tear down other people' are not mutually incompatible
>>> But they are.
>> I don't see how. They often happen together. It's the essence of a zero-sum game.
> Many things are believed to be zero-sum games, that are not in fact
> zero-sum games.  Most things of importance to large governments are
> not zero-sum games, whether or not they are believed to be.


Can you give us some examples?


>>>> What are the Israelis doing by trying to wipe out the Palestinians?
>>> Tearing them down.  Building them up - so the Palestinians don't get
>>> raised on "our primary purpose in life is that Israel must die" -
>>> would involve education, providing actual security, and other stuff
>>> that seems harder than simply killing them as justifications arise.
>> Exactly. The israelis are improving their own lives by tearing down the palestinians. They get more territory and security by destroying palestine.
> More territory, by itself, does not always improve their lives -
> certainly not as much as using what territory they have better would.


More money, by itself, does not always improve people's lives. More of lots of things, by themselves, do not always improve people's lives, but they can all contribute to improvement. Saying that more territory does not always improve people's lives doesn't invalidate the benefits of having more territory. If you ask the israelis "Do you want more, the same, or less, territory", how do you think they'd answer?

You could argue that people don't know what would improve their lives, so there's no point in asking them, but where does that leave us?


> As to security: they're just pushing the problem outward.  The people
> who are raised to kill them are still on their borders.  Education,
> providing those people actual security, et al would change it so their
> neighbors don't want to kill them nearly as much.


Yes, and as you pointed out, this is not going to happen while easier solutions exist, like the one that is currently being implemented.


>> Ok, the same principles apply to individuals as to collections of individuals, when we're talking about zero-sum situations.

> This is the core disconnect.  We're not mostly talking about zero-sum situations.


I think we are. Can you demonstrate how we're not?

A lot of things are about money, which is clearly zero-sum. What non-zero-sum things are involved in improving or worsening people's lives?
-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein