[extropy-chat] Death Toll

[Jef Allbright]

Dirk Bruere wrote:

> Jef Allbright wrote:
>
>> Jeff Davis wrote:
>>
>>> If survival is the goal, then you get there by
>>> rational behavior.  If multiple individuals with
>>> similar values act in concert, their survival ***as a
>>> group*** may be enhanced, but the similarity to
>>> tribalism is merely coincidental.   
>>>
>> Jeff makes a good point about rationality, but it is an ideal that 
>> doesn't fully map onto the world in which we live.  Due to real 
>> constraints on contextual knowledge and processing time, instinctive 
>> behavior can be much more survival enhancing than a so-called 
>> rational approach.  I think we are near the crossover point, however, 
>> beyond which the survival of humans and their organizations will most 
>> certainly depend on expanded contextual awareness and associated 
>> processing.
>>
> I suggest simple game theory indicates otherwise.
> Namely, that a group A acting consistently in concert will win every 
> time over either individuals or a looser group B that sometimes act 
> for their own group and sometimes for A depending on circumstance.
>
Dirk -

I'm glad to see that you and I are now apparently in agreement on the 
big-picture benefits of cooperation, however, game theory has often been 
used to demonstrate the opposite point--that at least in the short-term, 
narrowly defined domain of the game, rational behavior means ruthless 
identification with the local self and immediate goals.  This leads, as 
most on this list are well aware, to the so-called Prisoner's Dilemma 
paradox, where the paradox appears to arise precisely because of the 
limited scope of the game compared to our real-world experience of an 
open-ended and not fully knowable web of possible future interactions.

However, that wasn't the point of my previous post.  I was taking 
(slight) issue with another poster's statement that "if survival is the 
goal, then you get there by rational behavior", and pointing out that 
this is true only in the limited set of those cases where one has 
sufficient contextual information and sufficient processing power and 
time to come to a "rational" decision.  Very often, in a situation where 
survival is at stake, one does not have the luxury of rational 
evaluation and in fact evolved behaviors can be more likely to lead to 
success.  This is largely dependent on how closely the survival scenario 
matches the environment of evolutionary adaptation, diminishing with our 
increasing awareness, but will be always relevant as we can never 
comprehend the full context of our environment.

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net