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I agree, it wouldn't be problematic, but it seems like a world-scale prisoner's dilemma, that goes back at least to the time of the dawn of agriculture. All it

by defen 6y ago

I agree, it wouldn't be problematic, but it seems like a world-scale prisoner's dilemma, that goes back at least to the time of the dawn of agriculture. All it takes is one culture to defect, and they will "win" - so how could you possibly disincentivize that?

int_19h 6y ago
Well, consider our own society. A perfectly natural way to outcompete your neighbor is by getting strong enough to murder them and take over their resources. But we have mechanisms that prevent this from being the norm. When it comes to interactions between cultures, such mechanisms are still nascent. But since we're one of the cultures that have historically been defecting in this sense, the onus is on us to develop those mechanisms. We are in a unique position where we can take all those gains from unrestricted competition we engaged it, and utilize them to prevent the same in the future. And, conversely, if we treat other cultures as inferior on the basis that they couldn't (or refused to) remain competitive against us, that's straight-up victim blaming. As for the counter-argument that if it weren't for us, they'd just be outcompeted by someone else, well... would you consider it acceptable to murder a person for material gain, if you knew with absolute certainty that they'd be murdered later by somebody else, anyway? Our society in general certainly does not consider this a valid justification - whatever the hypotheticals, the person who actually committed the murder bears full responsibility for it. If somebody were to say that the victim had it coming because they weren't able to muster an adequate defense, or because they refused to defend themselves for moral reasons (e.g. pacifism), that would be considered a morally repugnant position, right? So then isn't it hypocritical to not use the same logic for moral judgments on how our culture interacts with others?

by defen 6y ago

int_19h 6y ago

Well, consider our own society. A perfectly natural way to outcompete your neighbor is by getting strong enough to murder them and take over their resources. But we have mechanisms that prevent this from being the norm. When it comes to interactions between cultures, such mechanisms are still nascent. But since we're one of the cultures that have historically been defecting in this sense, the onus is on us to develop those mechanisms. We are in a unique position where we can take all those gains from unrestricted competition we engaged it, and utilize them to prevent the same in the future. And, conversely, if we treat other cultures as inferior on the basis that they couldn't (or refused to) remain competitive against us, that's straight-up victim blaming. As for the counter-argument that if it weren't for us, they'd just be outcompeted by someone else, well... would you consider it acceptable to murder a person for material gain, if you knew with absolute certainty that they'd be murdered later by somebody else, anyway? Our society in general certainly does not consider this a valid justification - whatever the hypotheticals, the person who actually committed the murder bears full responsibility for it. If somebody were to say that the victim had it coming because they weren't able to muster an adequate defense, or because they refused to defend themselves for moral reasons (e.g. pacifism), that would be considered a morally repugnant position, right? So then isn't it hypocritical to not use the same logic for moral judgments on how our culture interacts with others?