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> Nature is the only known example we have of a sustained environment, no? No, not really. Looking at the large scale, the Earth will burn up together with the

> Nature is the only known example we have of a sustained environment, no? No, not really. Looking at the large scale, the Earth will burn up together with the Sun, and then we'll reach the death of the universe one way or the other. Small scale, we have sustained businesses, economies, families, ecosystems. In those, prisoner's dilemma is real and testable. I'm getting the impression that you're trying to draw some equivalency between all classes of harms, regardless of their magnitude. I do agree to a certain extent, but I can nary see an argument that would convince me that some options are just not singularly harmful. As an example, me and my neighbour being paid to grow a field, at the cost of the field insects, versus me and my neighbour being paid to drive each other away and take over the land. One is clearly better than another if human well being is more important than that of insects. If we fear the neighbour fighting us and we value survival, we must fight ourselves. That's the curse of the prisoner's dilemma, because giving up the fight yields a better outcome. I would call such a greedy "survival" approach naive and unfortunate. If we value dominance above all, then fighting the neighbour is the better choice. I believe we have a word for such value systems: egoism.

lazide 6y ago
Giving up the fight yields the better outcome only when the other party doesn’t come over and eat you or kill you no? It isn’t about dominance over all - it’s about survival and the complex intertwining of all the various strategies (good, bad, failing) being tried simultaneously with the hope that theirs wins. Sometimes it’s domination. Sometimes it’s teamwork. Sometimes it’s passivity. As any individual player, you have to pick one - and sometimes it wins, sometimes it loses. Most strategies exist not because they are always ideal, but because having the selection is essential and necessary to long term survival in a fundamentally unpredictable environment. A species that only does one strategy at once is going to go extinct when the environment changes suddenly. I’m definitely not equating all actions as equal, or saying everything has equal cost. I’m noting that nothing, including no action, has no cost, and that assuming a player in the game (you or someone else) will definitely lose or definitely win for a given survival criteria has a very low degree of predictive accuracy in the real world.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  Of course, you're right about survival. Sometimes the rational strategy is to fight. What I'm contesting is the view that predicting outcomes is useless. I gave the example of economies and ecosystems together with prisoner's dilemma to illustrate that we do indeed have a models that are accurate in predicting at least first order effects. First order effects are not everything, of course, but it doesn't seem sensible to throw away our knowledge coming from game theory (or cybernetics? or plain life experience) and settle on not being able to predict which choices are net positive and which are net negative. As with any estimation, there will be those that can't be evaluated with any certainty, but also clear winners and losers.

lazide 6y ago

Giving up the fight yields the better outcome only when the other party doesn’t come over and eat you or kill you no? It isn’t about dominance over all - it’s about survival and the complex intertwining of all the various strategies (good, bad, failing) being tried simultaneously with the hope that theirs wins. Sometimes it’s domination. Sometimes it’s teamwork. Sometimes it’s passivity. As any individual player, you have to pick one - and sometimes it wins, sometimes it loses. Most strategies exist not because they are always ideal, but because having the selection is essential and necessary to long term survival in a fundamentally unpredictable environment. A species that only does one strategy at once is going to go extinct when the environment changes suddenly. I’m definitely not equating all actions as equal, or saying everything has equal cost. I’m noting that nothing, including no action, has no cost, and that assuming a player in the game (you or someone else) will definitely lose or definitely win for a given survival criteria has a very low degree of predictive accuracy in the real world.

rhn_mk1 6y ago
Of course, you're right about survival. Sometimes the rational strategy is to fight. What I'm contesting is the view that predicting outcomes is useless. I gave the example of economies and ecosystems together with prisoner's dilemma to illustrate that we do indeed have a models that are accurate in predicting at least first order effects. First order effects are not everything, of course, but it doesn't seem sensible to throw away our knowledge coming from game theory (or cybernetics? or plain life experience) and settle on not being able to predict which choices are net positive and which are net negative. As with any estimation, there will be those that can't be evaluated with any certainty, but also clear winners and losers.