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After watching this video, Veratasium's video brings me some modicum of hope at least: "What The Prisoner's Dilemma Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Every

• sph 3y ago
  That one was of his best videos, but while it made me a lot more optimistic about human affairs, I wouldn't translate that to the world at large. Large groups of people and organisation do not function like humans. While this shows it is scientifically proven that being nice and forgiving works with fellow humans, governments and corporations do not operate like that. They have no feelings, they have no physical presence, they do not care about hurting or helping you. They only care about preserving and justify their existence.
  • 0dayz 3y ago
    On the surface yes, in practice no. I think there are a few societies that are as you described heartless, mainly former Russian empire and the Chinese empire (which hint hint still has the same heartless society today). The reason why I say so is that if it truly was the case that governments or even corporations were entirely heartless, then we should be living like China and Russia, seen as expendable cannon fodder or serfs. A civilized government or corporation needs in some way cooperative with the people, that how you can attain taxes, profit , stability and trust. And as you know we used to, what changed is the prisoners dilemma, most monarchies that decided to cooperate are the ones still Live today while those that sought to suppress started a zero sum game of whoever would win. The exception there is China where it was the 2nd round (warlords fighting themselves) that decided to not cooperate.
    • sph 3y ago
      > A civilized government or corporation needs in some way cooperative with the people, that how you can attain taxes, profit , stability and trust. In theory, sure, in practice, strongly disagree, but this would be too long a philosophical and political discussion to be had as a forum comment. A civilized government doesn't need to be cooperative and nice with people, with their monopoly on force, overwhelming power over the individual, not to say it doesn't really care about you, in a country of tens or hundreds of millions of other people. You literally are just a statistic. Its only problem is if a huge majority of people rebel against it, but there is a very efficient way to avoid that: control of mass media and... psyops. Why would you rebel against the system when you're brainwashed it is efficient, friendly, and you have the power to change it? How would you organise against it, when all our lives are based on the Internet and technology that is easy to monitor? Sorry, I promised I wouldn't get political.
      • 0dayz 3y ago
        Okay so if that is the case then why aren't states in the west doing this overwhelmingly like how we used to/how authoritarian governments do? Again psyops can only go so far and media is not inherently "owned" or anything of the sort, most of what you're saying you have to buy into a paranoid world view to rationalize instead of just looking at the truth of what civilized vs uncivilized governments do and don't do. Since it's highly unproductive to assume government in the west is incapable of cooperating, as if this was the case we would literally not have ideals in society followed and protected by a fundamental agreement we fall the constitution, since again why should we in the west follow rules when China/Russia is far worse than us.