• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    But for myself, the world and humanity was created with free will and it’s up to us to choose good vs evil.

    That’s a terrible take: It implies that if you see something that you consider evil, you attribute it to choice, whereas the opposite is generally the case – once individuals have waded through layers of shit conditioning they are able to make choices that are actually attributable to them and not to society, upbringing, etc, and they very much do not choose evil. They might choose things that are inconvenient to others, or short-sighted, or unwise, but evil? That’s not just a different ballpark that’s a different game:

    There can be no good without evil.

    As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.

    In other words: Noone, willingly, chooses imperfection. Minds, life, that would do so, would use its degrees of freedoms like that, would long have went the way of the dodo.

    • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social
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      2 hours ago

      I’ll ignore the first half of this reply because we won’t agree. Not every choice is a conscious decision in my eyes, but the vast majority are.

      As for the second half, believing that bad actors would be weeded out based on the principle of free will is naive. Consider game theory. Two people have something to gain from cooperation, but more to gain from defecting. Meanwhile, the other gains nothing or very little. That simple thought experiment incentivizes bad actions from time to time. You have more to gain by acting selfishly.

      Now blow up the experiment. You vs the world and reputation is introduced. Someone with a perfect cooperation rate is flawed. They offer nothing but blind trust and can be taken advantage of. The opposite also displayed. Someone who makes selfish decisions all the time offers nothing but blind distrust. You’re left to choose which people to interact with that are somewhere along the middle of the reputation gradient. Those that are 70% or lower seem unpredictable or untrustworthy so many choose to interact with people on the higher end of the reputation spectrum when available and reflect that in their own decision making. You can’t always choose who to interact with, so eventually you’ll have to interact with a bad actor. You’ll get burned by making a cooperative choice and they will benefit from it. In turn, ensuring that they will survive natural selection.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        49 minutes ago

        That simple thought experiment incentivizes bad actions from time to time.

        The optimal strategy, in theory and practice, for the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (unknown or infinite amounts of iterations) is some version of tit for tat, details depending on the exact rules (such as low information reliability needing increased forgiveness). The strategy involves punishing the other player for defecting but it will never defect first so two tit-for-tat players will play 100% cooperatively and the knives stay where they belong, behind their backs. Holistically speaking choosing to punish is not bad because it incentivise the other player to play cooperatively, leading to overall greater results for both.

        Evolutionarily speaking: If cooperation did not give advantages, why the fuck did we become a social species? Going for anti-cooperative strategies only ever makes sense in zero-sum games and practically nothing in life is.

        You have more to gain by acting selfishly.

        That’s capitalist propaganda with no basis in game theory.

        Not every choice is a conscious decision in my eyes, but the vast majority are.

        Oh my sweet summer child.