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The Internet Is About to Get Much Worse
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Technology
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If this is how everyone would act in their daily life, you would see crime, theft and abuse on an unimaginable level. No, people don't always do what benefits them "at every individual point". We are social creatures, acting as a community where the individuals benefit from working together. Although this has been successfully undermined by capitalism and other hierarchies.
This whole concept is also called, the Prisoner's Dilemma, one of my favorite thought experiments because it shows how being rational can result in everyone being worse off.
Yeah, but when we've had no hierarchy we've always had constant warfare, which is also highly abusive (not to say that's inevitable). We're just as naturally capable of antisocial behavior as other species, when we can either socially get away with it (cow grazing, Easter Islanders killing all their trees) or do it to people we've decided are others (every time hunter-gatherer bands killed or enslaved each other).
You're right we can act cooperatively in the right situation, but let's not make it sound like human ignorance is new or unnatural.
It is never not advantageous, as an individual, to graze as much as possible. Your "analysis" ignores that very basic, unarguable fact.
Sure, it's advantageous in the short-term. I think this is where we misunderstand each other. What I'm trying to say is that under normal circumstances, individuals aren't maximizing their output. They are just living as part of the community, following the unwritten rules and benefiting from that. (In the prisoner's dilemma, this would be choice A).
That's the point. That's the entire (and entirely correct) metaphor.
People ignore the communal benefit because in the short term it's better to do so.