Cooperating results in people taking advantage of you.

Tit-for-tat is about as good as it gets for an unknown number of iterations.

Of course, the idea that you can't communicate or coordinate or even add penalties for defective shows how limited its applications it is to reality. There are built-in social mechanisms for ostracism of people who do not cooperate and are selfish. This makes them worse off for obvious reasons. This is why people naturally tend to cooperate, even when it might not be in their best interest. Our brain is rewarding us for cooperating. Our brain is also wired to punish people even if it hurts us if we view them as being unfair.

1 to 2% within a reasonably quick period of time (less than a year).

People don't know what you are thinking, so you're leaving it up to them to characterize you. Those who are going to think of you as a troll are more likely to mention it, as opposed to those who don't. Also characterizing you as a troll, degenerates into a non-serious discussion. It's an easier battle for them to win (or not lose), rather to trying to win a debate.

You're giving liberals too much credit. For the most part, they don't think that. If they thought along those lines, the answer to question #1 would be much higher, and you probably don't initiate this thread.

Which is the entire point. If either player tried to play in a way that would result in the best result for everyone, they would get taken advantage of by people just being selfish. So yeah, not a very convincing argument for why people being selfish yields the best results for everyone.

And it's still significantly worse than cooperation every round.

I agree that the prisoner's dilemma is too restrictive, but look at the rest of what you're saying. You're saying that people are wired in a way that makes them not act in their best interest, while trying to defend the claim that people acting in their best interest yields the best results for society.

Assuming that you really want to say something along the lines of "people looking out for their best interested, but with the restrictions naturally put into place by our biology, yields the best results for society," then I would ask why you believe our natural mechanisms are better than anything else we could put in place on top of that, and also why you think natural mechanisms work well in today's world.

Ostracism and feelings of guilt works in some contexts, but when people aren't living in small societies where everyone knows one another, and many of our interactions with people are so impersonal, I wouldn't expect our natural tendency to cooperate to be perfectly suited for our conditions.

No it doesn't eg if you jump into bed with every woman you fancy this might satisfy you but it is likely to be bad for your partner/wife, your kids and society as a whole.

facepalm.jpg

Read a book.

20%? (: If it was in the east maybe 33%?

..Did I pass?? :*

Believe it or not conservatives, there are some people out there that genuinely care what happens to other people beside themselves. There are also people out there that genuinely value freedom as a principle. Yes I'd like poker to be allowed because I could make money off of it, but the principle of the matter is more important to me and to our country's future as a whole.

Same when it comes to left vs right economic issues. Some people (Warren Buffett comes to mind) are willing to sacrifice some of their personal gain if they feel it is best for the world.

Research has discovered that you don't need to accumulate money to be happy you just need enough to make you feel secure and your freedom. That's where capitalism fails people. It encourages them to work longer doing things they don't like for money they don't need.

This is true but it doesn't change the fact that the people working hardest to make our economy and country run aren't compensated fairly because they have no leverage.

So why aren't people working less if they don't need the money? What's the source of this systematic irrational behaviour? Of course if it's really true that people are earning too much for optimal happiness, perhaps we should do something about it. How about lowering wages?

They are subverted by capitalism which convinces them they need pet rocks and a different mobile phone every six months.

There's a lot of propaganda put out by the 1% that we need to consume, consume, consume, but it's also cultural and it's also human nature.

The point isn't that people are earning "too much to be happy," it's that people get happier as they become able to live at a certain standard. Once you get past a certain point, there is a huge diminishing returns on money you make making you happier.

People need security to be happy. American-style capitalism offers them the opposite so they work their lives away terrified of ending up broke.

Everyone would be happier if we lived in caves and gathered berries and died of gangrene at age 27 (assuming you're one of the lucky ones to make it out of childhood alive).