Why are you repeating yourself with yet more of the same derail posts then?

Of course you're not a troll.

Ignored.

El oh to tha El

Ugh, back to square one. I have obviously been arguing all this time, that you will be better off within your lifetime.

Sure. I am saying, that even if you remove empathy, then maximal happiness given remaining emotions still mandates having a system in place which prevents abuses. Already mere maximal safety and prowess of the physiology of your organism mandates this. The reason we do not see this often in nature, is because organisms except humans lack the capability to create a system which would prevent abuses.

But you are saying that this effect is only present beyond one's lifetime. I emphatically disagree.

Take into account that I agree in principal. I don't like attrocities.

If I owned slaves who picked cotton for me, I don't see how it benefits me to give them up.

I completely agree. The only problem is that it requires thinking about humanity, rather than just myself.

So, I let my slaves go. Who is going to pick the cotton for less of a cost to me?

I do agree in principal. Just can't see how the argument is convincing without saying that other people count just as much as I do.

Pretending: because it is decent strategy.

Managing: because some are smart enough to do it with skill and because it doesn't take much skill to trick people.

Typical talking therapy involves a lot of showing people how to understand others. Basically, it is teaching a better theory of mind. Teaching someone who has bad intentions how people really work is like handing them another bullet.

I am not up to date on the cutting edge of current treatments enough to know, but I imagine that the current more successful treatments involve goal setting and understanding of consequence.

So the benefits outweigh the costs and the intelligent ones behave appropriately.

Yet when I say they can behave in a way that reflects the cost benefits you say no.

?




Of course because we expect them to be behaving as per the cost/benefits and they are

Which works because the consequences to themslves of behaving well towards others outweighs the costs involved to themselves and they are reasonable.

I struggle to see where we are disagreeing.

Except that they happen to only behave appropriately occasionally.

Unless you mean appropriate in a new and interesting way.

People don't work based on cost/benefit analysis in general (consciously and with forethought or without). Not sure why you would think that someone who had no feelings for others would work any better.

Your theoretical take makes sense. However, they act badly regardless of how they should theoretically act.

Again, reality trumps rational argument every time.

Even you said they could keep it up for many years.

Then how do they keep it up for so many years and why does it break down when they have lots of power?

This is how you said they behave in reality. You even need a special test to find them.

They can be uncaught for many years. Completely different.

Kind of like a pickpocket helping a little old lady across the street. The bad behavior is just hidden.

Sorry for the lack of clarity.

but not because they're trying not to get caught and good at it?

can we have some more clarity

Earlier I said:

To which you very sensibly replied

What did that mean?

I meant that some of them can be charming.

yes, why and how?

what do they have that functions highly?

Why such an isolated case? You and your slaves are part of a system. I didn't mean that self-interest always leads to personally being nice in every single case. I'm just saying if you were intelligent and far-sighted you would be in favour of a system where noone got to keep slaves, yourself included, even if you had no empathy. And empathy hardly ever stopped anyone from keeping slaves to begin with.

If you personally let your slaves go while everyone else didn't give a damn about it, sure, you'd be screwed. Outside pressure would probably crush whatever utopia you tried to build by your own hands. If everyone let slaves go though, I think you would have a better system which puts even you the slaveowner in a better position in 5-10 years.

And I think you are underestimating what purely economic value a friendly atmosphere can create. It's hard to imagine actually, because people suck so bad at it. I mean the slaveowner might sense friendly behaviour as hard because he would have abusive urges and also social pressure to be abusive. Maybe if he and his peers were intelligent and far-sighted, it would also be easier for him to see through his silly hostile urges, and he could realistically create a friendly constructive atmosphere. You know, maybe he would experiment with giving slaves more freedom and reward for hard work, and he could test a bunch of different slaves and keep the ones that respond best to this, and he could end up with a very productive crew, who would work hard without forcing and whom he could rely on, so he could maybe trust them with expensive equipment that increases productivity, etc. Just it's hard to even imagine this kind of thing happening. But I think this mechanic does have legitimate purely economic value.

I don't know if you understand what I'm getting at. But for a real example, one place where this clearly works is creative and intellectual tasks. Some very successful commercial enterprises dealing with creative/intellectual products have remarkably lax atmosphere. I think Google for an example had something like, a lot of the time they just let their employees just work on basically whatever they want, and some of their best products come out of this. Of course, you're going to say that picking cotton is where this is not going to be helpful. And I'm not going to say that I can disagree with confidence. But I do think that this mechanic, people being most economically productive when they are free and happy, is way underestimated.

This assumes a certain type of ethical stance. Specifically that any ethical judgement should be made without knowledge of which person you are in mix.

I completely agree that any sensible ethical system should include this as a "rule."

However, a brighter person (brighter than you or me) would realize that ethics is a poor substitute for personal gain, since we know which person we are in the mix.

As I said before, empathy is not sufficient.

Have you ever been to the rural south in the US? Granted, overall better, but if you take only into account the progeny of the former slave owners, it isn't.

And the ones he isn't going to "keep?" There are greater attrocities than slavery. Selective breeding and throwing people away are quite reasonable (and wrong) correlates of your musings.

I don't mean to suggest that this is what you were proposing, but the logical extension is that you keep the happy submissives and throw the others to the wolves.

I do know what you are getting at - Humanity would be better off if people treated each other like people. You are part of humanity, so you should want humanity to prosper to the greatest extent possible.

There are two problems though.

One is that you have to care about what is best for humanity, even if it costs you personally. You overestimate or assume that overall greater prosperity translates to a specific individual's prosperity. For those who are in the powerful group it doesn't. Especially once you add in that people judge their own well-being based on relative, rather than absolute measures.

The second is that people extend consideration for their group over humanity in general.

"High functioning" is a psychology term. A high functioning moderately mentally ******ed adult is one that can dress themselves appropriately despite the fact that most can't.

and what can a high functioning pyschopath do very well in the context of "They may realise they get treated best by other people when other people think they are nce. "

They can act charming. Deja vu.

Well charming is what we want, we know they can do it and high functioning indivduals do it well (wehatever you think distinguishes high and low function individuals)

We agree they can be charming
we agree they dont care about the people they are charming to.
we agree its for their own self-interest

I'd say that in ther own self-interest they act charming which includes acting like they care even though they dont care. I say they do this because X

You dont like X = 'they are reasonable'. I've no idea why but its time for me to stop caring (or even pretending to).

Brian, your position makes more sense to me now and don't mind that we disagree on this, but just like you think I'm overestimating how much treating other people nice is immediately helpful to yourself and how much general prosperity translates to a single individual, I think you're underestimating it.

Would you rather be a king in the middle ages, or an average joe in modern day? We're perhaps not going to see that kind of transformation in one's lifetime, but I do think we'd see an insanely fast improvement of this kind, fast enough to at least pay off in one's lifetime, if people were completely without empathy but intelligent and far-sighted.

I don't find it problematic either.

People judge their own well-being in both absolute and relative terms.

Possibly.

Here is something to listen to about the best strategy and how it works out (it is about 25 minutes long, but it is entertaining): http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/...erves-another/

A smart wolf would wear sheep's clothing and quite reasonably act like a sheep. That would be quite rational.

However, it is not in the best interest of the wolf to not eat sheep though.

Only a really dumb wolf would pretend to be a sheep for longer than absolutely necessary or when not being watched.

A smart wolf will realise, that having the sheep work for him is even better than eating them. A smart wolf will realise, that the sheep work most productively if they are free and happy.

At the risk of our temporary verbal truce being broken, I disagree. I am arguing on two fronts. With you, I am arguing about what is necessary for societies to change. With Chezlaw, I am arguing the individual rogue element.

The problem of figuring out what a smart rogue wolf in the presence of sheep will do is entirely different than figuring out how a society can come to terms with creating a better near- or far-term future.

Interestingly and completely on topic, I had lamb chops for lunch. Didn't feel much guilt for not even finishing them. Of course, I have read that baby sheepies grow quicker and are tastier if they are treated well. If I were a particularly smart, reasonable and long-sighted farmer, and I believed that treating them well would make them more marketable, I would tend to do whatever I could to keep them comfortable until I slaughtered them.

The last part is the important part. Good behavior can come without giving moral consideration to others (which is entirely a function of emotion), but it tends to not work out well in the end.

I'm so pleased we have cracked the reasobale code. Now evrything folls nice and simply

True. wolf like things very much have to eat sheep like things. People on the other hand mostly dont have to hunt human prey - pyscopaths might, but just being of low empathy doesn't imply that. ythey are indifferent to people not licking their lips.

but far far more importantly

as we have talked of possible punishments then by definition they are always being watched. The important thing is to make sure they realise they are sufficiently watched