Vaniver comments on Exterminating life is rational - Less Wrong

17 Post author: PhilGoetz 06 August 2009 04:17PM

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Comment author: TitaniumDragon 27 May 2014 10:47:57PM -1 points [-]

Incidentally, regarding some other things in here:

[quote]They thought that just before World War I. But that's not my final rejection. Evolutionary arguments are a more powerful reason to believe that people will continue to have conflicts. Those that avoid conflict will be out-competed by those that do not.[/quote]

There's actually a pretty good counter-argument to this, namely the fact that capital is vastly easier to destroy than it is to create, and that, thusly, an area which avoids conflict has an enormous advantage over one that doesn't because it maintains more of its capital. As capital becomes increasingly important, conflict - at least, violent, capital-destroying conflict - becomes massively less beneficial to the perpetrator of said conflict, doubly so when they actually also likely benefit from the capital contained in other nations as well due to trade.

And that's ignoring the fact that we've already sort of engineered a global scenario where "The West" (the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe, creeping now as far east as Poland) never attack each other, and slowly make everyone else in the world more like them. It is group selection of a sort, and it seems to be working pretty well. These countries defend their capital, and each others' capital, benefit from each others' capital, and engage soley in non-violent conflict with each other. If you threaten them, they crush you and make you more like them; even if you don't, they work to corrupt you to make you more like them. Indeed, even places like China are slowly being corrupted to be more like the West.

The more that sort of thing happens, the less likely violent conflict becomes because it is simply less beneficial, and indeed, there is even some evidence to suggest we are being selected for docility - in "the West" we've seen crime rates and homicide rates decline for 20+ years now.

As a final, random aside:

My favorite thing about the Trinity test was the scientist who was taking side bets on the annihilation of the entire state of New Mexico, right in front of the governor of said state, who I'm sure was absolutely horrified.

Comment author: Vaniver 27 May 2014 11:52:11PM 0 points [-]

Incidentally, you can blockquote paragraphs by putting > in front of them, and you can find other help by clicking the "Show Help" button to the bottom right of the text box. (I have no clue why it's all the way over there; it makes it way less visible.)

There's actually a pretty good counter-argument to this, namely the fact that capital is vastly easier to destroy than it is to create, and that, thusly, an area which avoids conflict has an enormous advantage over one that doesn't because it maintains more of its capital.

But, the more conflict avoidant the agents in an area, the more there is to gain from being an agent that seeks conflict.

Comment author: TitaniumDragon 28 May 2014 11:47:33PM *  2 points [-]

The more conflict avoidant the agents in an area, the more there is to gain from being an agent that seeks conflict.

This is only true if the conflict avoidance is innate and is not instead a form of reciprocal altruism.

Reciprocal altruism is an ESS where pure altruism is not because you cannot take advantage of it in this way; if you become belligerent, then everyone else turns on you and you lose. Thus, it is never to your advantage to become belligerent.

Comment author: Vaniver 29 May 2014 04:33:11AM *  1 point [-]

Agreed. The word 'avoid' and the group selection-y argument made me think it was a good idea to raise that objection and make sure we were discussing reciprocal pacifists, not pure pacifists.