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Peterdjones comments on By Which It May Be Judged - Less Wrong
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How do you avoid prudent predation
I think the author of that piece needs to learn the concept of precommitment. Precommitting to one-box is not at all the same as believing that one-boxing is the dominant strategy in the general newcomb problem. Likewise, precommitting not to engage in prudent predation is not a matter of holding a counterfactual belief, but of taking a positive-expected-utility action.
Are there moral systems used by humans that avoid prudent predation, and are not outcompeted by moral systems used by humans that make use of prudent predation?
I will note that the type of predation that is prudent has varied significantly over time, and correspondingly, so have moral intuitions. Further altering the structure of society will again alter the sort of predation that is prudent, and so one can seek to restructure society so disliked behavior is less prudent and liked behavior is more prudent.
I find it hard to make sense of that. I don't think people go in for morality for selfish gain, and the very idea may be incoherent.
Maybe. I don't see what your point is. If the moral is not the practical, and if PP is wrong, that would not imply morality is timeless, and vice versa.
The claim is that moral intuitions exist because they were selected for, and they must have been selected for because they increased reproductive fitness. Similarly, we should expect moral behavior to the degree that morality is more rewarding than immorality. (The picture is muddied by there being both genetic and memetic evolution, but the basic idea survives.)
But morality isn't just moral intuitions. It includes "eat fish on friday"
That doens't follow. Fitness-enahncing and gene-spreading behaviour don;t have to reward the organism concerned. What't the reward for self sacrifice?
that's a considerable understatement.
Sure. We should expect such rules to be followed to the degree that they are prudent.
There are several; kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and so on. In some cases, self-sacrifice is the result of a parasitic relationship. (Kin selection appears to have a memetic analog as well, but I'm not familiar with work that develops that concept rigorously, and distinguishes it from normal alliance behaviors; it might just be a subset of that.)
Again, I have no idea what you mean. Morality does not predict self-centered prudence, since it enjoins self-sacrifice, and evolution doenst predict self-centered prudence in all cases. It is not selfishly prudent for bees to to defend their colony, or for male praying mantises to mate.
Rewards for whom?
If you pass on the idea that self-sacrifice is virtuous, in a persuasive sort of way (such as by believing it yourself), you're marginally more likely to enjoy the benefits of having someone willing to sacrifice their own interests nearby when you particularly need such a person. Of course, sometimes that meme kills you. Some people are born with sickle-cell anemia and never get the opportunity to benefit from malaria resistance; evolution doesn't play nice.