NancyLebovitz comments on Good Idealistic Books are Rare - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 February 2009 06:41PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 19 February 2009 12:14:57PM *  0 points [-]

I recommend Zarah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor Mbachu-- it's a young adult novel with various sorts of cooperation working out well. It's also good on thinking about what you're trying to do.

At a first pass, idealism is the idea that cooperative behavior is reliably rewarded. Cynicism is the belief that cooperative behavior is reliably punished or is at best ineffective.

This gets complicated because cooperation with one group can be defection to another.

The idea that goals can't be achieved at all is more thorough-going than cynicism-- call it despair.

So PUA and to a lesser extent Andrew Carnegie are cynical, but they're in strong opposition to despair.