Rien Posted November 17, 2013 Posted November 17, 2013 Listening to FDR2531 set the following train of thought in motion: Not all people are equally good at allocating their resources. Differences in intelligence and experience will cause some people to be better at this than others. People don't survive on their own, people survive in groups. In a group there will be people that are better at allocating resources than others. Since groups will be competing, evolution will favour those groups in which the assets are best allocated. Even if there was some kind of force involved. Creators with little social skills might find that their chances at survival are better in a group that has little respect for self ownership than in a group that perishes because they value self ownership. It might even be that the genome has this build in. Care to shoot any holes in this? PS: I am not defending the existence of a government. I fully subscribe to the NAP. I do see that governments exist, and I wonder what role they play in human evolution, and if we might be predisposed to accept a government.
Bulbasaur Posted November 18, 2013 Posted November 18, 2013 I find the intersection of ethics and evolution to be a very interesting topic, so I'll take a stab at it. Not all people are equally good at allocating their resources. Differences in intelligence and experience will cause some people to be better at this than others. People don't survive on their own, people survive in groups. In a group there will be people that are better at allocating resources than others. Since groups will be competing, evolution will favour those groups in which the assets are best allocated. Even if there was some kind of force involved. I suppose 'best allocation of resources' could be considered synonymous with 'productivity,' which I think does correlate with evolutionary fitness. Evolutionary processes are very much 'ends justify the means,' so in principle the use of force would only matter to the extent that it was effective or ineffective at increasing fitness, no different than any other attribute. However, I think it's worth considering whether the use of force is inherently detrimental to the fitness of a group. Evolution may not 'care' about ethics, but ethics (by its very nature as a system of objective 'ought') may have universal implications for maximizing group fitness. In a closed system, it's easy to see how this might be the case. Honest voluntary interactions tend to be win-win and create net value, whereas forceful involuntary interactions tend to be win-lose and destroy net value (e.g. theft is a break-even transfer of value often combined with property or bodily damage and disruption of productivity). This is why a fully free society based on voluntary capitalism should in principle maximize net productivity and fitness. Conversely, productivity should be progressively suppressed as the degree of force, fraud, and theft in a society increases. This seems to be supported empirically through the inverse relationship between economic growth and government growth. I specify 'closed system' because conquest has obviously been a profitable application of force throughout history which should be addressed. The use of force by one group against another group could certainly increase the fitness of that group enough to more than compensate for any loss of fitness incurred by the use of force within the group. Thus a force-using group could increase their fitness through use of force, but only at the expense of another group. In a more global view, the interaction is still win-lose and a net loss, and the situation of force between groups is analogous to the situation of force between individuals. That said, any universal objective ethics must apply equally to all moral agents, so it's necessary to consider humankind as a single closed moral system (and if other moral agents are ever encountered, they must also be included). I imagine something like an entropy law could be developed, e.g. Deviations from ethics always decrease productivity in an isolated moral system In other words, deviations from ethics may cause a local gain in productivity (or perhaps fitness or some other metric would be more suitable), but always create a net global loss. If this is true, then the most successful groups should be those which allow people the most freedom. Practically all successful groups throughout history do seem to have engaged in substantial use of force, but I don't think that disproves the claim. While it seems to be true that organization into authoritarian hierarchies like tribes and governments had an evolutionary advantage, I think it's likely that this is only true when coming from a more unethical state of total disorganization, which would be expected of a lawless population with no technology or understanding of ethics. We can see a general progression of increasing freedom throughout history, from direct human slavery to serfdom to the indirect tax slavery we have now. If it is the case that alignment with ethics correlates proportionally with productivity and fitness, then societal evolution should naturally progress toward a more ethical state (even if we never explicitly discovered ethics). However, in much the same way that our discovery of the scientific method dramatically accelerated our productivity, our capacity for philosophy could likewise fast-track our progress in outgrowing governments, if people can be convinced of its value. Creators with little social skills might find that their chances at survival are better in a group that has little respect for self ownership than in a group that perishes because they value self ownership. It might even be that the genome has this build in PS: I am not defending the existence of a government. I fully subscribe to the NAP. I do see that governments exist, and I wonder what role they play in human evolution, and if we might be predisposed to accept a government. Certainly predators (e.g. sociopaths) do better individually in a less ethical society, because they can thrive at the expense of others. However, this is detrimental to the group as a whole, since it's fundamentally parasitical. But sociopathy appears to be largely a consequence of ethical failures perpetrated on one as a child, so this would be more of an epigenetic phenomenon if anything. As far as accepting a government, people do seem predisposed to accept domination as preferable to death which obviously would confer an evolutionary advantage. We're also susceptible to social programming, but there are probably good evolutionary reasons for this besides its usefulness as a control mechanism.
Rien Posted November 18, 2013 Author Posted November 18, 2013 whereas forceful involuntary interactions tend to be win-lose and destroy net value I think if I boil down my original post it comes down to questioning this. Is the use of force always win-lose (or even lose-lose)? Can it be win-win? And come to think of this, I remember a podcast in which Stefan said as much. It was along the lines: if the person that is forced (for example a child) can be assumed to later appreciate that he/she was forced (for example brushing your teeth), then the use of force was justified. So there are win-win situations even if force is used. If these kind of win-win situations exist, then it is at least possible that forced leadership might have had a beneficial effect on the fitness of a group. And that this might have found a place in the gene. I like your observation that: We can see a general progression of increasing freedom throughout history Which seems to suggest that the time were forced compliance was useful has passed. In other words, deviations from ethics may cause a local gain in productivity (or perhaps fitness or some other metric would be more suitable), but always create a net global loss. Today, yes probably. But not necessarily in the past. Two groups that never interacted may have had quite different futures. To the extend that one group, possibly with perfect ethics, starved to death while another group in similar circumstances but through the use of force was able to survive. An easy example would be failed crops followed by certain starvation. A group that would without remorse kill the weaker members might survive while a group in which the use of force was unthinkable might all have died. I know that this is a very unpopular lifeboat scenario, but that does not make it less true. And I suspect that in a time where human population was scattered and rarely had contact this kind of scenario's might have happened a lot. Often enough to leave an imprint on the gene. May this is the reason why sociopaths exist.
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