
Ethics have been on my mind; largely
So Robert Axelrod (In The Evolution of Cooperation, which I confess I haven't read) lays out four descriptive conditions of strategies that do well at The Prisoner's Dilemma: they are Nice, which is to say it presupposes cooperation, unless there is reason not to; they are Retaliating, in that if the other player defects, they punish with their own defection; they are Forgiving, so that they can put aside relaliating & go back to cooperating when the other side starts cooperating; & they are Non-envious, which is to say they don't judge off of the "cheaters" points, but rather optimizing their own. Those are pretty decent evidence for the success of Ethics; then again, that is sort of the point of game theory. This is the sort of thing that makes me angry about state bailouts & light punishments for white collar crime; those are the defections we should be punishing. The whole point of government, if you ask me, can be reduced to "make cooperating the best option & defecting the worst option." Do it with the carrot & the stick, use every trick in the book. Anyhow; I think about the Dilemma a lot, so seeing it with fresh eyes was fun.