Re: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Prisoner's

Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Fri, 18 Apr 1997 11:04:00 +0100

Drakir wrote:
>The other problem is that the game has already begun. The dice
>have been rolled, and the players are in action. To sit out is to lose
>out. It's too late to suggest another game. We have to wait 'till the
>current players have all lost before it's over, and before we can
>suggest some alternatives.

There's a discussion going on that showed up in
alt.humor.best-of-usenet about how to replace NT on a server
with Linux, remotely. Imagine the effect on the sys admin,
coming in the next morning, to find the machine in just the
same state he left it, except running a different OS. Not
absolutely irrelevant, perhaps? :-)

>> or in other words:
>>
>> "Cooperate, don't defect"
>
>You're always going to find people who disagree, possibly quite
>strongly, with this.

Not very many, if you can really demonstrate its rationality.
(Though it looks like in iterated games defection is called
for as punishment for previous defection by the other.)

>> But how can you make such a system stable?
>
>Eliminate Greed. It's the only way. How to eliminate greed? I can
>only think of one way: Eliminate the human race.

All (!) you have to do is show that greed is not really beneficial.

--
Robin Faichney
r.j.faichney@stirling.ac.uk
http://www.stir.ac.uk/envsci/staff/rjf1/