
Selfishness Is Learned: We tend to be cooperative unless we think too much - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/selfishness-is-learned
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sbuttgereit
There is a need to really consider definitions of selfish/cooperating here and
skimming the article, the authors seem to take a narrow, short term focused
set of definitions that aren't always applicable to these terms as they can be
more broadly defined.

For example, I'm a married man. I am married because I want to share my life
experiences with my wife. I want to cooperate with her in building those
experiences and navigating through the options. I engage in this deep
cooperation and sharing with another person precisely because I am selfish. I
give money and sometimes my time to causes like the Red Cross and Institute
for Justice, again, not because I'm naturally cooperative, but because I view,
over the long term, that these organizations may actually either be helpful to
me someday or will help mold the kind of society I want to live in: I'm being
cooperative because this sort of cooperation is ultimately in my best
interest... in other words, I'm being cooperative precisely because I am being
selfish.

I could rob a bank to get cash now, cheat a merchant that gives me too much
change, simply be rude to people because it feels good in any one moment,
or... as the test in the article states... take from the communal pot without
contributing anything. That's the sort of thing the article is calling
selfish, but looking at my life as a whole, each one of those things actually
aren't all that selfish; they simply satiate in the moment and comes with
consequences if one things more clearly about it. Each of those "quick fixes"
end up causing me more long term harm than good (always being on the run,
making a society where dishonesty is the norm, encouraging everyone to be
rude, encouraging less sensible generosity).

So yeah, we may cooperate as a default, we may make short-sighted self-
interested decisions with a little thought, but selfish cooperation takes the
most thinking.

~~~
alttab
I too believe there is some meat on the bones of psychological egoism [1], the
thought that altruism in its most purest sense doesn't really exist, because
there is personal benefit (feeling good) to being altruistic.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism)

~~~
sbuttgereit
Feeling good about being benevolent is the least transgression for an
altruist. I would argue that being fully consistent when it comes to living
philosophically altruistic is only possible if you're prepared to die for it
(quickly).

Think about it, every time you take a bite of food, you act selfishly. I
guarantee you if you look hard enough you will find someone that is more
starved than you are when you take that bite.... even if you, yourself are
starving. How much more selfless and altruistic can you be than to give all
the food you would otherwise eat for the benefit of your fellow man that
otherwise would starve? (nevermind what it says about them to accept your
sacrifice). How can you not be selfish when you choose to service your own
need of nourishment, no matter how little you take, over choosing to feed
those others that need it more.

Egoism on the other hand doesn't mean that you don't cooperate. It doesn't
mean that you can't be benevolent. True, it doesn't _demand_ any of that from
you, but in the long view and all other things being equal, it's usually in
your interest to cooperate and to be benevolent.

~~~
tremon
_being fully consistent when it comes to living philosophically altruistic is
only possible if you 're prepared to die for it (quickly)._

Imagine you're the only skilled baker in town. Does your community benefit
more from you when you starve yourself to death, or when you keep producing
food for them?

~~~
alttab
I took this specific quote as killing yourself is the most merciful thing you
could do for others. Dark indeed.

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khattam
>But many people don’t, even if they wouldn’t be caught—now, that’s weird.

WHAT? How is that weird? There are a lot of idiots doing all kinds of stupid
things. How is paying taxes more stupid than all of the retarded shit people
do?

>Psychologists are deeply perplexed by human moral behavior, because it often
doesn’t seem to make any logical sense.

No they are not. If they have studied ANY social animal, "moral" behavior
makes sense. It's selfishness of the group, not the individual.

>But if we could understand these seemingly irrational acts

Fuck off! Who the fuck are you?

...

OK MATTHEW HUTSON.

>I have a B.S. in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University and an M.S. in
science writing from MIT

OK

> Author of 7 laws of magical thinking > I’ve written for Newsweek, Wired, The
> Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Scientific American Mind,
> Popular Mechanics, Technology Review, New Scientist, Slate, NewYorker.com,
> NYMag.com, ScienceMag.org, Aeon, Nautilus, Al Jazeera America, The Boston
> Globe, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times,
> The New York Times, and Psychology Today

You are what is wrong with academia and scientific journalism.

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bitL
In cognitive neuroscience for robotics when trying to figure out how humans
learn you'd find out that children are innately trying to be super helpful to
others when they start perceiving other persons as unique beings separate from
them.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Do you have more source for that?

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aab0
Makes sense from a bounded rationality point of view. We want to be as selfish
as possible while escaping punishment and social ostracism; this requires
modeling whether others will learn of selfishness, what the punishment will
be, what the payoff will be, and so on. This is not necessarily quick or easy,
so given the asymmetry in payoffs, it is reasonable to default to cooperation
unless the additional thinking indicates that this is a safe time to defect.

(Or to put it another way: is it more reproductively fit to occasionally lie?
Absolutely. But if you're going to lie, you need to be careful about it. So if
someone surprises you with a sudden demand or question and expects an instant
response, the safest answer on average will be the truth.)

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gohrt
Which is it: selfishness is "learned", or selfishness is the product of
thinking. Could the same article have the headline below?:

"Sharing Is Stupid: We tend to be cooperative when we think too little"

~~~
steego
> Which is it: selfishness is "learned", or selfishness is the product of
> thinking.

Why are those two things mutually exclusive?

~~~
jsmith0295
The title seems to imply that selfishness is something externally imposed on
people, and that they would naturally be cooperative instead. While both could
be true, its more about which is _more_ true. (Although I don't think
selfishness and cooperation are necessarily opposites either.)

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fiatjaf
I stopped on "tax". What? Paying taxes is "cooperative"?

~~~
alanwatts
When you have a choice, yes. Although when taxes are autodeducted from your
paycheck you don't have much of a choice but to cooperate, unless you want to
quit your job.

Thoreau was famous for his non cooperative "civil disobedience" which entailed
not paying taxes. He ended up in jail for it but he achieved his desired
effect in the long run.

Gandhi read of Thoreau's tactics and in turn led a movement in India where
millions refused to pay the salt tax to the British Empire.

~~~
khattam
The US did the same by refusing to pay tax to the UK.

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lucio
"Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a
man at all" \- Hobbes

I see Hobbes as closer to reality

~~~
LionessLover
I don't see where your reply fits in. The article isn't claiming anything that
you seem to be in opposition of? It doesn't say what reality is (whose
anyway?). It points out mechanisms. With those mechanisms anything is
possible, from Hitler to fantasy land.

Example: Describing the laws of physics doesn't give any description of
whether you stand in a wasteland or in a paradise. Either one is built upon
the same rules. The rules the article mentions don't rule out the worst much-
less-than-cooperation outcomes.

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thesimpsons1022
maybe this is off topic but all my cs major friends seem a lot more selfish
than my non-cs friends. Ie instead of sharing or letting someone borrow
something they want the exact cash value. Even if you've shared with them in
the past with no strings attached.

~~~
llamataboot
Get better friends, maybe? I noticed the same thing among capital-L
Libertarians -- down to calculating the exact amount of money needed per pizza
slice when buying pizza and sharing among friends. I prefer to hang out in
mostly gifting/sharing circles these days ;)

~~~
donatj
Capital-L Libertarian here, and frankly when it comes to friends I don't care
about money, one big happy 'circle of mooching' as my best man labeled it.

However if you're not my friend, I have no reason to take financial risks for
you however small.

Consider perhaps you are not good friends with these people.

~~~
llamataboot
Those people are irrelevant. They do that even with their closest friends
because they all seem to be intent on not getting screwed. I'd rather share
and gift extremely liberally, to the best of my abilities, among my circle of
friends and even far acquaintances. Are there freeloaders in economic terms?
eh, sure, but a lot of that is income dependent as well. But mostly what goes
around comes around and a lot is going around -- velocity of gifting is > than
velocity of money which is great. But then again I'm a small-l libertarian
socialist.

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dharmach
The concept of cooperation also fits to the tolerance-intolerance debate.

[https://www.myind.net/tolerance-intolerance-and-game-
theory](https://www.myind.net/tolerance-intolerance-and-game-theory)

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NoMoreNicksLeft
I'm not sure that I think that we'll get desirable results if our motivations
are "let's get people to do things without thinking them through".

Their initial example is taxes (and tax cheats). This is a good example for my
point...

Paying taxes isn't morally righteous. Our government takes some large fraction
of those and spends it on killing people. Killing them far away, with little
justification (much of it absurd), no transparency or accountability, and what
we have found out about all this is that it's all abominable.

If I could figure out how to cheat on my taxes, I would. I'd feel obligated to
do so.

Their second example is hardly better, though it seems that way at first
glance (and note how all of these seem simple at first glance). A young man
saved a woman in a flood. And his gamble paid off. That time. He almost
certainly risked much to save her, and those gambles rarely pay off. Much of
the time, acting quickly without thinking gets people hurt and killed. Usually
many more are hurt or killed than would have been if slow, deliberative
thinking had delayed such rescue.

Then it veers into situations, where the agents are all mindless algorithms,
and only the programmer/researcher/experimenter gets to decide what
"beneficial results" means.

This reduces everyone in such a model to mindless automatons, where only the
results of those in charge are considered. Is that what they want to turn us
into? Maybe they can find some secret psychological button to make your
concerns melt away, so that the only thing worried about are the wants of
those who manage to find and poke the button? This should worry people.

~~~
colanderman
> If I could figure out how to cheat on my taxes, I would. I'd feel obligated
> to do so.

That is silly. It's like punishing a child who eats too much candy by
restricting his total caloric intake. He will continue to eat as much candy
and simply stop eating regular meals. (Just look at our crumbling
transportation infrastructure…)

You have to punish in a manner not fungible with the desired behavior: in this
example, take away toys; in the case of taxes, take away votes.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
Governments aren't children. Starving a child is horrible no matter what
infraction they're guilty of... both because it's a child, and the infractions
are minor anyway (eating candy).

A government isn't a child, deserves none of the same considerations. And it's
crime is mass murder.

I'm happy to see it starve, I'm obligated to try to starve it.

~~~
colanderman
You entirely missed my point.

Replace "child" with "garden" and "sweets" with "weeds". If you try to starve
the weeds taking over your garden by not watering your garden, you'll have
only weeds left.

You need to attack the root of the problem, be it _literally_ roots, or by
voting warmongers out of office.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
I'm ok with not having a government left. It's a murderous government. "Drone
bombs on hospitals" murderous.

You can't vote warmongers out of office. There are no such candidates.

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vox_mollis
Do people still take sociology or psychology research seriously anymore,
following the replication scandals?

~~~
barry-cotter
Psychology != Social Psychology

Psychophysics and psychometrics hold up really, really well to attempts to
replicate. There is a great deal of solid settled science in most every field.

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Poorboyrise
Annectodical

1 GET A$

2 FOR A$ THEN ADD ASSERTIVENESS

3 IF ASSERTIVENESS > USEFULNESS OF LIFE: GOTO END

4 GOTO 1

5 END

(-:

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draw_down
Oops, I thought too much.

