

Fight Zero-Sum Bias (possible evolutionary explanation) - MikeCapone
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2gd/fight_zerosum_bias/

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Gianteye
Although I appreciate the thought and attention that goes into articles
written for LessWrong, the language is often difficult to unpack.

Take the term "Pareto-efficient society" used in the first paragraph. This is
a term I'm incredibly unfamiliar with. A link to a definition or an article on
it would have been useful. After doing my dutiful research on wikipedia, I
found that the definition means more or less "a society in which it is
impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone
else worse off." This definition is analogous to "zero sum society." So, the
fourth sentence of the first paragraph reads "this bias [thinking that it is
impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone
else worse off] is the major obstacle to a society in which it is impossible
to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse
off."

Buh?

I support a lot of the concepts behind LessWrong, but all of the articles read
like Critical Theory midterm essays.

~~~
sprout
Go back for a moment to Pareto-efficiency. What that means is that you're
looking for a move which benefits yourself without harming anyone else.

A Pareto-efficient society is a society in which no such moves exist; we have
the optimal wealth available. If you want more wealth, you have to take it
from someone else.

So naturally, if you mistakenly believe we live in a Pareto-efficient society
( I doubt anyone would agree ) it makes it very difficult to actually create a
Pareto-efficient society. It's all rather Utopian, but generally I like the
sentiment.

Though I'd rather believe that Pareto-efficiency is unobtainable and we can
always create more wealth.

------
codexon
I don't believe there is an innate zero-sum bias. Why would humans be hunting
in groups 200,000 years ago if we evolved to be zero-sum thinkers?

I find too many people on HN use the zero-sum bias argument against everything
because Paul Graham said so.

Some resources are zero-sum, and remain so through the last century of
technological progress (which has seen most of mankind's improvements). Land
ownership (especially coastal properties) is ever diminishing. Cities still
fight over water (desalination is expensive). Oil, a new zero-sum resource,
has been the cause of many wars.

It is only in the utopia of software development (where duplication is cheap),
that people are blind to this. If the population ever outstrips availability
of crucial goods like land, water, or food, you will see your software and
webapp sales plummet to 0 no matter how hard you work on it.

~~~
MikeCapone
> I don't believe there is an innate zero-sum bias. Why would humans be
> hunting in groups 200,000 years ago if we evolved to be zero-sum thinkers?

It would be just one of many heuristics and biases. Others, like the ones that
make us help people who carry our genes (family, but originally, almost
everybody in a tribe), are probably the foundation of cooperation and altruism
of the kind you write about.

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ajuc
I would say in prehistoric times resources were more available than now -
people could just walk away from each other and live on what nature provided
without fighting. I think this is why people spreaded over the whole world. So
why should zero sum bias be encouraged by evolution?

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isnoteasy
Zero-sum is only a simplification, the world can get richer or poorer and I
don't think is a zero-sum game. Evolution is not related to zero-sum games.
Perhaps the post is about learning to cooperate is better that thinking life
is a zero-sum game.

~~~
Ardit20
" Evolution is not related to zero-sum games"

Of course it is. If the deer does not run faster, the cheetah will have
him/her for dinner.

~~~
isnoteasy
If the cheetah eats every deer they will get extinct and there is not deer to
eat any more, so there must be an equilibria between predators and prays so is
more than a zero-sum game.

