I think non-zero-sum games can exist as sub-games of a much larger, more complex, overarching zero-sum game... But not everyone is allowed to participate in those sub-games.
This website is a good resource to show other people to mislead them so that they can be exploited.
I think a major flaw of all these models is that they underestimate:
1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past reputation if you get caught doing something bad.
2. How forgiving people are and how tolerant they are to deception, abuse and immorality. I hate to say it but a lot of people are attracted to abusers. They keep going back to the same kinds of people who will abuse them over and over. There are a lot of people who tend to show disrespect and look down on good, honest people. I cannot overstate how powerful this effect is; and it seems to be getting worse over time!
Once you factor these two things, cheating is the clear winning strategy. By a mile... It's objectively a superior strategy. If we just follow game theory; it will take us somewhere really dark. Game theory isn't what's keeping the world civilized. Society literally all rests on people's irrational emotions and fickle moral principles.
The desire to do the right thing is completely irrational and is a net loss to the individual. If we continue with the current system and current assumptions, all moral individuals will be wiped out because they are at a HUGE disadvantage.
This doesn't make sense to me, our current prosperity is founded on an enormous mountain of collaboration and shared beliefs. Usually not out of selflessness of course, often guided and forced by strong leadership and/or strong institutional structures to steer selfishness into selflessness (like capitalism).
Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of desperate crab-bucket like behavior. Broad collaboration and institution building is always the only way out of the hole, although the hole can be very deep and collaboration can be very costly until you get out.
You are right though, that for an individual living in a good collaborative system, often cheating is very effective, it's just that the system can only handle a certain amount of that behavior before it collapses.
As is discussed in the first scene of Plato's The Republic, the winning strategy tends to be to be unjust while seeming just. If people are going to be assholes, it is actually much better if they are discrete about it and keep a pretense of civilization. When people start acting conspicuously like assholes, out of a weird sense of honesty, that's when it propagates and the whole thing collapses. It's an ancient story that we are still living.
This website seems really well made, and the posts are interesting, thanks for sharing!
I'm still exploring the content, but that website is very pretty. It's nice to see something that stands out between all the copy-and-paste AI slop.
Personally I clicked off because the fonts appear to be something like comic sans, it is a chore to read.
I think non-zero-sum games can exist as sub-games of a much larger, more complex, overarching zero-sum game... But not everyone is allowed to participate in those sub-games.
This website is a good resource to show other people to mislead them so that they can be exploited.
I think a major flaw of all these models is that they underestimate:
1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past reputation if you get caught doing something bad.
2. How forgiving people are and how tolerant they are to deception, abuse and immorality. I hate to say it but a lot of people are attracted to abusers. They keep going back to the same kinds of people who will abuse them over and over. There are a lot of people who tend to show disrespect and look down on good, honest people. I cannot overstate how powerful this effect is; and it seems to be getting worse over time!
Once you factor these two things, cheating is the clear winning strategy. By a mile... It's objectively a superior strategy. If we just follow game theory; it will take us somewhere really dark. Game theory isn't what's keeping the world civilized. Society literally all rests on people's irrational emotions and fickle moral principles.
The desire to do the right thing is completely irrational and is a net loss to the individual. If we continue with the current system and current assumptions, all moral individuals will be wiped out because they are at a HUGE disadvantage.
This doesn't make sense to me, our current prosperity is founded on an enormous mountain of collaboration and shared beliefs. Usually not out of selflessness of course, often guided and forced by strong leadership and/or strong institutional structures to steer selfishness into selflessness (like capitalism).
Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of desperate crab-bucket like behavior. Broad collaboration and institution building is always the only way out of the hole, although the hole can be very deep and collaboration can be very costly until you get out.
You are right though, that for an individual living in a good collaborative system, often cheating is very effective, it's just that the system can only handle a certain amount of that behavior before it collapses.
As is discussed in the first scene of Plato's The Republic, the winning strategy tends to be to be unjust while seeming just. If people are going to be assholes, it is actually much better if they are discrete about it and keep a pretense of civilization. When people start acting conspicuously like assholes, out of a weird sense of honesty, that's when it propagates and the whole thing collapses. It's an ancient story that we are still living.