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| Rihanna. She has cooperated with established celebrities such as Eminem |
What if there is an inherent morality embedded in our reality? What if it can be shown to appear spontaneously from the primordial Chaos/Paradox and thus provide another sense in which random indifferent Paradox emulates ‘God’?
Well, modern computer studies of some notable paradoxical situations have revealed that this may indeed be the case. The studies suggest that an individual being’s or a species’ success in any uncontrolled, iterated, competitive evolutionary process is correlated with certain key behaviors and attributes. The better a living thing performs in following these 'rules,' the more successful it will be (no consciousness required):
- Be nice. Cooperate with others by default: freely offer trust and respect; never be the first to act selfishly.
- Be provocable when wronged, but never hateful: react to a selfish act (a sin) with an assertive defense, in like measure but not beyond. “Eye for an eye.” A wrong must be made right, not rewarded, not ignored. Respond to the sin, respect the sinner (as per the first rule above and the next one below)
- Be forgiving: cooperate with a ‘sinner’ who returns to cooperation. Do this generously and immediately. Do not hold a grudge.
- Be humble (don't be envious): be fair with those around you. Do not try to out-compete them. Do not be resentful if they out-compete you.
- Be honest (don't be too clever/intelligent): Don't try to be tricky, sneaky, scheming, or subtle. Keep your approach transparent.
As I said, these intrinsic rules for navigating existence apply to all living things equally, and no consciousness is required to obey them. Noting this provides us with some surprising guidance regarding our relationship with our natural world:
- Enslave no living thing, animal or vegetable: Gather, hunt, trap, and eat only those things that live wild and free. Yes, gardening is a sin, as is keeping a pet. That cute little kitty sitting in your windowsill next to that potted plant? Bad ideas; both of them sit there yearning to be on the other side of that glass. Agriculture is a pursuit that will ultimately fail us, especially the breeding and keeping of animals in industrial factory farms.
- We are stewards of our world, not owners: It is incumbent upon us to manipulate our surroundings as little as possible, and to leave it in as good or better condition than we found it. In all you do, keep in mind the Seven Generations to follow.
This, to me, is good news - the best I could hope for. I'll discuss the details in a moment. But first let me offer the bad news: why
Homo sapiens is going to go extinct:
Our current human culture (the species pejoratively called ‘bowlheads’ in my
seven-book novel series 'Eden's Womb') fails miserably on nearly every one of the above counts. We are too selfish and greedy. We sometimes act hatefully. Burdened by our self-importance and parochialism we fail to forgive in too many instances — the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth is perhaps the most important example of this in human history. Too often we revert to covetousness and envy and seek ‘
schadenfreude.’ And we are just too damn smart for our own good. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” In
Eden's Womb, which is set more than half a million years in the future,
Homo sapiens had long ago gone extinct. Replacing them is a species I name
Homo phronensis, after the Aristotelian concept of mature, practical wisdom called
Phronesis (see his Nicomachean Ethics).
Now, how do those five rules basic emerge from pure indifferent Chaos? Let's get to the scientific studies - which I'll try to present in simple, easy to understand terms.
Many of you have probably heard of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” It's a paradox
in decision analysis, but ultimately it is a social interaction exercise. Two 'players' face one another and have two choices: cooperate with the other player, or betray her/him.
As originally posed, the Prisoner's Dilemma is this: You and a criminal associate have been busted for a crime that you committed together.
Fortunately for you, most of the evidence was shredded, so you are facing only a year in prison on circumstantial evidence. But the prosecutor wants to nail someone. To do so, he needs your testimony. So he offers you a deal: if you squeal on your associate – which will result in her/him getting a five year sentence – the prosecutor will see that you go free. Which sounds good, until you learn your associate is being offered the same deal – which would get you five years.
So what do you do? The best that you and your associate can do together is to not squeal: that is, to cooperate (with each other, not the prosecutor!) in a mutual bond of silence, and do your year. But wait: if your associate cooperates (that sucker!), can you do better by squealing ("defecting") and get sprung from jail? It's tempting, but then he's also tempted. And if you both squeal, oh, no, it's five years for both of you. So perhaps you should cooperate – but wait, that's being a sucker yourself, as your associate will undoubtedly squeal, and you'll rot in prison for five years. So what is the best strategy to minimize your incarceration?
In the most generalized version of this game it is the story of real life. Each 'play' represents a basic ‘unit’ of social interaction that confronts us innumerable times every day. And with each unit we must choose from two simple alternatives: Act cooperatively/altruistically, or act selfishly. Broken down to its most basic elements, every action we take becomes a series of binary choices, 'Black vs. White'.
And in countless contests conducted and monitored by experts this fundamental game of social interaction is invariably won by following the five rules listed above - a moral code that not so much emerges from nothing but comes pre-packaged the way mathematics itself does.
So ... the dry, indifferent realm of mathematics points the way to a moral code. How does the Prisoner's Dilemma and the resulting five rules apply to us in our every day life? In some surprising ways:
Whether we know it or not, we are constantly playing this game with every other person in the world, including people we've not only never met, but do not even know exist.
Consider this: Very few of us would go out of our way to ‘bad-mouth’ or ‘trash’ a complete stranger. But most of us would treasure the chance to connect with people that we've never met in order to establish some mutually beneficial relationship. And what better way to make an impression on them than to do something altruistic.
We all want our cup to 'runneth over' with adoring fans. So there is an obvious bias toward cooperation. But the cup can also be viewed as half empty: If we sit at home, in our own little cocoon and don't reach out to our potential fans, then this passive option - inaction - can be considered a negative choice: a selfish act.
Who hasn’t heard that venerable old saying: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Even Jesus of Nazareth said that (Matthew 12:30).
Every one of the seven billion strangers that you've neglected to connect with is a failed social bond and a potential enemy left unconverted. That's a harsh judgment, I know. But it makes a point:
The highest ‘score’ in the social interaction game goes to those who try the hardest. Think of these examples: Mother Teresa, the Buddha, Paul of Tarsus, and … yes … young 25-year-old Rihanna:
the single most 'liked' individual on Facebook.
Your choice to engage the people around you positively is the winning strategy. Your choice to remain aloof and not interact with them is the choice that fails. When I look at things this way, it is utterly transformative!
*******
Now to delve a little more deeply I'm going to get a bit more technical, let's take a look at the math of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game (don't be scared - this is not very complicated):
Let's assign symbols to the various outcomes of the game:
In every decision unit of the game, if you and your partner/opponent cooperate it produces a modest reward, "R", for both players. If one of you chooses the selfish option but the other participant ‘turns the other cheek’, the immediate result is a large taking “T” for the selfish one and a large suffering “S” for the victim. If both of you choose your own selfish interests, then both pay a certain Penalty, "P", in the resulting conflict.
In formal mathematical terms, for the individual participant in the Prisoner's Dilemma game, these four outcomes are arranged from largest reward to largest cost thusly: T > R > P > S, where the symbol > means "greater than". We'll call this relationship "Inequality (1)". These relative sizes
define the phenomenon, and so are fundamental to it. Other arrangements don't work. Some simple thought exercises can confirm this. In the real-world context the relative 'size' of the four variables, as specified above, makes intuitive sense:
T: Mugging on the street/Warriors pillaging the innocent: "To the victor go the spoils.” Big payoff for the winner.
R: Peace: "We get no spoils, neither do either of us suffer." Biggest
combined payoff, but never the maximum score.
P: War: "The battle between us will be bloody, so even the winner will suffer losses.” Rarely as rewarding as Peace and co-operation.
S: Mugging on the street/Warriors pillaging the innocent: "The victim suffers exceedingly.” The loser endures not just from the physical defeat, but also psychologically.
So Inequality (1) mirrors real life: The Temptation to act selfishly T offers a pay-off greater than the Reward for mutual cooperation, R. But the Reward for cooperation is better than the Penalty P for always acting selfishly. And the worst cost, S, is reserved for the "Sucker" who chooses to cooperate, faces a selfish ‘opponent’, and is robbed blind.
Now ... The Prisoner's Dilemma game is most relevant to our reality when it is played over and over among a large and diverse group of players. This is called the "iterative" version.
In order to be a valid model of reality, the iterative version of the Prisoners Dilemma game also requires that 2R > T + S. Let's call this Inequality (2). It means that the combined reward to two players who cooperate must exceed the sum of the benefits achieved by one Sucker and one selfish player:
That might seem like stacking the deck - a rule that fixes the outcome. But in the natural, very real world of human interactions this stipulation, in the long term, is naturally met without anybody forcing it to be so:
Think of it this way: A mugger on the street will sometimes come away with very little whereas her/his victim will always suffer in some way. Both players have higher stress levels during and after the encounter than they would have if they agreed to cooperate. The resulting sum is therefore almost always less than the alternative: ‘Both of us respect each other, keep what we have, and cooperate to get more.”
So in reality, since this inequality (2) does apply. Nature itself stacks the deck. Two heads are better than one. You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.
Do Nice guys finish last? Only if they ignore another old saying: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
Be nice but not gullible, be humble, forgiving, and honest and you'll end up on top of the evolutionary mountain.
And if you find the 'pearly gates' up there ... if there's a caring God there waiting for you ... well, now you know why.
Ringworld by Larry Niven
