You now confront the basic problem of morality
(media.communities.win)
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Gene essentialism, a la the lamentable Richard Dawkins. We are not are genes, and our genes do not create us. See Denis Noble for a far more rational take on the genome.
What makes you see this as “gene essentialism”? I see it as basically a modern day parable using “technojargon metaphors” instead of animal or agriculture metaphors
Apologies, but my comment includes a bucket of beer. That having been said, I can barely understand the OP. Could you sum it up for me? All I take away is some midwit trying to create some sort of moral theory based on genetic function. A parable? Parables teach simple ideas to simple people.
This is pure "i luv science" shit.
All good, I posted it for discussion
Basically it’s an interpretation of game theory expressed in parable form, I suppose is one way it could be summarized, or perhaps a modern elaboration on the Tragedy of the Commons. It’s also covering a couple ideas, and framing it all as a question.
Individuals in a society are like cells in a body. Temptation to cheat, and the power granted by cheating, grow in proportion to the success of the body and the size of the surpluses it generates. In order to function, violence must be used to punish cheating. This piece suggests that the violence should and must be proportional to the degree of violation, which increases with the degree of corruption, which increases with the success of the system.
It then boils down morality to a basic question of individual incentives and societal/systemic “needs”. This can be debated but I think there’s a solid foundation behind the claim (i.e. Game Theory).
This is all then wrapped in a delicious little theodic quandary: is the agent which punishes the cheaters with violence an agent serving “dark”, or “light”? I think the answer is clearly “light”, but I’ve posted it before and heard everything from good, to evil, to balance, to communism, so idk I think you’re short shrifting it a bit. Maybe you’ll like it more in the morning lol
Thanks, I feel you must have put more effort into explaining OP than the writer who created pic rel. I get the point, but its all bullshit. By which I mean its the worst possible way to approach any sort of moral theory. A genome based allegory with a bit of Nash Equilibrium thrown in?
Really, if you want to get edgy with moral theory, go with old Thomist theorists like Alistair McIntyre who proposed the idea that 'human dignity' was a puzzling and dangerous idea.
Genes are the blueprint of all organic life's design. Of course we are our genes at our core.