[Ghostavo]

Well, I'm a layman in terms of Game Theory, so I could be utterly wrong about that comment, but my understanding of that comment is that EGT uses a different basis for measuring the success of it's games, using an off-shoot or refinement of Nash Equilibria to show whether a strategy is Evolutionary Stable (ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy, implying that it is the underpinning driver of the behaviour of an organism/class of organism). As such, the strategies within EGT are not completely the same as within GT, or their success is measured in slightly different ways. You'd have to talk to someone who's subject area is Ethology specifically to get a more complete answer, but I think the ESS refinement of Nash Equilibrium is the crucial driver of the differences involved.

Those strategies talk about the payoffs in terms of populations, so I'm beginning to think that EGT is some kind of subset of GT rather than the other way around.

Basically Nash Equilibrium indicates a tuple of strategies that no individual player has incentive to deviate (basically, those who deviate stand worse than they did if they didn't deviate), while Evolutionary Stable Strategy indicates that a population of players with a strategy will still do well if suddenly some players try to deviate from that strategy.

[Ravenholme]

Well, I'm a layman in terms of Game Theory, so I could be utterly wrong about that comment, but my understanding of that comment is that EGT uses a different basis for measuring the success of it's games, using an off-shoot or refinement of Nash Equilibria to show whether a strategy is Evolutionary Stable (ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy, implying that it is the underpinning driver of the behaviour of an organism/class of organism). As such, the strategies within EGT are not completely the same as within GT, or their success is measured in slightly different ways. You'd have to talk to someone who's subject area is Ethology specifically to get a more complete answer, but I think the ESS refinement of Nash Equilibrium is the crucial driver of the differences involved.

Those strategies talk about the payoffs in terms of populations, so I'm beginning to think that EGT is some kind of subset of GT rather than the other way around.

Basically Nash Equilibrium indicates a tuple of strategies that no individual player has incentive to deviate (basically, those who deviate stand worse than they did if they didn't deviate), while Evolutionary Stable Strategy indicates that a population of players with a strategy will still do well if suddenly some players try to deviate from that strategy.

I never implied that it was the other way around, or intended to give the impression that it was the inverse. EGT is a subset of GT, but with some of the underlying principles adapted for the fact it is dealing with the biological/evolutionary system, rather than faceless players attempting to garner a higher payoff.

The best way to think of the associated payoff of a strategy in EGT is as a "fitness" score, so that in fact several strategies can 'survive' evolutionarily, without having to be the highest scoring.

[Black Wolf]

Superhappies are dicks, these humans are dicks. We can't impose our morality on the baby-eaters any more than they can on us - they tried to convince us to eat babies because they couldn't force us or wie us out - the implication being that they would have done so if they could. So the babyeaters are dicks too.

I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.

If you acceot that there was no way to both survive personally and save humanity from the superhappies, then the only appropriate course of action would have been to blow the star in the meeting system, especially once the baby-eaters ship was already dead. In fact, the crew of the ship chose possibly the worst option they had available - they killed billions of people, and left the babyeaters open to the kind of species-wide manipulation that they considered to horribly reprehensible for our own species, but somehow it's OK for theirs? Like I said, they're all dicks.

[Ravenholme]

Superhappies are dicks, these humans are dicks. We can't impose our morality on the baby-eaters any more than they can on us - they tried to convince us to eat babies because they couldn't force us or wie us out - the implication being that they would have done so if they could. So the babyeaters are dicks too.

I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.

If you acceot that there was no way to both survive personally and save humanity from the superhappies, then the only appropriate course of action would have been to blow the star in the meeting system, especially once the baby-eaters ship was already dead. In fact, the crew of the ship chose possibly the worst option they had available - they killed billions of people, and left the babyeaters open to the kind of species-wide manipulation that they considered to horribly reprehensible for our own species, but somehow it's OK for theirs? Like I said, they're all dicks.

I agree with this assessment.

[Bobboau]

we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it.

Is that not it's self a judgement of right and wrong that we as a race determined? could we not just as easily have come to the opposite conclusion? could we not change our minds if presented with the right situation?

[General Battuta]

Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.

The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?

[Bobboau]

About the rape thing - the exact wording used is non-consentual sex. Maybe it involves only cases like having sex with a passed out person without their consent? One could argue that things like physical assault would still be punished, so just attacking another person and force him/her to sex by using violence would still be against the law.

Bolded statement is still Rape.

Bolded statement is what the future society no longer considers to be bad. rest of the post is an explanation of why future society might have come to that position.

[Bobboau]

The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?

unlike humans though the BEs will want to eat their babies when they become adults. it is specifically stated that it is a instinctive behavior.

[General Battuta]

The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?

unlike humans though the BEs will want to eat their babies when they become adults. it is specifically stated that it is a instinctive behavior.

Sure, but you could have a culture of humans born with a condition that makes them hunger for baby flesh (but which has also allowed them to survive in their environment) and I'm sure you'd have people coming out of the woodwork to cure them.

[Bobboau]

and if said people didn't want it would it be the right thing to do?

[zookeeper]

I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.

So where and how do you draw the line? At what point does it become ok for you, as A, to intervene when B hurts C? As you're well aware, species is a completely arbitrary separator, so could you explain why would you choose to pick that instead of any of the other equally valid separators available to you (such as age, political views or the number of limbs)?

Anyway, you're saying that the species of the participants matters, so just to chart your point of view more accurately...

Code: [Select]

Not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C:
A: Human     B: Babyeater C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Human     C: Human

Ok for A to intervene when B hurts C:
A: Human     B: Human     C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Babyeater
That's how you see it, as far as I can tell. However, that leaves quite a few things unanswered, so could you please say where the following ones fit in?

Code: [Select]

Ok or not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C?
A: Human     B: Human     C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Human     B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Human     C: Babyeater
I'd especially like to hear why - assuming that I'm correct when I guess that "ok" is your answer to all of them - would it be ok for a human to prevent another human from hurting a babyeater when the babyeater is, as you say, of another species and we therefore have no moral responsibility of their well-being. Point being, if you truly are not concerned about the suffering of babyeaters, then you cannot be concerned about suffering of babyeaters inflicted on them by other humans.

[General Battuta]

and if said people didn't want it would it be the right thing to do?

Well that's the question, isn't it? I'm not coming down on one side, just saying 'there is ambiguity here'.

[Luis Dias]

Well that's the issue, we never get what we really want.

This ain't no Star Trek.

[Black Wolf]

we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it.

Is that not it's self a judgement of right and wrong that we as a race determined? could we not just as easily have come to the opposite conclusion? could we not change our minds if presented with the right situation?

Yes, of course it is. If this is a moral test, then the only basis we have from which to approach it is from he morality that we have developed. The fact that we might have come to a different conclusion is irrelevant - this is the one we've got, and this is the one we work from. Same with the potential to change minds - it could certainly happen, but that potential is irrelevant in this situation, as it hasn;t yet.

Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.

The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?

Yes. That divide - between secies evolved independently on different species - is unimaginably vast, orders of magnitude greater than any cultural variations on Earth. Even if the children are supposedly "analogous", trying to apply our morality to their society is utterly inappropriate.

Sure, but you could have a culture of humans born with a condition that makes them hunger for baby flesh (but which has also allowed them to survive in their environment) and I'm sure you'd have people coming out of the woodwork to cure them.

Absolutely. Humans aren't morally permitted to eat babies. Babyeaters are.

So where and how do you draw the line? At what point does it become ok for you, as A, to intervene when B hurts C? As you're well aware, species is a completely arbitrary separator, so could you explain why would you choose to pick that instead of any of the other equally valid separators available to you (such as age, political views or the number of limbs)?

Species is not an arbitrary separator. Consider - our morality evolved in response to millions of years of evolutionary pressure and thousands of years of societal pressures. None of those pressures, outside of those exerted by the universal framework of evolution - neccesarily applied to the babyeaters, since they evolved on a planet thousands of light years away. Applying our morla framework to them is equivalent to hunting down and punishing every orca in the sea for eating whales - after al, if species is an arbitrary separator, we should hold all species to account equally.

Code: [Select]

Ok or not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C?
A: Human     B: Human     C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Human     B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Human     C: Babyeater
I'd especially like to hear why - assuming that I'm correct when I guess that "ok" is your answer to all of them - would it be ok for a human to prevent another human from hurting a babyeater when the babyeater is, as you say, of another species and we therefore have no moral responsibility of their well-being. Point being, if you truly are not concerned about the suffering of babyeaters, then you cannot be concerned about suffering of babyeaters inflicted on them by other humans.

Interactions of the wo species outside the limited ones int his story become complex. For example, I would expect Babyeaters to follow human laws while within human legal jurisdictions, given that entering ito them implies consent to local laws. I would accept the right of a human to help another human defend himself against a Babyeater, just as I would expect humans to judge harshly another human who attacked a babyeater. But those are situations that involve humans, and our moralty has to come into play in those situations. But the options they were considering in this story - genocide and species-wide genetic manipulation to fundamentally alter another, utterly alien species because it didn't fit into our morality - are flat-out wrong. They're talking about making moral judgemens in how one alien deals with another alien within their own internally consistent morality, and that's wrong, whether we're doing it or the supperhappies are.

[General Battuta]

The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?

Yes. That divide - between secies evolved independently on different species - is unimaginably vast, orders of magnitude greater than any cultural variations on Earth. Even if the children are supposedly "analogous", trying to apply our morality to their society is utterly inappropriate.

But the divide is also arbitrary. The experience of a human baby being eaten by Babyeaters and a Babyeater baby being eaten by Babyeaters is identical. It's inconsistent to treat them differently.

Absolutely. Humans aren't morally permitted to eat babies. Babyeaters are.

That's circular. Ultimately you have to appeal to something external beyond 'we can do it because we can, we can't because we can't'. You need to take an externality like 'so and so suffers', and then the above weakness comes into play.

(obviously all moralities are constructed so this is basically like arguing about D&D rules)

But those are situations that involve humans, and our moralty has to come into play in those situations.

If the argument is that human morality no longer applies to babyeaters because the babyeaters are so vastly different from humans, and yet babyeater babies are basically human babies, I don't think the argument for that vast gap holds up.

[Mikes]

Good read, thanks for that.

Reminds of the moral and ethics discussion we had at the university.

And while the fact that the cultures are "alien cultures" makes it kind of a given that they are "different"...  we really don't need to leave earth to observe how different culture's morals can clash. Take the (not practiced anymore) Senilicide and Invalidicide amongst Eskimos for example.

Or just take the role of women and their rights (or lack of) in different cultures even today.

Reading an article about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity indeed made me feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.

[Herra Tohtori]

Tell me that reading about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity doesn't immidiately make you feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.

Nonvoluntary body modifications are always a bad thing (no need to specify females especially).

In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.

[General Battuta]

Tell me that reading about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity doesn't immidiately make you feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.

Nonvoluntary body modifications are always a bad thing (no need to specify females especially).

In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.

But if the part being permanently lost is, say, a third arm which repeatedly and uncontrollably punches other people, isn't that pretty well justified?

[Mikes]

In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.

I would actually associate it much more with the "Babyeater" morals...   i.e. inflicting physical harm on the young members of society. Worse in a way as far as the "reasons" are concerned... as the "human" justification for these traumatic acts are rooted in religion/tradition and superstition and are performed despite health concerns and risks, which as a whole strikes me as a worse rationalization than the one offered by the aliens in our fictional story.

[Herra Tohtori]

But if the part being permanently lost is, say, a third arm which repeatedly and uncontrollably punches other people, isn't that pretty well justified?

No. That sort of situation can be managed by other means, such as:

-restraints
-temporary paralyzing drug
-staying at an arm's distance from potential people who the arm would punch

If there was no medical risk caused by the anomalous extra limb, cutting it away without asking its owner for permission just because it offends someone's aesthetics or personal space is not a valid response.

I for one would think an extra hand would be very handy in many ways, even with the handicaps you mentioned. I certainly wouldn't want anyone to cut it off without my explicit permission.