Alternatively, identify external factors that can be statistically shown to increase defection, and then lower the influence of those external factors rather than expect people to magically overcome them. If you can statistically demonstrate that hungry people are more likely to defect, and you don’t want people to defect, what will suit you better: bitching that anyone who defects because they’re hungry is a morally bad person, or actually handing them a meal?
I’m not sure that’s the entirety of what he’s getting at. I think he’s saying “don’t make it acceptable for people to make excuses for defecting, because people will then use that as an excuse in cases where they would otherwise cooperate.”
That said, your idea is still a good solution to the way you interpreted that statement.
I’m not sure that’s the entirety of what he’s getting at. I think he’s saying “don’t make it acceptable for people to make excuses for defecting, because people will then use that as an excuse in cases where they would otherwise cooperate.”
Fortunately, there are numerousstudies examining the efficacy of that strategy, too.
As it turns out, being generous to people who need it and letting a few people get away with pretending to need it is much more cost-effective than trying to root out all the “cheats”.
Unless, of course, the specific goal is to maintain a status hierarchy simply for the sake of staying on top of it, with no real concern for the costs or benefits of that hierarchy.
Unless, of course, the specific goal is to maintain a status hierarchy simply for the sake of staying on top of it, with no real concern for the costs or benefits of that hierarchy.
Yep. Being determines consciousness, and social being in particular is a great predictor of social consciousness. And cheering for authoritarianism among high-IQ, economically secure, white, male, first-world, tech geeks is going to school in black—increasingly so.
I mean, just regular old proclamations that Liberal Democracy Ain’t All That? Pfft, that’s been among the safest and most polite kinds of contrarian posturing since before there were liberal democracies to snub. Every political position imaginable can do it from some angle. I do it. Respectable authors do it.
But direct, unapologetic support for the aesthetics and praxis of dictatorial control? The beauty and utility of hierarchies of dominance? Of deliberate asymmetries of power? Unsettling.
I’m not sure that’s the entirety of what he’s getting at. I think he’s saying “don’t make it acceptable for people to make excuses for defecting, because people will then use that as an excuse in cases where they would otherwise cooperate.”
That said, your idea is still a good solution to the way you interpreted that statement.
Fortunately, there are numerous studies examining the efficacy of that strategy, too.
As it turns out, being generous to people who need it and letting a few people get away with pretending to need it is much more cost-effective than trying to root out all the “cheats”.
Unless, of course, the specific goal is to maintain a status hierarchy simply for the sake of staying on top of it, with no real concern for the costs or benefits of that hierarchy.
Yep. Being determines consciousness, and social being in particular is a great predictor of social consciousness. And cheering for authoritarianism among high-IQ, economically secure, white, male, first-world, tech geeks is going to school in black—increasingly so.
I mean, just regular old proclamations that Liberal Democracy Ain’t All That? Pfft, that’s been among the safest and most polite kinds of contrarian posturing since before there were liberal democracies to snub. Every political position imaginable can do it from some angle. I do it. Respectable authors do it.
But direct, unapologetic support for the aesthetics and praxis of dictatorial control? The beauty and utility of hierarchies of dominance? Of deliberate asymmetries of power? Unsettling.