That’s a good way to clearly demonstrate a nonempathic actor in the Prisoner’s Dilemma; a “Hawk”, who views their own payoffs and only their own payoffs as having value and placing no value to the payoffs of others.
But I don’t think it’s necessary. I would say that humans can visualize a nonempathic human—a bad guy—more easily than they can visualize an empathic human with slightly different motives. We’ve undoubtedly had to, collectively, deal with a lot of them throughout history.
A while back I was writing a paper and came across a fascinating article about types of economic actors, and that paper concluded that there are probably three different general tendencies in human behavior, and thus three general groups of human actors who have those tendencies: one that tends to play ‘tit-for-tat’ (who they call ‘conditional cooperators’), one that tends to play ‘hawk’ (who they call ‘rational egoists’), and one that tends to play ‘grim’ (who they call ‘willing punishers’).
So there are paperclip maximizers among humans. Only the paperclips are their own welfare, with no empathic consideration whatsoever.
That’s a good way to clearly demonstrate a nonempathic actor in the Prisoner’s Dilemma; a “Hawk”, who views their own payoffs and only their own payoffs as having value and placing no value to the payoffs of others.
But I don’t think it’s necessary. I would say that humans can visualize a nonempathic human—a bad guy—more easily than they can visualize an empathic human with slightly different motives. We’ve undoubtedly had to, collectively, deal with a lot of them throughout history.
A while back I was writing a paper and came across a fascinating article about types of economic actors, and that paper concluded that there are probably three different general tendencies in human behavior, and thus three general groups of human actors who have those tendencies: one that tends to play ‘tit-for-tat’ (who they call ‘conditional cooperators’), one that tends to play ‘hawk’ (who they call ‘rational egoists’), and one that tends to play ‘grim’ (who they call ‘willing punishers’).
So there are paperclip maximizers among humans. Only the paperclips are their own welfare, with no empathic consideration whatsoever.