The notion that you can “be fair to one side but not the other”, that what’s called “fairness” is a kind of favor you do for people you like, says that even the instinctive sense people had of law-as-game-theory is being lost in the modern memetic collapse. People are being exposed to so many social-media-viral depictions of the Other Side defecting, and viewpoints exclusively from Our Side without any leavening of any other viewpoint that might ask for a game-theoretic compromise, that they’re losing the ability to appreciate the kind of anecdotes they used to tell in ancient China.
(Or maybe it’s hormonelike chemicals leached from plastic food containers. Let’s not forget all the psychological explanations offered for a wave of violence that turned out to be lead poisoning.)
Is it also possible that it has always been like that? People mostly feeling that the other side is evil and trying to get the better of them, with a few people sticking up for fairness, and overall civilization just barely hanging on?
I like the reference to the Little Fuzzy, but going further, how could we tell whether and how much things have changed on this dimension?
Is it also possible that it has always been like that? People mostly feeling that the other side is evil and trying to get the better of them, with a few people sticking up for fairness, and overall civilization just barely hanging on?
I like the reference to the Little Fuzzy, but going further, how could we tell whether and how much things have changed on this dimension?