I think we’ve seen some evidence lately that killing is easy, conquest is hard.
In addition to warm fuzzies, empathy is a shorthand for realizing that other people care about their own interests and are more likely to cooperate and less likely to defect if you have some care for their interest.
If we’re going into game theory here, then surely what you want to be signalling is not that you will cooperate, but that you will cooperate iff they cooperate?
Of course, ISIS have already defected, but that doesn’t generalise to all of the other billion people.
I think we’ve seen some evidence lately that killing is easy, conquest is hard.
In addition to warm fuzzies, empathy is a shorthand for realizing that other people care about their own interests and are more likely to cooperate and less likely to defect if you have some care for their interest.
If we’re going into game theory here, then surely what you want to be signalling is not that you will cooperate, but that you will cooperate iff they cooperate?
Of course, ISIS have already defected, but that doesn’t generalise to all of the other billion people.
You don’t want to have a habit of defecting first, and that’s what empathy can protect you from.
How very postrationalist of you :)