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comment by aidrocsid
aidrocsid  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How selfish is too selfish?

It's a kind of selfish that without which we wouldn't even have bows let alone Hubski. You sell yourself, let him sell himself, and may the best man win.





user-inactivated  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Do you believe both of those technologies to be a product of reasonable selfishness solely - or, rather, of advertising and selling oneself? It seems to me that either of those are used because they're a better alternative to something rather than simply better fit for everyone and everything. Certainly, there are situations where both bows and Hubski win - ranged combat and thoughtful conversations, respectively - but when declaring itself to be the better way rather than a better way for something, doesn't that make the declarers selfish beyond reason?

In the same manner, does declaring oneself to be better than others or best publicly make one's selfishness somehow harmful to others? If your point is to sell yourself, telling about your overall goodness of a product might help you but will harm others, for they're now unable to sell themselves, - which is fine while reasonable selfishness is concerned, but what about lying about your qualities?

aidrocsid  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well there's a difference between recommending yourself for a job and running around telling everyone you're superior to them. The point isn't to think you're better than everyone, it's to try to advance your own interests, often at the expense of someone else who was trying to do the same thing or something incompatible with what I'm doing. Everybody acts in their own interest competitively and we're generally left with the more feasible solution, though maybe not our favorite one. Not always, though, which again opens up vulnerability to those plans.

I don't even think you'd get past foraging societies without this sort of selfishness. You certainly wouldn't have civilization on the scale that we see it today. Not in human beings anyway.

For that matter, though, I don't even know that a mobile species can survive without some degree of selfishness.

user-inactivated  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fair enough. Thank you for sharing your vision.