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Selfishness Is Learned - Issue 37: Currents - Nautilus
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Understanding morality
Psychologists do not understand human moral behavior, because it seldom makes any logical sense.
Using moral philosophy and psychology, biology, economics, mathematics, and computer science, scientists are trying to study how morality operates in the real world.
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Our default mode
Through a series of experiments, it was discovered that despite the temptation to be selfish, most people show selflessness.
This is particularly true when subjects were forced to make their decision under time pressure; people are prone to cooperation when they rely more on intuition.
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Creating quantitative models
Most of the psychological theories are verbal, but words can be imprecise. If "cooperation is intuitive", it needs to state when. And what does "intuitive" mean?
In order to solve this, computer simulations of society were developed.
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The Sims computer simulation
These models represent collections of individual people described by computer algorithms that capture a specific set of traits, such as a tendency to cooperate or not.
- You can give them new personalities to see how they would behave.
- You can observe social processes in action.
- You can observe time scales, from seconds to generations.
- You can watch the spread of certain behaviors throughout a population and you can see how certain behaviors influence other behaviors.
The patterns that emerge can tell you things about large-scale social interaction that lab experiments and real people never could.
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The human instinct to cooperate
There seems to be evolutionary logic to the human ability to cooperate but adjust if necessary. To trust, but verify.
We generally collaborate with other people because it benefits us. Our rational minds let us work out when we might occasionally gain by acting selfishly instead.
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Getting people to cooperate more
Our intuitions are not fixed at birth. We develop social rules of thumb for interpersonal behavior based on the interactions we have.
Change those interactions, and you change behavior.
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Encouraging cooperation
In many situations, people are rewarded for backstabbing and ladder climbing.
In order to encourage cooperation where cooperation isn't the norm, companies might offer bonuses and recognition for cooperative behavior. Encouraging people to make decisions quickly can also bring out their better behavior.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
6
Key Ideas
The Zen View Of Morals
Evil cannot be destroyed, any more than good can, because they are polar opposites of the same thing. Destruction and creation, chaos and order; opposite aspects of reality, in tension with one ano...
The Zen View Of Life
For Zen practitioners, life is transitory and insubstantial. There is no security and thinking otherwise is a waste of time.
They also don’t believe in an afterlife. Reincarnation can be more accurately thought of as a constant rebirth, of death throughout life, and the continual coming and going of universal energy before and after death.
The Zen View Of The World
The word 'Zen' means emptiness or void. This is the basis of Zen — that all that exists is based on a dynamic emptiness. Which is also what quantum science says.
In this view, there is no difference between matter and energy. Look at anything closely enough and you will see that it is an event, not a thing. Furthermore, there is not a ‘multiplicity of events’. There is just one event, with multiple aspects, unfolding.
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Key Ideas
The Prisoner's Dilemma
It is a famous thought experiment in Game Theory. Two prisoners in separate interrogation rooms have two options: to confess or to lie, and this can lead to three outcomes:
- If both c...
The Millennials Dilemma
The Prisoners Dilemma can be reimagined as a life-optimization matrix. When two people have some free time due to a time-saving technique, they can spend it either on leisure or further work. This can have three outcomes:
- Both individuals choose to work harder in their free time, remaining in a constant state of acceleration
- Both individuals choose to relax and chill out.
- One of them works harder and gets ahead, while the other relaxes and is left behind in the acceleration.
The Burnout Generation
Millennials are fast becoming the burnout generation, due to them treating free time as not leisure time, when they can relax and unwind, but as bonus time for them to work harder and up their game.
The hyperproductive, work-obsessed world is hell-bent to automate every to-do list item so that you can work more and create more to-do lists.
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Key Ideas
The rational manner
When faced with a difficult dilemma, we should carefully assess our options and spend a few moments consciously deliberating the information. Then, we should choose the best fit for our preferences...
The emotional system
This would suggest that the unconscious is better suited for difficult cognitive tasks than the conscious brain, that the very thought process we've long disregarded as irrational and impulsive might actually be "smarter" than reasoned deliberation.
How emotional decision-making works
Thinking in a rational manner is more effective when there are limited pieces of information. However, those focused on feelings prove far better in complex conditions.
The advantages of emotional decision-making could be undone by a subsequent bout of deliberation, which suggests that we shouldn't doubt a particularly strong instinct, at least when considering lots of information.