1. Attachments are working again! Check out this thread for more details and to report any other bugs.

Nice Guys Finish First

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by burritos, May 19, 2011.

  1. burritos

    burritos Senior Member

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2006
    4,946
    252
    0
    Location:
    California
    Vehicle:
    2006 Prius
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17brooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

    Great feel good op-ed. Though that last paragraph extolling us humans could equally apply to ants and bees. Except they'll not likely nuke each other in the near future.
     
  2. twittel

    twittel Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2010
    1,605
    148
    0
    Location:
    Mt. Pleasant, SC
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    (Haidt quote): Human beings, Haidt argues, are “the giraffes of altruism.†Just as giraffes got long necks to help them survive, humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities.
    Different interpretations of evolution produce different ways of analyzing the world. The selfish-competitor model fostered the utility-maximizing model that is so prevalent in the social sciences, particularly economics. The new, more cooperative view will complicate all that...

    I'm not clear what Haidt argues, but sounds like Kantian philosopy of morality. For me the upshot is moral minds provide peace, order and cooperation and like-mindedness that could also be called society? Without morality, I think we have chaos.
     
  3. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2006
    18,058
    3,073
    7
    Location:
    Northern Michigan
    Vehicle:
    2006 Prius
    This sort of behavior is mathematically described by Game Theory.

    Tom