The danger I see to that is that a lot of the effects are very dispersed and externalized. So even if I were to, say, fuck over someone that I have a reasonable amount of interaction with for personal gain, the fact that I am networked with that person means that the whole grapevine effect could screw me by damaging my standing to a slight degree amongst a large population. Such a thing is incredibly difficult to estimate, and probably too dangerous to experiment with.
For this reason, I've come to the tentative conclusion that communalism is almost always the way to go with people that you are networked with. However, I see almost no reason not to fuck someone over for personal gain if I'm never going to interact with them again. I know that's kind of screwed up, but I think that's true.
I think that the saving grace for society, though, is that because we live in an ever-increasingly networked society, if this theory is accurate we can expect to see more communal behavior and less zero-sum self-maximizing behavior as time wears on.
I think I'm actually just describing the Prisoner's Dilemma.
For this reason, I've come to the tentative conclusion that communalism is almost always the way to go with people that you are networked with. However, I see almost no reason not to fuck someone over for personal gain if I'm never going to interact with them again. I know that's kind of screwed up, but I think that's true.
I think that the saving grace for society, though, is that because we live in an ever-increasingly networked society, if this theory is accurate we can expect to see more communal behavior and less zero-sum self-maximizing behavior as time wears on.
I think I'm actually just describing the Prisoner's Dilemma.
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