X-Message-Number: 8895
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8883 - #8886
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 23:36:51 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

More on reciprocal altruism. Apparently some economists (NOT immortalists, just
people thinking theoretically) have come to a similar conclusion about what
an expectation of a very long life would do to us. It goes something like this:

If the present value of the future is high enough, and the probability of
future interactions between people is sufficiently close to 1, then on the
average an individual can best advance his/her own selfish interests by
adopting an attitude of altruism toward those he/she meets. A lot here depends
on just how expensive that altruism may be, but even if we aren't much richer
we will have time --- which means that something it took us a year to 
accumulate wouldn't feel very expensive. Cf Axelrod, THE EVOLUTION OF COOPER-
ATION.

Note that the value of the future has to be high. It's not sufficient for 
everyone to know one another at all. For the value of the future to be high,
we must expect to be living then. 

No, people won't always be lovey-dovey. That's not what the idea says. But
even if they get into arguments the knowledge that someday the opposite 
person in the argument you're having might turn out to be a strong ally on
some other issue. That will not so much affect whether or not you argue as
affect what you do and how far you go when you argue. Moreover these processes

will always have limits: just as anything material can be broken with 
sufficientforce, anyone expecting to live for hundreds of millenia can find 
themselves
in situations in which physical force and threat of physical injury become
appropriate. Not often at all, but to say NEVER would be wrong.

As someone who is not a teenager (welcome to any teenagers reading this ---
maybe you're more mature than your fellows, even if you don't know it) I 
remember when I was, and can watch the behavior of teenagers now. I would
hardly compare the degree of difference between adults and teenagers in 
our current society to that which there would be between current adults and
someone expecting to live for many millenia. But we can see, in a small way,
how when many of us were young we did not place much value on the future (say
20 years in the future) compared to "adults". All you have to do is notice
them smoking.

So multiply that difference by several powers of 10, and imagine the society
which would result. That's what I am saying.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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