From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jan 03 2004 - 13:02:26 MST
On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 09:22:34 -0800 (PST)
Lawrence Foard <entropy@farviolet.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Randall Randall wrote:
>
> > Even a population made up of exclusively altruistic individuals
> > would require those individuals to pretend self-interest in
> > order to find an optimal solution to goods distribution, no?
>
> And why wouldn't a society where individuals worked only in others
> interests not work? Imagine that the pleasure reward from service
> is proportional to the good done by the act. For example while cleaning
> sewers is an unpleasant task, its a task which accomplishs a great
> deal of good (preventing sewer backup), and would be a highly desirable
> task for the altruistic minded organism.
>
Precisely why would such a society make any sense at all? Isn't it based on it being ok to work for every other individual's interest but the individual doing the work? How exactly is that rational? I can see considering some, many even all others as of equal import as oneself but excluding one (who happens to be oneself) from the mix seems illogical and undoable.
- samantha
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