Defect
A few more thoughts on our current predicament.
A few more thoughts on our current predicament.
You can conceive of society as a series of prisoner dilemmas. People tend to adopt one of four strategies:
Defect no matter what. These are alphas. Mobs, gangs, criminals, etc.
Cooperate no matter what. These are betas of a more docile kind. They’re high-trust, amiable libs. Good people, but somewhat gullible.
Cooperate with cooperators, defect against defectors. These are sigmas. Law-and-order republicans. They punish crime and reward pro-social behaviour.
Defect against those who defect against defectors, and cooperate with constant defectors. These are shitlibs. They will let violent criminals off the hook with a light sentence (cooperate with defectors), but will silence you for calling out rampant criminality (defect against those who defect against defectors).
The sigma strategy is optimal. So much so that we have a word for it: state. A state is meant to punish defectors and reward cooperators. It’s a contract among sigmas, if you will. Any other strategy leads to the disintegration of the state or, worse, tyranny.
