Baron Max said:
As I see it, TT, you may believe anything that you wish to believe ...as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.
I believe that there are little green men on Mars. I also believe that there are little blue men living on Pluto.
Baron Max
The harm principle is the core of ALL ethics. I t is also the core of our countries foundation. Hobbes and JS. Mill both agreed on this principle. A human may have complete liberty as long as they harm no one. The simple fact is, humans harm everyone and everything including themselves. So this whole (ethics are personal) stuff, I disagree with because a person with the wrong ethics is harming me, you, and everyone else indirectly.
I stick to the claim that game theory is the science of ethics. Many people may say they don't follow it, but honestly, if you and your group of friends follow it, it will protect you from many negative situations,and also give you quick and easy solutions to difficult problems.
One example of a game theory problem we can all relate to is the prisoners dillema.
In game theory, the prisoner's dilemma is a type of non-zero-sum game in which two players can "cooperate" with or "defect" (i.e. betray) the other player. In this game, as in all game theory, the only concern of each individual player ("prisoner") is maximizing his/her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff per se. In the classic form of this game, cooperating is strictly dominated by defecting, so that the only possible equilibrium for the game is for all players to defect. In simpler terms, no matter what the other player does, one player will always gain a greater payoff by playing defect. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect.
The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution—that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperate. In equilibrium, each prisoner chooses to defect even though both would be better off by cooperating, hence the dilemma.
In the iterated prisoner's dilemma the game is played repeatedly. Thus each player has an opportunity to "punish" the other player for previous non-cooperative play. Cooperation may then arise as an equilibrium outcome. The incentive to defect is overcome by the threat of punishment, leading to the possibility of a cooperative outcome. If the game is infinitely repeated cooperation may be a Nash equilibrium although both players defecting always remains an equilibrium.
Game Theory is situation based, in game theory, each situation is called a game, and in each game there are winners and losers. The most rational move to make in any situation, is the move which allows all players to share victory. This however, rarely happens because people are usually too emotional to be rational.
If we for example set an nearly unlimited amount of money on the table, and we said to everyone on this forum that each of us could have as much money as we need to survive, or everyone could fight for all the money and risk no one getting the money at all, most people would choose the irrational move to fight over a possibility, rather than accept guarenteed lifetime income. This move is irrational because the individual is choosing to gamble for it all instead of accept a guarenteed profit, and this is usually done for emotional reasons such as greed. If all players simply decided to accept their guarenteed income, they could then share their money as a group and each individual would have slightly more than the guarenteed income.
You also see this in situations with file sharing, where someone decides to share music with the masses because they want the ability to access more music than if they don't share. This is rational, it is irrational however to hoard music, and it seems in music a tleast, in the digital world, we have a lot of rational people, but when you look in the real world offline, people often do the irrational thing, like gambling their life savings away, or other irrational ideas and actions which we'd call unethical.
Sharing is ethical, stealing may even be ethical if the situation is right, but to steal from yourself, that is ALWAYS unethical. So while it might be ethical to steal from an unlimited supply, such as air, water, food, from a vending machine that just gives it all out, it's definately unethical to rob a blind homeless person of their only meal.
It gets tricker, but with game theory, you can actually calculate in a point system who will win, and who will lose, with your every action and with your every decision. The best decisions are decisions which as many people can win from as possible, so when you win a game, you want to win in a way that creates a chain reaction of victories so you can share success. If you win the game in such a way that you rob everyone else of success and victory, what you are doing here is irrational and unethical.
In any game, in any situation, if all players cooperate, it's better for all players than if all players fight.
Rationality and super-rationality
One resolution of the dilemma proposed by Douglas Hofstadter in his Metamagical Themas is to reject the definition of "rational" that led to the "rational" decision to defect. Truly rational (or "superrational") players take into account that the other person is superrational, like them, and thus they cooperate. This analysis of the one-shot game is in complete contradiction to classical game theory, but follows naturally from the symmetry between the two players:
* an optimal strategy must be the same for both players
* the result must lie on the diagonal of the payoff matrix
* maximize return from solutions on the diagonal
* cooperate
Hofstadter also expresses a strong personal belief that the mathematical symmetry is reinforced by a moral symmetry, along the lines of the Kantian categorical imperative: defecting in the hope that the other player cooperates is morally indefensible. If players treat each other as they would treat themselves, then off-diagonal results cannot occur.
Here are some more examples, of game theory
In sociology or criminology, the PD may be applied to an actual dilemma facing two inmates. Marek Kaminski, a former political prisoner and game theorist (see References below), analyzes the factors contributing to payoffs in the game set up by a prosecutor for arrested defendants. He concludes that while the PD is the ideal game of a prosecutor, numerous factors may strongly affect the payoffs and potentially change the properties of the game
Another interesting example concerns a well-known concept in cycling races, for instance in the Tour de France. Consider two cyclists halfway in a race, with the peloton (larger group) at great distance behind them. The two cyclists often work together (mutual cooperation) by sharing the tough load of the front position, where there is no shelter from the wind. If neither of the cyclists makes an effort to stay ahead, the peloton will soon catch up (mutual defection). An often-seen scenario is one cyclist doing the hard work alone (cooperating), keeping the two ahead of the peloton. In the end, this will likely lead to a victory for the second cyclist (defecting) who has an easy ride in the first cyclist's slipstream.
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Also in athletics, there is a widespread practice in high school wrestling where the participants intentionally lose unnaturally large amounts of weight so as to compete against lighter opponents. In doing so, the participants are clearly not at their top level of physical and athletic fitness and yet often end up competing against the same opponents anyway, who have also followed this practice (mutual defection). The result is a reduction in the level of competition. Yet if a participant maintains their natural weight (cooperating), they likely will compete against a nominally stronger opponent who has lost considerable weight.
dvertising is sometimes cited as a real life example of the prisoner’s dilemma. When cigarette advertising was legal in the United States, competing cigarette manufacturers had to decide how much money to spend on advertising. The effectiveness of Firm A’s advertising was partially determined by the advertising conducted by Firm B. Likewise, the profit derived from advertising for Firm B is affected by the advertising conducted by Firm A. If both Firm A and Firm B chose to advertise during a given period the advertising cancels out, receipts remain constant, and expenses increase due to the cost of advertising. Both firms would benefit from a reduction in advertising. However, should Firm B choose not to advertise, Firm A could benefit greatly by advertising. Nevertheless, the optimal amount of advertising by one firm depends on how much advertising the other undertakes. As the best strategy is not independent of what the other firm chooses there is no dominant strategy and this is not a prisoner's dilemma. The outcome is though similar in that both firms would be better off were they to advertise less than in the equilibrium. Sometimes cooperative behaviours do emerge in business situations. For instance, cigarette manufacturers endorsed the creation of laws banning cigarette advertising, understanding that this would reduce costs and increase profits across the industry.[citation needed] [5]. This analysis is likely to be pertinent in many other business situations involving advertising.
Finally the best example of game theory, driving.
A mundane but familiar set of examples of the prisoner's dilemma can be seen in automobile driving behaviour. From traffic violations (e.g., speeding, red light running) to reckless driving (e.g., passing in the shoulder to then cut off), these behaviours give a benefit to the perpetrator while hindering the efficiency of the general traffic and the safety of all.
Can you see how there is a legit science of ethics already in development? I'm just suggesting we complete the science. I'm specifically calling on athiests to focus on this. Athiests always get stereotyped as not having any ethics, and you won't convince people you are ethical by being anti God, or by hating God, or whatever and then offering no rational reason or logical replacement for that code of ethics. Ethics are real, it's a science, it's not a religion, athiests say this themselves when they claim to have ethics, so if it's a science, athiests should be the ones who take the lead in developing the science.
