>Not sure what you mean by long term, but how about the well known example
>of young birds killing their brothers and sisters by pushing them (or
their
>eggs) out of the nest? It certainly helps them to survive childhood.
It's like, in the movie "Titanic" when the ship was sinking, the lower
class people got locked down in the lower decks so there wouldn't be too
much competition for life boats.But, those are cases when it looks like
there's finite resources and time--that you're not going to see those
people (or birds)again and deal with them on a day to day basis. The
context of this argument was whether you can use ESS's to justify any
ethical system that you currently have. And then be able to use ESS's to
support any political system like Communism, Fascism, etc. These
political structures are formed on decisions based on long term
interaction--the "State" is based on situations when people see each other
on a day to day basis.
> In practice, one changes the
>structure of society, and hopes that in a generation the structure of the
>minds of the youths have adopted what was intended...
So you're saying that you can't just change things by being a professional
memetic vector (ie. artist), you have to get involved in politics?
>5) "Human immortality is conceivable". Most everything is conceivable
>(flying pigs are conceivable), the question is: is it possible? or even
>likely?
I don't know. But the concept of conceivable immortality is part of the
meme-complex that I say exists.
Communist and Fascist meme-complexes don't have the idea that there could
really be potential long term interaction--they assume people's choices and
lifespans will be limited to what they were in the past, so, in a sense,
evolutionary stable strategies can be used to support those ethics.
Basically, it comes down to "we think our meme-complex is better and we
should beat the other guys".
--David R.