The Search for a Fair Society: Insurmountable Disagreements Handled Fairly
October 26. Happy Saturday. Time for coffee and a chat about a realistic utopia of a fair society. Frankly, it’s always time for a chat like that because a fair society is our only chance to banish violence and war from our lives.
As previewed yesterday, I want to talk today about the situation when a member of a group can’t be convinced of an adjustment to the replacement dataset all members of the group must implement in their individual reality generation processes to align their otherwise diverse models of the world. Only alignment creates the common ground – the shared reality – necessary to formulate common goals. The replacement dataset will only fully be implemented by all members when all members agree with the rules, norms and structures encoded in it that govern their cooperation. As soon as any kind of mechanism comes into play that is meant to ensure that dissenting members are in any way coerced or forced to implement replacement datasets into their individual world generation processes or at least act like they do, the group/ society can’t claim to be fair anymore. Without full implementation by all, though, there’s no cooperation possible as the sliver of shared reality is lacking that allows to shape common goals. So, there’s a lot at stake.
The first step – after it is crystal clear that there’s no compromising, and by that I don’t mean compromising one’s basic values and convictions by one side to appease the other – is to check, if cooperation and the satisfaction of the motivations that have led all members to the decision to cooperate as they do (minimum as the natural motivation is a sustained increased ability to execute random searches) hinges on the data that’s to be added to or cut from the shared replacement dataset.
We humans tend to believe that certain data used by us in the self-generation of our model of the world serves us so well, it must be shared by all. What we forget, by identifying with our self so much while taking so little responsibility for the generation of the entirety of our reality in our mind, is that the plethora of material things that bonded together to create our body by pursuing the same twin goals are looking for completely different things. Take rules and beliefs of religions. They can be the answer for some while they can be unacceptable and even destructive for others. Are these rules and beliefs really necessary to achieve the kind of cooperation we all seek? Or might the aspired level of alignment of the models of the world even hinder us to achieve the results we want from the cooperation, especially a sustained increase in the ability of executing truly random searches for all to harvest the high payoff these searches promise? Random here means that people pave the paths of their choosing to places unknown before. The more we restrict the direction of expansion, the less random it is, the less payoff there will be that offsets the risk of this kind of search and justifies the dependency on the group, members create by aligning their models of the world.
If the answer is that cooperation doesn’t hinges on this data, everyone in the group must agree to keep it out of the shared replacement dataset. Crisis averted.
However, if the answer is that the data that’s unacceptable for a member or some of them is necessary to achieve the level of cooperation the majority wants, the member must leave the group as their continued presence while they don’t share the same reality with the others anymore is a danger to the success of the cooperation of the others. They can’t expect to be supported anymore when they don’t support the cooperation as is with all its rules, norms, and structures. The solution for all must be that these members either do their own thing individually or as a group or search for a group whose replacement dataset they can fully agree to.
This, of course, means that all groups have a duty to accept new members who agree with their replacement dataset and implement it fully into their world generation processes. The advantage for the group is that the more members their working fair cooperation has, the more the high risk of random searches is offset. Any new, willing member increases the sustained ability of everyone in the group to execute random searches and thus increase the payoff for all. The advantage for the single person is that they can’t be forced to accept changes to the replacement dataset that are unacceptable to them and thus remain in a situation where they are worse off because they are caught in a cooperation than they could be alone, just because they have no other option. It’s win-win unless you are the person who wants others to be caught without any options in an unfair cooperation for their own advantage.
It will not come as a surprise to you now when I say that for the longest time this is how most of humankind worked. States are a relatively recent invention. Enforceable borders have been with us for just about a hundred years now. And what is seldom mentioned, they serve as much to keep you in and available as a body to exploit as they keep others out. A world of fair societies does not need them.
Any thoughts? Tell me. Tell all. Since our models of the world change with every new information we gather and the models are only accessible to others when we communicate them, we are part of never-ending negotiations that require constant conversation and debate.
To watch this post as a video, go here.
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