🚀 go-pugleaf

"ant" <dont-look@evil.spam> writes:
>Kym HORSELL wrote in message <80o8a4$3gq$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>...
>>nenosed@apex.met.au (Ned Latham) writes:
>>>Kym HORSELL <kym@cs.mu.oz.au> wrote:
>>>> nenosed@apex.met.au (Ned Latham) writes:
>>>> > Kym HORSELL <kym@cs.mu.oz.au> wrote:
>>>> > > One of the classic methods of determining "the good" when it comes
>to
>>>> > > choices between actions is to select the alternative that is most
>contrary
>>>> > > to one's self interest.
>>>> > Well, there's a self-defeating definition, if ever I heard one.
>>>> Well, that's the view of people that DEFINE "the good" to be their
>immediate
>>>> self-interest. ;-)
>>>----snip----
>>>Others too, Kym. Those to whom self-interest is irrelevant to the
>definition
>>>of ``the good'', for example.
>>As I said, some people (GenX-ers, eg) define the 2 to be the same thing.
>hey, i am a genX-er as you put it 

There's an easy test.  Do you define "the good" to be the same as 
"my self interest" (AKA "Greed is Good")?  

I didn't think so. ;-)

>and i i would invariably rescue the
>child, if it was then possible to return for the cash without undue
>personal risk i would do so. my motto is people before profit. i suspect
>that if someone did a qunatative study of attitudes there would be as many
>baby boomers and whatever the generation before them are called who are
>also as greedy and self intrested, 100 years of intensive corporate
>properganda has had its desired effect, elevating greed and gluttony from
>mortal sins to a role models for society.

I think psychologists of various ilks have already beaten you to the 
punch there.

While self interest is pretty much a biological drive -- it obviously
does have some positive benefit in propagating a species if its
members at least TRY to look after their individual interests --
co-operating at the expense of the self has an important role.
People looking into  (e.g.) Prisoner's Dilemma type problems 
that are said to abount in nature (e.g. one  herd animal
deliberately falling behind to "sacrifice" itself to the wolves)
argue it's at least as important and, so it can be argued,
allows some kind of optima to be reached that are seemingly impossible
to achieve by purely selfish means.

There have been a growing number of studies that suggest Western society
is in the process of "shifting gears" to elevating self-interest
as a chief "good", at the expense of self sacrifice of even 
the most trivial kind, e.g. simple patience.

At one time -- at least in the West -- doing what was "just" was
supposedly the "right thing to do". In those good old days (say, c 10th C),
lopping off someone's hands for being a thief was "justice" and therefore
"good". Obeying the king was "just" and "good"; disobedience was,
of course, unjust and therefore not nice at all. ;-)

A bit later, the idea of "kindness" crept into the idea of "goodness".
It wasn't then so much a matter of being "just", but being "just"
in just (sorry) the right way(s). 

These developments are obviously reflected in legal systems
through history. Hamurabi was worried about getting his tax money;
Middle Ages law was worried about protecting privs for the
well-to-do; a bit later the law was worried about protecting the
rights of the badly-done-by (be that at the expense of the privs
of the well-to-do or not).

Some people thought the progression was "improvement".

In our part of the human era -- with its emphasis on 
mass-learning-by-observing-the-idiot-box (an instrument of the Devil if 
ever there was one; especially as it's attuned to the human's natural 
learning mechanisms and thereby able to get by most built-in safeguards) 
and (some say) *hence* superficiality, alienation, inability by many 
to see the need of various behaviours, mass depression, etc... 
the pendulum (that never swung in just the one b&w plane anyway ;-) is 
moving over more to the "me me me" and "*my* individual rights at all
costs" axis.

Various social experiments -- e.g. those related to the evaluating
the societal levels of the so-called "free rider" problem (whereby some 
social good is provided by members co-operating, but being subject to 
individuals that refuse to put themselves out for the co-operating part, 
yet feel entitled to the payoff from the co-operation of others) -- indicate
there is a significant difference between the actions & outlooks and social
skills of those born (say) pre 1950  and those born (say) in the past
couple of decades. Various not-always-very-soundly-reasoned studies
relating to inter-generation comparisons seem to be iterating toward a
consensus in that regard.

>[sorry, more news to read...]
--
R. Kym Horsell
KHorsell@EE.LaTrobe.EDU.AU                  Kym@CS.Binghamton.EDU 
http://www.ee.latrobe.edu.au/~khorsell      http://cs.binghamton.edu/~kym