Originally Posted by contracycle

And both you and Z have both recently propounded the "everyone is an object/competetitor to everyone else" line.

Hold on! What 'object' has to do with cooperation or competition? I can cooperate with "objects"? Such as the red light when I am driving. Or with animals - changing sides when I see a snarling dog on one side.

As to the competition aspect, if you recall, I have often pointed out that, in game theory, cooperation + retribution beats other strategies in repeat games.

Of course, you do still have things like free rider issues and the like and I do believe that, ultimately, it's selfishness that drives humans. But self-interest, well understood, includes cooperation strategies.

Right now, as you may remember, my solution to this present crisis is for the Western world to unite against the very rich and China. Quite cooperative in many ways.

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Originally Posted by contracycle

Yes but that's always been the case. Never mind doing things that are actually useful, lets just leave it all to churches and charities. This isn;t as absolute as you are making it.

It's still not post-apocalyptic, every man for himself behaviour. A church soup kitchen or an NRA group is still a team.

Originally Posted by contracycle

That's what it means in terms of relations between bosses and workers.

The balance of probability is that you're going to have a loud dickhead on any given team. (Unless it's the sort of team that I usually end up a part of, which are invariably composed of nothing but loud dickheads.)

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

As to the competition aspect, if you recall, I have often pointed out that, in game theory, cooperation + retribution beats other strategies in repeat games.

I'm not disagreeing with that. What I was saying, primarily, is that this research does not say "lets all hug and sing kumbaya". And the secondary point is also that really, the idea that we are all objects to each other is an affectation rather than a reality.

Originally Posted by Zichao

The balance of probability is that you're going to have a loud dickhead on any given team. (Unless it's the sort of team that I usually end up a part of, which are invariably composed of nothing but loud dickheads.)

Again, I'm not talking about what happens in the team. I'm talking about when you have a team of 10 people, and the management sacks 5 and tells the rest of you to "be flexible" and "prioritise" and to "work as a team" to make up the shortfall.