Thought Experiment: Followup
Last week I pointed to a thought experiment over at Marginal Revolution that asked “A freak solar event ‘sterilizes’ the half of the planet (people, animals, etc) facing the sun. What happens?”.
You’d never guess who picked up the ball: David Brooks in his New York Times editorial. I’m not sure I’m super keen on Brooks’ take, though: “If people knew that their nation, group and family were doomed to perish, they would build no lasting buildings. They would not strive to start new companies. They wouldn’t concern themselves with the preservation of the environment. They wouldn’t save or invest.”
As I was reading I got to thinking about something in particular: There is a lot of research on aging at the moment and I wonder if all resources wouldn’t move to that. All of a sudden The Methuselah Foundation (they’re working on extending human life) would have people knocking down it’s doors. It’s possible, even, that incentivized by the possibility of extended life indefinitely people from around the world would move and join the fight. It’s a sort of weird thought, but hey, it’s a sort of weird question.
This reminds me of game theory, particularly iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma games. As you probably know, a standalone PD game results in both participants screwing over their partners, resulting in the least optimal outcome. However, if rounds of PD games are played consecutively without knowledge of when the games will end, cooperation (the optimal outcome) does occur. Once the end is known, however, everyone switches back to the least optimal outcome. So I could understand Brook’s argument from that point of view. If this is confusing and you want more background, I can clarify.
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caterpillarcowboy reblogged this from heyitsnoah and added:
game theory, particularly iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma games. As you probably know, a standalone PD game results
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