[Radim]

I'd guess this is Prisoner's Dilemma in practice:

If you don't expect repeat interactions with an agent, or expect the agent won't remember / weigh these past interactions strongly, you do what's best for you in the moment.

Which happens to be taking the counterparty's current situation into account – including their wealth/power, AKA how much they can do for you. Entirely pragmatic, if selfish ("disgusting" in your words).

The way to combat this fake behaviour is to increase its cost, forcing the "fake" person to interact differently.

But I wouldn't hold my breath:

1) To "increase the cost" you need something of value in the first place. If you're poor and powerless, you are… powerless. Your only strength is in numbers: social pressure, `∑ little_power * lots_of_people`.

2) This "fake" personality is likely something learned in early childhood. A person would probably need to experience lots of negative feedback to readjust later in life.

3) Have you considered that their strategy ("fakeness", taking into account extrinsic factors like wealth or fame) may be superior to yours ("integrity", interacting based solely on a someone's intrinsic traits)? You know, it is not a physical law that being nice and consistent to people pays off. It's a pretty wild social dynamic, evolved only recently.

[tovej]

Regarding 3), how well someone's social strategies pay off is completely separate from their morality. It's irrelevant.

Just as a thought experiment: if there was little social cost to it, killing your competitors would probably be a very successful strategy. Would you go: "sure, he kills people, but it makes him very successful and we should give him kudos for that"?

Regarding your last statement, that "being nice and consistent" is a recent social norm, I call bullshit and citation needed.

[Radim]

Morality certainly has its merits – after all, it's omnipresent across nearly all human groups (that survived to this day). So it has undoubtedly played a central role in advancing humankind.

But please note morality is an evolved collective strategy as well, a survivor in an extremely competitive landscape. It's not "above" evolution (unless you're into religious metaphysical arguments).

If all its proponents "were killed" – your words; an unlikely proposition in my estimation – then yes, that would be it for morality. Something else would take its / our place, but the world would still go round.

[mrtranscendence]

> But please note morality is an evolved collective strategy as well, a survivor in an extremely competitive landscape. It's not "above" evolution (unless you're into religious metaphysical arguments).

I don't fancy a debate right now, but I feel I should point out for observers that this is a minority position in the philosophy of ethics (for atheists and religious philosophers alike). At the very least it is possible (and common) to be a moral realist without making "religious" arguments.

[repomies69]

Yes, psychopaths can be wildly successful people, I will start to act psychopath right away, sir. Thanks for your advice.

[Radim]

I have not revealed my preference, one way or another (I'm personally not a fan of fakeness, if you must know; which is precisely the reason why I think about such things and take time to reply on HN).

But seeing your visceral response, I'll offer one advice now: don't let your biases blind-side you.

[repomies69]

> I have not revealed my preference, one way or another

You have revealed your preference of evaluating morality as a choice.

I think morality is a basic assumption for pretty much all human interaction. If someone chooses to be immoral, then why would I want to interact at all with that person? If being fake and untruthful is a choice for that person, I don't see how any interaction made sense. Just the only sensible choice is to run away from that person and if you have business going on just try to close them as quickly as possible. Even online discussions like these would be totally pointless with a person who has selected to be immoral/fake.

[Radim]

What you do and whether you "run away" or "close business" is up to you. But likewise, what other people do is up to them – how would you impose your choices and preferences onto others?

You're able to do that only to the degree that you hold power over them. That is what "power" is.

Which is precisely what is being discussed here. Not the personal preferences and animosities of human X (Radim, repomies69, whoever), but how social interactions evolve over aeons. It is a pretty complex dynamic system with feedback loops that span individual interactions (the repeated prisonner's dilemma from my OP), generations and even civilizations.

Let me try another way: You can be perfectly happy with your strategy Y and die content you did what you thought was best. In fact, it's probably the best anyone can hope for. Alea iacta est.

But if you're the last person believing Y, that strategy dies with you. It is not a personal attack on you to observe that there are people who do not follow Y, and evaluate relative merits of strategy Y vs Z. You can wish everyone followed Y (was more like you), and still do that.

Interestingly, lashing out at people who observe other strategies than Y even exist is a strategy in itself. Proselytizing, ostracizing and zealotry are a form of social pressure, and humans evolved to be quite susceptible to that.

On a technical note, "if A then B" is an implication, a form of logical reasoning. An implication doesn't mean that A is true, or that the person proposing the implication believes A (or B). For example, you could say "if everyone is dead, money will be worthless". An implication is an observation about relationships, trying to make sense of the world.

[repomies69]

Thanks for your generous advice, sir. Greatly appreciated.