Hacker News Reader

Comment by altcognito | Hacker News Reader

There is a strong argument that cooperative populations are more effective/efficient than non-cooperative.

Structures and processes that place a high value on all people and their many quirks instead of conformity to an arbitrary leader are likely to do better in most situations than ones that don’t.

View on HN

Not sure that history would prove that out. Highly structured, militaristic colonial powers (Inca and Aztec, Mandarin Chinese, Vedic Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Roman, Western European) all had pretty good runs. Have there been societies that "place a high value on all people and their many quirks instead of conformity to an arbitrary leader" who have been dominant for spans of centuries? I can't think of any.

> There is a strong argument that cooperative populations are more effective/efficient than non-cooperative.

Which probably means being at the top of the social hierarchy in such a population is even more valuable.

Valuable how? I realize that altruism is an unpopular concept, but it exists nature and works quite well when civilization is placed under the greatest survival pressures.

Selfishness is a luxury humans indulge in because those pressures are quite weak in modern days.

Being at the top of the social hierarchy in a cooperative environment is not necessarily valuable, probably not even pleasurable, at all. Because true cooperation can either exist without a top, when the experience is mostly p2p, or with a benevolent top painstakingly at the service of the entire community.

So if your commentary meant valuable as in dedicated to the point that the individuals at the top become shit sponges for everyone else and do die as saints or martyrs, then yes, it is very valuable.

That being said, it depends on where you put value in life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com