Comment by saltcured

I'm not sure it maps well to game theory. I think it's more of a false dilemma.

There is the old adage in many academic fields that "progress happens one funeral at a time." It's an age-old, rueful take on how our own learning and adaptation proceeds within a collective society. It is a rendering of an objective truth seen at the intersection of evolutionary processes, memetics, and the human condition. It is not a call to action.

Sometimes, I think the most worrisome thing is the ever so slight possibility that some clever, naive upstart will hear this adage and, rather than ponder the lesson about patience and complex social systems, instead conclude that the short path to a lot of progress is a bunch of killing.

Even if we ignore the obvious psychopathy it takes to embrace such an idea, it is still fantastically myopic. Yes, in a hypothetical way it might happen... after the great chaos, some new civilization might emerge with an impressive growth spurt.

But, it is infantile fantasy to believe that such chaos can be applied in a goal-directed fashion, or that the perpetrator(s) can expect to survive it and enjoy the result. Nobody can control who nor what knowledge passes through the gauntlet, nor what direction it spins after that.

What troubles me most, perhaps, is that the current zeitgeist makes me think some people are oblivious to these caveats.