GiuseppeAndTheYeti

"We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions-bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

I got a letter in the mail just the other day that a software company that manages my medical data had a data breach that potentially compromised my SS, DOB, driver's license number, patient id, medical history, address, phone number, and basically anything else that could be stored by a hospital on its patients.

I got to a section of the letter that said in a subtitle "What are we doing about it?" followed with and im paraphrasing cause I don't have the letter on hand...'We contacted law enforcement and our security system is now more secure than ever before'

Cool thanks. Now can you do that before all my info is leaked next time? And maybe offer more than just 2 years of complimentary identity theft monitoring.

Edit: Keep in mind that I had no choice in whether this company got to handle my data. The hospital I am essentially forced to go to because of insurance coverage uses them for storing patient data. The next hospital closest to me that my employer provided insurance covers is 60 miles away.

Probably made for a good day at work. I know I wouldn't mind if I knew it was a neo-nazi

Probably made for a good day at work. I know I wouldn't mind if I knew it was a neo-nazi

If we don't ever get to see the families of Sandy Hook take his money, I would at the very least hope to see Alex Jones incarcerated with no ability to reach a public audience. That's not all though. His only source of news should be restricted to daily governmental briefings on what democratic elected officials are doing and left-leaning news organizations coverage. One more thing. We give him a recording session of 1 hour every month so everyone gets their dose of schadenfreud.

Evolutionarily speaking: If cooperation did not give advantages, why the fuck did we become a social species? Going for anti-cooperative strategies only ever makes sense in zero-sum games and practically nothing in life is.

In game theory cooperation does give advantages.

Both co-op: +1/+1 Both defect: 0/0 Defect/co-op: +3/0

That's just one interaction. When you expand the experiment, predictability becomes a positive trait and risk is avoided. So by more often choosing cooperation, you become more predictable, avoid the risk of not gaining any points through mutual defection, and more people are likely to interact with you. More interactions=higher potential for points. When you adjust the rules of the game to not define a set number of interactions with each player and you can choose the frequency of interactions with bad reputation players, cooperating is naturally selected for. Conversely, as the pool gets collectively nicer, defection will net more benefits and the pendulum will start to slowly swing the other way.

I'll ignore the first half of this reply because we won't agree. Not every choice is a conscious decision in my eyes, but the vast majority are.

As for the second half, believing that bad actors would be weeded out based on the principle of free will is naive. Consider game theory. Two people have something to gain from cooperation, but more to gain from defecting. Meanwhile, the other gains nothing or very little. That simple thought experiment incentivizes bad actions from time to time. You have more to gain by acting selfishly.

Now blow up the experiment. You vs the world and reputation is introduced. Someone with a perfect cooperation rate is flawed. They offer nothing but blind trust and can be taken advantage of. The opposite also displayed. Someone who makes selfish decisions all the time offers nothing but blind distrust. You're left to choose which people to interact with that are somewhere along the middle of the reputation gradient. Those that are 70% or lower seem unpredictable or untrustworthy so many choose to interact with people on the higher end of the reputation spectrum when available and reflect that in their own decision making. You can't always choose who to interact with, so eventually you'll have to interact with a bad actor. You'll get burned by making a cooperative choice and they will benefit from it. In turn, ensuring that they will survive natural selection.

I can only speak for my own beliefs. I don't believe in an omnipotent god. I believe that god holds dominion over the heavenly afterlife and that is all. The universe was created by pushing over the first domino, two atoms collided, and now life exists. It's up to us to use the gift of life as fully and morally as possible. To leave the world a better place than when you first arrived. I don't think that we are some pet project for a God that can change everything on a whim.

Catholicism teaches that God is all forgiving and loves unconditionally. For as many flaws as the Catholic Church has or has had, they've generally been the Christian denomination that's preached forgiveness the most to my knowledge. Maybe I'm wrong.

And I was talking about my beliefs growing up in the Catholic Church not Catholicism as a whole.

I don't believe in a spiteful god, but sure man, go off I guess.

Excuse my faux pas. In the context of the argument, the ethnicity of the citizens living in those countries would be classified as minority ethnicities in America. Not that they are minorities in their own country. I would hope that anyone who's first language is English could make that assumption. But you're right.

I was only focused on the countries listed in the graphic, but Yugoslavia being left out shows that this graphic is serving a bias.