[MUD-Dev] The Relationship between pkers andmonster AI?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> Groups and societies by their nature as groups, require some sense
> of agreement as to common purpose or action among their members.
> Rarely is that agreement documented, explicitly agreed to, or even
> very well known.  Those agreements are the "social contract".

It is my impression that those that participate in a group have their own,
and sometimes conflicting, goals and agendas.  They certainly don't have to
agree upon some common purpose in order to coexist and even cooperate.

You need norms in order to be productive, not "social contract", I think?

> The sad point of this is that for the groups to survive, the basic
> agreements etc of those groups must be pro-survival both for the
> group and the individual members.  Ergo, adherence to those
> agreements in turn is, quite literally, often in one's
> self-interest.  It has nothing to do with police or enforced
> justice, but the collective experience of the group as qualitatively
> expressed as mores.

People switch groups if there are alternatives. They also influence norms by
participating (or by not participating) etc. Not sure what you mean by
"pro-survival", but counter-examples are easy to find even if it just means
"maintaining heartbeats".  So really, it doesn't have to be pro-survival for
the individual (assuming a reasonable definition of pro-survival).

> > The best government is a monarchy. The worst government is also a
> > monarchy.
> 
> Few can argue with a benign dictator.  As such a principle problem
> of government is ensuring the inheritors of power continue in the
> good traits of their predecessors.

There are no "benign" dictators, simply because there are no single
objective perspective on the world.  For a dictator to remain "benign" he
will have to enforce his perspective on the populace.  That's not very
"benign", is it?

"Good traits"? Who is going to judge that?
--
Ola




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