Naked Ape

"Living a proper life" as defined by whom?

It would seem that some ballance might be required, since not avoiding fatal experiences will have a rather negative effect on your futire ability to aquire positives.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

UncleJim

Since we have not communicated with each other very much then it is possible I am not "reading" your position accurately.
Cheating is when you deceive another of a right by appearing to be acting properly in-order to gain or keep something desired which that other has an equal right to keep (or gain) and enjoy. My view is that people by the nature of the requirements determined by human survival and its impact on human evolution are "wired" for honesty. If I am correct then more people will act properly than improperly.
Then it seems to me that you are gaining happiness rather than avoiding sadness.
Are you sure that you know what it is? Happiness can neither be given nor received; it is earned and is therefore deserved.

UncleJim

No one!
Humans are not privileged to determine what is proper for another human to do. This is the sole purview of life. The only thing a human can do is discover what is required by life for the achievement of human happiness and then gain it by performing the actions necessitated by it.

Naked Ape

What happens when you decide that certain actions are necessitated in the achievement of human happiness, but someone else comes up with a completely different set of actions that they claim lead to their achieving happiness?

How do we measure which one has achieved the most happiness, and has therefore come closest to performing the correct actions?

How would you calibrate such a gauge?

Cheers,

Naked Ape

UncleJim

That depends on who is right. And this depends on what is true. And this is found only within reality. If ones actions are determined by discovering what is true and then one acts only on that knowledge then one actions will be proper and proper actions result in happiness.
By knowing what is true and then by comparing these acts against that standard. The one who acts most consistently in accordance to what is true is the happiest.
As it is with all of man's relationships with reality the gauge of proper action is his life and its requirements with regard to its eternal physical survival.

Happiness is defined as being the emotion automatically experienced as one does; or when one realizes that one is able, to achieve the successful state of living.

When one recognizes that life has always existed: Then the concept of happiness must include this factor in its definition if it is to be considered a factually based (a true) definition.

yalla

I am a retired teacher and I used to get students to play the Prisoner's Dilemma game.
Now it was fascinating to watch the decision making processes at work in the kids.
After a while they cottoned on to the idea of the game and what was fascinating to me almost unanimously adopted the mutual maximal line and specifically rejected the 1 winner 1 loser option.
I was careful not to try a and pre-empt the process by building in assumptions etc..

What can you make of this?

yalla

Where I live I have a view from a cliff of a freshwater lagoon below. On this lagoon flocks of pelicans and cormorants frequently engage in collective feeding.
There can be a group of them minding their business doing nothing in particular [pelicans are good at that] with a few scattered around the lagoon.
Then one of them discovers a school of fish. Somehow this is communicated to all pelicans and associated cormorants in the vicinity and they stop what thay were not doing and congregate with the discoverer. They adopt a line abreast formation with military precision with the foremost scooping and eating and those in the rear flying to the front and the manoevure is repeated over and over. The cormorants are bobbing up and down scattered in the middle of all this and the whole scenario gives a strong impression of ready communication and unity of purpose. Clearly there are "rules'' of behaviour- no pushing in, take your turn at the back and front.Who decides this, how it is communicated I've got no idea but it happens in front of me.
Sometimes it breaks off and they all go back to doing nothing again but frequently they achieve what seems to be a preditermined objective. They succeed in driving the school into a shallow bay opposite us who are diligently watching and perhaps industriously drinking wine which is our assigned task. When they get the fish into the bay a feeding frenzy ensues with the formation broken.
Then it's time for a rest.
This can take place at almost any time but was particularly spectacular on a clear moonlit night last New Year which involved at least 500 pelicans. The watching crowd cheered and made sure they didn't fall off the cliff.

Sometime ago I read an article where a scientist somehow measured all this and concluded that, in cooperative feeding, each individual gains more than compared to individual fishing taking into account expended energy and awareness of opportunity.

I suspect the pelicans knew that long before he did.

JamesBannon

It's called learning and it's a good lesson in communication and co-operation. Co-operative feeding in your second post isn't unusual in social species in the animal world and it's usually only in extreme conditions that co-operation breaks down, say during drought conditions.

UncleJim

What are the rules and what do they encourage?

If the rules were altered would you begin to see different actions by the players?

UncleJim

The goal is survival. If your survival (happiness) is best achieved by cooperation then that is what a rational person will do.

However if the conditions (the rules of the game) have changed and now survival is determined by eating your neighbor's leg then you’re better off knowing this and acting accordingly.