(Somehow an earlier message of mine got lost in cyberspace.)
I said that you *can* force people to do the right thing, and used the
civil rights movement as an example. I often used to hear "You can't
legislate morality" which is true, but you can legislate behavior. If
you make the penalties for not behaving well strong enough, people
start to behave well. Pretty soon it becomes the norm. Did racism go
away? Of course not. But those penalties--whether social or legal--
against racist behavior are strong enough to make this a better
country for most people to live in.
Pamela
On Mar 29, 2011, at 3:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Wow! So when a majority of white southerners showed up in their
Sunday
finest to watch the weekly lynchings, that was the right thing?
I guess you mean "right" in some other sense.
N
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On Behalf
Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:26 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] vol 93, issue 22
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What the majority of people do IS the right thing. Wisdom of crowds
and so
on.
On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Douglas Roberts <d...@parrot-farm.net
>
wrote:
Geeze, Nick.
You can't make people do the right thing. People have to want to do
the right thing. People don't want to do the right thing. (Speaking
in majority terms now, minority exceptions don't count). Things
won't
change until people change. When will that be? Not in our lifetime,
people are slow learners, and relatively stupid, statistically
speaking. We're talking on the evolutionary time scale before the
collective good will come before the individual profit on this
particular
spec of the cosmos.
--Doug
BTW, I'm a realist. Not a pessimist, nor an optimist. Roger
probably
understands. And Steve. I kind of wonder about some of the rest of
you, though.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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"Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps
believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it
is a food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one."
G. K. Chesterton
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
