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Posted by hawat.thufir on 09/26/02 11:29
anthonyberet wrote:
....
> To take the example of theft: In animal terms, a predator who chases
> away weaker predators from their kill has an advantage over the weaker
> predator - it doesn't need to risk injury, or develop the skills to
> catch the prey, and thus might be more likely to survive to have
> offspring than the weaker predator.
> It wouldn't be the same in human society, because human society has laws
> and punishments. A thief is less likely - other things being equal- to
> reproduce than a non-thief, because of his increased risk of death,
> injury or imprisonment.
> Of course, this is a simplistic example - other forces are at work in
> both situations.
A corollary to theft would also be cheating on a spouse; or maybe it's
the other way around. In either case there's a definite advantage to
cheating and stealing, sometimes. On the other hand, most "career"
criminals spend alot of time in jail, which should be a big deterrent,
unless you're a white collar criminal.
However you slice it, there's a definite advantage to
theft/cheating/etc for humans. To come at that from the reverse angle,
because we do it then presumably that offers an advantage to not
cheating/stealing/whatever. However, it only works if a small minority
of people are criminals. If everyone stole all the time, well, no
society would work--I hope that's obvious.
There are always going to be people who tape tv shows, or record
concerts, or photocopy books, etc, because it's particularly easy. I'm
not even convinced it's immoral.
-Thufir
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