Re: decision making <=> coevolution <=> emergent structure?

[Nick Gotts]

Steve Emsley wrote:
> 
>     >> Perhaps an answer to Mort Saul's classic question: "How have we
>     >> gone form Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin to what we have
>     >> in Washington today.  Could Darwin be so wrong?"
>     >>
> 
> No ... it just means that the environment in Washington *now* gives a
> higher fitness to those who want to succeed and those who are willing
> to be succeeded.
> 
> Excuse the pun ...
> 
> Steve.

And that in turn is an instance of a very widespread tendency in human
affairs: in any social, political or economic hierarchy, those who reach
the top will usually be those whose primary concerns are prestige, power
and/or wealth (rather than, say, truth, beauty, justice or the
alleviation of suffering), simply because the former will be
single-minded in their attempts to rise or maintain their position in
the hierarchy. Or to put it more succinctly:

        "The scum rises to the top."

Revolutions (and other periods when the talents needed to rise change
rapidly) may temporarily undermine this tendency, and institutional
measures (separation of powers, throwing the King/President/CEO off a
cliff after a fixed term, etc.) may ameliorate it, but as long as we
have both hierarchies and some degree of mobility within them, it will
persist. I'd expect it to emerge in sufficiently detailed social
simulations.

Nick


-- 
Nick Gotts     address@hidden

Land Use Science Group
Macaulay Land Use Research Institute
Aberdeen AB15 8QH, UK

All views expressed are mine, not MLURI's.


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