Quote from: iamnotback on January 26, 2017, 11:49:41 PM

Minimizing defection actually limits cooperation and promotes top-down failure modes which are rigor mortis. Some coordination results from top-down control, but massive amounts of aliasing error (relative to fitness) also. Satoshi's PoW design suffers from this problem and my solution to fixing it is involved with increasing decentralization and removing that aliasing error.

Maximizing cooperation is a coordination problem. This has to do with Coasian costs. It is an economic and technology issue. For solutions, we need decentralized paradigms such as open source. Religion isn't objective open source. It is unfalsifiable, top-down control.

When you argue that defection limits cooperation you appear to be confusing two distinct entities. Defection and rebellion are not synonyms. Cooperation involves a mutually beneficial exchange that improves the well-being of both participants. Defection is an interaction that benefits one party at the expense of another. Defection always implies violence, the threat of violence, ignorance, or forced interaction.

Top-down control fulfills its mandate when it maximizes cooperation and minimizes defection. Top-down control also uses fear, violence, and forced interaction. Top-down control is thus only morally justified if the use of those things results in an overall increase in cooperation and a reduction in defection.

The amount of top-down control required to maximize cooperation is inversely proportional to knowledge. As knowledge advances the of top-down control needed to maximize cooperation shrinks. However, humans are morally flawed resulting in recurrent excessive concentrations of power and a general refusal to cede power. The human condition is thus marked the gradual progression of technological and moral progress with either no accompanying change in top-down control or a counterintuitive increase in top-down control. When this happens the top-down control itself limits cooperation and becomes a form of defection. The situation is like a pressure cooker that eventually explodes in a rebellion resetting the top-down control to a more appropriate level.

Defection and rebellion are thus entirely separate phenomenon. The first is evil and always morally unjustifiable. The second is not only just but a moral obligation once a superior solution to top-down failure becomes available.

A visual example may help:
This is rebellion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ldlEbbphs
This is defection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t7gG3XVqW0

You often repeat the "we just need decentralization paradigms" argument. That is only half true. Yes we need decentralization paradigms. This is the growth of knowledge above. However, decentralization paradigms are only half of what we need. The other half of what we need is a top-down control that maximizes cooperation alongside new decentralization paradigms. Your anarchist tendencies recurrently lead to you gloss over this second part. You acknowledge that top-down control cannot be avoided then seem to stop thinking about it.

The reality is we need top-down control just as much as we need decentralization paradigms. That may be a bitter pill to swallow for an anarchist. The need for top-down control does not go away just because we don't like it or don't want to think about it.

I notice you tend to brush off this issue with comments such as "I don't want to fix the world" and "Trying to fix society is evil." these come across as avoidance. Adopting a lets just do decentralized anarchy and let the cards fall where they may approach is not a rational position.

Religion indeed is top-down control, but that statement is meaningless without context. We both need top-down control and will always need top-down control. Thus ultimately the relevant question is what kind of top-down control is religion.

That answer of course varies depending on what kind of religion we are talking about. The primitive idols worshiping pagans had horrific gods. These religions were tools of extreme top-down oppression and their extinction is welcome. See my post on Pagans and Human Sacrifice if you are interested in more on this.

However, belief in God especially individual belief in God coupled with a fear of God is something else entirely. A society where all individuals genuinely believed in and feared God would have very little defection. What defection did occur would be the result of ignorance not malice and even that would decline with time as knowledge progressed. An individual restrained only by a genuine belief and fear of God has complete operational autonomy he would willing choose only cooperation and never defection limited only by his knowledge of what actions constituted genuine cooperation.

Belief in God is top-down control. It is the purest manifestation of such control enabling a maximisation of freedom. Rejecting God leads ultimately to higher levels of defection and consequentially less freedom.

Proverbs 9:10
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom"