From: locklin@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Misquamicus)
Subject: Example of "Moral Absolute"
Organization: Campus Crusade for Cthulhu
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 19:43:13 GMT
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Sine noone can come up with an adequate argument for moral absolutes, I will
give it a try. I've always said I could make better arguments for christianity
than fundies if I tried (not that these "moral absolutes" have anything to do
with christianity.)

First off, so as to avoid confusion, I'll make a definition. Moral Absolutes,
for the purpose of this argument will be this: A moral absolute is a guideline
for the proper action in a certain situation that will have the maximum
benefit oneself in this situation. Most moral absolutes have to do with the
"good of the many" as opposed to the good of the individual. The arguments I 
will present are based on this definition & are invalid without said 
definition.

Game theory, pioneered by the great mathemetician John von Neumann, has much
to say about maximising benefits for "game players". It is applicable to
essentially any situation in which one has to make a choice between 2 or
more options. The favorite (& arguably the simplest) example used to illustrate
the principles of this mathematics is the prisoners dilemma. (something I am
somewhat familiar with in R.L. actually; but I digress)

The situation is this. You and an "accomplice" have been arrested for a crime.
You are interrogated separately. If you refuse to testify against your
accomplice AND he refuses to testify against you, you will both recieve 1
year in jail. If you testify against him, and he does not testify against you,
you will go free, and he will recieve 20 years (or something
similar), and vice versa. If you both testify against each other, you will both
recieve 5 years.

Now, this is a GAME; I have reduced the degrees of freedom in this problem
to two. These prisoners have no personalities & etc...

Consider, if you testify the minimum total time served is 20 years. If you
both do (remember, you have no info on what your buddy does) the total is 10
years. If neither, the total is 2 years. 

Looking at the "big picture" we can see that the best outcome is for neither
to squeal, BUT, looking at the small picture, THIS IS STILL THE BEST THING TO
DO, EVEN THOUGH IT MAY SEEM LIKE YOU ARE CHEATING YOURSELF!

Why?

Consider the successive iterations of the "game". The object of the game is,
of course, to minimise your total jailtime.
Obviously, if you both keep your yaps shut, you will have the lowest possible
scores, hence you will both be winners. If your partner tries to get less
by turning you in, you will return the favor & you will both end up losing the
game (but one may loose by a bit less than the other). If the instigator breaks
his pattern of turning you in, the most advantageous thing to do would be to
follow his example, so as to prevent his retributions. The result of this will
always serve to minimise your score.

SO.. being a "nice guy" and cooperating with your "accomplice" will always
be the "moral" thing to do in this game. Try playing this game sometime...
HOWEVER, you will note that non-cooperation with the police is considered to 
be the moral thing to do in this situation. This is considered immoral by
society. This is to demonstrate the relativity of morality (i.e. the police
are not playing the game).

Apologies for any innacuracies in details, I do not have my copy of von 
Neumann's "Theory of Games in Economic Behavior" handy, I refer the curious
to this treatise.

Note that this is, of course, a rather simplistic example; few things in
life have only 2 degrees of freedom (or is it 1; I forget my degrees;)
It is applicable to more complex games, I used it on a rather simple form
of 2-card poker popular in my hometown & won a bit of cash for myself. 
Unfortunately, my freinds don't have very much money & I can't seem to interest
the local Amherst rubes in 2-card poker. Certain people use it "counting
cards" in casinoes. Others use it in regular poker (I have a rather neat
reference on this). Still others are trying to play the stock market with
it, though IMHO, you need some serious computing power to do this...

Another note, by my definition, LaVeyan Satanism is the most moral religion
there is  8-O  !

If anyone can come up with a proof of "moral absolutes" in the Kantian sense,
I'd like to bash, um read it....

-Misquamicus

Newsgroups: alt.satanism