A message about the cave rescue an important thought

Originally posted by aniesbaswedan ↑

You said yourself that to you credibility and respect has to be earned so basically for people to be deemed worthy of your respect they have to earned it. Not freely given even as a benefit of the doubt because it doesnt matter what people think because you are a supremacist who adamantly that you are always correct. In order for you to show any respect to people then and for them to be seen as credible then they have to comply to your perspective and belief. You are as incorrigible and dogmatic as they come. It doesn’t matter how compelling an argument could be because you would always have the option to reject it by simply going the route of “I refuse to believe it”. Your comment has been very condescending, sanctimonious indicating an absolute lack respect. Anyone who read it would understand that and yet here I am still responding to it. Tell me what kind of person are you? A good one or a bad one but for sure you are an extreme left.

As for animals,

my dog learn how to sit, lie down, roll, come, etc through conditioning. I could go punishment, basically a time out or reward route, basically food. I went through both and over time she learns to do those things without either the punishment or reward but without the conditioning then she simply wouldn’t do those things nor bother to learn them. Any dog owners would concur. Overtime the dog is able to associate doing things with food (reward pathway) and thus feels good when they do it. Dogs are really amicable to human because they are selectively bred to be docile over many thousands of years.

In the context of the diver. Australian society reward such deed without fail under mutual benefit of national pride that make us as a population vicariously feel good about ourselves. Others would then look at the two people getting richly celebrated and rewarded and thus learn the benefit of such deeds. Overtime the thought gets reinforced and becomes ingrained through brain changes and how our reward pathway works just like how dogs associate certain act with reward. If such deed was never celebrated then it would be less likely for people to want to do them, which would be detrimental to society. The reward loop is then established.

In the end, the fact is that the 2 aussies are going to be celebrated and be richly rewarded and there is no one here that is able to say 100 percent that they never expected it. They are being rewarded just like everyone else who volunteers whether direct or indirect. There is no altruism involved whether in motivation nor end result. That is a fact.

Does that make the diver acts less valuable? Absolutely not. The rescue was in fact great achievements worthy of celebration albeit not altruistic.

Expand

From a genetic viewpoint, Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins is a good background read to understand Anies argument.

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize of Behavioural Economics in 2002 which included work on cognitive and hedonic psychology - again relevant to the theme of this thread covering many similar decision making theories and what makes life pleasant / unpleasant.

Anies is certainly not unique in his view. It is however imo a specialised area of learning/psychology which Anies clearly has had exposure to. Interesting discussion - what reward is Anies getting for his well articulated arguments involving much time and effort for which he is being derided, and more importantly, how do I get rewarded out of buying into the viewpoint?