I think I understand where the problem is. The concepts covered in MBT regarding consciousness evolution are quite specific in that what is "good" is that which lowers the overall entropy of the system. Selfishness, in general, does not tend to produce "good" results. In biological systems, selfishness is part of the propagation and survival of species, and so is not good or bad - it simply is - but biological systems are competitive and so the most selfish (or winner) can cause self-destruction, or widespread collapse because the selfish drive does not strive for systemic success.

Selfishness is harmful in that it is less efficient (it's going to be less efficient by definition because the evolution of consciousness occurs in a system without resource limits, without external environmental constraints, and is intentional) for the evolution of an apparently infinite system towards lower disorder. Selfishness will always result in a worse outcome, in this case; this is why AUM created little discrete bits of itself to interact with one another; not so that they could compete; so they would interact and learn to cooperate for ever greater levels of efficiency. This is why we are individuated, in the first place - overcoming selfishness creates lots of progress.

Entropy is not a resource like energy, food, or money - just wanted to say that.

At this point, I am wondering what you think are the positive characteristics of selfishness and why you want it to be acceptable within your world-view or why it is interesting enough to put this much thought into. Why is it good and what is its allure?

When you completely disregard others when making choices you are completely disregarding whether your actions could harm them.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I think you are still missing my intent. I simply think that the concept of selfish is a neutral one, and that most people seem to lump a negative intent with the word selfish before realizing that. I would argue that when dealing with consciousness selfishness does produce good results, for it is the nature of consciousness to lower it's own entropy, and the way it does that is selfish in nature(whether consciousness is all that there is or not). I would say that you can act in a selfish manner without others being involved. For example, I look both ways before crossing the street so that I don't get hit by a car. In that scenario I am being selfish in a way that doesn't affect others. I am going to have to disagree that selfishness is less efficient in general. I would agree if you said that selfishness is less efficient when done at the expense of other IUOCs, but if you are selfish in a positive way like helping other IUOCs then it would be the most efficient route to personal gain.

Where has Tom said that AUM created IUOCs to overcome selfishness? You said, "overcoming selfishness creates lots of progress." Progress towards what kind of goal, a selfish one maybe? I think of IUOCs overcoming selfishness to create progress as merely being selfish in a more efficient way. For example, Love is the most efficient means to the goal of growth or lower entropy. The nature of lowering entropy is selfish...ext.

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I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

That is a big "could" though. Putting it like that assumes that the "could" will happen, and also that it will turn out bad.

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I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

I did. I should have added "or help them" because that is the missing piece.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

You are making a very big redefinition of selfishness there. How exactly might you accomplish that? Please provide an example of behavior that fits this.

Your analysis of this example that you give is faulty. This does not affect others only if there are no others who care anything about you, for one, and second, you assume that the driver running into you cares nothing about the big hit on his insurance and what it will cost him in future years, the damage to his vehicle which never gets returned to original condition and that they will not be traumatized by what happens to you and care nothing about you and your hypothetical injuries and potential death, whether they know you or not.

There are basic flaws in your logic. You simply cannot say to the rest of the world (or worse, do it without announcing it) that "I am going to make a basic redefinition of the meaning of the word selfish to mean what I want it to mean". Doing that simply makes communication have very large disconnects in it. That is the whole point of language and its use, having a set of words with standard definitions and put together in reasonably accepted grammatical usage. Otherwise people have no clue that you are making it up as you go along. If you are Louis Carrol writing "Alice in Wonderland" you can do that and let it be worked out in your literary work. If you do it in normal life without a lot of explanation and argument, then you just get strange looks of incomprehension.

Ted

I would challenge the binary paradigm of the discussion

Many decisions of significance involve the interests of the spouse, the family, the neighbourhood...and so on

the general problem of life is to find efficient lifestyle choices and an MO of operating that deals with these tradeoffs

Unless you are a Ralph Nader or Mother Teresa, there is a great deal of selfishness in your choices.

The key is where you try to place yourself in the continuum of self vs other in your key decisions and day to day decisions, relative to the norm, and how broadly you define the "other" you are incorporating in your decision algorithm, when forming intent

The effectiveness of your intent is a separate axis, and high effectiveness vs low effectiveness might appear to be very different, QoC held constant.

I believe there is a point to be made, that PMR selflessness is a small picture word for big picture NPMR selfishness.

In the big picture, FWAU selflessness is not a sacrifice, it is merely effective profit maximization, from the point of view of the IUOC

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?