Quotes About Cooperation

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs.

In fact, war may be just another obstacle an enlightened species learns to overcome, like pestilence, hunger, and poverty.

What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened.

Positive-sum games also change the incentives for violence. If you're trading favors or surpluses with someone, your trading partner suddenly becomes more valuable to you alive than dead.

Golden Arches theory: no two countries with a McDonald's have ever fought in a war.

Existen buenas razones evolutivas para que los miembros de una especie inteligente intenten vivir en paz.

legal investigation. As Clinton noted, "My goal in this deposition was to be truthful, but not particularly helpful.

When you combine self-interest and sociality with impartiality—the interchangeability of perspectives—you get the core of morality.

Mediante el intercambio voluntario, las personas benefician a otras beneficiándose a sí mismas; como él decía: «No esperamos conseguir nuestra cena por la benevolencia del carnicero, el cervecero o el panadero, sino porque ellos velan por sus propios intereses. No apelamos a su humanidad, sino a su amor propio».

In fact, as of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.

The goals installed in Homo sapiens, that problem-solving, social species, are not just the Four Fs. High on the list are understanding the environment and securing the cooperation of others.

Outwitting and second-guessing an organism of approximately equal mental abilities with non-overlapping interests, at best, and malevolent intentions, at worst, makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition. And a cognitive arms race clearly could propel a linguistic one.

The alternative, then, to the religious theory of the source of values is that evolution endowed us with a moral sense, and we have expanded its circle of application over the course of history through reason (grasping the logical interchangeability of our interests and others'), knowledge (learning of the advantages of cooperation over the long term), and sympathy (having experiences that allow us to feel other people's pain).

Certainly the taste for cruelty clashes with the values of a cooperative society: it must be harder to work with your neighbors if you think they might enjoy seeing you disemboweled.

As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later, "If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.") Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, endorsed the ideal

As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later, "If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.") Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, endorsed the ideal of doux commerce, gentle commerce.

Instead of asking, "Why is there war?" we might ask, "Why is there peace?" We can obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right. Because we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know what, exactly, it is.

Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later, "If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.")

Vengeance is no disease: it is necessary for cooperation, preventing a nice guy from being exploited.

In the study of humans, there are major spheres of human experience—beauty, motherhood, kinship, morality, cooperation, sexuality, violence—in which evolutionary psychology provides the only coherent theory.

In a noisy world in which misunderstanding and error are possible, Tit for Tat is bested by an even more forgiving strategy called Generous Tit for Tat. Every once in a while Generous Tit for Tat will randomly grant forgiveness to a defector and resume cooperating. The act of unconditional forgiveness can flick a duo that has been trapped in a cycle of mutual defection back onto the path of cooperation.

A humanistic morality rests on the universal bedrock of reason and human interests: it's an inescapable feature of the human condition that we're all better off if we help each other and refrain from hurting each other.

A positive-sum game is a scenario in which agents have choices that can improve the lots of both of them at the same time. A

Better still, improvements build on one another. A richer world can better afford to protect the environment, police its gangs, strengthen its social safety nets, and teach and heal its citizens. A better-educated and connected world cares more about the environment, indulges fewer autocrats, and starts fewer wars.