this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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An idea that species can “be meant to do x” by y has roots in teleological philosophy. Aincent Greeks believed that gods designed and meant us to live a certain way, this approach was adapted by other religions. It cannot be applied to evolution as evolution is a sequence of random events, some more likely than other.
We have evolved to, under certain conditions, when it increases our or our relatives' chances of survival or recreation, kill others of our species or enact violence against them, including the type of violence that increases the expected number of offsprings of the person enacting it, but nobody argues we should build ethics around it.
I argue that we should build ethics around it.
People, even those that understand evolution often speak this way because it's easier, this is Lemmy, not a research paper.
I claim that what we call morality and ethics is human cultural interpretation of what we call game theory. My foundation for morality is respect for consent, except in cases of self/community defense and participation in the food chain as evolution has produced my body in this way due to natural selection to operate at a particular trophic level.
If it were for pure game theory, slavery would still exist in some form (legally, because illegal slavery is still wide-spread IRL). Why would we care to liberate a useful caste of human servants if they would lose all means to rebel against a modern army? Granted, they could kill someone in an uprising, but so does cattle occasionally injure and kill farmers. Any great injustice is justified by game theory at the end.
Morality, whether based on game theory or not, has little to do with law.
You should learn more about game theory.
Game theory is about extracting personal good from cooperation. Game theory has nothing to say against boiling your cat alive as it has no leverage on you.
In societies where things like slavery existed for centuries or even millennias, owners had great evolutionary benefit from owning slaves. Their descendants hold some privileges to this day. Game theory was on their side.
Did you watch “86”? In this show, San-Magnolia was a country populated exclusively with blonde people, referred as “alba”. People with non-white hair (referred as “colorata”) were sent to internment camps outside the state walls and conscripted to fight in a war in a hope to regain at least some rights.
It was later revealed that over 10 million colorata and zero alba were killed in the later stage of the war, and if original prognosis on enemy forces ceasing to operate in a few years would be correct, alba people would totally win the evolutionary race and no game theory would bring justice. Doesn't sound great if your hair happens to be brown or red.
So far every response to be has been straw man args.
Nobody is talking about boiling cats alive, I'm not arguing for the morality of that.
I'm not saying game theory can be used to justify anything, I'm saying it's the basis for morality, it's how morality came to be in our species IMHO. I think agents (things with agency, which are subject to game theory) develop strategies, and morality is based on these strategies. Harming other beings unnecessarily often puts one at risk, therefore harming other beings without need is often bad strategy. I'm not saying that anything that can create benefit is morally OK, this is a straw man, know what that is?
You're speaking as if there's a global, cosmic morality in which harming others is wrong, this is a religious belief, I'm not talking about religion. There are many moralities with different foundations, I explained the basis for mine.