The Art of War

[Richard Fiero]

alice wellintown wrote:
>http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
>
>On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:30 PM, alice wellintown
><alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> "They recognize universal values or ethics
> >> but fail to consider how pluralistic ones often create paradoxes and
> >> deadlocks."
> >>. . .

 From the above URL:
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
by Steven Pinker

"The first is that Hobbes got it right. Life in a state of nature is 
nasty, brutish, and short, not because of a primal thirst for blood 
but because of the inescapable logic of anarchy. Any beings with a 
modicum of self-interest may be tempted to invade their neighbors to 
steal their resources. The resulting fear of attack will tempt the 
neighbors to strike first in preemptive self-defense, which will in 
turn tempt the first group to strike against them preemptively, and so on."

This is an especially paranoid game theory just as John Nash 
developed it at RAND in the fifties. I'm also not sure of his use of 
the word anarchy since he uses it where State security features are 
weak that may allow the formation of pirate bands and so on. It's 
unlikely that any group of pirates practices anarchy.