This is actually a very serious philosophical discovery, it didn’t occur to me until now that it should be in philosophy rather than off topic. The magnitude of it just hit me.
“Do unto yourself and others as you’d do unto yourself if you were them - Ecmandu’s Rule.”
The problem with the golden rule is that it solves as everyone dying of dehydration within 14 days, because everyone keeps giving everything away without using any of it themselves. There are other issues with the golden rule such as the hypothetical where men break into women’s houses to offer sex (which women don’t want) but most men would gladly have happen for them if a woman broke into their house to offer sex. The golden rule in game theory is tit for tat.
The beauty of this rule and the precise way it is worded is that you can take care of yourself too, and it doesn’t have any of the loopholes of the golden rule.
Maybe you can find one!!!
If you can’t… this rule is one of the greatest philosophical discoveries / formulations in human history… think of all the billions of brains churning away at some way to land a precisely elegant rule. Rules like the silver rule or platinum rule… they all have downsides. This may be the perfect rule.
I meant to add more about this wonderful rule, instead of just saying it covers the loopholes of the golden rule that are undesirable, it also takes out the negative parts of the golden rule (such as everyone dying of dehydration).
Also, the last “them” in this rule refers to both you and others, “you” are one of the “them” Maybe that makes it clearer.
“Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he’d do unto himself if he were himself and others” = “Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he’d do unto himself if he were multiple people including himself.”
“Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he’d do unto himself if he were himself and/or others” = “Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he’d do unto himself if he were any number of people, which may or may not include himself” = “Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he’d do unto himself if he were himself” = “Ecmandu should do unto himself and others as he does unto himself.”
In the latter case, your rule simply says: “Do unto others as you do unto yourself”, which surely leads to problems. And as for the former case: can a single person really imagine what it would be like to be multiple people?
I’m not even going to bother debating the steps you took… because the last step is false, do to YOURSELF and others and you’d do to YOURSELF would be how the last step reads, but that’s not even what I’m saying…
I’m saying, Put yourself in your own shoes AND other people’s shoes, do what’s right for you from your perspective and for them from their perspective. For example with the Golden Rule… everyone wants to be forgiven, so you just forgive everyone forever, no matter what they do forever… well, some psychopath is going to find you and say “Hey look at this fellow, he forgives everything… do I want to fuck with him/her or someone who stands up for themselves and actually makes us pay in some way for trespasses… I think I’ll just torture this forgiveness him/her forever… no consequence to me and I get what i want, sucks to be them, but that’s their philosophy, so I guess we’re symbiotic now.” That’s eternal damnation for one person and eternal heaven for another person = bad game theory.
Look at my post above… for some people harming them is not letting them harm you, it’s bad game theory on their part, but even worse on your part, because they can catch you in an eternal damnation trap where they are always in heaven.
How can a psychopath use that rule? A psychopath can use the golden rule easily, but they have to check for consent with this rule, they have to check the mental content of the person they are engaged with.
Sometimes they imagine others to be either willing victims, or unwilling but still willing victims [sm etc]. They see people as how their own mind thinks those people think - ergo the later part of your rule is negated by our subjectivity.
I see the point though, but it requires reason and logic that perpetrators of crimes often [always?] don’t employ.
Isn’t; ‘everyone think clearly before acting’, a better rule? Except that those thinking un-clearly will still be the problem.
“Putting yourself in your own shoes” is bullshit. I do get what you were saying now, though. You’re basically saying “give to each his own”. Can you, though? Can you not at most give to each–your own?
It’s not bullshit, it’s not putting yourself exclusively into someone elses shoes. Treating yourself with dignity as well as others, striking that balance of optimal game theory.
I meant the phrase. In fact, what you say about the balance reminds me of John Nash. I’m reminded of this little joke my brother made when we were kids, though:
I: “What would you do if you were me?”
He: “Immediately commit suicide.”
My point being that you will still be giving others what you think is best for them, from your limited perspective. Won’t that make your rule run into problems?
My rule in no way states what would I do if I were you, it’s what would I do to you if i were you… and like I already said twice in this thread, you can merely ask them to check their mental content.
I can’t make you commit suicide so that doesn’t work… my phrase was what would I do TO YOU if I were you. Well technically, you can torture someone and decrease suicidal tension and make anyone commit suicide, but that’s actually homicide… so your statement about suicide doesn’t work.
Your second poser is tougher… but you do need to also look out for yourself in my rule, someone is right to try to bum a cigarette off me, but if I bummed all the cigarettes that people wanted, I’d be homeless… so I make the decision not to.
If it’s effecting you adversely to their benefit, this wouldn’t be good game theory. Like giving a kid a bunch of sweets and making them hyper and grumpy…
Isn’t suicide simply a special case of homicide? And if we cannot commit homicide, according to your rule, simply because one cannot commit homicide to oneself, can’t we think of a rule in which breaking any of the Ten Commandments, for instance, would be likewise impossible? Not because nobody would do that to oneself, but because nobody could?
How is someone right to bum a cigarette off you? Isn’t smoking bad for one’s health? Unless he’s bumming it solely in order to throw it away, so you’ll have one less cigarette to smoke… Then again, can you really tell if it’s the right moment for another to stop smoking?
I can’t make you commit suicide so that doesn’t work… my phrase was what would I do TO YOU if I were you. Well technically, you can torture someone and decrease suicidal tension and make anyone commit suicide, but that’s actually homicide… so your statement about suicide doesn’t work.
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Isn’t suicide simply a special case of homicide? And if we cannot commit homicide, according to your rule, simply because one cannot commit homicide to oneself, can’t we think of a rule in which breaking any of the Ten Commandments, for instance, would be likewise impossible? Not because nobody would do that to oneself, but because nobody could?
How is someone right to bum a cigarette off you? Isn’t smoking bad for one’s health? Unless he’s bumming it solely in order to throw it away, so you’ll have one less cigarette to smoke… Then again, can you really tell if it’s the right moment for another to stop smoking?
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Tobacco is an anti-depressant, and people have different biochemistries. Most things we consume have side effects, anything too much. Not everyone needs the same substances externally, in fact a peanut kills lots of people. I believe suicide is a special case of homicide for existential cases, perhaps for diseases, not so much, though perhaps the organism could be blamed for it. Well adultery decreases suicide, so I don’t know why you brought the ten commandments into this…
My take on war is that if someone confesses to going to war, you should kill them in their sleep… there are more people who don’t war than who do war, so this would stop war from a game theory perspective, and prevention always works better than tit for tat in game theory anyways.
Sorry, I totally messed up the quotes here, hopefully you can work it out.
Not really… do to yourself what you’d want to do to yourself, but do to others as if you were them (in their shoes), check their mental state to get verification if there’s ambiguity. But clearly some people are better equipped to handle what is best for both parties involved, so it brings up problems to that extent… like in the case of the candy and the hyper/grumpy kid… they like the hyper, and probably even the grumpy, but you don’t, so you have to draw a boundary there by with holding candy. Maybe there’s a better way you can get simple carbohydrates through them that is balanced… you can set a boundary such as, “If you act this way after you get this joy, you will no longer get that joy in that way and we’ll try to find a different way to give it to you, because you are not respecting how I’d like to be treated if you were in my shoes.”
