Author: David Rasmussen
Date: 02:23:29 01/12/01
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On January 12, 2001 at 05:21:33, David Rasmussen wrote: >On January 11, 2001 at 20:25:47, Christophe Theron wrote: >>> >>>Mankind benefits from the sharing of truth. >> >> > >I agree totally with Dann on this, and I've stated similar views before. > >> >>Really? >> >>The main engine of mandkind progress is competition. It is not cooperation. >> >>This is how it works. The ideal of "sharing the truth" is a generous idea, but >>this is not how it works in the real world. >> >>The only animal that behaves according to your idea is the ant. And maybe the >>bee (I'm not a specialist). >> >>But competition is written in our genes. We love to hate each other and to fight >>each other. We love to create groups and to belong to groups, then to fight the >>groups in which we do not belong. Fighting is the activity we love to spend our >>energy in. >> >>That's ugly, but that's the way we are. >> >> >>Computer chess would be nowhere by now if there was no competition in the field. >> >> >> > >I disagree completely. It is a nice idea, and it works in some cases, but >history has thousands of examples of development flourishning when knowledge is >shared or released. Look at what happened in shift from middle ages to >renaissance. Enlightenment begets development. Also, look at the mathematics >community of the last 500 years. There are examples of the competition you >mention, but that hasn't been "the engine" at all. There are also examples of >people discovering the same thing simultaneously. But most of all, there are >countless examples of what happens when knowledge is released. It is developed >in countless new ways, that the originator of the knowledge couldn't have done >alone. One man, one team, one country etc. cannot fully exploit an idea. It will >always developed further when shared, published. > >A society that hides it's knowledge inside competing teams, will never develop >as quickly as one where knowledge is shared. The competition will still be >there: "How can I take all this public knowledge and develop it further or >revolutionize it?". > >One person, team or country can only do so much.
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