With no laws or rules to influence your behavior, how do you think you would behave?
“Unable to cope with the infinite possibilities, I would immediately set to work, building a new set of laws or seeking some other way to limit myself.”
With no laws or rules to influence your behavior…
“Fundamentally people behave in a social and rather compassionate and “good” way rather than aggressively, even without specified rules. That is the result of a study from the Institute for Science of Complex Systems at the MedUni Vienna under the leadership of Stefan Thurner and Michael Szell. They analysed the behaviour of more than 400,000 participants of the “Virtual Life” game “Pardus” on the Internet. The findings are that only two percent of all actions are aggressive, even though the game would make it easy for war-like attacks with spaceships, for example.
Millions of human interactions were assessed during the study which included actions such as communication, founding and ending friendships, trading goods, sleeping, moving, however also starting hostilities, attacks and punishment. The game does not suggest any rules and everyone can live with their avatar (i.e. with their “game character” in the virtual world) as they choose. “And the result of this is not anarchy”, says Thurner. “The participants organise themselves as a social group with good intents. Almost all the actions are positive.”
The interactions were fed into an “alphabet” by the researchers, “similar to how the genetic code of DNA was decoded 15 years ago”, says Thurner. “From this we get a pattern which reflects how people tick”. However, there is quite a high potential for aggression: so, for example, if a negative action is inflicted, the probability that the player will subsequently also act aggressively shoots up more than tenfold, even to about 30 percent.
Thurner and his team were also able to present by means of the pattern that the whole game is a reflection of reality. “For example, we could adopt measured values one for one for communication networks. A further measurement is that almost no one has more than 150 friends, the so-called Dunbar’s number, regardless of whether in the real or the virtual world.” The study has now been published in the specialist journal PLoS One.
The long-term aim is to detect “phase transitions in societies” early on using these measurements and the behavioural patterns researched in the virtual world in order to be able to forecast group dynamic social processes and to be able to react in the event of these cases in good time. “It is possible, for example, that through certain conditions the aggression level, that has increased tenfold, remains extensively in place and therefore systemically for a longer time, which bears comparison with a drastic radicalisation in societies. Consequently, we could react to it in good time.” A current example for such a phase transition in society has been the relatively surprising “Arab Spring” with its many protests, uprisings and revolutions, which, as is well known, were targeted against the ruling totalitarian regimes in many countries.”
With no laws or rules to influence your behavior…
“I’m not sure it’s the rules or laws that govern’s one’s behavior. 2/3’s of the population don’t adhere to speed limits.Those who are hell bent on doing their own selfish thing, with no regard to the law or another’s safety, do it anyway! Our laws are an indicator of behavior that’s acceptable in a specific society. They don’t, in themselves, control people. They are a guide to acceptable behavior for those who care about acceptable behavior. The best influence to behavior is how you are brought up in this world, and time and place. A person born into poverty with poor parenting will probably consider life “unfair” and probably not follow the rules. Emotional development also plays a part with one’s behavior in life. For some, it’s stunted.
I was brought up in a home with average wealth and had many personal opportunities due to time and place. However, it wasn’t a free ride. My parents didn’t provide me with spending cash. I had to earn it by working as a teen. They also taught me responsibility and morals. As a member of this world, because I was treated fairly and learned the accomplishments of earning my own funds, I am inclined to extend that fairness and those opportunities to others, who are also willing to put forth the effort. Without laws, my behavior wouldn’t change. It’s my upbringing and compasion toward others that regulates my behavior, not laws or rules.”
With no laws or rules to influence your behavior…
“Humanity started with no laws. In the beginning we behaved like animals. We killed when we were hungry. We killed when we were scared. Eventually, we learned that if we work together we could do more. If we had no laws, eventually a civilization would arise resembling a lot like the one that we have today. Laws arose because the strongest survive. For humans, the strongest meant the strongest group not just the strongest person. Laws allowed us to work better as a group and thus to become a stronger group. You could even say that it is natural for humans to develop laws where there are none. There would be people who would act on their own but they would quickly be dominated by those groups that had laws.”
With no laws or rules to influence your behavior…
“Most people would likely behave exactly like they do now. I really do believe that most people don’t interact with the law on a daily basis. We don’t really need to be told not to steal things, not to murder people, etc. We’d probably drive faster, on average, but not by much as the “Flow” of traffic would settle on some speed not much faster than people currently drive. We likely wouldn’t change a whole lot about what we normally do. On the other hand, if there were really zero laws, of any kind, you could make an argument that society would completely collapse. There would no longer be any laws governing international or interstate trade so you would not be able to buy anything. Currency would disappear too as that’s based on laws. Some people would use the absence of laws (and police, therefore) to take over ala Mad Max.”
With no laws or rules to influence your behavior, how do you think you would behave?
“While we may not agree with all the laws in place, they are there to prevent our ‘freedom’ from encroaching too much into others’ freedom. What would start small – like lying or stealing – would increase until the entire system collapsed. That said, what would emerge would be a system of morals based upon instinct rather than imposition. Actions would be based upon an inner decision of morality rather than an outer one. A society governed by the inner voice of the people.”
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