This posting is a mixture of some of my beliefs and some thoughts. One of their common denominators is that as of July 2009 I believe them to be true. I will probably think differently in the future.
So called axioms or, in a laxer context of this posting, automatic thoughts:
Different people mostly differ in their objective function
People always use their most up to date version of their objective function, even if the objective function contains some inherent random variables.
When people agree to participate in a transaction, they act only according to their own objective function. (The way the Noam Chomsky put it: if 2 people perform a transaction, let's say, one person sells another person a car, then the 2 parties only care about their own profits and do not take to account the cost of the transaction to third parties.)
Money is just one, though very important, type of currency out of many.
Some implications, which seem to match with observations:
In business people do not mind participating in transactions, where the other side has a terrible disadvantage. An example: whenever there's enough people in a bad enough situation to find a sweatshop a viable working environment and if sweatshops are legal, sweatshops will emerge.
Love is not free. Sometimes some part of it can, indeed, be payed with money, but just like one has to repay a bank loan in Estonia in Euros, while the local currency is Kroon, one has to pay for love with a fine company and physical attraction.
In the case of employee-employer and buyer-seller relationships there are cases, where the selling side does not expect to receive only money. For example, in some cases respectful treatment is also expected, in addition to the money.
Hunting of animals, including humans, does not constitute a murder as long as the hunted do not enforce themselves. (Illustrations: deer hunting, the slaughter of Iraq citizens by united states army and security forces, civilian deaths of United States drone attacks in Pakistan, the holocaust imposed by the Israeli army to the people within the Gaza Strip in 2009, fishing, etc.)
Even people at noticeably honored positions, for example, university professors, don't mind stealing and deceiving in a way that is even worse than that of common pocket thieves. (I won't name anybody, but I know one such case really well.)
What I think that is useful or harmful for the other person probably differs from his or hers own view, because his or her objective function probably differs from mine. (I have also noticed that my views have a much greater match with the views of those people, who have somewhat similar background, let's say, that of other programmers, physicists. For some reason the decisions of people with economics background tend to seem the craziest to me. That is to say, for some weird reason biologists and philologists tend to be much more similar to me than economists.)
One of the questions that might be of interests at the notion of those statements is:
What is to be wanted from a truly true and affectionate lover?
This question has been inspired by an erotic story, where a daemon changes to a passionate lover and a true companion of its disenchanter, while requiring human sperm to stay alive.
From the love perspective there's also a question that if there were a robot, like in the movie Alien Resurrection, with technical ability to attend one's daily life, i.e. shopping, sports, leisure, work, etc., and the robot had comparable or greater intelligence than that of fellow humans, then why should someone fall into love with another human in stead of that robot?
A side-note: As of July 2009 I still find the movie, Alien Resurrection, inspiring. I think that it is one hell of a well done movie in multiple contexts. May be it's because it somewhat summarizes my career, interests, goals and desires (provided that the violence part of the movie is skipped)?
