The ideal solution to this problem is something that gets covered in the technical lectures following Utility, on Decision, but on reflection dath ilani children all know about this concept before anybody tries to teach ideal solutions to it.

There is, of course, a pure-Good solution to this problem, which is that both farmers care about what happens to sapient life in general, and care about themselves as only special cases of sapient life.  They won't impose a direct cost of -70 on the other farmer, for a benefit of +20, because their real or ultimate utilities are a sum over all sapience evenly weighted in proportion to the reality-weight of all those sapient beings, everything with - your language has no word for 'qualia', right, on some less strained day Keltham needs to ask some carefully constructed questions so as not to give away what he's trying to test, but for now he is going to guess that Taldane lacks the word 'qualia' and not that Golarion inhabitants lack the thing the word is talking about.

Anyways, that's the Good solution - everyone's real utility is just a sum of everyone's payoffs, and everybody knows that this is the case about everybody, and so everybody individually decides to do whatever they need to do, in order to end up in the matrix-cell with the maximum sum of payoffs.

There's a Keltham solution, which is that you don't have very much of that pure Good - you care about other people close to you, maybe, but these farmers are not lovers nor friends - but you do care a lot about not stealing from strangers.  If you live next to a Keltham, that you know is a Keltham, you can be pretty sure he won't fake a bear attack on you; the difficulty, of course, is in the knowing, because this world has no truthspells.

But suppose now that both farmers are Abaddon-style pure Evil, not partially selfish but absolutely selfish.  They care about their own food supplies, the satisfaction of eating now and eating in the future; nothing else.

Is there a Lawful solution for absolutely selfish people?

The ideal solution to this problem is something that gets covered in the technical lectures following Utility, on Decision, but on reflection dath ilani children all know about this concept before anybody tries to teach ideal solutions to it.

There is, of course, a pure-Good solution to this problem, which is that both farmers care about what happens to sapient life in general, and care about themselves as only special cases of sapient life.  They won't impose a direct cost of -70 on the other farmer, for a benefit of +20, because their real or ultimate utilities are a sum over all sapience evenly weighted in proportion to the reality-weight of all those sapient beings, everything with - your language has no word for 'qualia', right, on some less strained day Keltham needs to ask some carefully constructed questions so as not to give away what he's trying to test, but for now he is going to guess that Taldane lacks the word 'qualia' and not that Golarion inhabitants lack the thing the word is talking about.

Anyways, that's the Good solution - everyone's real utility is just a sum of everyone's payoffs, and everybody knows that this is the case about everybody, and so everybody individually decides to do whatever they need to do, in order to end up in the matrix-cell with the maximum sum of payoffs.

There's a Keltham solution, which is that you don't have very much of that pure Good - you care about other people close to you, maybe, but these farmers are not lovers nor friends - but you do care a lot about not stealing from strangers.  If you live next to a Keltham, that you know is a Keltham, you can be pretty sure he won't fake a bear attack on you; the difficulty, of course, is in the knowing, because this world has no truthspells.

But suppose now that both farmers are Abaddon-style pure Evil, not partially selfish but absolutely selfish.  They care about their own food supplies, the satisfaction of eating now and eating in the future; nothing else.

Is there a Lawful solution for absolutely selfish people?

The ideal solution to this problem is something that gets covered in the technical lectures following Utility, on Decision, but on reflection dath ilani children all know about this problem-concept before anybody tries to teach ideal solutions to it.

There is, of course, a pure-Good solution to this problem, which is that both farmers care about what happens to sapient life in general, and care about themselves as only special cases of sapient life.  They won't impose a direct cost of -70 on the other farmer, for a benefit of +20, because their real or ultimate utilities are a sum over all sapience evenly weighted in proportion to the reality-weight of all those sapient beings, everything with - your language has no word for 'qualia', right, on some less strained day Keltham needs to ask some carefully constructed questions so as not to give away what he's trying to test, but for now he is going to guess that Taldane lacks the word 'qualia' and not that Golarion inhabitants lack the thing the word is talking about.

Anyways, that's the Good solution - everyone's real utility is just a sum of everyone's payoffs, and everybody knows that this is the case about everybody, and so everybody individually decides to do whatever they need to do, in order to end up in the matrix-cell with the maximum sum of payoffs.

There's a Keltham solution, which is that you don't have very much of that pure Good - you care about other people close to you, maybe, but these farmers are not lovers nor friends - but you do care a lot about not stealing from strangers.  If you live next to a Keltham, that you know is a Keltham, you can be pretty sure he won't fake a bear attack on you; the difficulty, of course, is in the knowing, because this world has no truthspells.

But suppose now that both farmers are Abaddon-style pure Evil, not partially selfish but absolutely selfish.  They care about their own food supplies, the satisfaction of eating now and eating in the future; nothing else.

Is there a Lawful solution for absolutely selfish people?