Forgiveness is overrated

In sum, a certain amount of forgiveness is a good thing: societies that are wholly “shame” based (Japan, pagan Rome) have high suicide rates when contrasted with societies that are wholly “guilt” based, for example, as people kill themselves when they fail to live up to their own standards. How much forgiveness is a good thing, then, if we wish to bisect the scylla of seppuku and the charybdis of Tony Abbott and Bill Clinton being reduced to soap opera before our very eyes? Korb et al again:

This work does demonstrate that misperception can help TFT players maintain mutual cooperation in an evolutionary IPD game. However, this requires that misperception mimics forgiveness and that any misperception causing unwarranted defections is limited. Forgiveness can counteract the effects of random noise; however, excessive forgiveness leaves the population of TFT players vulnerable to exploitation, in this case by selfish Punishing Misperception. Forgiving Misperception is not an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy, as Punishing Misperception will invade the population to exploit the forgiving players.

High Punishing Misperception probabilities are an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy, albeit a highly detrimental one since such widespread behaviour produces worse payoffs than a population only affected by noise.

The optimal upper bound for Forgiving Misperception is approximately 30% for the TFT players. At this point mutual cooperation can be maintained, while Punishing Misperception does not evolve to invade the population. The Forgiving and Punishing Misperception probabilities which evolve in the player population interact in a manner similar to a predator-prey relationship. When the population’s Forgiving Misperception probability is restricted, misperception will provide an evolutionary benefit when it induces behaviour analogous to forgiveness. However, this benefit requires an asymmetric model of misperception in which the evolution of Forgiving Misperception is restricted.

About 30 per cent, friends and neighbours. None of this 70×7 malarky: all that happens then is that you get taken to the cleaners. And exploitative individual-based noise as a result of excessive forgiveness? That’s Tony Abbott sounding off about his failures and expecting to be taken seriously.

May I suggest, then, a modest reframing of public debate every time Tony Abbott (or a similar moral failure by his own standards) sounds off on this sort of thing? We should shame him for his hypocrisy. Instead of listening to the dishonest banker caught with his fingers in the till who begs our forgiveness, we should listen to the honest banker who makes the shareholders money without cheating his customers or pissing all over market rules. Instead of listening to the Catholic who played Vatican Roulette with his girlfriend, we should listen to the parish priest who lived up to his vows (and believe me, there are plenty of them; the media are very good at highlighting only the failures). Instead of listening to a given celebrity tell of their travails with drugs, we should listen to another celebrity who has managed to avoid drugs altogether. We may actually learn something, even if we ultimately disagree with their policy proposals and submissions to public debate. I will probably disagree with everything the parish priest says about virginity before marriage, because I think it’s a double standard directed primarily (and negatively) at women. At least, however, I can take him seriously. He has lived his ideals. I can’t take Tony Abbott seriously. The distinction may be a fine one, but it is important to bear it in mind.

Let me also stress that this is not a counsel of perfection, but a recognition that it isn’t actually that difficult to be a decent person. By taking craptacular failures so seriously, we risk making decency and goodness (however defined; my particular interest is financial probity) seem impossible across the wider society. Similarly, I’m not suggesting we bring out the “shame tool” whenever someone has lived a less than blameless life (that really would be heading down the seppuku route). Rather, I’m suggesting that shaming is the appropriate response to public figures who get off on wallowing in their sin in public, and who then purport to advise the rest of us on the basis of that wallowing. Talking the talk requires walking the walk, in other words.

You’re not perfect, Tony Abbott, but you’re also not forgiven. Now get down to the bar and grab yourself a nice steaming hot cup of shut the f**k up.