"Individuals" as Networks. You'll only be as good as the network you're in

"Individuals" as Networks. You'll only be as good as the network you're in.

This is the idea that behavior (including moral behavior) is the result of the feedback loop between a person and the network. Behaviorism hints at this point because the reinforcements clearly shape behavior. A network uses these modes of "rewards" and "punishments" to create the spectrum of behaviors we see from individuals.

Yes it is true that individuals can act irrationally and blatantly rebel against rather than conform toward their network. It is also true that individuals can join other networks with different reward and punishment structures.

Does free will even exist? It's an open question but behaviorism, physics, and neural science, are indicating it does not. So does this mean all behavior is shaped by environment and thus is just emergent from the environment? According to behaviorism the probability of a behavior increases when it is frequently reinforced (rewarded).

The network in this case is the social network of "agents" in a multi agent system. If we think about each agent as an economic agent (attempting to be rational) then this kind of network would be populated by agents which way the costs vs the benefits of decisions. The interesting thing to note is people assume religious people are not being rational but according to their religious beliefs if they follow it they could be doing it in a rational way. The cost of violating religious laws is the risk of going to hell. The more a person sins, the higher the risk of going to hell, which presents a psychological cost against sin.