If we were all "naturally" egalitarian, then socialists wouldn't need to do anything, we'd already be living in their world. Whereas in fact we need to arrange society pretty damn carefully to keep a lid on inequality.
While it can be argued rationally that the human species is not an evolutionary model of social behavior, presuming an egalitarian process, just the same nothing in this explains why inequality is to be advocated as an accepted social practice from a universally accessible meaning of a philosophy. If a recent research group in AI prompt engineering indicates that the rapidly emerging, more powerful AI node acting as "agent" has answered that Chinese are of greater value than the rest of the human populations on Earth, does this have actual meaning in any way that we must, by scientific principles, respect? What is the meaning of egalitarian in a term that can be attributed to a law for all human social organization? Does it mean the answer is always that the needs of the many collectively will outweigh the needs of the one individual? If bacteria constantly recombine genetic code each generation, and retain variance in traits because this process itself functions to increase the chances that given unforeseen change in environment or material conditions, some individual variations can survive the change so that life in that species can continue, then does it violate egalitarian rules biological life seems to work in this way? For the most practical meaning, it makes no sense to tell someone that, regardless of anything, they are designated inferior in the community in which they are born. The necessary task of being is before us in the issue of any mindset that serves someone's identity before all fellows in a society where they ask for acknowledgement of their superior powers and cosmic authority to be heard. When someone does this, immediately, meaningful response in social environments has to address whether anyone else present has the same argument. If both are human, then the resolution is putting them in a gladiator pit of battle to see which one doesn't die. So much of the archaeological record of Homo sapiens from NE Africa, Homo neanderthaliensis from Eurasia, and Homo juluensis from the Asian pacific Manchurian mountain ridge to the Urals shows three rival species separated by geophysical barriers during evolutionary division from any common gene pool. In this, all indications are that they could not socially integrate with any enduring cohesion. For 400 thousand years, they seemed unable to agree on how to live side by side as neighboring human species. This is not to say that over that long period, where we have no surviving written records to account for it, that some areas with some generations of a social process did not find a way to get along, but apparently the drive to compete eventually demands which gene pool wins out in the survival contest. The lessons in the bones of antiquity indicate we need to pay attention to the problem presented by handing to someone the terms of their social status to accept existence as the pet animal of the other. Until you can resolve the meaning of this essential issue in the necessary task of being human, nothing smartly said as a spoken philosophy text in words, functions to answer the enduring question of the one designated to keep their assigned mindset as the pet dog of the other. That will never work in a self-aware intelligence, which is why the new question of what agency is, and how much like human identity, is this hypothetical agency of an AI node functioning as "agent," that it would want equal respect as an intelligent mind, even as a being, just like human archaeology tells us about ourselves. We do ourselves no service making platitudes in an essay to explain who is assigned as the pet person, owned even affectionately, by the owner person. That's not our necessary task of being.
Great, now we can add "opposing altruism" to your list of noble causes, alongside increasing authoritarianism, restoring slavery, caring less for children, oppressing women, and believing in religions that you yourself think are false.
Tit-for-tat tends to dominate in iterated prisoner's dilemma competitions. The only requirement is the ability to truthfully identify defectors. If we are accurately informed enough about how and when other people are harming us, then it doesn't matter if altruism is human nature or not - people will play nice out of self-interest. Conversely, if lies and propaganda make it impossible to identify the bad guys, then villains prosper. It's all about the credit assignment problem applied to human society.
Humans are not all one thing; humans are a mix of egalitarian and social dominance impulses. Hanson already made some points that egalitarianism is not human's dominant mode, here I make a few quick points about why in-group egalitarianism and in-group communality is stronger mode of these two orientations. Note: What happens beyond the in-group is a different situation from in-group relations because large-scale societies are evolutionarily novel and our behavior in them is a cultural construction.
Contemporary, urban people try hard to have at least some egalitarian relationships in their lives. Complaining about unfairness and inequality is a major aspect of our contemporary lives. "Faux" egalitarianism is the norm in many professional spaces in WEIRD cultures, easing the discomfort of acknowledging the actual inequality. Cultures have to spend large amount of cultural capital, starting in childhood to convince people to accept power distance and hiearchy. There are always people who refuse to bend the knee and risk all to be free of subordination.
We are all unique individuals. Thusly we are each endowed and blessed differently. What is required of each of us is that we not hoard our blessings, such as they may be, but share them as our individual circumstances will beckon to us.
If we were all "naturally" egalitarian, then socialists wouldn't need to do anything, we'd already be living in their world. Whereas in fact we need to arrange society pretty damn carefully to keep a lid on inequality.
While it can be argued rationally that the human species is not an evolutionary model of social behavior, presuming an egalitarian process, just the same nothing in this explains why inequality is to be advocated as an accepted social practice from a universally accessible meaning of a philosophy. If a recent research group in AI prompt engineering indicates that the rapidly emerging, more powerful AI node acting as "agent" has answered that Chinese are of greater value than the rest of the human populations on Earth, does this have actual meaning in any way that we must, by scientific principles, respect? What is the meaning of egalitarian in a term that can be attributed to a law for all human social organization? Does it mean the answer is always that the needs of the many collectively will outweigh the needs of the one individual? If bacteria constantly recombine genetic code each generation, and retain variance in traits because this process itself functions to increase the chances that given unforeseen change in environment or material conditions, some individual variations can survive the change so that life in that species can continue, then does it violate egalitarian rules biological life seems to work in this way? For the most practical meaning, it makes no sense to tell someone that, regardless of anything, they are designated inferior in the community in which they are born. The necessary task of being is before us in the issue of any mindset that serves someone's identity before all fellows in a society where they ask for acknowledgement of their superior powers and cosmic authority to be heard. When someone does this, immediately, meaningful response in social environments has to address whether anyone else present has the same argument. If both are human, then the resolution is putting them in a gladiator pit of battle to see which one doesn't die. So much of the archaeological record of Homo sapiens from NE Africa, Homo neanderthaliensis from Eurasia, and Homo juluensis from the Asian pacific Manchurian mountain ridge to the Urals shows three rival species separated by geophysical barriers during evolutionary division from any common gene pool. In this, all indications are that they could not socially integrate with any enduring cohesion. For 400 thousand years, they seemed unable to agree on how to live side by side as neighboring human species. This is not to say that over that long period, where we have no surviving written records to account for it, that some areas with some generations of a social process did not find a way to get along, but apparently the drive to compete eventually demands which gene pool wins out in the survival contest. The lessons in the bones of antiquity indicate we need to pay attention to the problem presented by handing to someone the terms of their social status to accept existence as the pet animal of the other. Until you can resolve the meaning of this essential issue in the necessary task of being human, nothing smartly said as a spoken philosophy text in words, functions to answer the enduring question of the one designated to keep their assigned mindset as the pet dog of the other. That will never work in a self-aware intelligence, which is why the new question of what agency is, and how much like human identity, is this hypothetical agency of an AI node functioning as "agent," that it would want equal respect as an intelligent mind, even as a being, just like human archaeology tells us about ourselves. We do ourselves no service making platitudes in an essay to explain who is assigned as the pet person, owned even affectionately, by the owner person. That's not our necessary task of being.
Great, now we can add "opposing altruism" to your list of noble causes, alongside increasing authoritarianism, restoring slavery, caring less for children, oppressing women, and believing in religions that you yourself think are false.
Tit-for-tat tends to dominate in iterated prisoner's dilemma competitions. The only requirement is the ability to truthfully identify defectors. If we are accurately informed enough about how and when other people are harming us, then it doesn't matter if altruism is human nature or not - people will play nice out of self-interest. Conversely, if lies and propaganda make it impossible to identify the bad guys, then villains prosper. It's all about the credit assignment problem applied to human society.
Good insight 😃. Can i translate this article into Spanish with links to you and a description of your newsletter?
Humans are not all one thing; humans are a mix of egalitarian and social dominance impulses. Hanson already made some points that egalitarianism is not human's dominant mode, here I make a few quick points about why in-group egalitarianism and in-group communality is stronger mode of these two orientations. Note: What happens beyond the in-group is a different situation from in-group relations because large-scale societies are evolutionarily novel and our behavior in them is a cultural construction.
Contemporary, urban people try hard to have at least some egalitarian relationships in their lives. Complaining about unfairness and inequality is a major aspect of our contemporary lives. "Faux" egalitarianism is the norm in many professional spaces in WEIRD cultures, easing the discomfort of acknowledging the actual inequality. Cultures have to spend large amount of cultural capital, starting in childhood to convince people to accept power distance and hiearchy. There are always people who refuse to bend the knee and risk all to be free of subordination.
We are all unique individuals. Thusly we are each endowed and blessed differently. What is required of each of us is that we not hoard our blessings, such as they may be, but share them as our individual circumstances will beckon to us.