Right; if you put a spoonful of spaghetti sauce in a pot of sewage, you have a pot of sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a pot of spaghetti sauce, you have a pot of sewage.
"...only immoral people do bad things, whereas both moral and immoral people do good things." Isn't this naive? Often moral people end up doing bad things by not fully understanding the situation, or in the belief that their choice is the moral one.
Yes I agree with you. Like when you are under stress you will usually make a lot of bad decisions. But then the question becomes if both immoral people and moral people do destructive things, how do we tell them apart?
"Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end."
Most people do see when things they done turn sour. But that’s after the consequences slapped them in the face too many times. The hurt is done and even if they can see that something went wrong and they feel regret in some sense, they are not gonna change anything meaningful. I met a lot of people from around the world in my days but I must say that very very few people is what you could be consider “moral”. And 99% is still considering themself moral. Only if people did things more like I then the world would be a paradise. I’m not much better my self in that regard.
What does this even mean? If I tried to define what 1 unit of good deeds were from first principles it would be the amount of good needed to cancel 1 unit of bad deeds (a la utility function existence proof). Ok, but under that definition it's straightforwardly impossible for bad to be more powerful than good since we've defined the units to be what makes them equally important.
Ok, maybe on this metric the claim is that more bad happens than good? But the world is getting better and more moral. Or is the claim that the median/mean bad act is more bad than the corresponding median/mean good act? First, why not describe that as good being easier than bad (far more good acts must occur to balance no)? Second, what evidence is there it's true? I see lots of assholes inflicting small harms and a few people who make huge positive contributions.
I suspect that what's going on is that when we think of bad we don't include all those small kinds of bad acts. This is just reflection of fact we are reluctant to call the people who are just a bit too strict/unsuprortive/distant bad parents because the benefit from criticism wouldn't be worth the cost. Socially that's a good policy, but I don't see a deeper truth. If there is one can someone spell it out?
Utility function have their usage, but you could also just make a compliment to person 1 and an inverse to person 2. See what happens when you say “you are a good parent” to one person, and the opposite to the other (I’m joking, don’t do that).
Yes, that's exactly my point. It's not that there aren't plenty of things parents do that might make a child's life slightly worse. Making a child eat his green beans when they find them disgusting qualifies if it's not really needed to be healthy/teach character. Rather, it's that humans are very sensitive to criticism so we avoid calling things bad unless they are so bad the harms of the criticism are outweighed by the need to discourage.
Thus, it's not that there is an asymetry out there in the world that means harmful acts are more powerful than helpful. The asymetry is in our willingness to call out something harmful as bad vs praise something beneficial as good.
You might think of a utility function that changes over time with the introduction of each new piece of information, good or bad. Good information is defined as information that makes the function go up, bad information is defined as information that makes the function go down. Then, the idea that "bad" information is more important than "good" information, means that the function has small positive slope most of the time, and large negative slope occasionally. "Usually things improve, but only little by little, and occasionally things get worse, but in big jumps."
But that doesn't seem to be true. The discoveries of general anesthesia, antibiotics, morphine, artificial fertilizer, steam/internal combustion engines, electric lights, IC etc etc were all positive jumps that dwarfed even the worst genocides of the 20th century. Hitler killed several million, Stalin and Mao maybe tens of millions. Antibiotics alone have saved billions.
An overall upward trend is compatible with, "usually things improve, but only little by little, and occasionally things get worse, but in big jumps." If the big jumps downward are infrequent enough the overall trend can still be upward.
It takes many years to build up wealth and property that can be destroyed in an afternoon by fire, storms, or war. This does not mean that fire, storms, and war win in the long run, just that *when* they win it is a comparatively sudden and drastic event.
Yes, it's true that an overall upward trend doesn't rule out that possiblity but what is the actual evidence for the claim that the negative things tend to be more negative? The implication was that the evidence was that the big negative impacts were larger than the big positive ones. I've already pointed out that doesn't seem to be true if we look at the absolute most impactful things. What about even in a individual life?
Well no, if we look at how unhappy people who never find romantic partners are it seems like having relationships are hugely impactful positive things. Same could be said about being healthy or having access to reliable sources of food and housing.
But, you might object, I'm just reframing the absence of a negative as a positive. Yah, sure, but that's the point. What's really doing the work here isn't that positive things are less positive than negative things negative. It's that we live in a pretty nice world so implicitly measure relative to the expectation things are going to be pretty good.
but if it's not that the worst bad things are way bigger than the best good things what is the actual evidence for the claim that
You mentioned "general anesthesia, antibiotics, morphine, artificial fertilizer, steam/internal combustion engines, electric lights, IC" but the effects of these weren't so sudden - not as sudden as a fire or a war. It took many years for each of these inventions to gradually spread and produce material benefit on a large scale. Each was a bigger deal overall than a war, but the large benefits accrued gradually.
When destruction happens, it usually happens faster than creation. It's faster to stick a knife in someone than to treat and heal a knife wound. Faster to crash a car than to build one. Faster to bomb a city than to build a city. There are exceptions: the aging process happens slower than growth to maturity. But usually destruction is faster. It's safe to say that the fastest way to destroy any complex system, is faster than the fastest way to create it.
Creation requires the careful (read: slow) arrangement of parts into functional relationships, destruction requires only sufficient randomization of the parts. Almost all of the state space of a set of parts is part of a "destroyed" system macrostate, very little is part of a "functional" system macrostate.
Although, this has all strayed far from Hanson's post, which is not about the rate at which good or bad things happen, it's about the rate at which we revise our assessment of a topic upon hearing good or bad things about the topic. What I was originally saying is that when we hear a good thing about a topic, our estimation of the topic goes up a little bit. When we hear a bad thing about the topic, our estimation goes down substantially. Imagine you are thinking of buying a used car and the salesman lists dozens of things in the car that function properly. Your valuation of the car will go up with each working feature the salesman mentions, but only by a small amount, because you already expected most parts of any used car work, so it doesn't change your expectations much. But then if you hear about three things that are wrong with the car, that's going to impact your expectations by a lot, and decrease the value of the car substantially.
If the world is overall getting better and that's the result of people's actions it must be true that most people end up doing more good in the world than they do harm. And when it comes to outliers I see more people who have had huge positive effects on the world (eg improving agriculture, inventing things with huge impacts..or just working to support those inventions) than similarly outsized villains (the worst genocides are in the tens of millions but using the stat value of a life many people have increased world GDP by more).
“The strength of an attacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; all growth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent — or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one’s entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms — opponents who are equal.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We likely underestimate how important are bad things to our systems of values" - I don't see the support for that in your quotes. What I see from your quotes is that people like to *talk* in positive terms, especially when it comes to self-reporting, but like to *think* (listen, read, judge) in negative terms.
The positive talking is likely an attempt to fool others into thinking we're happier and better than we know we are. Also to avoid giving too much offense. And it's not very successful because the listeners compensate for it.
Interesting post this with relevance to the formation of political opinions and postures. I think that the psychology underlying political opinions can often be best understood by viewing the ostensible subject matter of the 'opinion' (race, gender, inequality etc etc) as actually a proxy for something else. That 'something else' can be an essentially narcissistic desire to feel more positive about oneself and a corresponding visceral desire to vent-by-proxy a dislike or contempt for some other social group. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Right; if you put a spoonful of spaghetti sauce in a pot of sewage, you have a pot of sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a pot of spaghetti sauce, you have a pot of sewage.
"...only immoral people do bad things, whereas both moral and immoral people do good things." Isn't this naive? Often moral people end up doing bad things by not fully understanding the situation, or in the belief that their choice is the moral one.
My Cathlolic education said all people end up doing bad things knowing full well they are bad things. Hence Jesus for all people.
Meanwhile, my "there is no free will" friends are not surprised that no one here has any idea of what they're talking about.
Yes I agree with you. Like when you are under stress you will usually make a lot of bad decisions. But then the question becomes if both immoral people and moral people do destructive things, how do we tell them apart?
Moral people will acknowledge their mistakes.
I am reminded of this Vasily Grossman-quote:
"Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end."
Most people do see when things they done turn sour. But that’s after the consequences slapped them in the face too many times. The hurt is done and even if they can see that something went wrong and they feel regret in some sense, they are not gonna change anything meaningful. I met a lot of people from around the world in my days but I must say that very very few people is what you could be consider “moral”. And 99% is still considering themself moral. Only if people did things more like I then the world would be a paradise. I’m not much better my self in that regard.
What does this even mean? If I tried to define what 1 unit of good deeds were from first principles it would be the amount of good needed to cancel 1 unit of bad deeds (a la utility function existence proof). Ok, but under that definition it's straightforwardly impossible for bad to be more powerful than good since we've defined the units to be what makes them equally important.
Ok, maybe on this metric the claim is that more bad happens than good? But the world is getting better and more moral. Or is the claim that the median/mean bad act is more bad than the corresponding median/mean good act? First, why not describe that as good being easier than bad (far more good acts must occur to balance no)? Second, what evidence is there it's true? I see lots of assholes inflicting small harms and a few people who make huge positive contributions.
I suspect that what's going on is that when we think of bad we don't include all those small kinds of bad acts. This is just reflection of fact we are reluctant to call the people who are just a bit too strict/unsuprortive/distant bad parents because the benefit from criticism wouldn't be worth the cost. Socially that's a good policy, but I don't see a deeper truth. If there is one can someone spell it out?
Utility function have their usage, but you could also just make a compliment to person 1 and an inverse to person 2. See what happens when you say “you are a good parent” to one person, and the opposite to the other (I’m joking, don’t do that).
Yes, that's exactly my point. It's not that there aren't plenty of things parents do that might make a child's life slightly worse. Making a child eat his green beans when they find them disgusting qualifies if it's not really needed to be healthy/teach character. Rather, it's that humans are very sensitive to criticism so we avoid calling things bad unless they are so bad the harms of the criticism are outweighed by the need to discourage.
Thus, it's not that there is an asymetry out there in the world that means harmful acts are more powerful than helpful. The asymetry is in our willingness to call out something harmful as bad vs praise something beneficial as good.
You might think of a utility function that changes over time with the introduction of each new piece of information, good or bad. Good information is defined as information that makes the function go up, bad information is defined as information that makes the function go down. Then, the idea that "bad" information is more important than "good" information, means that the function has small positive slope most of the time, and large negative slope occasionally. "Usually things improve, but only little by little, and occasionally things get worse, but in big jumps."
But that doesn't seem to be true. The discoveries of general anesthesia, antibiotics, morphine, artificial fertilizer, steam/internal combustion engines, electric lights, IC etc etc were all positive jumps that dwarfed even the worst genocides of the 20th century. Hitler killed several million, Stalin and Mao maybe tens of millions. Antibiotics alone have saved billions.
An overall upward trend is compatible with, "usually things improve, but only little by little, and occasionally things get worse, but in big jumps." If the big jumps downward are infrequent enough the overall trend can still be upward.
It takes many years to build up wealth and property that can be destroyed in an afternoon by fire, storms, or war. This does not mean that fire, storms, and war win in the long run, just that *when* they win it is a comparatively sudden and drastic event.
Yes, it's true that an overall upward trend doesn't rule out that possiblity but what is the actual evidence for the claim that the negative things tend to be more negative? The implication was that the evidence was that the big negative impacts were larger than the big positive ones. I've already pointed out that doesn't seem to be true if we look at the absolute most impactful things. What about even in a individual life?
Well no, if we look at how unhappy people who never find romantic partners are it seems like having relationships are hugely impactful positive things. Same could be said about being healthy or having access to reliable sources of food and housing.
But, you might object, I'm just reframing the absence of a negative as a positive. Yah, sure, but that's the point. What's really doing the work here isn't that positive things are less positive than negative things negative. It's that we live in a pretty nice world so implicitly measure relative to the expectation things are going to be pretty good.
but if it's not that the worst bad things are way bigger than the best good things what is the actual evidence for the claim that
You mentioned "general anesthesia, antibiotics, morphine, artificial fertilizer, steam/internal combustion engines, electric lights, IC" but the effects of these weren't so sudden - not as sudden as a fire or a war. It took many years for each of these inventions to gradually spread and produce material benefit on a large scale. Each was a bigger deal overall than a war, but the large benefits accrued gradually.
When destruction happens, it usually happens faster than creation. It's faster to stick a knife in someone than to treat and heal a knife wound. Faster to crash a car than to build one. Faster to bomb a city than to build a city. There are exceptions: the aging process happens slower than growth to maturity. But usually destruction is faster. It's safe to say that the fastest way to destroy any complex system, is faster than the fastest way to create it.
Creation requires the careful (read: slow) arrangement of parts into functional relationships, destruction requires only sufficient randomization of the parts. Almost all of the state space of a set of parts is part of a "destroyed" system macrostate, very little is part of a "functional" system macrostate.
Although, this has all strayed far from Hanson's post, which is not about the rate at which good or bad things happen, it's about the rate at which we revise our assessment of a topic upon hearing good or bad things about the topic. What I was originally saying is that when we hear a good thing about a topic, our estimation of the topic goes up a little bit. When we hear a bad thing about the topic, our estimation goes down substantially. Imagine you are thinking of buying a used car and the salesman lists dozens of things in the car that function properly. Your valuation of the car will go up with each working feature the salesman mentions, but only by a small amount, because you already expected most parts of any used car work, so it doesn't change your expectations much. But then if you hear about three things that are wrong with the car, that's going to impact your expectations by a lot, and decrease the value of the car substantially.
If the world is overall getting better and that's the result of people's actions it must be true that most people end up doing more good in the world than they do harm. And when it comes to outliers I see more people who have had huge positive effects on the world (eg improving agriculture, inventing things with huge impacts..or just working to support those inventions) than similarly outsized villains (the worst genocides are in the tens of millions but using the stat value of a life many people have increased world GDP by more).
I have previously learned that one negative interaction has the same potency as 7 positive interactions. Bad is far more impactful than good.
“The strength of an attacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; all growth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent — or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one’s entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms — opponents who are equal.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
This is concordant with my intuition that the biggest personal motivator is fear, not love or any other 'positive' affect driver.
Is near processing for bad? What about the arrangement of eyes on predators and prey animals? Which is doing focused vs holistic processing?
The theme also relates to my vicious-tail interpretation here:
https://dklein780.medium.com/the-tail-that-wagged-the-party-f3be6e89b891
Thanks for alerting us to the 2001 paper and to the nice post. I agree.
And so does Adam Smith, particularly pp. 27–50 of TMS. Representations of some ideas are Figure 34 and 23 here:
https://adamsmithprogram.org/figures/
Sorry for typos. Figures 34 and 23.
"We likely underestimate how important are bad things to our systems of values" - I don't see the support for that in your quotes. What I see from your quotes is that people like to *talk* in positive terms, especially when it comes to self-reporting, but like to *think* (listen, read, judge) in negative terms.
The positive talking is likely an attempt to fool others into thinking we're happier and better than we know we are. Also to avoid giving too much offense. And it's not very successful because the listeners compensate for it.
Interesting post this with relevance to the formation of political opinions and postures. I think that the psychology underlying political opinions can often be best understood by viewing the ostensible subject matter of the 'opinion' (race, gender, inequality etc etc) as actually a proxy for something else. That 'something else' can be an essentially narcissistic desire to feel more positive about oneself and a corresponding visceral desire to vent-by-proxy a dislike or contempt for some other social group. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/