But if they're going in a specific direction then it doesn't make sense to describe them as "wandering" and "without obvious limits." Nor does it make sense to emphasize how random they are. Technically, according to what you're saying, driving from New York to Boston is a "random walk" (with nonzero mean) because random jitter is involved in each turn of the wheel, but it does no service to describe it that way.
Whether it's useful to considering something a random walk depends on the time scale at which you considering the process. In the limit as duration time goes to zero, changes are due to fashion. In the limit as duration time goes to infinity, changes are due to deterministic forces. In between, you will have some mixture of fashion and true innovation. The precise mixture depends on the strength of the drift, the strength of the diffusion, and the precise amount of time under consideration. Mathematically, this can be formalized using a Fokker-Plank equation, and the extent to which innovation dominates over fashion goes as \mu/sqrt(2 D) t^(1/2) where \mu is the drift strength and D is the diffusion constant.
Sure, but I don't think it's right to distinguish "innovation" and "fashion" by saying that fashion is the random part. Fashion isn't a random walk; people adopt fashions for specific reasons that are often related to larger societal trends. And in particular, moral fashion has shifted to be more compassionate towards the weak.
Yes. Since feudal times we've consistently moved in the direction of increasing empathy and tolerance for disadvantaged and oppressed groups: serfs, slaves, child laborers, people of different religions, factory workers, women, blacks, disabled, LGBTQ.
We're not doing any measurement of disadvantage & oppression. It's just not plausibly described as utilitarianism. The few people who identify as utilitarians are into things like effective altruism and considered more weird than fashionable.
Instead of saying "utilitarianism," I think it's better to describe society's moral shift in terms of helping the disfavored and oppressed more than we used to, increasing empathy for our fellow humans and even animals.
Utilitarianism can mean practically anything though, depending on how you weight and value utility. It's a very flexible framework. It only demands that you have some function telling you how much "good" there is in society - a societal utility function - which we then seek to maximize. You can dream up a societal utility function to match WHATEVER you call good. Every moral framework is utilitarianism from a certain perspective.
Rather than moving in the direction of disadvantage per se, these changes have been I think more aptly described as "widening the speed of moral concern," from oneself to ones relatives to ones tribe, eventually encompassing all sentient beings in logical conclusion. In terms of social movements this certainly looks like rescuing groups that have been especially excluded moral consideration for various reasons, but I think the "oppression" framing derives more from contemporary moral trend than the underlying cause of the expansion, which is the gradually shared realization that increasingly dissimilar entities can also suffer or thrive, and relaxing resource pressure such that we can collectively indulge problems further removed from our own survival.
Minimaxing is closer to Rawlsianism, although I wouldn't say that what's going on is quite that (rather, Rawls seems to have come up with his theory to provide justification for some popular ideas but popular ideas aren't a matter of political philosophy).
- Food, use of social media (why Instagram/TikTok/Facebook/Twitter/whatever?), size of dwelling unrelated to use, size and expense of kitchen unrelated to need (not uncommon for the most upscale kitchens to be owned by those who eat prepared foods only
- Political parties - in some ways, they are fungible commodities, in others, useful mostly for status seeking/virtue signaling. Little action difference between most of them.
- Size of bodies used to indicate status, unrelated to health or fitness. Assume that bodies within a certain range are 'healthy enough'. At the low end, not starving. At the high end, able to bend over to tie their shoes without grunting or becoming winded or light-headed; able to climb 2 flights of stairs without pain or becoming breathless. Exceptions for those with joint issues or other serious medical problems.
No, fashion is NOT utilitarian. In fact, the less useful a change is, the less fashionable it becomes
For those interested in developing a precise vocabulary for analysing cultural change, I warmly recommend to consult Everett Rogers’ classic “Diffusion of Innovations” (2003, fifth edition).
Rogers points out, among other things, that there are “cultural innovation hubs” in the world – places that Cool People elsewhere (=young high-status urban people mostly) keep a watch on. With fashion in the traditional sense, it is places like Milan and Paris. With cultural fashions it is New York, the Bay Area, Berlin and Tokyo. With political fashions [fill in yourself].
Here are some of the precisely-defined-concepts that Rogers uses to flesh out his detailed and rather grand theory:
Innovation, Diffusion, Innovation-decision process (knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation), Innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability), three types of processes (optional innovation-decision, collective innovation-decision, authority innovation-decision), Adopter Category characteristics (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards), degree of Homophily/Heterophily, Change agent, Aide, Opinion leader, Take-off, Rate of Adaption, Rejection, Re-invention, Consequences (desirable/undesirable, direct/indirect, anticipated/unanticipated).
Another “conception pump” scholar is the sociologist Peter Berger, with a supplementary list of useful concepts, including: Localisation, Revitalisation, Hybridization, Compartementalization, “Davos culture”, “Faculty Club culture”, Individuation, Extrinsic versus Intrinsic cultural linkages, Sacramental versus Non-Sacramental consumption items.
I can see people getting hung on on the apparent contradiction between these two parts:
> In the short term, fashion changes look much like evolution changes, with some initially-random variations growing in popularity, as if they had superior lasting value. But then these changes go away, replaced by new fashions, *without net gains resulting*.
vs
> But moral fashion actually seems to be more of a (not necessarily zero mean) random walk in a not so limited space.
I think your main point is that moral fashions can leave lasting impacts. In that sense, they do seem innovative. However, the selection pressure is off so the component of them that is innovative is dangerous.
>agree on a way to precisely and canonically evaluate cultural packages of morals, norms, values, and status markers, then it should become harder for moral fashions to change them.
This is John Locke’s idea of natural law as I understand it. The idea that there is a set of beliefs, institutions, and values that is empirically better for human happiness and flourishing in society. We can approach this by reason - both by reasoning out some best practices and by evaluating what has and hasn’t worked so well in the past.
Makes sense to me, but value judgments on cultures became super taboo in the second half of the 20th century. I’m hoping Lockean natural law can return to fashion.
Cultures whose citizens do not share a common moral core are prone to moral panics and moral fashions. That includes most of the Western world, as is now obvious.
Cultures with consensual more cores, like China's Confucian ethic, have a distinct advantage over us for this reason, as J. M. Keynes observed, “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
if you tie in choices, and choices as agreements/meetings/negotiations/memes/rejections/identities as iterating chaos/complexity structures in a world or two among other worlds attempting to survive, you'll get an interesting epicycle framework for what you are writing,
I think fashion rewards attention to fashion. If you care - and can afford - to pay close attention you too can be fashionable. If you prefer to spend all your time thinking about Plato or heavy metal poisoning the fashionable people will respond by ignoring you. This can lead to problems only if you need something from them, e.g., funding or social engagement. But as long as you and they live in distinct social niches everyone can be happy.
Why do you say it is a random walk? To me it looks like a walk in a particular direction, roughly described by utilitarianism
Random walks don't have to have zero mean per step.
But if they're going in a specific direction then it doesn't make sense to describe them as "wandering" and "without obvious limits." Nor does it make sense to emphasize how random they are. Technically, according to what you're saying, driving from New York to Boston is a "random walk" (with nonzero mean) because random jitter is involved in each turn of the wheel, but it does no service to describe it that way.
Whether it's useful to considering something a random walk depends on the time scale at which you considering the process. In the limit as duration time goes to zero, changes are due to fashion. In the limit as duration time goes to infinity, changes are due to deterministic forces. In between, you will have some mixture of fashion and true innovation. The precise mixture depends on the strength of the drift, the strength of the diffusion, and the precise amount of time under consideration. Mathematically, this can be formalized using a Fokker-Plank equation, and the extent to which innovation dominates over fashion goes as \mu/sqrt(2 D) t^(1/2) where \mu is the drift strength and D is the diffusion constant.
Sure, but I don't think it's right to distinguish "innovation" and "fashion" by saying that fashion is the random part. Fashion isn't a random walk; people adopt fashions for specific reasons that are often related to larger societal trends. And in particular, moral fashion has shifted to be more compassionate towards the weak.
Yes. Since feudal times we've consistently moved in the direction of increasing empathy and tolerance for disadvantaged and oppressed groups: serfs, slaves, child laborers, people of different religions, factory workers, women, blacks, disabled, LGBTQ.
We're not doing any measurement of disadvantage & oppression. It's just not plausibly described as utilitarianism. The few people who identify as utilitarians are into things like effective altruism and considered more weird than fashionable.
Instead of saying "utilitarianism," I think it's better to describe society's moral shift in terms of helping the disfavored and oppressed more than we used to, increasing empathy for our fellow humans and even animals.
Utilitarianism can mean practically anything though, depending on how you weight and value utility. It's a very flexible framework. It only demands that you have some function telling you how much "good" there is in society - a societal utility function - which we then seek to maximize. You can dream up a societal utility function to match WHATEVER you call good. Every moral framework is utilitarianism from a certain perspective.
Rather than moving in the direction of disadvantage per se, these changes have been I think more aptly described as "widening the speed of moral concern," from oneself to ones relatives to ones tribe, eventually encompassing all sentient beings in logical conclusion. In terms of social movements this certainly looks like rescuing groups that have been especially excluded moral consideration for various reasons, but I think the "oppression" framing derives more from contemporary moral trend than the underlying cause of the expansion, which is the gradually shared realization that increasingly dissimilar entities can also suffer or thrive, and relaxing resource pressure such that we can collectively indulge problems further removed from our own survival.
That widening scope is the moral theory found in Heinlein's Starship Troopers. There's explicit discussion about how it could eventually encompass other species, just as it had expanded to cover all humans. https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/starship-troopers/
Indeed, or even non-biological beings.
Minimaxing is closer to Rawlsianism, although I wouldn't say that what's going on is quite that (rather, Rawls seems to have come up with his theory to provide justification for some popular ideas but popular ideas aren't a matter of political philosophy).
Not even close. Think of some modern trends that have been abandoned:
- Low-slung pants, far below the waist, in many cases hovering below the ass - no utility other than a marker for status
- 4-5 inch heels in women - not even relatively stable, but stiletto style
- Long hair on men, held out of the way with a man-bun - not only time consuming, but - in many occupations/sports, actually hazardous
- tats, piercings, bodily modifications - expensive, and, frankly, useless
- Food, use of social media (why Instagram/TikTok/Facebook/Twitter/whatever?), size of dwelling unrelated to use, size and expense of kitchen unrelated to need (not uncommon for the most upscale kitchens to be owned by those who eat prepared foods only
- Political parties - in some ways, they are fungible commodities, in others, useful mostly for status seeking/virtue signaling. Little action difference between most of them.
- Size of bodies used to indicate status, unrelated to health or fitness. Assume that bodies within a certain range are 'healthy enough'. At the low end, not starving. At the high end, able to bend over to tie their shoes without grunting or becoming winded or light-headed; able to climb 2 flights of stairs without pain or becoming breathless. Exceptions for those with joint issues or other serious medical problems.
No, fashion is NOT utilitarian. In fact, the less useful a change is, the less fashionable it becomes
For those interested in developing a precise vocabulary for analysing cultural change, I warmly recommend to consult Everett Rogers’ classic “Diffusion of Innovations” (2003, fifth edition).
Rogers points out, among other things, that there are “cultural innovation hubs” in the world – places that Cool People elsewhere (=young high-status urban people mostly) keep a watch on. With fashion in the traditional sense, it is places like Milan and Paris. With cultural fashions it is New York, the Bay Area, Berlin and Tokyo. With political fashions [fill in yourself].
Here are some of the precisely-defined-concepts that Rogers uses to flesh out his detailed and rather grand theory:
Innovation, Diffusion, Innovation-decision process (knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation), Innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability), three types of processes (optional innovation-decision, collective innovation-decision, authority innovation-decision), Adopter Category characteristics (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards), degree of Homophily/Heterophily, Change agent, Aide, Opinion leader, Take-off, Rate of Adaption, Rejection, Re-invention, Consequences (desirable/undesirable, direct/indirect, anticipated/unanticipated).
Another “conception pump” scholar is the sociologist Peter Berger, with a supplementary list of useful concepts, including: Localisation, Revitalisation, Hybridization, Compartementalization, “Davos culture”, “Faculty Club culture”, Individuation, Extrinsic versus Intrinsic cultural linkages, Sacramental versus Non-Sacramental consumption items.
I think you would enjoy this essay: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2015/12/god-is-telomeme.html.
In the long term, traditions tend to outlast fashions.
I can see people getting hung on on the apparent contradiction between these two parts:
> In the short term, fashion changes look much like evolution changes, with some initially-random variations growing in popularity, as if they had superior lasting value. But then these changes go away, replaced by new fashions, *without net gains resulting*.
vs
> But moral fashion actually seems to be more of a (not necessarily zero mean) random walk in a not so limited space.
I think your main point is that moral fashions can leave lasting impacts. In that sense, they do seem innovative. However, the selection pressure is off so the component of them that is innovative is dangerous.
True; I just tried to reword to make that clearer.
>agree on a way to precisely and canonically evaluate cultural packages of morals, norms, values, and status markers, then it should become harder for moral fashions to change them.
This is John Locke’s idea of natural law as I understand it. The idea that there is a set of beliefs, institutions, and values that is empirically better for human happiness and flourishing in society. We can approach this by reason - both by reasoning out some best practices and by evaluating what has and hasn’t worked so well in the past.
Makes sense to me, but value judgments on cultures became super taboo in the second half of the 20th century. I’m hoping Lockean natural law can return to fashion.
Cultures whose citizens do not share a common moral core are prone to moral panics and moral fashions. That includes most of the Western world, as is now obvious.
Cultures with consensual more cores, like China's Confucian ethic, have a distinct advantage over us for this reason, as J. M. Keynes observed, “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
That rules us out.
Code word alert--"activists!"
Should I be worried if you don't post for a few days?
Typo in
> initiate mroe temporary
fixed; thanks
go look up Mary Douglas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Douglas
if you tie in choices, and choices as agreements/meetings/negotiations/memes/rejections/identities as iterating chaos/complexity structures in a world or two among other worlds attempting to survive, you'll get an interesting epicycle framework for what you are writing,
me?
I prefer tarot cards.
Any particular works by Douglas you'd recommend as relevant?
there no chaos/complexity framework in her work, that's my guessful addtion
The three main ones are below, my discovery began with Thought Styles nearly 30 years ago.
Douglas, Mary.
———. Natural Symbols. Penguin, 1970.
———. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo | with a New Preface by the Author. Routledge Classics. London: Routledge, 2002.
———. Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste. London: SAGE publications, 1996.
I think you are overthinking this. Moral fashion is nothing more than vanity and egotism.
I think fashion rewards attention to fashion. If you care - and can afford - to pay close attention you too can be fashionable. If you prefer to spend all your time thinking about Plato or heavy metal poisoning the fashionable people will respond by ignoring you. This can lead to problems only if you need something from them, e.g., funding or social engagement. But as long as you and they live in distinct social niches everyone can be happy.