Feels maybe im stupid, but i feel like this logic leads to being against economic freedom and equal rights in front of the law?
I certainly get the impression that heavily conservative peopleand the far right use this logic heavily: a relative of mine would likely read this and say “yes, and thats why we must deport X group”
I can see equal legal rights as a deal we might make. But you can see my vouching for criminal law proposal as letting each person buy their legal rights. Which is unequal, but seems good.
I read this as strong advocacy of your beliefs as a way to maintain the "evolutionary equilibrium" Robin mentions. It's advocacy of ideas that allow them to compete and maintain the state of tension that forces an equilibrium.
It's not an argument against competing groups agreeing to do so on a ground of equal rights/freedoms. But it is an argument for favoring a particular group in that competition, and for that group to agree to rules it expects to particularly benefit from.
Rules like - gerrymandering in favor of your party? Closing polling stations used by people who don't vote for your party?
If you win with such tactics, what has won is an autocratic monster that a rational person wouldn't *want* to win. Countries ruled by a single party that has subverted the democratic process are the worst places to live. It doesn't matter the nominal ideology of the single party rule, right wing or left wing - in practice, they just act as autocrats to preserve their own power, which is bad for the people.
Fairness always has to come first, if you want your efforts to go towards a better society, as opposed to a worse one.
It sure didn't *help*. It's a matter of degree; just how free and fair are your elections? The less free and fair, the more autocratic, until a line is crossed into one party rule and the loss of democracy. China, Russia, North Korea, the Nazis and so on. A government will only act in the interest of its citizens if and *to the extent that* the politicians depend on the meaningful consent of its citizens to rule.
There seems to be a current right wing movement in the US to do *more* gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics and attacks on elections themselves. Keep going down that road and it *does* lead to full autocracy where your vote only counts if you vote for the "right guy." What the "right guy" does after that will have little to do with the original ideology of his party, since he's no longer required to get the people's consent. Autocrats tend to go full sociopath.
We've been going down that road since 1812, but it still hasn't resulted in autocracy, and actual voting rates have been quite high recently for Presidential elections in states that are allegedly suppressing votes.
We haven't been consistently going down that road since 1812 - there have also been reversals in favor of more fair elections, such as when black people and women got the vote. What's happening now is a new trend for the worse.
Furthermore the USA already does have many autocratic tendencies. Especially since Citizens United got big money into politics (yaay!)
Voting rates in the US are very low compared to most first world countries, around 60-70% even for Presidential elections, and lower rates for other elections, particularly local. Why? Voting is not compulsory, it's not even a holiday, polling station lines are hours long particularly in urban areas, voter ID laws put additional obstacles in front of poor voters. Australia by comparison has compulsory voting (>90% of registered voters vote in every federal election.)
Look at it this way. If you have liars and cheats who act unfairly to get power, you can't trust those people to act on your interest either, no matter what they say to you. They are established liars and cheats. If they win, their victory is not your victory, regardless of what your tribal instincts are telling you. If you want to promote a world that *you* would approve of, you have to be on the side of fairness and honesty, and vote out the bastards who aren't.
Intriguing post, Robin. You've brought to light a fundamental tension between the desire to be a benevolent, impartial force for good and the evolutionary pressures that can penalize such impartiality. I appreciate the nuance you've captured in this analysis, and it certainly gives me food for thought.
You make good points, but the question then becomes, which groups should a rational person favor? Should they favor whatever groups they happen to find themselves in? Not necessarily - some of those groups might be opposed to some of the values of the rational person. Or some of those groups might evolve their aims over time to become opposed to some of the values of the rational person. Consider Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
This suggests that if you dedicate yourself to an org that at present seems aligned with your values, over time it will evolve into something that is not aligned with anything but its own power. And what reason do you have to devote your life to promoting a future group that will be aligned with nothing but its own power? Not your power, either - the future group's power, after you're dead and after it is no longer aligned with its present values.
Therefore, a rational person should devote themselves to a group that somehow is immune or at least resistant to Pournelle's Iron Law. What kind of group would that be?
Logically, I have a hard time disagreeing, but morally this feels like "Might is Right" will win out in the end, unless some strategic, Machiavellian influence is exerted in the direction of the 'weaker' side of a battle. So if what you really believe to be important is diversity of thought, then picking the losing side might be the best bet.
If you just support a temporary loser in a battle, then your energy will decay over time, and you won't have energy later to support temporary losers then. If you could somehow support a loser to make them permanent, then your actions will have longer term effects.
When survival of all is at stake, people unify to face the danger. When all factions share a common fate, factionalism and infighting risk losing the larger war.
FWIW, Machiavelli came to the same conclusion as you have here, for different reasons. "A prince is also much respected but he is either a true friend or a downright enemy. In other words, when he declares himself without any reservation in favour of one party against the other. This will always be more favourable than remaining neutral. ... It will always be more advantageous for you to declare yourself and to wage a vigorous war. If you do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall prey to the winner, which will be to the pleasure and satisfaction of the loser, and you will have nothing nor anyone to protect or to shelter you." (his point being that even if you lose, the loser will shelter you as a loyal ally, but if you stay neutral all sides will consider you untrustworthy).
Summary: helping ingroup and outgroup equally may lead to less net help reaching ingroup than helping only ingroup.
Is other news, giving all your money to charity may leave you broke.
Isn't this just another one of those negative-sum equilibria that take conscious work to *avoid* (let alone we forget they exist). More interesting IMO how the descendants in the evolved system might have a very different pov on what constitutes the co-evolved network. Had women's suffrage not been adopted a century ago, I might have held roughly double the political power. Yet I don't feel like my male ancestors hung me out to dry. Do you feel different?
I’m not sure something needs to support its associated evolutionary systems to survive. It just needs to not destroy them. Eg a virus can survive long-term only if it doesn’t kill its hosts too efficiently.
The “help everyone equally” strategy is a particular brand of virtue signaling, which seems to have strong evolutionary support. In particular, it has the advantage of resonating with our sense of fairness, like equality before the law. Also, it counts as an ideology, which fits into your framework - it can survive long-term, is more likely to thrive if we devote resources to it.
While neutrality might seem like the moral high ground, it often results in limited influence. Your insights into how group dynamics and loyalty play a significant role in cementing one's influence are both fascinating and counterintuitive. Realising as much challenges us to re-evaluate our beliefs and forces us to confront the idea that, in a world marked by polarization, fence-sitting may not be the best strategy for leaving a legacy.
Helping everyone (for feel-good social signaling purposes) in a way which is unhelpful for the next generation has been our primary goal as a civilization for quite some time. It has not gone well.
An analogy here might be financial investing. With investing often a mixed strategy is preferred because there are certain kinds of risks that can be hedged by spreading your money around. However, in truth it depends on the particular game one is playing. If the game is winner-take-all, then the optimal strategy is to go all-in on some high-risk/high-return bet. The people we recognize as the most influential in history tend to be biased toward this latter strategy; they are not especially "balanced" individuals.
I am most definitely a consequentialist, if that is what you mean. Principles and deontological stances aren't realistic if you live on a real planet, with real people, and with the simple acknowledgement that the future is going to happen. This is actually hard to say in public because we have to pretend otherwise. For example: there is absolutely a hypothetical person you could imagine that should be blocked from becoming president even if this requires stuff that is against principles you normally or typically *think* you hold dear.
Feels maybe im stupid, but i feel like this logic leads to being against economic freedom and equal rights in front of the law?
I certainly get the impression that heavily conservative peopleand the far right use this logic heavily: a relative of mine would likely read this and say “yes, and thats why we must deport X group”
I can see equal legal rights as a deal we might make. But you can see my vouching for criminal law proposal as letting each person buy their legal rights. Which is unequal, but seems good.
Why would we make that deal?
Have you written about this buying your legal rights idea?
Yes under "vouching".
I read this as strong advocacy of your beliefs as a way to maintain the "evolutionary equilibrium" Robin mentions. It's advocacy of ideas that allow them to compete and maintain the state of tension that forces an equilibrium.
It's not an argument against competing groups agreeing to do so on a ground of equal rights/freedoms. But it is an argument for favoring a particular group in that competition, and for that group to agree to rules it expects to particularly benefit from.
Rules like - gerrymandering in favor of your party? Closing polling stations used by people who don't vote for your party?
If you win with such tactics, what has won is an autocratic monster that a rational person wouldn't *want* to win. Countries ruled by a single party that has subverted the democratic process are the worst places to live. It doesn't matter the nominal ideology of the single party rule, right wing or left wing - in practice, they just act as autocrats to preserve their own power, which is bad for the people.
Fairness always has to come first, if you want your efforts to go towards a better society, as opposed to a worse one.
The term "gerrymander" goes back to 1812, and the practice of it did not in fact turn the US into an autocracy.
It sure didn't *help*. It's a matter of degree; just how free and fair are your elections? The less free and fair, the more autocratic, until a line is crossed into one party rule and the loss of democracy. China, Russia, North Korea, the Nazis and so on. A government will only act in the interest of its citizens if and *to the extent that* the politicians depend on the meaningful consent of its citizens to rule.
There seems to be a current right wing movement in the US to do *more* gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics and attacks on elections themselves. Keep going down that road and it *does* lead to full autocracy where your vote only counts if you vote for the "right guy." What the "right guy" does after that will have little to do with the original ideology of his party, since he's no longer required to get the people's consent. Autocrats tend to go full sociopath.
We've been going down that road since 1812, but it still hasn't resulted in autocracy, and actual voting rates have been quite high recently for Presidential elections in states that are allegedly suppressing votes.
We haven't been consistently going down that road since 1812 - there have also been reversals in favor of more fair elections, such as when black people and women got the vote. What's happening now is a new trend for the worse.
Furthermore the USA already does have many autocratic tendencies. Especially since Citizens United got big money into politics (yaay!)
Voting rates in the US are very low compared to most first world countries, around 60-70% even for Presidential elections, and lower rates for other elections, particularly local. Why? Voting is not compulsory, it's not even a holiday, polling station lines are hours long particularly in urban areas, voter ID laws put additional obstacles in front of poor voters. Australia by comparison has compulsory voting (>90% of registered voters vote in every federal election.)
Look at it this way. If you have liars and cheats who act unfairly to get power, you can't trust those people to act on your interest either, no matter what they say to you. They are established liars and cheats. If they win, their victory is not your victory, regardless of what your tribal instincts are telling you. If you want to promote a world that *you* would approve of, you have to be on the side of fairness and honesty, and vote out the bastards who aren't.
Intriguing post, Robin. You've brought to light a fundamental tension between the desire to be a benevolent, impartial force for good and the evolutionary pressures that can penalize such impartiality. I appreciate the nuance you've captured in this analysis, and it certainly gives me food for thought.
You make good points, but the question then becomes, which groups should a rational person favor? Should they favor whatever groups they happen to find themselves in? Not necessarily - some of those groups might be opposed to some of the values of the rational person. Or some of those groups might evolve their aims over time to become opposed to some of the values of the rational person. Consider Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
This suggests that if you dedicate yourself to an org that at present seems aligned with your values, over time it will evolve into something that is not aligned with anything but its own power. And what reason do you have to devote your life to promoting a future group that will be aligned with nothing but its own power? Not your power, either - the future group's power, after you're dead and after it is no longer aligned with its present values.
Therefore, a rational person should devote themselves to a group that somehow is immune or at least resistant to Pournelle's Iron Law. What kind of group would that be?
Logically, I have a hard time disagreeing, but morally this feels like "Might is Right" will win out in the end, unless some strategic, Machiavellian influence is exerted in the direction of the 'weaker' side of a battle. So if what you really believe to be important is diversity of thought, then picking the losing side might be the best bet.
If you just support a temporary loser in a battle, then your energy will decay over time, and you won't have energy later to support temporary losers then. If you could somehow support a loser to make them permanent, then your actions will have longer term effects.
Baptists should be looking for bootleggers.
Thanks, I needed to read this. I feel stuck between a lot of different communities and I'm not sure where I am going to fit.
For long-term influence vs. other groups, yes.
When survival of all is at stake, people unify to face the danger. When all factions share a common fate, factionalism and infighting risk losing the larger war.
FWIW, Machiavelli came to the same conclusion as you have here, for different reasons. "A prince is also much respected but he is either a true friend or a downright enemy. In other words, when he declares himself without any reservation in favour of one party against the other. This will always be more favourable than remaining neutral. ... It will always be more advantageous for you to declare yourself and to wage a vigorous war. If you do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall prey to the winner, which will be to the pleasure and satisfaction of the loser, and you will have nothing nor anyone to protect or to shelter you." (his point being that even if you lose, the loser will shelter you as a loyal ally, but if you stay neutral all sides will consider you untrustworthy).
Summary: helping ingroup and outgroup equally may lead to less net help reaching ingroup than helping only ingroup.
Is other news, giving all your money to charity may leave you broke.
Isn't this just another one of those negative-sum equilibria that take conscious work to *avoid* (let alone we forget they exist). More interesting IMO how the descendants in the evolved system might have a very different pov on what constitutes the co-evolved network. Had women's suffrage not been adopted a century ago, I might have held roughly double the political power. Yet I don't feel like my male ancestors hung me out to dry. Do you feel different?
I’m not sure something needs to support its associated evolutionary systems to survive. It just needs to not destroy them. Eg a virus can survive long-term only if it doesn’t kill its hosts too efficiently.
The “help everyone equally” strategy is a particular brand of virtue signaling, which seems to have strong evolutionary support. In particular, it has the advantage of resonating with our sense of fairness, like equality before the law. Also, it counts as an ideology, which fits into your framework - it can survive long-term, is more likely to thrive if we devote resources to it.
Seems right to the extent that your allies also desire long term universal influence.
While neutrality might seem like the moral high ground, it often results in limited influence. Your insights into how group dynamics and loyalty play a significant role in cementing one's influence are both fascinating and counterintuitive. Realising as much challenges us to re-evaluate our beliefs and forces us to confront the idea that, in a world marked by polarization, fence-sitting may not be the best strategy for leaving a legacy.
How would you say this interacts with some earlier advice on avoiding picking a side in a competition?
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/policy_tugowarhtml
Your picking a set of allies doesn't mean you should pick a side in every policy debate, especially if you specialize in policy analysis.
This is brilliant, but alas 150 years too late.
? Elaborate?
Helping everyone (for feel-good social signaling purposes) in a way which is unhelpful for the next generation has been our primary goal as a civilization for quite some time. It has not gone well.
An analogy here might be financial investing. With investing often a mixed strategy is preferred because there are certain kinds of risks that can be hedged by spreading your money around. However, in truth it depends on the particular game one is playing. If the game is winner-take-all, then the optimal strategy is to go all-in on some high-risk/high-return bet. The people we recognize as the most influential in history tend to be biased toward this latter strategy; they are not especially "balanced" individuals.
if someone could tell me which side I'm on that would be great, thanks.
I am most definitely a consequentialist, if that is what you mean. Principles and deontological stances aren't realistic if you live on a real planet, with real people, and with the simple acknowledgement that the future is going to happen. This is actually hard to say in public because we have to pretend otherwise. For example: there is absolutely a hypothetical person you could imagine that should be blocked from becoming president even if this requires stuff that is against principles you normally or typically *think* you hold dear.