Hidden Motives of Gratitude
I recently got 568 Twitter folk to say which of these 4 things they are most thankful for:
For which are you most thankful: (A): existing at all, (B): given (a), existing as human. (C): given (b) your time & place in human history, or (D) given (c) your particular role & associates.
— Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) November 26, 2020
Assume first that one is most thankful for the process which increased your gains by the highest ratio, relative to prior expectations. If we are just talking about such a degree of selectivity into a better position, then it seems to me that the first answer is obviously best: there are vastly more possible than actual creatures. If you get zero value from not existing, but a positive value from existing, and your prior odds of existing were tiny, then your gain ratio is astronomical.
However, some insist that they can only compare scenarios where they exist, and so reject the counterfactual possibility that they might not have existed. For them, the second option seems obviously the most selective among the remaining three. Humans are clearly enormously special compared to the vast number of species who will ever exist. For example, far more special than are humans in any one place and time compared to humans in others.
What if the goal of a poll respondent isn’t to identify the option from which they benefited more, but instead to use this poll as an opportunity to signal something about themselves. (Other than literal understanding and honesty.) The apparently most useful thing to signal then would be loyalty to one’s immediate associates, and confidence in one’s local roles. In which case the last poll option seems obviously best.
But oddly, 48% of poll respondents picked the third option! What goal could explain that choice? One possibility is that they sought to signal their “patriotism” toward their place and time in human history. People in different places often feel rivalrous toward each other. Different nations are in different places, and even within nations different culture, ethnic, and political “factions” tend to be in different places.
What about your time in history? Well first, there is less rivalry of feeling between different times, and less to gain by signaling loyalty to your time. Furthermore, if you think you’ve seen a trend in history toward times getting better, to make your time the best so far, you should expect the future to get even better, making your time not so great compared to all the times, past and future. So I suspect that many overt time affiliations are actually covert political affiliations.
Thus I’m led to conclude that the strongest motive in choosing what to be most thankful for is signaling loyalty to one’s region. Nationalism, racism, political alignment, and cultural rivalry. If you encourage people to be more grateful, that’s what you will be encouraging. Not what I would have guessed, but I guess not so crazy either.
"But it's a good bet that some future societies will make ours look primitive and benighted"
A good bet but by no means guaranteed. While the most recent post-Enlightenment 200 years gives us optimism, there was very little progress for much of humanity's 200,000 year existence prior to that. So, to the extent that we can maintain our liberal democratic capitalist society, your bet will probably be correct. Keep in mind, though, that even in the 20th Century, communism/socialism and fascism threatened to plunge humanity into darkness. Those ideologies gained traction even among "respectable" people in the US, so the threat was by no means purely external. By the 1990s, one might have thought that humanity had reached the "End of History", where liberal democratic capitalism would persevere indefinitely. Some might say that it's less obviously the case now, although it's probably still a good bet.
The point is though that the human flourishing that the West has been blessed with is actually quite fragile when one considers the entirety of human history. We know for sure that we live in a (mostly) liberal democratic capitalist society right now. There is some risk, though perhaps small, that won't be the case in 100 years.
Literally, the question asks what people *are* most thankful for, not what they *ought to be* more thankful for nor what they would be more thankful for if they put more thought into it. Most people probably have not contemplated very much not existing nor not existing as a human. If one takes being human for granted, then one won't be thankful for it. They probably have thought about the 21st Century West vs. other past and present societies and about inequality within the 21st Century West. So, people probably have answered quite honestly what they literally *are* most thankful for, given what they have contemplated seriously and what they take for granted.