Humans suffer two big but under-discussed biases, which together make us overly favor people we see as prestigious and sincere. First, humanity’s superpower is cultural evolution, wherein we copy each others’ behaviors, and this wouldn’t work if we copied from random others. So it couldn’t get going without our first big clue on who to copy: prestige. Which has become so entrenched that we greatly over-emphasize prestige even when better alternatives are now available.
One thing, we will not survive if we don't reason well. The article has minimal reasoning or solid evidence. OP is a beggar of questions. What evidence is there that 'too much trust will lead to destruction'? Ideally good evidence, triangulated, large sample-size; making sure the sample Pre- question are on point. That the effect size are not so outlandish to be worthless, but plausibly on the margin inherent in red-queen evolutionary competition.
> The article has minimal reasoning or solid evidence. OP is a beggar of questions.
In defense of Robin, this kind of stuff is impossible to study in a rigorously controlled and evidence-driven way. Cultural drift and the rise and fall of civlizations has happened before, but a double handful fo times that there's even any writing about, and nearly none where there's any rigorous data.
Any historical analyses are also confounded by the fact that reality is complex and there's a million things going on prior to and during any of these major shifts. And forget a lack of data, even if we *had it* we don't even have the theory to use it and rigorously control and determine what was causative or not.
More broadly, I'd note that Robin has always been a "big picture / big idea" sort of guy, and that's what he's best at (and that's why I'm here reading, he genuinely has unique and insightful and interesting ideas often enough to be worth it, in my own opinion).
I share your love of well reasoned and evidentially supported arguments, but you're much better off at Scott Alexander's ACX or Zvi Moshowitz's blogs for those sort of things. Reading a given author can be valuable for different reasons.
But that's precisely it; we live in unprecedented times. Hence, it's all survivorship biased information. So what can we do? First principles, some Markov chain modeling, some fundamental evolutionary game-theoretical equilibriums, etc. Some indicator numbers and leading signals. You can test anything, maybe not in the real world, but a model of your idea. A guy just had AI run a civ game Government, with interesting comments. So where is the data? Where is the qualitative analysis and the quantitative Fermi quiz?
We need good ideas, and we need to be better. Vague notions, whispered blog-posts and ideas of cultural drift etc. mostly seem like a Luddite whistling down the street, or complaining about common evolutionary processes.
Incidentally an interesting example of maladaption is the Shakers, who despite their wholesome progressive lifestyle have almost completely died out over the last two centuries due to total celibacy. (Thus only persisting that long via converts)
I think people need to ask themselves why they fall for these biases. Complaining about their own politics?
You would have to believe in the prestige to fall for it.
That's how one ends up being patronizing, because they haven't considered the belief in superiority might be a value problem in itself. But I still find the patronizing older rationalists endearing.
This post tied together alot of the earlier posts on cultural drift...so thank you! By the way, when I read these cultural drift items I always think back to Pirsig's Lila book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals. My interpretation is that adaption in this book maps to Pirsig's dyanmism. Curious if that came across your radar.
I'd be curious to hear more details about how you see "adaption." There are clear negative examples like dying out or losing a war to aliens, but I don't know how to judge how much "adaption" is happening at a place that exists at a low level of knowledge and comfort but with stability and a clear harmony between values, desires, and what is realistically attainable. I'm thinking, for example, of the uncontacted tribal groups on the Andeman Islands. Maybe more adaptive is to have the flexibility to take over more environmental niches. If yes than really the only kind a adaption that counts involves the large-scale colonization of the reachable galaxies. But I have a feeling that this will be initiated socially non-mainstream rogues who exploit the gaps left by a decaying consensus society. We only need to stay on the ball until we can build and launch the first minimally-specced interstellar colonization ship. If that colony can keep the colonization going, adaption is basically guaranteed. We will become interstellar rats, who can basically find good stuff to eat on every weird island where they land. Whether or not we are enlightened or even happy doesn't figure into our score for adaption. Right? (I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding what you might have meant by the term.)
I begin to doubt the central thesis. It seems to me that the reason, for example, the Korea Total Fertility Rate is so dismal might be "Korean culture mal-adapted too quickly and ended up with low fertility", sure, but it looks like a more plausible thesis is "Korean culture failed to adapt quickly enough to rapid urbanisation". The cultural drives surrounding the property market and domestic labour roles plausibly force the fertility issue. Are we *sure* that culture is upstream from economics?
Robin, given the ideas you've expressed along these lines, wouldn't the logical thing for you to do now be to oppose AI safety and hope AI replaces humans? You've concluded that humans are too stupid to ever do the things they need to do, owing to their evolution--this is not something that can be fixed. And it's obvious that AIs will soon be much smarter than humans.
AIs would have stronger individual level selection pressures, but still have bad levels of the other key parameters of cultural evolution. So this will remain a problem for them.
whoever survives will be well-adapted, and they will have gotten themselves to their current state by making choices that appear to be motivated by expected value. might be the mysterious way god works, or the superiority of their skin tone, or whatever you're inclined to imagine. why winners win is obviousl: they are WINNERS
I think to some extent our tendency to over-trust people is probably an artifact of our evolutionary heritage. When we lived in small bands and interacted with the same people over an extended time, a person's reputation caught up with them so to speak. So blind trust in another's reputation wasn't a bad algorithm. Modern society is strange because we interact a lot more with new people.
Humanity could use a firmware update. Culture can only patch over so much. It's surprising we've done as well as we have given how dramatically conditions have changed.
One thing, we will not survive if we don't reason well. The article has minimal reasoning or solid evidence. OP is a beggar of questions. What evidence is there that 'too much trust will lead to destruction'? Ideally good evidence, triangulated, large sample-size; making sure the sample Pre- question are on point. That the effect size are not so outlandish to be worthless, but plausibly on the margin inherent in red-queen evolutionary competition.
Whatever. Alas, No one knows anything anymore.
> The article has minimal reasoning or solid evidence. OP is a beggar of questions.
In defense of Robin, this kind of stuff is impossible to study in a rigorously controlled and evidence-driven way. Cultural drift and the rise and fall of civlizations has happened before, but a double handful fo times that there's even any writing about, and nearly none where there's any rigorous data.
Any historical analyses are also confounded by the fact that reality is complex and there's a million things going on prior to and during any of these major shifts. And forget a lack of data, even if we *had it* we don't even have the theory to use it and rigorously control and determine what was causative or not.
More broadly, I'd note that Robin has always been a "big picture / big idea" sort of guy, and that's what he's best at (and that's why I'm here reading, he genuinely has unique and insightful and interesting ideas often enough to be worth it, in my own opinion).
I share your love of well reasoned and evidentially supported arguments, but you're much better off at Scott Alexander's ACX or Zvi Moshowitz's blogs for those sort of things. Reading a given author can be valuable for different reasons.
But that's precisely it; we live in unprecedented times. Hence, it's all survivorship biased information. So what can we do? First principles, some Markov chain modeling, some fundamental evolutionary game-theoretical equilibriums, etc. Some indicator numbers and leading signals. You can test anything, maybe not in the real world, but a model of your idea. A guy just had AI run a civ game Government, with interesting comments. So where is the data? Where is the qualitative analysis and the quantitative Fermi quiz?
We need good ideas, and we need to be better. Vague notions, whispered blog-posts and ideas of cultural drift etc. mostly seem like a Luddite whistling down the street, or complaining about common evolutionary processes.
Incidentally an interesting example of maladaption is the Shakers, who despite their wholesome progressive lifestyle have almost completely died out over the last two centuries due to total celibacy. (Thus only persisting that long via converts)
"...thaT you pack and leave soon" ?
I think people need to ask themselves why they fall for these biases. Complaining about their own politics?
You would have to believe in the prestige to fall for it.
That's how one ends up being patronizing, because they haven't considered the belief in superiority might be a value problem in itself. But I still find the patronizing older rationalists endearing.
I liked the 'pretty' reference. Nature prefers symmetry, something pretty.
This post tied together alot of the earlier posts on cultural drift...so thank you! By the way, when I read these cultural drift items I always think back to Pirsig's Lila book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals. My interpretation is that adaption in this book maps to Pirsig's dyanmism. Curious if that came across your radar.
I'd be curious to hear more details about how you see "adaption." There are clear negative examples like dying out or losing a war to aliens, but I don't know how to judge how much "adaption" is happening at a place that exists at a low level of knowledge and comfort but with stability and a clear harmony between values, desires, and what is realistically attainable. I'm thinking, for example, of the uncontacted tribal groups on the Andeman Islands. Maybe more adaptive is to have the flexibility to take over more environmental niches. If yes than really the only kind a adaption that counts involves the large-scale colonization of the reachable galaxies. But I have a feeling that this will be initiated socially non-mainstream rogues who exploit the gaps left by a decaying consensus society. We only need to stay on the ball until we can build and launch the first minimally-specced interstellar colonization ship. If that colony can keep the colonization going, adaption is basically guaranteed. We will become interstellar rats, who can basically find good stuff to eat on every weird island where they land. Whether or not we are enlightened or even happy doesn't figure into our score for adaption. Right? (I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding what you might have meant by the term.)
It can be quite hard to judge the adaptiveness of different particular behavior options. Even so, the concept is clear, even if abstract.
I begin to doubt the central thesis. It seems to me that the reason, for example, the Korea Total Fertility Rate is so dismal might be "Korean culture mal-adapted too quickly and ended up with low fertility", sure, but it looks like a more plausible thesis is "Korean culture failed to adapt quickly enough to rapid urbanisation". The cultural drives surrounding the property market and domestic labour roles plausibly force the fertility issue. Are we *sure* that culture is upstream from economics?
As tech/econ changes, culture needs to also change with that in the right ways to stay adaptive. Failure to do so results in maladaptive culture.
Robin, given the ideas you've expressed along these lines, wouldn't the logical thing for you to do now be to oppose AI safety and hope AI replaces humans? You've concluded that humans are too stupid to ever do the things they need to do, owing to their evolution--this is not something that can be fixed. And it's obvious that AIs will soon be much smarter than humans.
AIs would have stronger individual level selection pressures, but still have bad levels of the other key parameters of cultural evolution. So this will remain a problem for them.
whoever survives will be well-adapted, and they will have gotten themselves to their current state by making choices that appear to be motivated by expected value. might be the mysterious way god works, or the superiority of their skin tone, or whatever you're inclined to imagine. why winners win is obviousl: they are WINNERS
I think to some extent our tendency to over-trust people is probably an artifact of our evolutionary heritage. When we lived in small bands and interacted with the same people over an extended time, a person's reputation caught up with them so to speak. So blind trust in another's reputation wasn't a bad algorithm. Modern society is strange because we interact a lot more with new people.
Humanity could use a firmware update. Culture can only patch over so much. It's surprising we've done as well as we have given how dramatically conditions have changed.
Yes. Time for genetic engineering or ems with some kind of ... hack. I'm crossing my fingers for a Moravec-style AI/human hybrid.
What is an example of an "idiot story plot?'