"The default assumption of every intellectual should be that the human mind is about as well-designed as the hawk’s eye, the bat’s sonar, or the cheetah’s sprint. Unfortunately, intellectuals do not make this assumption. Instead, they assume our species is broken, and they’ve been put on this earth to fix us."
But surely things have changed? We're very well adapted to our original environment, but what about the modern world? Overconfidence may have been useful in a paleolithic community, where the risks of overestimating oneself are low, but it's certainly not a useful trait for a stock broker or procrastinating university student.
Regarding politics, I agree that it's a high-stakes competition some of the time, but certainly not all of the time. It seems like there are, & have been, a bunch of win-win policies that were needlessly contentious.
"voters have basically no incentive to be unbiased, and strong incentive to parrot their tribe’s propaganda."
This also doesn't seem right. It seems to me that the opinionated uncle at thanksgiving dinner isn't exactly the most prosocial guy.
Re voters having no incentive to be unbiased, I'd recommend checking out the linked-to book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, for the argument that voters have no incentive to have rational political opinions. Yes, our uncle is opinionated, but his opinions are often bullshit, because he has no incentive for accurate political opinions. Re environments changing, I agree this can happen, and some of our maladies might be caused by mismatch to a novel environment, but in general I think mismatch explanations are a bit overrated and that humans are pretty clever and adaptable to any unique environment you throw at them. That is, after all, why we have such huge brains.
Awesome read as always! The prose in some of the sections reminds me of Thomas Sowell's writing: dry, direct, and a little sarcastic wording that makes the points come across as obviously true. That said, I'm not sure I fully agree on the second-to-last point. There *might* be something we can do. If technology and science continue moving forward, it might be possible for drugs (or other technology that is impossible to foresee) to "change" what human nature even is. I have literally zero clue what that might be, and my timelines are conservative. I imagine this won't be even remotely possible until 2100, but I don't think it's a given that no intervention could ever possibly exist.
Yes. This is the possibility recognized in transhumanism. It amazes me that we operate as well as we do in the current complex environment with a brain that hasn't evolved much in 100,000 years.
But why would you want that? The point of the article is that we delude ourselves about our true motives because it is in our interest to do so. You're suggesting that it would be good for us to use drugs or technology to bring our true motives in line with our delusions. It would not be good for us because then our true motives would not serve us and we'd be outcompeted by defectors from the technological/drug interventions.
The way that I look at this issue is to consider to consider two possible meanings of "rationality" and also to to consider the roles of rationality and passions in directing human behavior.
I think that rationality is most often seen as a process of obtaining a true, accurate representation of the world. From this rationality-as-accurate-representation-of-reality view, misunderstanding is forming an incorrect representation of reality (e.g., stereotypes as inaccurate descriptions of various out-groups).
But, leaving aside the issue of how accurate stereotypes are, even if we did possess perfectly accurate knowledge of different groups, that knowledge alone does not tell us how to behave. A purely cognitive, information-processing description of people cannot tell us how they will use that information to choose a behavioral path. The goals we pursue are determined by our emotions, our motives, our passions. Without a push from emotional determinants, we would just sit there, contemplating our knowledge. Our rationality can only help us calculate specific behavioral paths for reaching the goals set by our passions. Therefore, making people more "rational" in the sense of possessing more accurate knowledge cannot solve recognized problems such as ethnic fighting, murder, and wars.
But note that rationality-as-accurate-representation-of-reality is not the only way to define rationality. In fact, there are problems in trying to think about rationality this way, the primary problem being that our mental maps or representations of reality can never be perfect representations of reality. The map is never the territory. Rather, our mental maps are constructions that serve the practical function of prediction *well enough* to allow creatures to achieve the goals of life *well enough* to reproduce.
A moment's thought reveals that an insect's mental world and our mental world are very different, but does it make sense to say that an insect's rationality is worse than ours? A pragmatic rather than correspondence conceptualization of rationality (a mental map that is good enough to allow an organism to reproduce before it dies) is more consistent with Kahneman's disinterest in correcting even his own biases because they are "rational" in a pragmatic, functional sense of helping him achieve his goals.
Wow. Bravo. This is so good. I'm a devout Christian, primarily because I've found the Sermon on the Mount to be the most comprehensive, robust heuristic for moral living, and the book of Genesis the best explanation for consciously understanding the human condition. I have yet to encounter a disagreement, tragedy, contest, instance of friction, etc that isn't very readily explained in the Genesis myth, and then very readily responded to by the Sermon on the Mount. Your claim about the human brain / the human condition is obviously true. This is the first time in a hot second that a claim has been intriguing and complex enough that I had to really pull out and USE my heuristics and do some conscious pondering and analysis in order to a) understand a piece of truth and b) determine what action, if any, that information points to.
Anyways. Really, really good points, all the way down. And really beautifully synthesized. Thank you for writing!
Yea I like that piece. I actually think both the mistake view and the conflict view are correct. I think politics is a zero-sum competition over power, but in our zeal to win that competition, we believe a lot of mistaken things about reality. It would be better if we didn't believe those mistaken things, but trying to correct them is largely futile, and it would be better to change the underlying incentives of our political system so that mistaken beliefs are disincentivized.
So basically intellectuals are rational animals using a rational strategy to win status and power. And you're offering us some bullshit advice that would undermine our strategy. It's a trick, right? B/c you think we are obsessed with "understanding," you think you can dupe us into changing by telling us we were misinformed
It’s a good point. Intellectuals are being just as rational in pursuit of their unflattering goals as anyone else, and one rational way they are pursuing their goals is by promoting the misunderstanding myth. But another route to status and power is through saying genuinely true and insightful things. That is the route I’m trying to take, and I’m hoping I’ll get there by writing (hopefully) insightful posts like these. Whether I will succeed, or whether the misunderstanding myth will prevail, or whether I’m full of shit too, is anyone’s guess.
This is really impressive work, I love your succinct writing style and lack of jargon. Maybe you could help me understand something slightly out of left field. I recently read “Up From Slavery” by Booker T Washington and he makes the observation that the happiest people he knows are ones that spend their lives helping others. This rings true to me reflecting on my own life, is this just some type of dopamine reward related to altruism, or maybe it’s signaling to me that my actions are pushing me up the social hierarchy? I mean I don’t really care but I’m curious, because if it makes me feel “happier” in my day to day I’m going to keep doing it.
There are a number of a reasons why helping others might have evolved to feel good. The people you're helping might be genetically related to you. They might feel really grateful or indebted to you, increasing the odds that they will help you (or your family) later. It might boost your status and reputation, making you look like a virtuous person or loyal tribesman. It might make you more valuable to your community, such they could not afford to lose you if times got tough. I think there is empirical evidence showing a link between helping and happiness. But whether we want happiness in the first place is a whole other can of worms. I don't think we do.
I have a post called "Happiness Is Bullshit" and a very long followup post called "Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited" if you're curious. I also think a great way to ensure that you're miserable is to try to be happy.
Another brilliant essay by the best writer in the world (seriously).
I have one point I would like to dispute - that the stakes are high in politics. Of course they’re high on a national level, but they’re not high for most people individually.
First, most people’s day to day lives will not change very much based on what happens in a presidential election.
Second, most people have no control over the outcome. Even if it’s important in some sense if it’s outside your control then being heavily invested in the outcome is irrational.
Of course we can talk about other motives for people’s political behavior but I disagree with the claim that the stakes are high for most people.
Thanks, Ross. It's a great point, and I agree with the second part about voters having little control over the outcome. The book I link to later on, when talking about how voters have no incentive to be unbiased, makes essentially the same argument: because every individual voter has essentially no impact on the outcome, they have no incentive to hold accurate political beliefs. But I disagree with the first part, that most people's day to day lives will not change based on what happens in politics. Certainly people with unwanted pregnancies will have their lives changed dramatically as a result of abortion policy. Certainly businesses who are more heavily regulated will have their livelihood and their way of making a living changed by regulatory policy. We may not have a huge stake in *all* political outcomes, but we do have a clear stake in *some*, and it is those political outcomes that ultimately shape which side we support in politics. So if I have a stake in abortion policy, I might join whichever party agrees with me on abortion, and then adopt all that side's other issue opinions to show loyalty to them. So I think the stakes are genuinely high in politics for at least some issues, those issues shape which political coalition we join, and we come up with bullshit narratives (the sanctity of life, a woman's right to choose) to justify our self-interested stance on those issues. But we care more about showing loyalty to our political coalition and generating propaganda to support our coalition than we do in having true political beliefs. Or at least, that's how I'm thinking about these issues as of now (I have a long post in the pipeline called Democracy Is Bullshit where I get into more detail).
I’m excited about the Democracy is Bullshit post! Hopefully it will be here soon.
I still disagree with the claim that most people’s lives are heavily influenced by presidential election results. You gave 2 examples - abortion and business regulations. Only a tiny percentage of people are going to be getting (or trying to get) abortions in the next few years, and it’s only relevant if abortion becomes illegal in the state you live in and you can’t go to another state to get one. As for business regulations, most things that affect businesses are outside of actions taken by the federal government. Do you think the success of most businesses depends on whether a democrat or republican is president? That’s obviously a tiny factor and affected business owners are a small percentage of people.
Yes, you're right in one sense. Many people aren't very affected by federal policy. But remember that only about half of Americans vote in presidential elections, an even larger percentage of Americans are politically ignorant, and of the people who do vote and know stuff, many are simply doing so out of social pressure. So you're right that there aren't a big number of big stakeholders in federal election outcomes. But I'm talking about the small number of people who do vote and do non-performatively care about politics. For these people, I don't think there is any misunderstanding. I suspect that many of them are stakeholders in at least some issues, or are socially connected to people who are. These stakeholders really are affected by presidential elections. Which party wins will matter if you are a fossil fuel company or a company who is competing with China. Even though abortion so far has only affected states, there was (and may currently be) a significant likelihood of it being banned at the federal level, especially given who the president decides to put on the supreme court. Plus, having to drive out of state for an abortion is a huge pain in the ass that many people would reasonably want to avoid. So I agree that certain business owners (and unions and NGOs and religious factions and other stakeholders) are a small percentage of people, but they play an outsized role in political outcomes via lobbying and advocacy and punditry and goading their peers to care about politics. These are the people who mainly determine the political conversation (and, to large extent, public policy). For these people, I don't think there is any misunderstanding. Plus, it might be that it's rational for them to seek political power in general even if the consequences of any particular election aren't that huge. Gaining power pays dividends in the long-run. Anyways, thanks for pushing back, it's helping me think these ideas through.
same question occurred to me, and i think it's partly confusing bc of the connotations of rationality. it's not necessarily the case that survival & reproduction are virtuous or rational ends, and so strategies to those ends are also rational by proxy. the nature of rationality is contested.
to me it's not clear that it's inherently virtuous to strategize for survival & reproduction, either unconsciously or with (meta)-representational awareness. it's not objectively irrational to (want to) strategize for omnicide, altruism or any number of outcomes that aren't satisficing for fitness. there is noise, byproducts, adaptations and the incomprehensibly complex clusterfuck of all these systems non-linearly interacting with themselves and environments. there are repulsively complicated feedback loops and plasticity and outcomes and novel mutations that collectively ensure that we aren't all stuck striving for status and reproduction and stuff that would've increased the chances for those in the EEA.
Wonderful writing. This sits perfectly alongside my philosophy of anti-crisis thinking. I developed it after noticing that almost none of the crises I'm constantly told I should be worried about are anything more than just how things are. Now all I can see is certain types of person responding to the incentives you describe, so that they can feel like saviours. And don't get me started on the so-called' post-truth' era. Things are just the way they always were, except better in almost every measurable or subjective way.
Society’s sinkhole analysis you’ve given sadly entertaining and quite realistic. Realism is a moving target to our grasped understanding. You’ve outlined the reasons for exasperation.
This feels like a very selective reading of “mainstream social science” where you’re primarily referring to big-3 (nature, science, pnas) pop/tabloid behavioral science. That said, I would agree with you about the problems in that way of doing social science which I read as (1) empirically fragile, drifting quite far from the “true state of the world” and (2) normative fragile, i.e. coming to paternalistic or out-right harmful conclusions about policy. But I would point out that there are other social science cultures alive and well and very much mainstream today - particularly in political science - that are very much about correcting those misguided conclusions *within* social science. And that also zoom out and attempt to describe the specific behavior of institutions not just the misunderstanding of individual brains.
Yes agreed. Not saying all of social science is like this; just saying it’s a common and misleading mindset that annoys me. There’s definitely lots of good social science pushing back against that mindset and I’ve linked to a lot of it throughout.
I read this post because it showed up on my feed and I liked it a lot, but I had to double check that you were not a member of an unacceptable tribe before allowing myself to like or comment on it.
Just joking / reflecting on how even while I agreed with a lot of what you wrote I still feel compelled to lift a finger to the winds of polite social correctness before publicly saying so.
"The default assumption of every intellectual should be that the human mind is about as well-designed as the hawk’s eye, the bat’s sonar, or the cheetah’s sprint. Unfortunately, intellectuals do not make this assumption. Instead, they assume our species is broken, and they’ve been put on this earth to fix us."
But surely things have changed? We're very well adapted to our original environment, but what about the modern world? Overconfidence may have been useful in a paleolithic community, where the risks of overestimating oneself are low, but it's certainly not a useful trait for a stock broker or procrastinating university student.
Regarding politics, I agree that it's a high-stakes competition some of the time, but certainly not all of the time. It seems like there are, & have been, a bunch of win-win policies that were needlessly contentious.
"voters have basically no incentive to be unbiased, and strong incentive to parrot their tribe’s propaganda."
This also doesn't seem right. It seems to me that the opinionated uncle at thanksgiving dinner isn't exactly the most prosocial guy.
Re voters having no incentive to be unbiased, I'd recommend checking out the linked-to book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, for the argument that voters have no incentive to have rational political opinions. Yes, our uncle is opinionated, but his opinions are often bullshit, because he has no incentive for accurate political opinions. Re environments changing, I agree this can happen, and some of our maladies might be caused by mismatch to a novel environment, but in general I think mismatch explanations are a bit overrated and that humans are pretty clever and adaptable to any unique environment you throw at them. That is, after all, why we have such huge brains.
Awesome read as always! The prose in some of the sections reminds me of Thomas Sowell's writing: dry, direct, and a little sarcastic wording that makes the points come across as obviously true. That said, I'm not sure I fully agree on the second-to-last point. There *might* be something we can do. If technology and science continue moving forward, it might be possible for drugs (or other technology that is impossible to foresee) to "change" what human nature even is. I have literally zero clue what that might be, and my timelines are conservative. I imagine this won't be even remotely possible until 2100, but I don't think it's a given that no intervention could ever possibly exist.
Point taken.
Yes. This is the possibility recognized in transhumanism. It amazes me that we operate as well as we do in the current complex environment with a brain that hasn't evolved much in 100,000 years.
I mean... we don't operate that well. At least not that well compared to an ideal. I wasn't aware of the idea of "transhumanism", I will look it up!
But why would you want that? The point of the article is that we delude ourselves about our true motives because it is in our interest to do so. You're suggesting that it would be good for us to use drugs or technology to bring our true motives in line with our delusions. It would not be good for us because then our true motives would not serve us and we'd be outcompeted by defectors from the technological/drug interventions.
The way that I look at this issue is to consider to consider two possible meanings of "rationality" and also to to consider the roles of rationality and passions in directing human behavior.
I think that rationality is most often seen as a process of obtaining a true, accurate representation of the world. From this rationality-as-accurate-representation-of-reality view, misunderstanding is forming an incorrect representation of reality (e.g., stereotypes as inaccurate descriptions of various out-groups).
But, leaving aside the issue of how accurate stereotypes are, even if we did possess perfectly accurate knowledge of different groups, that knowledge alone does not tell us how to behave. A purely cognitive, information-processing description of people cannot tell us how they will use that information to choose a behavioral path. The goals we pursue are determined by our emotions, our motives, our passions. Without a push from emotional determinants, we would just sit there, contemplating our knowledge. Our rationality can only help us calculate specific behavioral paths for reaching the goals set by our passions. Therefore, making people more "rational" in the sense of possessing more accurate knowledge cannot solve recognized problems such as ethnic fighting, murder, and wars.
But note that rationality-as-accurate-representation-of-reality is not the only way to define rationality. In fact, there are problems in trying to think about rationality this way, the primary problem being that our mental maps or representations of reality can never be perfect representations of reality. The map is never the territory. Rather, our mental maps are constructions that serve the practical function of prediction *well enough* to allow creatures to achieve the goals of life *well enough* to reproduce.
A moment's thought reveals that an insect's mental world and our mental world are very different, but does it make sense to say that an insect's rationality is worse than ours? A pragmatic rather than correspondence conceptualization of rationality (a mental map that is good enough to allow an organism to reproduce before it dies) is more consistent with Kahneman's disinterest in correcting even his own biases because they are "rational" in a pragmatic, functional sense of helping him achieve his goals.
I think, if anything can make anything better, it’s acceptance of what is. That’s what I got from this - thank you!
Wow. Bravo. This is so good. I'm a devout Christian, primarily because I've found the Sermon on the Mount to be the most comprehensive, robust heuristic for moral living, and the book of Genesis the best explanation for consciously understanding the human condition. I have yet to encounter a disagreement, tragedy, contest, instance of friction, etc that isn't very readily explained in the Genesis myth, and then very readily responded to by the Sermon on the Mount. Your claim about the human brain / the human condition is obviously true. This is the first time in a hot second that a claim has been intriguing and complex enough that I had to really pull out and USE my heuristics and do some conscious pondering and analysis in order to a) understand a piece of truth and b) determine what action, if any, that information points to.
Anyways. Really, really good points, all the way down. And really beautifully synthesized. Thank you for writing!
You've probably already read this, but this piece reminded me of https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
Yea I like that piece. I actually think both the mistake view and the conflict view are correct. I think politics is a zero-sum competition over power, but in our zeal to win that competition, we believe a lot of mistaken things about reality. It would be better if we didn't believe those mistaken things, but trying to correct them is largely futile, and it would be better to change the underlying incentives of our political system so that mistaken beliefs are disincentivized.
I thought of this too. The piece seems to specifically address mistake theorists.
Thankyou for your hilarious insights in the human mind.
Your observations are refreshing in a world where everyone tries to more understanding, holier and forgiving than the other.
So basically intellectuals are rational animals using a rational strategy to win status and power. And you're offering us some bullshit advice that would undermine our strategy. It's a trick, right? B/c you think we are obsessed with "understanding," you think you can dupe us into changing by telling us we were misinformed
It’s a good point. Intellectuals are being just as rational in pursuit of their unflattering goals as anyone else, and one rational way they are pursuing their goals is by promoting the misunderstanding myth. But another route to status and power is through saying genuinely true and insightful things. That is the route I’m trying to take, and I’m hoping I’ll get there by writing (hopefully) insightful posts like these. Whether I will succeed, or whether the misunderstanding myth will prevail, or whether I’m full of shit too, is anyone’s guess.
This is really impressive work, I love your succinct writing style and lack of jargon. Maybe you could help me understand something slightly out of left field. I recently read “Up From Slavery” by Booker T Washington and he makes the observation that the happiest people he knows are ones that spend their lives helping others. This rings true to me reflecting on my own life, is this just some type of dopamine reward related to altruism, or maybe it’s signaling to me that my actions are pushing me up the social hierarchy? I mean I don’t really care but I’m curious, because if it makes me feel “happier” in my day to day I’m going to keep doing it.
There are a number of a reasons why helping others might have evolved to feel good. The people you're helping might be genetically related to you. They might feel really grateful or indebted to you, increasing the odds that they will help you (or your family) later. It might boost your status and reputation, making you look like a virtuous person or loyal tribesman. It might make you more valuable to your community, such they could not afford to lose you if times got tough. I think there is empirical evidence showing a link between helping and happiness. But whether we want happiness in the first place is a whole other can of worms. I don't think we do.
Thanks so much for your response. I’ve always thought I wanted to be happy, but I’ve never really been able to achieve it. A lot of food for thought.
I have a post called "Happiness Is Bullshit" and a very long followup post called "Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited" if you're curious. I also think a great way to ensure that you're miserable is to try to be happy.
Another brilliant essay by the best writer in the world (seriously).
I have one point I would like to dispute - that the stakes are high in politics. Of course they’re high on a national level, but they’re not high for most people individually.
First, most people’s day to day lives will not change very much based on what happens in a presidential election.
Second, most people have no control over the outcome. Even if it’s important in some sense if it’s outside your control then being heavily invested in the outcome is irrational.
Of course we can talk about other motives for people’s political behavior but I disagree with the claim that the stakes are high for most people.
Thanks, Ross. It's a great point, and I agree with the second part about voters having little control over the outcome. The book I link to later on, when talking about how voters have no incentive to be unbiased, makes essentially the same argument: because every individual voter has essentially no impact on the outcome, they have no incentive to hold accurate political beliefs. But I disagree with the first part, that most people's day to day lives will not change based on what happens in politics. Certainly people with unwanted pregnancies will have their lives changed dramatically as a result of abortion policy. Certainly businesses who are more heavily regulated will have their livelihood and their way of making a living changed by regulatory policy. We may not have a huge stake in *all* political outcomes, but we do have a clear stake in *some*, and it is those political outcomes that ultimately shape which side we support in politics. So if I have a stake in abortion policy, I might join whichever party agrees with me on abortion, and then adopt all that side's other issue opinions to show loyalty to them. So I think the stakes are genuinely high in politics for at least some issues, those issues shape which political coalition we join, and we come up with bullshit narratives (the sanctity of life, a woman's right to choose) to justify our self-interested stance on those issues. But we care more about showing loyalty to our political coalition and generating propaganda to support our coalition than we do in having true political beliefs. Or at least, that's how I'm thinking about these issues as of now (I have a long post in the pipeline called Democracy Is Bullshit where I get into more detail).
I’m excited about the Democracy is Bullshit post! Hopefully it will be here soon.
I still disagree with the claim that most people’s lives are heavily influenced by presidential election results. You gave 2 examples - abortion and business regulations. Only a tiny percentage of people are going to be getting (or trying to get) abortions in the next few years, and it’s only relevant if abortion becomes illegal in the state you live in and you can’t go to another state to get one. As for business regulations, most things that affect businesses are outside of actions taken by the federal government. Do you think the success of most businesses depends on whether a democrat or republican is president? That’s obviously a tiny factor and affected business owners are a small percentage of people.
Yes, you're right in one sense. Many people aren't very affected by federal policy. But remember that only about half of Americans vote in presidential elections, an even larger percentage of Americans are politically ignorant, and of the people who do vote and know stuff, many are simply doing so out of social pressure. So you're right that there aren't a big number of big stakeholders in federal election outcomes. But I'm talking about the small number of people who do vote and do non-performatively care about politics. For these people, I don't think there is any misunderstanding. I suspect that many of them are stakeholders in at least some issues, or are socially connected to people who are. These stakeholders really are affected by presidential elections. Which party wins will matter if you are a fossil fuel company or a company who is competing with China. Even though abortion so far has only affected states, there was (and may currently be) a significant likelihood of it being banned at the federal level, especially given who the president decides to put on the supreme court. Plus, having to drive out of state for an abortion is a huge pain in the ass that many people would reasonably want to avoid. So I agree that certain business owners (and unions and NGOs and religious factions and other stakeholders) are a small percentage of people, but they play an outsized role in political outcomes via lobbying and advocacy and punditry and goading their peers to care about politics. These are the people who mainly determine the political conversation (and, to large extent, public policy). For these people, I don't think there is any misunderstanding. Plus, it might be that it's rational for them to seek political power in general even if the consequences of any particular election aren't that huge. Gaining power pays dividends in the long-run. Anyways, thanks for pushing back, it's helping me think these ideas through.
I recently came up with a different maxim: unaccountability is at the root of all evil
I haven't read your piece yet - just wanted to share
I agree. Pretty similar to “incentives are everything,” which was one of my posts.
Reminds me of Nassim Taleb's "skin in the game" idea.
Okay, it's an inconvenient truth. But what's the evolutionary explanation for our widespread need to weave a web of comforting lies around it?
Thanks
I give an answer to this question in my academic preprint “the evolution of social paradoxes” (soon-to-be-published in American Psychologist).
same question occurred to me, and i think it's partly confusing bc of the connotations of rationality. it's not necessarily the case that survival & reproduction are virtuous or rational ends, and so strategies to those ends are also rational by proxy. the nature of rationality is contested.
to me it's not clear that it's inherently virtuous to strategize for survival & reproduction, either unconsciously or with (meta)-representational awareness. it's not objectively irrational to (want to) strategize for omnicide, altruism or any number of outcomes that aren't satisficing for fitness. there is noise, byproducts, adaptations and the incomprehensibly complex clusterfuck of all these systems non-linearly interacting with themselves and environments. there are repulsively complicated feedback loops and plasticity and outcomes and novel mutations that collectively ensure that we aren't all stuck striving for status and reproduction and stuff that would've increased the chances for those in the EEA.
Wonderful writing. This sits perfectly alongside my philosophy of anti-crisis thinking. I developed it after noticing that almost none of the crises I'm constantly told I should be worried about are anything more than just how things are. Now all I can see is certain types of person responding to the incentives you describe, so that they can feel like saviours. And don't get me started on the so-called' post-truth' era. Things are just the way they always were, except better in almost every measurable or subjective way.
Society’s sinkhole analysis you’ve given sadly entertaining and quite realistic. Realism is a moving target to our grasped understanding. You’ve outlined the reasons for exasperation.
This feels like a very selective reading of “mainstream social science” where you’re primarily referring to big-3 (nature, science, pnas) pop/tabloid behavioral science. That said, I would agree with you about the problems in that way of doing social science which I read as (1) empirically fragile, drifting quite far from the “true state of the world” and (2) normative fragile, i.e. coming to paternalistic or out-right harmful conclusions about policy. But I would point out that there are other social science cultures alive and well and very much mainstream today - particularly in political science - that are very much about correcting those misguided conclusions *within* social science. And that also zoom out and attempt to describe the specific behavior of institutions not just the misunderstanding of individual brains.
Yes agreed. Not saying all of social science is like this; just saying it’s a common and misleading mindset that annoys me. There’s definitely lots of good social science pushing back against that mindset and I’ve linked to a lot of it throughout.
I read this post because it showed up on my feed and I liked it a lot, but I had to double check that you were not a member of an unacceptable tribe before allowing myself to like or comment on it.
Not clear if you’re joking or serious. But no I’m not a member of the unacceptable tribe I suspect you’re thinking of.
Just joking / reflecting on how even while I agreed with a lot of what you wrote I still feel compelled to lift a finger to the winds of polite social correctness before publicly saying so.