Re: Beliefs, Preferences and Delusions
Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 6:59 pm
wow, this is a lot of good stuff. brute had to take notes. here goes:
@Riggerjack:
upbringing
it's interesting how closely brute's upbringing mirrors Riggerjack's. almost to the point, with a few exceptions. no surprise brute and Riggerjack both think similarly about libertarianism.
tribe of one
brute isn't sure if it's a "clean slate", but there is certainly a phenomenon where some individuals become distant/disillusioned/fail to adapt to their natural tribe. brute could make the argument that neither Riggerjack nor he ever fully adopted their natural tribes, or maybe repeated chances at starting over with clean slates in new tribes made the difference. it's probably both.
brute has also seen tribes (including his own natural one) fail so brutally and viciously, and seen humans get fucked so badly, that it's difficult for him to commit to any tribe to the degree that the average human seems to be able to.
it might be like that theory about "which stock market a human (financially) grew up in" - if a human grows up seeing the tribe fail badly, and individuals get really hurt, they will probably develop a completely different mental model of societies, politics, and so on.
most humans in the west grew up in just about the nicest and safest political environment and society that has existed in human history. it's like growing up during the stock market of the 90s. it's easy to be index-positive and optimistic after that experience. by analogy, brute and Riggerjack got fucked by the penny stocks or pets.com startups of the time, and have become much more wary of the blue skies of tribalism.
on humans doing mindblowingly contradicting stuff
there are times when brute's brain literally failed to compute. for example, brute knows humans with type 2 diabetes who have had limbs amputated and literally gone blind, yet don't want to try out a low-carb diet because they "couldn't possibly do that". they'd rather lose one of the more important sense and the ability to walk than try a diet that is moderately out there (Atkins is hardly radical compared to what brute eats). "but bread tastes so good" is another popular argument AMONG HUMANS WHO ARE ABOUT TO LOSE LIMBS AND EYE SIGHT! WHAT THE FUCK!
there are various other medical examples brute could list, of humans choosing to spend the rest of their lives in self-described "endless agony" and "debilitating disability", but unwilling to try something that's free, would likely completely cure the condition, and taste better. medical professionals are no better - in brute's eyes, the treatment of diabetes, obesity, and related conditions from the 1950s onwards is paramount to genocide on the part of the medical profession.
on the other hand, some humans fly a plane into a building, killing themselves and their friends and hundreds of innocents, because there was a promise to get laid.
so it could be said that beliefs are maybe the most powerful force in humans.
responsibility
in short, brute isn't sure this has much to do with libertarianism. brute HATES responsibility. brute enjoys libertarianism. for most humans brute has argued with, the idea of personal responsibility and political systems seems pretty disconnected.
uncaring? brute thinks not.
brute thinks that most non-libertarians, at least most liberals and conservatives, are actually extremely caring. brute's mental model goes like this:
there are various levels of effects/consequences that humans can think about a specific problems they care about. 1st order, 2nd order, .. similar to the way Dear Leader jacob describes the web of goals effects in the ERE book.
most of the time, humans will agree with brute on the desired outcomes (0th order effects?), e.g. "human children should not starve", "humans who work in factories should not die", or "crime is bad".
the 1st order thought could be something like "banning crime" or "raising the minimum wage". a pretty simple, direct-effect action or law. most humans ignore any higher-level effects.
unfortunately, human societies and economies are complex, intercausal systems, where the higher order effects are often stronger than the first order (intended) effects.
thus "workers are poor -> raising the minimum wage" type ideas actually end up doing more harm than good, often times even hurting workers more than it helps.
economics is the science of thinking about the higher-order effects of these things, and brute presumes there's some other social science that does the same for more general societal effects or non-economic policy. for example, the higher-order effects of both parents working, social media, stuffing 30 human kids of the same age in a class room, not being surrounded by grandparents while growing up, and many more.
most humans only think "workers are poor! bad!", or "workers are poor! bad! -> minimum wage! good!". rarely do humans not formally trained about a specific field even think that they might be missing the higher-order effects, and typically they are unable to do so if they try, or if trained humans try to explain it to them.
parallels: global warming discussions with Dear Leader jacob.
this sure sounds like the Kegan thing. and it seems to invalidate Democracy.
what is the solution? technocracy? just spectacularly failed in Europe (or in the process of, apparently still in free fall). maybe there is a way to do technocracy right?
maybe a more evolutionary system, where small iterative things are tried and then somehow humans measure if the higher-order effects added up to something good? economics and complex social systems are notoriously hard to A/B test though, to the point where economists disagree even about the things where both sides have the exact same facts in front of them (e.g. great depression, QE, inflation, minimum wage), which is rare.
to come back to the touchy-feely types: when they suggest "school shooting bad! -> ban guns", or "poor workers bad! -> minimum wage", and int-types/libertarians argue against it, they conclude that ints/libertarians must not think school shooting or poor workers are bad.
violent rejection ensues. ("SHOCK! libertarians are for child prostitution! inconceivable!")
@ffj:
self interest vs. altruism seems a false dichotomy. they're the same thing. for an altruistic human, it's in his self-interest to help others. the whole point of virtue signaling, The Atlantic, and so on seems to be to reinforce the identity of an altruist to the altruist himself and his in-group.
@Riggerjack:
upbringing
it's interesting how closely brute's upbringing mirrors Riggerjack's. almost to the point, with a few exceptions. no surprise brute and Riggerjack both think similarly about libertarianism.
tribe of one
brute isn't sure if it's a "clean slate", but there is certainly a phenomenon where some individuals become distant/disillusioned/fail to adapt to their natural tribe. brute could make the argument that neither Riggerjack nor he ever fully adopted their natural tribes, or maybe repeated chances at starting over with clean slates in new tribes made the difference. it's probably both.
brute has also seen tribes (including his own natural one) fail so brutally and viciously, and seen humans get fucked so badly, that it's difficult for him to commit to any tribe to the degree that the average human seems to be able to.
it might be like that theory about "which stock market a human (financially) grew up in" - if a human grows up seeing the tribe fail badly, and individuals get really hurt, they will probably develop a completely different mental model of societies, politics, and so on.
most humans in the west grew up in just about the nicest and safest political environment and society that has existed in human history. it's like growing up during the stock market of the 90s. it's easy to be index-positive and optimistic after that experience. by analogy, brute and Riggerjack got fucked by the penny stocks or pets.com startups of the time, and have become much more wary of the blue skies of tribalism.
on humans doing mindblowingly contradicting stuff
there are times when brute's brain literally failed to compute. for example, brute knows humans with type 2 diabetes who have had limbs amputated and literally gone blind, yet don't want to try out a low-carb diet because they "couldn't possibly do that". they'd rather lose one of the more important sense and the ability to walk than try a diet that is moderately out there (Atkins is hardly radical compared to what brute eats). "but bread tastes so good" is another popular argument AMONG HUMANS WHO ARE ABOUT TO LOSE LIMBS AND EYE SIGHT! WHAT THE FUCK!
there are various other medical examples brute could list, of humans choosing to spend the rest of their lives in self-described "endless agony" and "debilitating disability", but unwilling to try something that's free, would likely completely cure the condition, and taste better. medical professionals are no better - in brute's eyes, the treatment of diabetes, obesity, and related conditions from the 1950s onwards is paramount to genocide on the part of the medical profession.
on the other hand, some humans fly a plane into a building, killing themselves and their friends and hundreds of innocents, because there was a promise to get laid.
so it could be said that beliefs are maybe the most powerful force in humans.
responsibility
in short, brute isn't sure this has much to do with libertarianism. brute HATES responsibility. brute enjoys libertarianism. for most humans brute has argued with, the idea of personal responsibility and political systems seems pretty disconnected.
uncaring? brute thinks not.
brute thinks that most non-libertarians, at least most liberals and conservatives, are actually extremely caring. brute's mental model goes like this:
there are various levels of effects/consequences that humans can think about a specific problems they care about. 1st order, 2nd order, .. similar to the way Dear Leader jacob describes the web of goals effects in the ERE book.
most of the time, humans will agree with brute on the desired outcomes (0th order effects?), e.g. "human children should not starve", "humans who work in factories should not die", or "crime is bad".
the 1st order thought could be something like "banning crime" or "raising the minimum wage". a pretty simple, direct-effect action or law. most humans ignore any higher-level effects.
unfortunately, human societies and economies are complex, intercausal systems, where the higher order effects are often stronger than the first order (intended) effects.
thus "workers are poor -> raising the minimum wage" type ideas actually end up doing more harm than good, often times even hurting workers more than it helps.
economics is the science of thinking about the higher-order effects of these things, and brute presumes there's some other social science that does the same for more general societal effects or non-economic policy. for example, the higher-order effects of both parents working, social media, stuffing 30 human kids of the same age in a class room, not being surrounded by grandparents while growing up, and many more.
most humans only think "workers are poor! bad!", or "workers are poor! bad! -> minimum wage! good!". rarely do humans not formally trained about a specific field even think that they might be missing the higher-order effects, and typically they are unable to do so if they try, or if trained humans try to explain it to them.
parallels: global warming discussions with Dear Leader jacob.
this sure sounds like the Kegan thing. and it seems to invalidate Democracy.
what is the solution? technocracy? just spectacularly failed in Europe (or in the process of, apparently still in free fall). maybe there is a way to do technocracy right?
maybe a more evolutionary system, where small iterative things are tried and then somehow humans measure if the higher-order effects added up to something good? economics and complex social systems are notoriously hard to A/B test though, to the point where economists disagree even about the things where both sides have the exact same facts in front of them (e.g. great depression, QE, inflation, minimum wage), which is rare.
to come back to the touchy-feely types: when they suggest "school shooting bad! -> ban guns", or "poor workers bad! -> minimum wage", and int-types/libertarians argue against it, they conclude that ints/libertarians must not think school shooting or poor workers are bad.
violent rejection ensues. ("SHOCK! libertarians are for child prostitution! inconceivable!")
@ffj:
self interest vs. altruism seems a false dichotomy. they're the same thing. for an altruistic human, it's in his self-interest to help others. the whole point of virtue signaling, The Atlantic, and so on seems to be to reinforce the identity of an altruist to the altruist himself and his in-group.