I've been having inchoate thoughts on the topic of Loyalty and Libertarianism for a few years now, that had slowly begun to form into something solid over the last few months.
Then Kent went off and wrote something catalytic on the topic here. Vroom vroom.
Aretae claim I:
A (the?) primary characteristic that one can use to differentiate people is "how important is it to belong?" Alternately, one can use the personality trait Agreeableness.
Aretae claim II:
Verbal Opinion is primarily a method by which one notes agreement with one's tribe. Anyone using verbal opinion for any other purpose is highly confused about the purpose of the opinion faculty. You're doing it wrong. Note: I am highly initially confused about the purpose of the opinion faculty...and because opinions don't work how I want them to work, I am giving a predictive hypothesis.
Some folks...Athiest, Libertarians, Left-libertarians, Athiest left-Libertarians, Moldbuggian Neoreactionaries, Roissy-an PUAs, Sailerite new Racists, and most Psychopaths prominent among them...are completely broken on the agreeableness dimension. We (mostly) don't care if someone likes our ideas...we don't know how to "belong". And as such...we don't fit into our tribe...rather we go off, looking for truths.
We are the ones who are dysfunctional human beings. Indeed...I think dysfunctionality as a human being is a prerequisite to being a truth-seeker. Social fitting in is the "correct" way to be as a human being...leading to the highest net happiness.
By the way...this hypothesis would predict that intellectual opposition will effectively never succeed in organizing to oppose or support anything. If you're an intellectual..who reached positions by truth-values, you only got there because you can't work in a tribe. If you're part of a tribe...most of your opinion comes from being part of the tribe. You occasionally get weird semi-rationalist groups (Objectivist, Popperite TCS, Extropians, LessWrong) which succeed partially in creating a fusion of the rationalist and tribal insticts... but the core issue is that truth-seeking is opposed to tribes. Pick at most one. Either, be a (very likely to be wrong) truth-seeker with no tribe, or a tribalist who prefers tribe to truth.
I wish the LessWrongers all the best...I don't think they've solved the problem that is that truth seeking and tribalism are deeply opposed. Rational people will (necessarily?) disagree on important or taboo topics. Tribes require shared conclusions. Good luck threading the needle.
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16 comments:
I had a brief email discussion with MM on this topic a while back, which I posted in his comments. I think our exchange is related enough that you might be interested.
Leonard,
Well said (over there).
Excellent.
In the past I have found groups where I could "belong" without being agreeable to reprehensible things. I compartmentalized. I still do that when I can.
So, while I might not belong where sports or religion or politics were concerned, I could be completely embraced by my karaoke group. I made my own tribe.
I can be a truth-seeker, but I can also take a break and enjoy myself with people in a situation where that truth-seeking is not likely to cause a problem.
I don't think anyone will ever belong to a tribe of "everyone who lives in a particular region", so we might as well choose our tribe- based upon things we can agree on.
I think I am more optimistic about building a community around truthseeking than you are. If tribes have to coalesce around a single belief system that can't change at all, then I think breaking and reforming the rationalist tribe is the best approach, where each successive belief structure is more true and thus less fragile to disruption, like annealing a steel blade. If all the individuals are capable of updating, then it seems like the whole community can shift in parallel once a new truth is discovered. The unifying belief can be a meta-belief about their identity as truthseekers, and thus being able to update will determine group status.
If [X], cutting the Gordian knot is easy.
Make a tribe. Its core truth is a procedure. The procedure is checking beliefs against reality. It is a recursive procedure - the details of the procedure are themselves subject to testing, to see if they indeed lead to beliefs matching reality.
In practice this would look like an objective method for coming to agreement between parties. The recursion would be coming to agreement on a new method.
Unfortunately...[X] is "Tribes in fact follow their stated beliefs." As per your line about the purpose of opinion...you're somewhat broken if you take the colours of your tribe's belief-flags seriously. The beliefs aren't for being used, just shown off.
You can form a truth-seeking tribe, but everyone in it who will actually seek truth was going to anyway - which means the club would have to be exclusive, to keep out the 99.9etc% who want to free ride on the appearance of truth-seeking, lest they overwhelm the culture.
(They say that our elites are incompetent...but exclusive clubs are all but illegal these days. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.)
You say you're broken re: beliefs...but that's not quite true. Something you have in common with Less Wrong is the out-grouping of certain opinions. Indeed you use the same word: "insane."
It's a sophistry, and if that's not what you mean to do, you should probably stop.
A pure truth seeker can't do that. Mainly what it does is make you look bad if it turns out you're wrong. Falsity shouldn't need any further insults than 'false.'
Check: a belief is incorrect, so you don't believe it.
Or, a belief is insane, so you don't believe it...harder?
Kent,
Joining an activity group, and becoming a part of a tribe are different.
Will,
I think I have to expand the thought. More coming.
Alrenous,
Very insightful critique of me. I think I need to think about that.
As a neoreactionary, I neither require or expect the tribe to follow a lot of arguments about the consequences of competition for power. "The King brings peace and prosperity. Long Live The King!" will do for me. What particularly attracts me to monarchy over alternative formalist structures is that it has a proven track record of being the basis of tribal unity.
Historically, Monarchism lost the thinkers first, and the tribe only later. My claim is that the thinkers made a mistake.
Those of us thinking and arguing about these things now will tend to be untribed, misfits. That's only a problem if we overgeneralise from ourselves to normal folks. That can lead to the error of trying to do away with tribes.
Let's take an argument like free trade. Let's say I can prove that free trade makes the world richer, even if it makes members of your particular tribe (say, first world blue collar laborers) poorer. Why would you support it if its against the interest of your tribe? Why even acknowledge the argument, if acknowledging the argument will only hurt your tribes case?
Truth seeking is an odd thing. Probably has something to do with ego and/or with someone who can't fit in well with the groups around him (really smart people, really ugly people, etc that just don't fit in). I've come to peace with it, but I also acknowledge how useless it is for most people.
In order to avowed beliefs to serve as a signal of group membership, they have to be costly. To a first approximation, proclaiming true beliefs is not costly. Proclaiming true forbidden beliefs is costly, perhaps costly enough to stop us from forming an open group. If the reboot gets off the ground, that will no longer be the case.
Another issue is that "With the Cathedral" points to one place. "Against the Cathedral" points to all of the other places, and is thus weaker as a focal point. We can disagree with each other as well as with the consensus.
Aretae,
I'm relieved I came across more or less as I intended.
"Historically, Monarchism lost the thinkers first, and the tribe only later. My claim is that the thinkers made a mistake."
For the record, my formulation of anarchism allows monarchy to be re-created within it, provided only that you join the kingdom voluntarily, not automatically.
Neurotypical are happier?
Well ignorance is bliss. But ignorance is also dangerous.
Truth seeking also pays off in many circumstances. The truth tends to make itself useful.
The point about belonging is that given gaussian distributions, people in the tails will always find it hard to belong. Especially if you are a dissenter, and especially in our individualistic times. People are encouraged to 'be yourself' and to have hobbies and all that. Hard to get a critical mass of like-minded people when you have the mental depth to be unique.
In real life, I'm a highly agreeable (and very non-confrontational) person. I have lots of contrarian beliefs, but I only let them out on the internet.
Perhaps it's my Scandinavian ancestry.
I've (mostly) given up on writing about politics after realizing that the typical political position was a statement of tribal identity, not something with analysis behind it. I've also noticed that people who hold a few heretical beliefs (ie, gun-owning liberals) tend to make lots of attacks against the opposing party to make it clear they're not part of *that* tribe.
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