- Human brains are effectively populated by rabbits. Your conscious mind is like a very small person attempting to ride a large herd of rabbits, which aren't all going the same direction. Your job is to pretend to be in control, and make shit up to explain where the rabbits went, and what you did.
- Humans bunny brains are optimized for social activity, not intellectual activity. If your brain thinks principles first, instead of groups first, it's broken, and not just a little bit.
- Of course, this means that anyone thinking group first is almost completely full of crap regarding their reasoning process. They're (99.86% certainty) making shit up that makes the group look good, and the actual rational value of the statement is near zero. The nominal process "A->B->C" is actually C, now let's backfill with B and A.
- Therefore I'm almost only interested in listening to folks who are group-free. If your brain is broken in the kind of way that prohibits group-attachment...then you're far far more likely to be thinking independently, and shifting perspectives.
- Aside: FWIW, this is the core (unsolvable?) problem that inhabits rationalist groups. There is a deep and abiding conflict between groupism and thinking. The Randians have encountered this most loudly, but it's also there in the libertarians, the extropians, the David Deutch-led popperian rationalists, and the LessWrongers.
New discovery, shouldn't have been as surprising as it was. When looking for folks who are group-avoidant, I seem to have phenomenally good luck finding great people when talking with Gays from non-leftist areas (rural Texas, Tennessee, downstate Illinois). Because they don't/can't fit in with their local culture, and often can't conveniently exit, they become interesting people. It's a surprisingly good metric.
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Your job is to pretend to be in control, and make shit up to explain where the rabbits went, and what you did...
Humans bunny brains are optimized for social activity, not intellectual activity. If your brain thinks principles first, instead of groups first, it's broken,...
Alternative explanation: We have broken brains that are somehow latching onto a principal as though it was a group. Our standard group circuitry is still running as normal, but we've got it aimed at a group of ideas rather than a group of people.
Related point 1: In our brain, people are just a symbolic representation of something we assume is "out there" so an idea is just a similar symbolic representation. At the level of squidgy neurons it's probably easy to substitute one for the other.
Related point 2: Given that it's just about impossible to get something right the first time you try: the chances of getting something as complex as thinking right by getting something else wrong (standard groupism) is even worse. That even a tiny minority of the population could somehow "go wrong" in a way that results in "correct" thinking is hard to believe. More likely, we've just substituted one group for another.
Of course the real question is: Which sort of group loyalty (to Collingwood Football club, or to logic and rationality) results in improved outcomes.
For extra credit, define "improved outcomes" in a way that does not have a basis in the value structure of the group you are a member of.
3. I realize I haven't finished the reference to the first part of the quote I copied:
Our description of our own thinking as "rational" is no doubt ALSO an after-the-fact just-so story about the rabbit herd. So a possibly productive field of inquiry is to assume that our rabbit-herd is following some sort of groupism, and try to work out what it is.
4. Possibly a better metaphor is a group of many sorts of animals. Rabbits, cats, pigs, flatworms, e-coli... with different motivations, different levels of activity, different levels of thought.
5.
I'll echo drpat in asking: if you are part of a group that eschews group thinking, it looks like you are no better off.
Drpat's criticism is incisive. You are arguing as if your brain is somehow exempt from attachment; but how can you know it is not? Do normal people sense how their groupism distorts their thinking? Obviously not. Therefore, it is wise to consider that there is probably some factor that similarly distorts your own thinking. Attachment to ideas, perhaps. Or just attachment to the idea of "truth". Your rabbit herd is boinging about against rabbit-herd-led people. And your group-brain is rationalizing your herd's exclusion of the wrongthinkers.
It's rabbit herds all around, and all the way down.
And yet there is still truth and an objective external world. As always it gets back to judgment.
As always it gets back to judgment.
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Also, Because they don't/can't fit in with their local culture, and often can't conveniently exit, they become interesting people.
? What do you find interesting? Different is interesting, sometimes, but it doesn't mean "better".
RSF's question first:
I find interesting that they ask questions across a variety of topics many of which are considered sacred and unquestionable by one group or another. Their idea sets cohere, but not from group identity;
With my people-group disability, my personal interaction involves a great deal of mapping folks thought processes, and determining what opinions they have. Almost universally, if I can find the group that someone subscribes to, I know their opinions/approach on damn near everything. If they don't subscribe to a group... or only subscribe narrowly, then their thoughts are very different, and most often not so firm, and more nuanced.
Great, interesting question you made me think about.
Pat:
That's a fascinating alternate.
Point 1: I don't buy it, past the obviously true part. I think our brain has a whole mini-herd of rabbits that model group as real thing.
Point 2: I didn't say they were right. I said they were more interesting. Big difference.
Point 2.5: I am highly suspicious of logic-and-rationality as an even potential group. Halfway because I've seen 4 or more distinct groups play that claim, and fail.
Point 3: This is, I think, your best insight...
Point 4: Yes, probably more accurate, but the bunnies is so fun to think about. And it captures 90% of the value of the proposition.
RSF,
Question 1:
I wasn't claiming that there was a group of such people. I actively noted that most people in said groups fail that test reflexively.
Leonard,
"How can you know?" is always the wrong question: Hume answered it 200 years ago. You can't.
What reason do you have to believe? Different question.
Thirdly, I haven't claimed correctness...just difference.
Re: drpat's principle-as-group hypothesis:
That fits awfully well with what I've read in McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues about atheistic substitutes for the transcendant ("science" / "la revoluçion" / "art" / "Nature" / etc). These could be either names for groups ("other people who appreciate this thing as much as I do") that make us feel smug, or substitute concepts for a group-like thing (something that has a degree of permanence and significance independent of the self) that tend to hit the same bunny brains. Probably most people live on a sliding scale between the two.
That's all undercaffeinated speculation, mind.
Or overcaffinated in my case.
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