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Will the Truth Set You Free?

By crispy
    2021-02-14 02:18:00.710Z

    @suspendedreason and I were discussing Moldbug's piece about Scott Alexander

    and he told me the following, saying we should take it to the forum:

    Selection mechanisms rule the world, and a selection mechanism that rewards actors/bullshitters/scammers/grifters, while strongly penalizing honest contrarians, independent thinkers, people unwilling to pay lipservice, people who are disagreeable, etc, ends up with dysfunctional institutions

    I strongly disagree. The ability to coordinate effectively in large groups overwhelms these by a longshot, in my view. I think the strawman n the above is that grifting is singular. I agree that systems which are open to exploitation by singular actors tend to breakdown quickly. Instead, I believe that systems allow for strong mutual enforcement of norms are strong, and they tend to eat-up other systems as long as they're able to monopolize resources through sheer size. Grip on people's psyches and conversion rituals are also key factors in determining how well run they are.

    I'm not denying that the ability to discover things that are true is useful. But I personally feel that we rely on an intuition that "eventually people must be allowed to think or nothing would happen!" without much evidence. As long as there are classes or categories of people that are allowed to care about real world logistics, I feel that this kind of dysfunction rarely becomes the primary obstacle.

    • 2 replies
    1. suspendedreason
        2021-02-14 02:21:22.311Z

        We have a post on deviance vs conformity where I cite an abstract that supports your point, so it's clear I don't disagree.

        The problem is with leadership selection, not low-level bureaucrats.

        We show that, regardless of the source of heterogeneity and game parametrization, socially the most favorable outcomes emerge if the masses conform. On the other hand, forcing leaders to conform significantly hinders the constructive interplay between heterogeneity and coordination, leading to evolutionary outcomes that are worse still than if conformists were chosen randomly. We conclude that leaders must be able to create a following for network reciprocity to be optimally augmented by conformity. In the opposite case, when leaders are castrated and made to follow, the failure of coordination impairs the evolution of cooperation.

        1. In reply tocrispy:
          crispy
            2021-02-14 02:33:57.930Z

            I could buy this in the long-run or in simple games with very clear hierarchies, but I think we underestimate the level of conformity needed simply to efficiently communicate with people today. Most people are in school for twelve years, constantly be acculturated to certain kinds of communication, ideas, practices, etc. My feeling is that what you quote above is true, but it's true within a sphere of practicality that does not encompass many of the ways we might think of things if we started from the top.

            Take the example of Ethics. Almost all writing in the literature of Ethics today, even if totally decries some vast portion of humanity (e.g. Meat Eaters) generally sticks to justifying or condemning certain kinds of interactions that their audience expects to be acceptable. If a principle is challenged, it must be challenged individually, so as to use other principles as inherent foundations. We cannot get away from coordination all at once, without losing our audience entirely and therefore present Ethics tends to vastly justify the present, condemning it on certain routes that alight enough emotion that people can feel the justification.