I upvoted you both because I appreciate the apparent honesty!
However, surely you agree that the world has gotten much sociologically worse in the last 15 years?
Friendship rates are down. Birth rates are down. Happiness rates are down. Distrust is up. Etc.
Having grown up in a small town in northern California full of aging hippies, where the idea that “almost everyone is in almost everyone else’s ingroup (and the people who aren’t tend to be literal psychos who literally commit robberies or literally murder their parents or whatever (and visible social separations could be grounded in coherent individual failures at basic ethics))” was normal...
...I find it really sad to see a world arise where the idea of distrust and tribalism is so socially real that we can no longer joke about having transcended it successfully.
When I was growing up, my father was in the Rotary Club (which almost eradicated polio via an international network of voluntary cooperators) and they had a vision for World Peace built on friendships between people traveling around the world being virtuous with each other. Some nights, the club would have all the members bring their family to a Thursday Dinner, and we’d hear a speech by someone from the Philippines (or where ever (sometimes it was just the High School principal from the town one valley over (or whatever))) who happened to be visiting my little town in the redwoods, after having been a President of his local Rotary Club in a little town on the other side of the planet, and it was nice and it seemed normal to me.
Not more than three months ago, I saw a slideshow at the my father’s church, about a trip deep into a jungle, to a place that has zero roads, and can be reached only part of the year, to help build a community center for a community in decline, and deliver bundles of christmas presents to the community’s children. Then we took a collection for doing that again for a new town.
Following scholars like Putnam, I believe that civic engagement is essential for the civic virtue that makes a constitutional democratic republic possible.
All of this feels consonant and consistent with themes of sociological happiness and success and progress going back at least as far as Tocqueville.
You two seem to share an “anti-ingroup vision” of virtue and happiness and systematically good outcomes that is NOT just a joke… and I’m wondering if you could unpack how you think that works so that I could learn to participate in your novel-to-me and hypothetically learnable culture?
From my perspective, if you guys are being entirely literal, and not joking, then… I kinda predict that your society will be a sad place that loses cohesion and falls apart, rather than being a community that grows, and links up, and aims for common goods with all, in a spirit of friendship and reason?
If >80% of humans don’t love and trust >80% of humans, in some very abstract and yet very deep sense, based on our shared humanity (ie based on our shared genesis as children made by the same God in the image of universal reasoners?), and our shared belief that humanity is pretty darn OK, then… why have a country together? Why aim for world peace? Why pretend that justice is possible? Why be against racism, or imagine that open borders could ever be a good idea? Why tolerate interstate travel? Why should any city let infectious people enter that city? Why unify Europe? Why keep India together? Why keep China together? Why have cities are all? Why not “social nihilism”?
I feel like you might be missing (1) a really important principle for manifesting utopia inside of history with existing humans, and also (2) you’re missing (or not tying together?) key facts that undergird this principle and make its hopes into something other than cope, but rather make the hopes practical and realizable on both a local and global basis.
In the same way that I’ve offered (1) three links that point to political theorists from past centuries, past decades, and also some friendly voluntary associations living up to those ideals in living memory, and then (2) three more links reiterating “morally universal” conclusions from Christian ethics without actually citing any Christians such as to put the ideas on a more worldly and secular and scientific basis...
...I wonder if you could offer three links to substantive material that hangs together to describe the theory and practice of the “vision of the good” that you are preaching here, so that I could learn to sing along with whatever song you are singing that is similarly hopeful and similarly real but which somehow gives the opposite advice on “being friendly to strangers (by calling them ingroup or any other joke term), and telling jokes about human nature, and trying to make friends”?
In good faith, I hope that you have such a theory and I am open to learning about it.
But epistemically, I fear that I will hear no such theory, and maybe, rather, if my epistemic predictions are born out… then perhaps, morally, I have a minor imperfect duty to offer to teach you my theory, so your praxis can become happier and friendlier and more conducive to helping the world get better outcomes than otherwise… if that’s even what you want?
it feels like we’re talking past each other. I want everyone to be friends, so I don’t like ingroup/outgroup distinctions? being friendly to strangers good! doing it in a way that requires outgrouping other strangers bad. that’s all?
edit: coming back to this—like, I disagree with very little you’ve said here besides the “joking”
bad, like those icky people in outgroup who lack our special characteristics.
and maybe also ambient praise of
You’re just that smart.
having seen society seem to move in a direction where these jokes are consistently used as cover to mean such things literally, I’ve stopped playing along when people try to be dismissive of an outgroup even as a joke. the fact that things got worse is why I’ve come to distrust that people who make jokes of criticism don’t mean it—countersignaling doesn’t work when people often mean it literally. you could have said “I really appreciate the people on this website” without having to say “unlike everyone else, who are bad”. you can say that, of course, but I’ll reliably react negatively to it, because I’ve come to dislike countersignaling that produces cover for actually just meaning the bad thing. if you want to say “lots of people have problem x” then please be specific about what x is, rather than producing incentive to conformity by criticizing people who differ and passing it off as a joke.
if you want to say positive things, just … say the positive thing? I don’t want people to try to make me feel good by tearing others down.
Fully agreed. This was one of the more unfortunate aspects of LW-fifteen-years-ago’s culture, and I’m glad to see it gone.
I upvoted you both because I appreciate the apparent honesty!
However, surely you agree that the world has gotten much sociologically worse in the last 15 years?
Friendship rates are down. Birth rates are down. Happiness rates are down. Distrust is up. Etc.
Having grown up in a small town in northern California full of aging hippies, where the idea that “almost everyone is in almost everyone else’s ingroup (and the people who aren’t tend to be literal psychos who literally commit robberies or literally murder their parents or whatever (and visible social separations could be grounded in coherent individual failures at basic ethics))” was normal...
...I find it really sad to see a world arise where the idea of distrust and tribalism is so socially real that we can no longer joke about having transcended it successfully.
When I was growing up, my father was in the Rotary Club (which almost eradicated polio via an international network of voluntary cooperators) and they had a vision for World Peace built on friendships between people traveling around the world being virtuous with each other. Some nights, the club would have all the members bring their family to a Thursday Dinner, and we’d hear a speech by someone from the Philippines (or where ever (sometimes it was just the High School principal from the town one valley over (or whatever))) who happened to be visiting my little town in the redwoods, after having been a President of his local Rotary Club in a little town on the other side of the planet, and it was nice and it seemed normal to me.
Not more than three months ago, I saw a slideshow at the my father’s church, about a trip deep into a jungle, to a place that has zero roads, and can be reached only part of the year, to help build a community center for a community in decline, and deliver bundles of christmas presents to the community’s children. Then we took a collection for doing that again for a new town.
Following scholars like Putnam, I believe that civic engagement is essential for the civic virtue that makes a constitutional democratic republic possible.
All of this feels consonant and consistent with themes of sociological happiness and success and progress going back at least as far as Tocqueville.
You two seem to share an “anti-ingroup vision” of virtue and happiness and systematically good outcomes that is NOT just a joke… and I’m wondering if you could unpack how you think that works so that I could learn to participate in your novel-to-me and hypothetically learnable culture?
From my perspective, if you guys are being entirely literal, and not joking, then… I kinda predict that your society will be a sad place that loses cohesion and falls apart, rather than being a community that grows, and links up, and aims for common goods with all, in a spirit of friendship and reason?
If >80% of humans don’t love and trust >80% of humans, in some very abstract and yet very deep sense, based on our shared humanity (ie based on our shared genesis as children made by the same God in the image of universal reasoners?), and our shared belief that humanity is pretty darn OK, then… why have a country together? Why aim for world peace? Why pretend that justice is possible? Why be against racism, or imagine that open borders could ever be a good idea? Why tolerate interstate travel? Why should any city let infectious people enter that city? Why unify Europe? Why keep India together? Why keep China together? Why have cities are all? Why not “social nihilism”?
I feel like you might be missing (1) a really important principle for manifesting utopia inside of history with existing humans, and also (2) you’re missing (or not tying together?) key facts that undergird this principle and make its hopes into something other than cope, but rather make the hopes practical and realizable on both a local and global basis.
In the same way that I’ve offered (1) three links that point to political theorists from past centuries, past decades, and also some friendly voluntary associations living up to those ideals in living memory, and then (2) three more links reiterating “morally universal” conclusions from Christian ethics without actually citing any Christians such as to put the ideas on a more worldly and secular and scientific basis...
...I wonder if you could offer three links to substantive material that hangs together to describe the theory and practice of the “vision of the good” that you are preaching here, so that I could learn to sing along with whatever song you are singing that is similarly hopeful and similarly real but which somehow gives the opposite advice on “being friendly to strangers (by calling them ingroup or any other joke term), and telling jokes about human nature, and trying to make friends”?
In good faith, I hope that you have such a theory and I am open to learning about it.
But epistemically, I fear that I will hear no such theory, and maybe, rather, if my epistemic predictions are born out… then perhaps, morally, I have a minor imperfect duty to offer to teach you my theory, so your praxis can become happier and friendlier and more conducive to helping the world get better outcomes than otherwise… if that’s even what you want?
it feels like we’re talking past each other. I want everyone to be friends, so I don’t like ingroup/outgroup distinctions? being friendly to strangers good! doing it in a way that requires outgrouping other strangers bad. that’s all?
edit: coming back to this—like, I disagree with very little you’ve said here besides the “joking”
and maybe also ambient praise of
having seen society seem to move in a direction where these jokes are consistently used as cover to mean such things literally, I’ve stopped playing along when people try to be dismissive of an outgroup even as a joke. the fact that things got worse is why I’ve come to distrust that people who make jokes of criticism don’t mean it—countersignaling doesn’t work when people often mean it literally. you could have said “I really appreciate the people on this website” without having to say “unlike everyone else, who are bad”. you can say that, of course, but I’ll reliably react negatively to it, because I’ve come to dislike countersignaling that produces cover for actually just meaning the bad thing. if you want to say “lots of people have problem x” then please be specific about what x is, rather than producing incentive to conformity by criticizing people who differ and passing it off as a joke.
if you want to say positive things, just … say the positive thing? I don’t want people to try to make me feel good by tearing others down.