I share your unease with the “raising awareness” mode of activism. I’m not really sold on these extra simulacra levels as an explanation of that unease. Especially levels 9 and 10, an evolutionary explanation just isn’t interchangeable with an explanation of a biological mechanism. Similarly, a memetic explanation just isn’t interchangeable with a simulacra explanation, a memetic explanation just isn’t an explanation of what psychological process causes a person to utter a sentence, it is an explanation of why certain sentences are uttered given a psychological environment.
For me at least, I think the uneasiness with “raising awareness” is more that it is transparently ineffective altruism. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people “raising awareness” of x type of cancer or of sexual assault or whatever, as though there was anyone on the planet who didn’t know that these things exist. And it seems wildly implausible to me that wearing a ribbon or whatever is actually going to cause anybody to think of a new solution or implement an existing solution more effectively. “Raising awareness” comes off as very transparent pure signaling, simulacra level 3 or 4, and often rather expensive signaling, and I don’t like that.
I think the issue is that ‘raising awareness’ is used to mean three separate things. (I agree that the extra simulacra levels aren’t a helpful explanation.) Using awareness of breast cancer as a reasonably non-controversial example.
Give people some useful knowledge or skill to help reduce the problem. Eg teach women how to examine themselves for lumps and when to seek medical advice.
Raise the profile of the issue (or in some cases inform people that the issue exists) such that more resources will be devoted to solving it. Eg publishing opinion pieces informing the public how many people are affected by cancer and calling for more facilities for treatment, or encouraging people to donate money to charities researching cures.
Signal that you are a virtuous person who is concerned about socially-approved causes. Eg wear a pink ribbon, or like Facebook pages from breast cancer charities.
I agree that there are a lot of people practicing virtue-signalling, while kidding themselves that they are doing level 2 profile-raising, and I also agree that a lot of the profile-raising is transparently ineffective. But I think that there are useful level-1 activities which also come under the banner of ‘raising awareness’ and I wouldn’t want to stigmatise those.
There are also some situations in which the level-2 activities are useful. I suspect you would disagree, but I think sexual assault is a fairly good example: a lot of people have gone to great efforts to explain to the general public that there is a widespread problem that needs action. The result has been an in-progress and partial change in social norms which may well succeed in reducing the levels of sexual assault.
I think the breakdown is good. I find it more natural to call your level 1 “education” than “raising awareness”, but I guess both terms are used.
I think the changes on sexual assault have been a mixed bag and that in at least some circles the pendulum has already swung too far. Reconceptualizing sex between spouses without consent as rape was a good move, reconceptualizing stupid drunk sex where both parties consented at the time as rape was a bad move, and both have definitely happened as a result of this raising awareness.
Give people some useful knowledge or skill to help reduce the problem. Eg teach women how to examine themselves for lumps and when to seek medical advice.
It’s worth noting it that while this intuitive sounds very good it’s not that clear it actually was good. Doing more testing for breast cancer increased breast cancer diagnoses and breast amputations but it’s not clear that it actually reduced breast cancer deaths.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century public health officials archieved a lot of increase in lifespan by raising awareness about the usefulness of hygine that they understood because of the germ theory of disease.
Hospitals are very expensive. To the extend that you can change behaviors of your population so that they engage in cheap preventive interventions like hand washing there a very high return on investment.
After declaring war on cancer, it made a lot of sense to tell the population about the symptoms that mean that they have cancer so that they can go to the doctor and get treated for cancer.
On the sexual assault front “see something say something” likely does increase the amount of people who step in when they witness sexual assault and make victims classify experience as sexual assault (it wasn’t that long ago that people believed that there’s no such thing as sexual assault in marriage). Laws about what counts as sexual assault get changed as a result of such activism.
One of the problems is that awareness raising leads to measures against sexual assault being adopted that signal taking action about the problem without being based on good research about what interventions are effective. The resulting discussion also usually ignores the tradeoffs that are involved with adopting interventions.
That unfortunately means that you get worse interventions then you would get if you would go for a lower simulacrum level and focus on the empriric evidence that certain interventions will help with the problem. Mid-20th century you had people spending way to much effort on hygine and cleanliness (housewifes spend much more time cleaning then with childcare).
I share your unease with the “raising awareness” mode of activism. I’m not really sold on these extra simulacra levels as an explanation of that unease. Especially levels 9 and 10, an evolutionary explanation just isn’t interchangeable with an explanation of a biological mechanism. Similarly, a memetic explanation just isn’t interchangeable with a simulacra explanation, a memetic explanation just isn’t an explanation of what psychological process causes a person to utter a sentence, it is an explanation of why certain sentences are uttered given a psychological environment.
For me at least, I think the uneasiness with “raising awareness” is more that it is transparently ineffective altruism. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people “raising awareness” of x type of cancer or of sexual assault or whatever, as though there was anyone on the planet who didn’t know that these things exist. And it seems wildly implausible to me that wearing a ribbon or whatever is actually going to cause anybody to think of a new solution or implement an existing solution more effectively. “Raising awareness” comes off as very transparent pure signaling, simulacra level 3 or 4, and often rather expensive signaling, and I don’t like that.
I think the issue is that ‘raising awareness’ is used to mean three separate things. (I agree that the extra simulacra levels aren’t a helpful explanation.) Using awareness of breast cancer as a reasonably non-controversial example.
Give people some useful knowledge or skill to help reduce the problem. Eg teach women how to examine themselves for lumps and when to seek medical advice.
Raise the profile of the issue (or in some cases inform people that the issue exists) such that more resources will be devoted to solving it. Eg publishing opinion pieces informing the public how many people are affected by cancer and calling for more facilities for treatment, or encouraging people to donate money to charities researching cures.
Signal that you are a virtuous person who is concerned about socially-approved causes. Eg wear a pink ribbon, or like Facebook pages from breast cancer charities.
I agree that there are a lot of people practicing virtue-signalling, while kidding themselves that they are doing level 2 profile-raising, and I also agree that a lot of the profile-raising is transparently ineffective. But I think that there are useful level-1 activities which also come under the banner of ‘raising awareness’ and I wouldn’t want to stigmatise those.
There are also some situations in which the level-2 activities are useful. I suspect you would disagree, but I think sexual assault is a fairly good example: a lot of people have gone to great efforts to explain to the general public that there is a widespread problem that needs action. The result has been an in-progress and partial change in social norms which may well succeed in reducing the levels of sexual assault.
I think the breakdown is good. I find it more natural to call your level 1 “education” than “raising awareness”, but I guess both terms are used.
I think the changes on sexual assault have been a mixed bag and that in at least some circles the pendulum has already swung too far. Reconceptualizing sex between spouses without consent as rape was a good move, reconceptualizing stupid drunk sex where both parties consented at the time as rape was a bad move, and both have definitely happened as a result of this raising awareness.
It’s worth noting it that while this intuitive sounds very good it’s not that clear it actually was good. Doing more testing for breast cancer increased breast cancer diagnoses and breast amputations but it’s not clear that it actually reduced breast cancer deaths.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century public health officials archieved a lot of increase in lifespan by raising awareness about the usefulness of hygine that they understood because of the germ theory of disease.
Hospitals are very expensive. To the extend that you can change behaviors of your population so that they engage in cheap preventive interventions like hand washing there a very high return on investment.
After declaring war on cancer, it made a lot of sense to tell the population about the symptoms that mean that they have cancer so that they can go to the doctor and get treated for cancer.
On the sexual assault front “see something say something” likely does increase the amount of people who step in when they witness sexual assault and make victims classify experience as sexual assault (it wasn’t that long ago that people believed that there’s no such thing as sexual assault in marriage). Laws about what counts as sexual assault get changed as a result of such activism.
One of the problems is that awareness raising leads to measures against sexual assault being adopted that signal taking action about the problem without being based on good research about what interventions are effective. The resulting discussion also usually ignores the tradeoffs that are involved with adopting interventions.
That unfortunately means that you get worse interventions then you would get if you would go for a lower simulacrum level and focus on the empriric evidence that certain interventions will help with the problem. Mid-20th century you had people spending way to much effort on hygine and cleanliness (housewifes spend much more time cleaning then with childcare).