I wonder if there’s a pattern of idea dissemination that goes something like this:
Someone discovers an idea that seems helpful for them in interacting with the world.
They find that the more strongly they identify with the idea, the more helpful it is.
They tell all their friends about the idea, because (a) this is part of identifying with it and (b) they want to help their friends.
Their friends, being similar people, also find the idea helpful and proceed to spread it similarly.
The idea gains sufficient traction that it’s no longer “this weird idea I had”, but the mantra of a (possibly powerful) faction.
At this point, some people who the idea doesn’t sit well with notice the idea (which now has significant psychosocial power) and experience cognitive dissonance.
At this stage, the idea (hopefully) gets optimized to be more accommodating to those people, and harmony ensues.
In other words, to provide a purely descriptive picture of what may have happened here: Eliezer found the idea of thinking of himself as a hero useful. This idea was helpful for accomplishing his goals. These goals included writing, and this is one of the things he wrote about. People found this writing compelling, and many adopted the idea themselves. The more seriously you take the idea, the better it works, so presentations of the idea coming from people using it successfully tended to present it pretty forcefully. But for those for whom the idea didn’t work, the forceful presentation turned them off.
I certainly am not in favor of turning away people who are interested in playing support roles. If you stayed in Ottawa and worked as a nurse for forty years, that’d be a loss as far as I’m concerned. And if you want to ignore everything everyone is saying about being a hero ’cause it’s not working for you, that’d be absolutely fine (and maybe even encouraged) by me.
So I appreciate you wrote this post, and hopefully we can find a form of the hero idea that’s still powerful and useful while also being non-harmful to you & others. (But, full disclosure, I’m a utilitarian and I don’t think we should pretend that we can make all the people happy all of the time—if propagating the forceful version of this meme is what maximizes utility than by definition I’m in favor of doing that. And things may get tricky if there are people who find the idea aversive initially but can benefit from it in the long run. It might be useful to tag some kind of quick self-classification test to the idea… for example, if the idea of playing a support role strongly appeals to you and you find the hero idea aversive, that could be evidence that the hero idea is not helpful for you even in the long term and you’re best off ignoring it or reinterpreting it.) (Another thought: maybe we could modify the idea to say “be more of a hero on the margin”, which could be less aversive and also potentially more useful even for those who can benefit from ideas of this type. There are probably all sorts of creative possibilities I’m not considering here.)
Good post.
I wonder if there’s a pattern of idea dissemination that goes something like this:
Someone discovers an idea that seems helpful for them in interacting with the world.
They find that the more strongly they identify with the idea, the more helpful it is.
They tell all their friends about the idea, because (a) this is part of identifying with it and (b) they want to help their friends.
Their friends, being similar people, also find the idea helpful and proceed to spread it similarly.
The idea gains sufficient traction that it’s no longer “this weird idea I had”, but the mantra of a (possibly powerful) faction.
At this point, some people who the idea doesn’t sit well with notice the idea (which now has significant psychosocial power) and experience cognitive dissonance.
At this stage, the idea (hopefully) gets optimized to be more accommodating to those people, and harmony ensues.
In other words, to provide a purely descriptive picture of what may have happened here: Eliezer found the idea of thinking of himself as a hero useful. This idea was helpful for accomplishing his goals. These goals included writing, and this is one of the things he wrote about. People found this writing compelling, and many adopted the idea themselves. The more seriously you take the idea, the better it works, so presentations of the idea coming from people using it successfully tended to present it pretty forcefully. But for those for whom the idea didn’t work, the forceful presentation turned them off.
I certainly am not in favor of turning away people who are interested in playing support roles. If you stayed in Ottawa and worked as a nurse for forty years, that’d be a loss as far as I’m concerned. And if you want to ignore everything everyone is saying about being a hero ’cause it’s not working for you, that’d be absolutely fine (and maybe even encouraged) by me.
So I appreciate you wrote this post, and hopefully we can find a form of the hero idea that’s still powerful and useful while also being non-harmful to you & others. (But, full disclosure, I’m a utilitarian and I don’t think we should pretend that we can make all the people happy all of the time—if propagating the forceful version of this meme is what maximizes utility than by definition I’m in favor of doing that. And things may get tricky if there are people who find the idea aversive initially but can benefit from it in the long run. It might be useful to tag some kind of quick self-classification test to the idea… for example, if the idea of playing a support role strongly appeals to you and you find the hero idea aversive, that could be evidence that the hero idea is not helpful for you even in the long term and you’re best off ignoring it or reinterpreting it.) (Another thought: maybe we could modify the idea to say “be more of a hero on the margin”, which could be less aversive and also potentially more useful even for those who can benefit from ideas of this type. There are probably all sorts of creative possibilities I’m not considering here.)