Yeah, agreed. It’s not just “political instincts”, it’s that humans are always operating in what’s a fundamentally social reality, of which coalitional instincts are a very large part but not the entirety.
I kinda dislike the “actively fight back” framing too, since it feels like a “treating your own fundamental humanity as an enemy” kind of thing that’s by itself something that we should be trying to get out of; but the easiest links that I had available that concisely expressed the point used that language, so I went with that.
I actually thought the “coalitional” part did deserve a mention, precisely because it is one of the few facets of the problem that we can just fight (which is not to say that coalitions don’t have a social and formal role to play in any actual political system!) Again, I think Crick would also agree with this, and ISTM that he did grapple with these issues at a pretty deep level. If we’re going to go beyond our traditional “no politics!” attitude, I really have to wonder why he’s not considered a trusted reference here, on a par w/ the Sequences and whatever the latest AI textbook is.
Yeah, agreed. It’s not just “political instincts”, it’s that humans are always operating in what’s a fundamentally social reality, of which coalitional instincts are a very large part but not the entirety.
I kinda dislike the “actively fight back” framing too, since it feels like a “treating your own fundamental humanity as an enemy” kind of thing that’s by itself something that we should be trying to get out of; but the easiest links that I had available that concisely expressed the point used that language, so I went with that.
I actually thought the “coalitional” part did deserve a mention, precisely because it is one of the few facets of the problem that we can just fight (which is not to say that coalitions don’t have a social and formal role to play in any actual political system!) Again, I think Crick would also agree with this, and ISTM that he did grapple with these issues at a pretty deep level. If we’re going to go beyond our traditional “no politics!” attitude, I really have to wonder why he’s not considered a trusted reference here, on a par w/ the Sequences and whatever the latest AI textbook is.
Do you have reading recommendations on him?