Now you made me want to make a rational argument for nationalism. Uhm… let’s try this:
Imagine that some cultures do things that you consider horrible (e.g. genital mutilation, “honor” killing, killing people for blasphemy or sexual orientation, etc.). Your culture doesn’t do that. However, for some reasons, the populations in the other cultures are growing, the population in your culture is not, people immigrate to your country and bring their horrible behavior with them. You are afraid that unless something is done against this, the repulsive behavior will become a norm in your country, too. Maybe not the majority norm, but still something that is more or less tolerated, because no mainstream politician would risk making too many voters angry. How to stop this?
Appealing to national feelings may be a realistic strategy. (The point is not to invent something that intellectuals would agree with, but something that has a realistic chance to get a popular support.) You can try to make people more proud of your local culture, and emphasise that not doing X is an important part of what makes this country great. Thus you get a strong political force against X.
Related: “Use Your Identity Carefully”. -- My analogy is that nationalism is identity on the mass level (identity for NPCs?). It is a tool to preserve a group of memes, both good and bad. Instead of throwing away the tool, you can try to increase the proportion of the good memes in the mix.
Having a strong national identity, and norms around self-sacrifice in favor of “The Fatherland” seems like pretty good instrumental rationality, in terms of coordination, enforcing cooperation, economies of scale, etc. “Identity for NPCs” sounds a bit dismissive for a mechanism that works pretty well (to me it sounds close to “cooperating is for suckers, rationalists should defect”).
I don’t think “rejecting weird foreign norms” has much to do with the historical causes of nationalist sentiment; I’d say it had more to do with enforcing strong norms over weak norms (for example, speaking the same language, not engaging in nepotism, obeying the law, sending your children to school, taking up arms to defend the country), and putting the primary focus of loyalty on the country (and not the king, the church, your family or your village). Foreigners from far away with different norms is a more recent phenomenon.
“Identity for NPCs” sounds a bit dismissive for a mechanism that works pretty well (to me it sounds close to “cooperating is for suckers, rationalists should defect”).
Oh. Uhm, if we put it to the Prisonner’s Dilemma language, I’d rather say—rational people can analyze the situation and choose with whom to cooperate even if the other person is different, but stupid people need some simple and safe algorithm, such as: “cooperate with identical copies of myself, defect against everyone else”.
Which works decently, if you have many identical copies at the same place, interacting mostly with each other. You cannot be exploited by someone using a smart algorithm. That’s a relatively impressive outcome for such a simple algorithm.
The disadvantage is that you can’t cooperate even with people using functionally identical algorithms with different group markers (e.g. using a different language, or dressing differently). And you have to suppress your deviations from the official norm (e.g. a minority sexual orientation). And you have a barrier to self-improvement, because the improved version is by definition different than the original one. -- On the other hand, if you manage to somehow artificially impose some positive change on everyone at the same time (or very slowly during a long time period), then the positive change will be preserved. Unfortunately, it works the same way with negative changes.
Oh. Uhm, if we put it to the Prisonner’s Dilemma language, I’d rather say—rational people can analyze the situation and choose with whom to cooperate even if the other person is different, but stupid people need some simple and safe algorithm, such as: “cooperate with identical copies of myself, defect against everyone else”.
It’s not clear that someone analyzing the situation will choose to cooperate—plenty of smart people have argued that the rational behavior in prisoner’s dilemma is to defect.
And I would argue that even for smart people, a simple algorithm is more likely to get everyone on board; a complicated but “better” solution which no one else follows (and that would only count as “better” if everybody was following it) is not worth following.
That’s certainly one, but there’s an even easier argument to make—Burkean conservatism. Your nation’s identity is built around stuff that’s probably worked pretty well for it in past(or else it probably wouldn’t be a nation today). As such, it’s got a higher prior probability of working out in your local circumstances. It’s not a large effect, of course, but it’s a real one, particularly for successful nations.
Imagine that some cultures do things that you consider horrible (e.g. genital mutilation, “honor” killing, killing people for blasphemy or sexual orientation, etc.). Your culture doesn’t do that.
But my culture also does things that I consider horrible that other cultures don’t do! (SCNR.)
Apparently you don´t need a argument to be a nationalist. Guess this is just system 1 working.
Now you made me want to make a rational argument for nationalism. Uhm… let’s try this:
Imagine that some cultures do things that you consider horrible (e.g. genital mutilation, “honor” killing, killing people for blasphemy or sexual orientation, etc.). Your culture doesn’t do that. However, for some reasons, the populations in the other cultures are growing, the population in your culture is not, people immigrate to your country and bring their horrible behavior with them. You are afraid that unless something is done against this, the repulsive behavior will become a norm in your country, too. Maybe not the majority norm, but still something that is more or less tolerated, because no mainstream politician would risk making too many voters angry. How to stop this?
Appealing to national feelings may be a realistic strategy. (The point is not to invent something that intellectuals would agree with, but something that has a realistic chance to get a popular support.) You can try to make people more proud of your local culture, and emphasise that not doing X is an important part of what makes this country great. Thus you get a strong political force against X.
Related: “Use Your Identity Carefully”. -- My analogy is that nationalism is identity on the mass level (identity for NPCs?). It is a tool to preserve a group of memes, both good and bad. Instead of throwing away the tool, you can try to increase the proportion of the good memes in the mix.
Having a strong national identity, and norms around self-sacrifice in favor of “The Fatherland” seems like pretty good instrumental rationality, in terms of coordination, enforcing cooperation, economies of scale, etc. “Identity for NPCs” sounds a bit dismissive for a mechanism that works pretty well (to me it sounds close to “cooperating is for suckers, rationalists should defect”).
I don’t think “rejecting weird foreign norms” has much to do with the historical causes of nationalist sentiment; I’d say it had more to do with enforcing strong norms over weak norms (for example, speaking the same language, not engaging in nepotism, obeying the law, sending your children to school, taking up arms to defend the country), and putting the primary focus of loyalty on the country (and not the king, the church, your family or your village). Foreigners from far away with different norms is a more recent phenomenon.
Oh. Uhm, if we put it to the Prisonner’s Dilemma language, I’d rather say—rational people can analyze the situation and choose with whom to cooperate even if the other person is different, but stupid people need some simple and safe algorithm, such as: “cooperate with identical copies of myself, defect against everyone else”.
Which works decently, if you have many identical copies at the same place, interacting mostly with each other. You cannot be exploited by someone using a smart algorithm. That’s a relatively impressive outcome for such a simple algorithm.
The disadvantage is that you can’t cooperate even with people using functionally identical algorithms with different group markers (e.g. using a different language, or dressing differently). And you have to suppress your deviations from the official norm (e.g. a minority sexual orientation). And you have a barrier to self-improvement, because the improved version is by definition different than the original one. -- On the other hand, if you manage to somehow artificially impose some positive change on everyone at the same time (or very slowly during a long time period), then the positive change will be preserved. Unfortunately, it works the same way with negative changes.
It’s not clear that someone analyzing the situation will choose to cooperate—plenty of smart people have argued that the rational behavior in prisoner’s dilemma is to defect.
And I would argue that even for smart people, a simple algorithm is more likely to get everyone on board; a complicated but “better” solution which no one else follows (and that would only count as “better” if everybody was following it) is not worth following.
That’s certainly one, but there’s an even easier argument to make—Burkean conservatism. Your nation’s identity is built around stuff that’s probably worked pretty well for it in past(or else it probably wouldn’t be a nation today). As such, it’s got a higher prior probability of working out in your local circumstances. It’s not a large effect, of course, but it’s a real one, particularly for successful nations.
But my culture also does things that I consider horrible that other cultures don’t do! (SCNR.)
Also, the bad things my culture does are “near” (both metaphorically and geographically), and the bad things other cultures do are “far”.
Which I guess is why I am not a nationalist.
But I can imagine a situation that could change it, such as seeing a foreign minority doing their horrible stuff in my neigborhood.