We have two basic mechanisms to “solve” the Prisonner’s Dilemma: either avoid people who defect, or punish them. They seem like substitutes: If you are free to choose your fellow players, you don’t need the punishments (for non-extreme levels of harm), because everyone can only hurt you once (or less than once on average, if you also avoid people who hurt your friends). But if you can’t avoid other people, that is when exact rules become so important, because if there are people who defect, you still have to interact with them all the time.
(...makes me wonder, could we use “how much you feel that strict rules are necessary” as a proxy for “how free you feel in your choice of people you interact with”?)
For example, many people would probably agree that murder or theft should be punished, but it should not be illegal to be an asshole. Not because being an asshole is a good thing, but because avoiding the asshole is usually a sufficient punishment. And when avoiding the asshole is not an option, for example for kids at school, that is when the rules for proper behavior (and the punishment for breaking those rules) become necessary.
Like, when I read those tweets, my reaction is that the proper solution is for Arthur to only interact with his superior friends, and to be shunned by everyone he despises—and that would solve the entire problem, without the need to find out whether his group of friends is “objectively” superior to others or not. Let them believe that they are, who cares. If they are right, then they deserve each other’s company. And if they are wrong, then… they also deserve each other’s company. Law of karma in action.
From the perspective of efective altruism, I think the idea is kinda that by choosing the most effective action, you could significantly improve lives of ten people. Let’s suppose that five of them are nice people who, if the situation was hypothetically reversed, would reciprocate; and the remaining five are selfish assholes who in the hypothetically reversed situation would just laugh at you. To me it still seems worth doing—improving the lives of the five nice people is a great outcome, and the five assholes are just a side effect. Is it too optimistic to assume that five out of ten people are nice? I assume that it is even more than five; the assholes just get disproportionally more visibility.
I am not sure what is the specific worry about Arthur and the EA movement. Will people like him get some benefit from EA activities? Almost certainly yes… but don’t worry about it, as long as you are doing it for others. There are certain things that almost everyone benefits from—such as there being a nice sunny day—and we should not enjoy them less just because we know that some people we don’t like may benefit from them, too. Will people like him join the EA? First, hahaha, nope, that seems quite obvious. Second, if he ever would, I see nothing wrong with him sending his money to effective charities. Either way, I don’t see a problem.
The real problems in my opinion are: how to organize your private life, and how to prevent becoming bitter. (These are related, because it is easier to become bitter if your life indeed sucks.) And I agree that a large part of improving your life is selecting the people in your social bubble. Also, spending less time on social networks. But here I would say that social groups organizes around the concept of altruism have the advantage that the assholes will mostly naturally filter themselves out. Although some predators will realize that these are convenient places to find naive prey; which is why people need to communicate openly about abusers amongst them.
To use Arthur as an example again, in what situation would you actually meet him? Only on internet. In real life, I assume you would hate the places that he enjoys, and vice versa. The problem mostly solves itself.
We have two basic mechanisms to “solve” the Prisonner’s Dilemma: either avoid people who defect, or punish them. They seem like substitutes: If you are free to choose your fellow players, you don’t need the punishments (for non-extreme levels of harm), because everyone can only hurt you once (or less than once on average, if you also avoid people who hurt your friends). But if you can’t avoid other people, that is when exact rules become so important, because if there are people who defect, you still have to interact with them all the time.
(...makes me wonder, could we use “how much you feel that strict rules are necessary” as a proxy for “how free you feel in your choice of people you interact with”?)
For example, many people would probably agree that murder or theft should be punished, but it should not be illegal to be an asshole. Not because being an asshole is a good thing, but because avoiding the asshole is usually a sufficient punishment. And when avoiding the asshole is not an option, for example for kids at school, that is when the rules for proper behavior (and the punishment for breaking those rules) become necessary.
Like, when I read those tweets, my reaction is that the proper solution is for Arthur to only interact with his superior friends, and to be shunned by everyone he despises—and that would solve the entire problem, without the need to find out whether his group of friends is “objectively” superior to others or not. Let them believe that they are, who cares. If they are right, then they deserve each other’s company. And if they are wrong, then… they also deserve each other’s company. Law of karma in action.
From the perspective of efective altruism, I think the idea is kinda that by choosing the most effective action, you could significantly improve lives of ten people. Let’s suppose that five of them are nice people who, if the situation was hypothetically reversed, would reciprocate; and the remaining five are selfish assholes who in the hypothetically reversed situation would just laugh at you. To me it still seems worth doing—improving the lives of the five nice people is a great outcome, and the five assholes are just a side effect. Is it too optimistic to assume that five out of ten people are nice? I assume that it is even more than five; the assholes just get disproportionally more visibility.
I am not sure what is the specific worry about Arthur and the EA movement. Will people like him get some benefit from EA activities? Almost certainly yes… but don’t worry about it, as long as you are doing it for others. There are certain things that almost everyone benefits from—such as there being a nice sunny day—and we should not enjoy them less just because we know that some people we don’t like may benefit from them, too. Will people like him join the EA? First, hahaha, nope, that seems quite obvious. Second, if he ever would, I see nothing wrong with him sending his money to effective charities. Either way, I don’t see a problem.
The real problems in my opinion are: how to organize your private life, and how to prevent becoming bitter. (These are related, because it is easier to become bitter if your life indeed sucks.) And I agree that a large part of improving your life is selecting the people in your social bubble. Also, spending less time on social networks. But here I would say that social groups organizes around the concept of altruism have the advantage that the assholes will mostly naturally filter themselves out. Although some predators will realize that these are convenient places to find naive prey; which is why people need to communicate openly about abusers amongst them.
To use Arthur as an example again, in what situation would you actually meet him? Only on internet. In real life, I assume you would hate the places that he enjoys, and vice versa. The problem mostly solves itself.