[Raemon is] not 100% sure this is the best way to think about the norm-negotiation problems.
I think about norms very differently. I try not to think about them as abstractions too much. I put them into a historical and geographical context whenever possible.
Once upon a time, we didn’t have norms against stealing from the outgroup. Over time, we somehow got that norm, and it allowed us to reap massive gains through trade.
What makes you think the causation went this direction? To me, the Shimonoseki campaign of 1863 and 1864 (and Western imperial mercantalism in general) is evidence that the massive gains through trade happened before norms against stealing from the outgroup. The Unequal Treaties (created to promote trade) were such blatant theft that’s why they’re called “the Unequal Treaties”. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of the Meiji Restoration then more well-known historical examples include the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Opium Wars.
In other words, I think of social norms as strategies downstream of technological, economic, social and political forces. This doesn’t mean small groups of innovators don’t can’t make a difference. But I think they’re like entrepreneurs surfing a wave of change. Someone was going to harness the potential energy eventually. The people who get credit for establishing norms just happened to do did it first. They sided with Moloch.
Small adjustments within the Overton window can sometimes be applied to existing institutions. However, I would be surprised if the way to establish radically new norms could be achieved by modifying existing institutions by someone other than a founder. (Small adjustments can be applied to existing institutions.) It’s to establish small, brand new institutions. If the norms are good (in the Darwinian sense) then they will find a niche (or even outcompete) existing institutions. If the norms are ineffective then survival of the fittest kills them with minimum damage to the rest of society. Without small-scale empirical testing, the norms that win are the are determined by the random political fashions of the day.
To reply more substantively on “what’s the point of this sequence?”
It’s mostly not to explain how norms evolve over millennia.
It’s to look at “okay, we in the rationality community where we have some shared structures for thinking and deciding, how can we do better here?”.
A lot of my posts here are a response to what we seem to be doing by default, which is mostly an elaborate way of saying “please stop”. In some cases I’m saying “I think we can actually do well here using our rationalist framesowrks”, but there are specific, constrained ways I think it is possible to do well, and people weren’t thinking about the constraints.
i.e. by default, I observe people fighting over norms in vaguely defined social clusters, which seems ill-advised. Vaguely defined social clusters are pourous, people come and go. For norm experimentation, I think it’s really important to have small groups where you can heavily filter people, and have high fidelity communication. (which I think means you and I are on the same page)
I think there are other non-norm coordination systems that can scale in other ways. Developing microcovid.org is an example, as is the LessWrong Review system, as is developing new grantmaking-body-procedures.
For norm experimentation, I think it’s really important to have small groups where you can heavily filter people, and have high fidelity communication. (which I think means you and I are on the same page)
What makes you think the causation went this direction? To me, the Shimonoseki campaign of 1863 and 1864 (and Western imperial mercantalism in general) is evidence that the massive gains through trade happened before norms against stealing from the outgroup. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of the Meiji Restoration then more well-known historical examples include the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Opium Wars.
My actual guess is that this actually happened incrementally over millennia.
I’m not super informed on the history here (feel free to correct or add nuance). But I assume by the time you’ve gotten to the Meiji Restoration, the Western Imperialists have already gone through several layers of “don’t steal the outgroup” expansion, probably starting with small tribes that sometimes traded incidentally, growing into the first cities, and larger nations. And part of the reason the West is able to bring overwhelming force to bear is because they’ve already gotten into an equilibrium where they can reap massive gains from internal trade (between groups that once were outgroups to be stolen from)
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
(How much of this to attribute to coordination vs technological happenstance vs disease, etc, is still debated a bunch)
I think the conversion of France into a nation-state is representative of the Western imperial process in general. (Conquest is fractal.) Initially the ingroup was Paris and the outgroup was the French countryside. The government in Paris forced the outgroup to speak Parisian French. Only after the systematic extermination of their native culture and languages did the French bumpkins get acknowledged as ingroup by the Parisians. In other words, the outgroup was forcibly converted into more ingroup (and lower-class ingroup at that). This process was not unlike the forced education of Native Americans in the United States.
It is true that the expansion of polities from small villages to globe-spanning empires happened over millennia. But I think it’s a mistake to treat this process as anything having to do with recognizing the rights of the outgroup. There was never a taboo against stealing from the outgroup. Rather, the process was all about forcibly erasing the outgroup’s culture to turn them into additional ingroup. Only after they the people of an outgroup were digested into ingroup were you forbidden from stealing from them. The reason the process took thousands of years is because that’s how long it took to develop the technology (writing, ships, roads, horses, bullets, schools, telephones) necessary to manage a large empire.
There’s a big difference between recognizing the rights of Christians before versus after you force them to convert to Islam—or the rights of savages before versus after they learn English.
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
It is true that the outgroup was sometimes respected such as the French not wanting to provoke a conflict with the British but the gentlemans’ agreements between European powers were not rooted in universal human values. It was because the outgroup had a powerful army and navy. The European empires enthusiastically stole from each other when they could.
Another tool the Western imperial powers used to coordinate against weaker countries was Most Favored Nation status, which was part of the Unequal Treaties.
What makes you think the causation went this direction?
I meant your point here to be implied by:
Maybe people started with some incidental trade, and the norm developed in fits and spurts after-the-fact.
But, you are noticing something like “I started writing this post like 3 years ago. I crystalized much of the current draft 9 months ago. I noticed as I tried to put the finishing touches on it that something felt subtly off, but then decided ‘screw it, ship it’, rather than letting it sit in limbo forever.” My attempt to tack on a slightly more realistic understanding in the concluding section is indeed inharmonious with the rest of it.
I probably have two different replies addressing your object level point, and the broader point about how this overall sequence fits together.
I think about norms very differently. I try not to think about them as abstractions too much. I put them into a historical and geographical context whenever possible.
What makes you think the causation went this direction? To me, the Shimonoseki campaign of 1863 and 1864 (and Western imperial mercantalism in general) is evidence that the massive gains through trade happened before norms against stealing from the outgroup. The Unequal Treaties (created to promote trade) were such blatant theft that’s why they’re called “the Unequal Treaties”. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of the Meiji Restoration then more well-known historical examples include the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Opium Wars.
In other words, I think of social norms as strategies downstream of technological, economic, social and political forces. This doesn’t mean small groups of innovators don’t can’t make a difference. But I think they’re like entrepreneurs surfing a wave of change. Someone was going to harness the potential energy eventually. The people who get credit for establishing norms just happened to do did it first. They sided with Moloch.
Small adjustments within the Overton window can sometimes be applied to existing institutions. However, I would be surprised if the way to establish radically new norms could be achieved by modifying existing institutions by someone other than a founder. (Small adjustments can be applied to existing institutions.) It’s to establish small, brand new institutions. If the norms are good (in the Darwinian sense) then they will find a niche (or even outcompete) existing institutions. If the norms are ineffective then survival of the fittest kills them with minimum damage to the rest of society. Without small-scale empirical testing, the norms that win are the are determined by the random political fashions of the day.
To reply more substantively on “what’s the point of this sequence?”
It’s mostly not to explain how norms evolve over millennia.
It’s to look at “okay, we in the rationality community where we have some shared structures for thinking and deciding, how can we do better here?”.
A lot of my posts here are a response to what we seem to be doing by default, which is mostly an elaborate way of saying “please stop”. In some cases I’m saying “I think we can actually do well here using our rationalist framesowrks”, but there are specific, constrained ways I think it is possible to do well, and people weren’t thinking about the constraints.
i.e. by default, I observe people fighting over norms in vaguely defined social clusters, which seems ill-advised. Vaguely defined social clusters are pourous, people come and go. For norm experimentation, I think it’s really important to have small groups where you can heavily filter people, and have high fidelity communication. (which I think means you and I are on the same page)
I think there are other non-norm coordination systems that can scale in other ways. Developing microcovid.org is an example, as is the LessWrong Review system, as is developing new grantmaking-body-procedures.
We’re on the same page here.
Addressing object level:
My actual guess is that this actually happened incrementally over millennia.
I’m not super informed on the history here (feel free to correct or add nuance). But I assume by the time you’ve gotten to the Meiji Restoration, the Western Imperialists have already gone through several layers of “don’t steal the outgroup” expansion, probably starting with small tribes that sometimes traded incidentally, growing into the first cities, and larger nations. And part of the reason the West is able to bring overwhelming force to bear is because they’ve already gotten into an equilibrium where they can reap massive gains from internal trade (between groups that once were outgroups to be stolen from)
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
(How much of this to attribute to coordination vs technological happenstance vs disease, etc, is still debated a bunch)
I think the conversion of France into a nation-state is representative of the Western imperial process in general. (Conquest is fractal.) Initially the ingroup was Paris and the outgroup was the French countryside. The government in Paris forced the outgroup to speak Parisian French. Only after the systematic extermination of their native culture and languages did the French bumpkins get acknowledged as ingroup by the Parisians. In other words, the outgroup was forcibly converted into more ingroup (and lower-class ingroup at that). This process was not unlike the forced education of Native Americans in the United States.
It is true that the expansion of polities from small villages to globe-spanning empires happened over millennia. But I think it’s a mistake to treat this process as anything having to do with recognizing the rights of the outgroup. There was never a taboo against stealing from the outgroup. Rather, the process was all about forcibly erasing the outgroup’s culture to turn them into additional ingroup. Only after they the people of an outgroup were digested into ingroup were you forbidden from stealing from them. The reason the process took thousands of years is because that’s how long it took to develop the technology (writing, ships, roads, horses, bullets, schools, telephones) necessary to manage a large empire.
There’s a big difference between recognizing the rights of Christians before versus after you force them to convert to Islam—or the rights of savages before versus after they learn English.
It is true that the outgroup was sometimes respected such as the French not wanting to provoke a conflict with the British but the gentlemans’ agreements between European powers were not rooted in universal human values. It was because the outgroup had a powerful army and navy. The European empires enthusiastically stole from each other when they could.
Another tool the Western imperial powers used to coordinate against weaker countries was Most Favored Nation status, which was part of the Unequal Treaties.
Nod. That all sounds about right to me.
I meant your point here to be implied by:
But, you are noticing something like “I started writing this post like 3 years ago. I crystalized much of the current draft 9 months ago. I noticed as I tried to put the finishing touches on it that something felt subtly off, but then decided ‘screw it, ship it’, rather than letting it sit in limbo forever.” My attempt to tack on a slightly more realistic understanding in the concluding section is indeed inharmonious with the rest of it.
I probably have two different replies addressing your object level point, and the broader point about how this overall sequence fits together.
Acknowledged.