Nobel Laureate in Econ Elinor Ostrom describes how in the real world we have a variety of formal And informal governance structures (that do negotiated decision making, monitoring, conflict resolution, punishments, etc.) to allow both local and global optima. From an info-processing view you know locally what’s best for you, but you need a way of aligning local decisions to reach global optima. Because this is very complex and fuzzy we humans have nested overlapping norms and institutions to govern behavior while allowing freedom and flexibility.
Nicholas Garcia
Depending on how things were weighted would really make a big difference. Especially since a lot of these theories make use of (aggregates of) proxies to measure what they really care about as the data you care about is long lost to history.
WRT overfitting, it would not be too hard to measure the error on a holdout set. Turchin et al. essentially used China as their holdout set.
Does anyone really track the marginal utility of their possible investment this way? Utilons—sure. But ROI on status? ROI on “warm fuzzies”?
Also, this assumes we have good estimates of the ROI on all our options. Where do these estimates come from? In the real world, we often seem to spread our bets - constantly playing a game of multi-armed bandit with concept drift.
I find this very true.
In fact, portraying a STRONGER identity often is met more easily results in better responses. The trick is that you can be strategic about it. By selecting between “personas” or “roles” you can select what kind of responses you want to get.
I find it helpful to think about the different situations I am in (work meetings, studying in cafes, meeting friends, etc.), and then think about “what is the most ideal response I could get”—and think about “what kind of person / action would provoke that kind of response?” Then, for the given situation make sure that everything is coherent—appearance, energy level, behaviors, speech cadence, etc.
Coherence is very powerful.
We already do this when we have a “work self” and a “home self”. But for most of our activities it is not pre-planned. We just want to be “ourselves”—i.e. not have to strategically prepare for each situation.
As for “social identity theory” and feeling attacked, I don’t think KYIS quite applies. When you are part of a tribe or subculture or whatever, there are several factors at play. (1) Defending the tribe may gain you status in the tribe. (2) Allowing attacks on fellow tribe-members to go unprovoked may put you personally at risk as well—thus the tribe makes it a value to protect fellow tribe-members.
KYIS may mean “don’t join any tribes”. Or more realistically—only feel kinship or trust toward those you personally know, not any abstract larger categories of people. Some would argue that this is how China used to work. However, as societies scale up in size, we typically do join social groups with abstract myths that bind people together, provide standards, and allow coordination among strangers.
Anyway, I guess it gets pretty complex as you unpack it. I suppose if you have skills that are in demand by many people, you do not need to be “married” to any one tribe, nation, or company. You can flit from one to the next if the current one falls. This may cause locals to mistrust you (e.g. the hatred for “globalists”) which lowers your status locally, but if your skills are valuable enough, you won’t mind too much.
So, the ultimate way to KYIS—be very valuable to many different groups of people. This may be from transferable skills, a great personality, or just a very strong and wide social network.
I guess the actionable version is to develop transferable skills, abilities, wealth, or social capital that are highly valued by many different tribes.
Then you have the leverage to flit from one to the next, and not care about standing up for any particular tribe.
However, the game to acquire wealth, social capital, and valued skills is basically the game that we are all playing and has lots of competition. The only way to “opt out” is to join a local monopoly (i.e. a tribe). Also, in the real world, tribes often “loan us resources” to develop our skills, capital, etc. in exchange for “joining” the tribe.
I had this same thought recently regarding friendship and connection as “divide and conquer” for understanding the world.
WRT why people cling to collective worldviews despite contrary evidence… one answer lies in interesting work in Social Psych called “Terror Management Theory.”
Basically, people seek to avoid death, but we all know that we will die. To avoid being paralyzed by this fear, we are socialized by our parents & society into worldviews that grant us “immortality” of sorts: religion, prestige, being “good” to be remembered by loved ones, survival our “our people”, hedonism of the “now” to block out the future, etc.
To see culture from a more CS perspective look up papers on “cultural evolution” and cooperation. The books / blog by evolutionary biologist / historian Peter Turchin “War and Peace and War” and “Super Cooperators”. Behavioral research on altruism and costly punishment in repeated prisoners dilemma games also shows the importance and impact of culture.
In this interpretation a “good” culture is one that has more solidarity & honor than back-stabbing & free riding. From a purely economic perspective it creates greater overall welfare and trust.
From an evolutionary perspective “more fit” cultures replace less fit ones, especially via invasion or general external pressure. When there is a lack of sustained external threat to incentivize collective action, cultures often devolve into decadence, back-stabbing and mistrust like Mafioso Sicily.
High social cohesion isn’t necessarily morally “good” though. Catholic Spain was super cohesive when kicking out the Moors. It propelled them into a golden age, but it also turned them into genocidal intolerant maniacs.
A good example of a strongly cohesive culture today is South Korea. They are always under threat of invasion from many sides, so they built a culture of super strong cohesion, hard work, etc.