From a team building and gamification perspective, granfalloons (while perhaps as objectively specious as TFA) points out, can help to focus group activities.
Whether the direction of that focus be good or evil is another discussion.
But if there is a natural disaster, and some granfalloon relief agency shows up to help you out, will you be quick to denounce it?
One of the few things we can be certain of with complex systems is that effects are not consequences of single causes. The US's political tribalism is clearly a negative for the nation, but is a consequence of history, not the signal flaw in a machine. It is a particularly vicious aspect of the system, I'd agree, as it tends to feed back and make the whole system increasingly dysfunctional.
The US looks very much like a nation in precipitous decline. Its hapless response to the current crisis may be the coup de grace.
He suggests keeping your identity small. There is only so much you can do on that front. Some potential government policies are beneficial for people with certain characteristics, including immutable ones or ones that are difficult to change, and harmful for other people. Why would it not be rational for people to align politically along the lines of those characteristics to push for policies that benefit them on that basis, especially if they believe people who don't have those characteristics are aligning to push against them?
There's nothing inherently 'rational' about self-interest (which is entirely orthogonal to the justification or lack thereof for the latter). It has literally never occurred to me to consider whether party policies are good for me personally when assessing who to vote for. This is not irrational behaviour on my part (I'm well aware of my values and the relationship, as far as I'm able to calculate it, between those values and proposed policies).
The conflation of self-interest and rationality is just ideology (often forcefully conveyed by evangelists for the most salient superstition of our age, ie. economics).
I certainly agree that everyone's values are ultimately arbitrary, but that's pretty far outside of this discussion. Most people are self-interested, and the person I originally replied to was talking about normal people. "This phenomenon is root of all evil in modern day America.
People identify with political parties as though they are sports teams."
That's fair enough, but I think the conflation of self-interest with rationality is so ubiquitous (and like most official ideologies, dangerously mistaken) that it's worth challenging when it arises. Or at least to the extent permitted by one's energies and everyone's good humour.
(I don't btw agree that values are entirely arbitrary, but that's a discussion for another day).
It's a longer discussion than I have time for now, but in short: it creates ethically worse people (unnaturally selfish) without them being any more 'rational' (just as subject to biases as ever). And it creates worse societies, eg. the US. The two feed back and forward to each other, making for a downward spiral very hard to arrest.
Part of what you're saying is right: it's rational to cooperate to achieve goals.
However, you're wrong in 2 ways:
1. Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation. I can vote to support gay rights without being gay. I can vote to support gun freedom without owning a gun. You're using the vague word "align" to mean both identifying as part of a group and cooperating, but these are not the same thing.
2. Your post is only looking at cooperating toward goals that arise from shared identification as part of a group. This is a myopic view: there are lots of people who despite identifying as part of the same groups, have different, incompatible goals. This is exactly why not identifying as part of a group is rational: if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
For example: I find myself cooperating with a certain political party more often than not--I've fairly consistently voted for them, and even worked for some of their political campaigns. But I don't identify as part of that party. This means that when someone criticizes that political party, I'm not offended: they're not criticizing me, because I don't identify as part of that party. I don't take it personally. And it also means that when I disagree with that political party, I don't fall prey to the Granfalloon technique. If I disagree with them (and I do) I don't feel any pressure to conform my views to the political party. I can rationally support my own goals, not theirs.
>Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation.
I didn't say or suggest it was.
>if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.
Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
> Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.
That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.
> Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
>That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.
You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals. That sort of behavior is quite destructive to the group, and groups have (of course imperfect) mechanisms to punish people that behave that way. If you can get away with behaving that way, so be it, but the group has a strong incentive to stop you from doing so.
>It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
> You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group, maybe it means trying to change the group.
This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
> In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish. If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest, then all cooperation lasts only as long as you have the same goals anyway, so your position is self-contradictory. That is, unfortunately, how a lot of the capitalist economy works, but that's not how relationships and cooperation really work in a lot of cases. The reality is that when I cooperate with people, even if they have different goals than me, I often learn things from them that change my goals, or form a new goal of maintaining a relationship with that person. Goals can be prosocial.
>I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group
But that is still parasitic in the sense that others are, as a consequence of identifying strongly with the group, sacrificing their own personal goals in order to achieve group goals, where you are not.
>This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
Hah, well I don't mean it as an accusation. I'm not criticizing your position on any kind of moral basis, just on a practical one.
>That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
Sure, but the point is that if the members strongly identify as members of the group, the group will be more effective in the short term.
>To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish.
Well, it's more that I think your position would not end up working for most people trying to further their own self interest, so it's not rational for them to act that way. I think it is generally rational for people to make membership of certain types of groups a significant part of their self-identity.
>If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest
I would not make a claim like that unless "rational self-interest" was defined in such a way as to make that claim tautological and therefore uninteresting.
>I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group
But that is still parasitic in the sense that others are, as a consequence of identifying strongly with the group, sacrificing their own personal goals in order to achieve group goals, where you are not.
>This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
Hah, well I don't mean it as an accusation. I'm not criticizing your position on any kind of moral basis, just on a practical one.
>That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
Sure, but the point is that if the members strongly identify as members of the group, the group will be more effective in the short term.
>To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish.
Well, it's more that I think your position would not end up working for most people trying to further their own self interest, so it's not rational for them to act that way. I think it is generally rational for people to make membership of certain types of groups a significant part of their self-identity.
>If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest
I would not make a claim like that unless "rational self-interest" was defined in such a way as to make that claim tautological and therefore uninteresting.
Unfortunately, humans are to some extent intrinsically tribal (when Haidt calls us "90% ape, 10% beehive", I think he's being exceptionally generous). This is so pervasive in our nature, it tends to be unconscious: if I consider an existential crisis for the opposing political party to win, I'll likely filter my thinking to that end, minimizing faults and maximizing virtues in my party, and doing the opposite with my opponents. As they do the same, it creates a race to the bottom, and all norms and decorum and fairness go out the window, in pursuit of victory and raw power.
Jason Brennan makes a compelling case [0] that democracy makes this problem worse. A lot can be chalked up to our electoral process being an utter failure of implementing democracy, from campaign finance corruption to First-Past-The-Post (to say nothing of more advanced ideas like holacracy, liquid democracy, public choice econ, etc); nonetheless, there's a case that the tribal dynamics inherent to politics creates perverse incentives for truth-seeking and sense-making.
I'm starting to think that democracy is only the second-worst system (except for all the others), and we'd get better results with a completely random lottery [1].
No, it is a beautiful and powerful thing. Everyone claims to not obey it but the force of tribalism is strong. There is no enlightened man above it. All are subject to it.
The best use it well. The average deny it. The worst are used well by it.
In its simplest form it lifts you up on a dreary Thursday as you get off the train, walk to the stadium gates, and yell a chant that is picked up by others who know nothing of you but that you know the chant and that you wear the colours. Such power in that unity.
In its most powerful form it motivates people to form great civil change. You are a civil rights activist, not merely a person who believes in the inherent rights of all people. You are a gay rights activist, or a climate change activist, or a revolutionary.
Learning to harness that mindhack of unity was so fulfilling to me. Yell the right words and you have sixty thousand at your back yelling them with you. You feel gigantic, not like a single man, but like a giant ocean swell. And it is such a trick. I do not share that much with the coal miner and the bus driver and the man who bought a flat in Highbury. But we share this. And over this we can talk. And through the talking we come to share more.
< Everyone claims to not obey it but the force of tribalism is strong. There is no enlightened man above it.
Oh, I think that as a American who disdains both major political parties, I can claim that honor.
> The best use it well.
Sure, modern politicians are great at that.
> The worst are used well by it.
Yep. Sounds about right.
By the way, it's going to destroy your country, too. Surprised that's not obvious. Civil wars suck, I've worked in the aftermath of two. Likely will not go that far in the UK, likely just a breakup and some civil unrest, but there is that risk with any breakup. In the US, I'd say there's a much higher chance.
> You feel gigantic, not like a single man, but like a giant ocean swell.
It's always amazing to me how different individuals can be. The idea of gaining power and feeling great because I'm shouting with thousands of other people gives me the willies. Sure, protests are necessary, but it's not a feeling we should relish. It means our government is failing.
And more often, when large groups of people gather to express emotion, it's for far more malevolent ends.
Oh, I knew the UK was doomed when triple-lock pensions were made real. I live in America! I think the most common reason large groups of people gather to express emotion is sports. And it is so joyful. And it's a nice substitute for war[0]
Don’t forget that the primary reason to divide people up into groups based on superficial characteristics is to prevent them from forming groups based on their real shared economic interests.
> please consider where this will lead the country.
Procopius of Caesarea wrote in History of the Wars in 545 CE:
In every city the population has been divided for a long time past into the Blue and the Green factions [...] And they fight against their opponents knowing not for what end they imperil themselves [...] So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colours be brothers or any other kin.
I'm reminded of the experiments where camp kids were randomly given blue and red shirts, and it took them less than an hour to form in-group/out-group dynamics and tribal loyalty based on shirts alone.
The thing is, from a game-theoretic standpoint, tribal loyalty is a Schelling focus [0]: your calculation about what alliance(s) to invest in, are inherently influenced by your calculations of the calculations of others. What defines the tribal boundary can be utterly non-sensical (from the objective viewpoint of a proverbial Martian), yet still be a rational choice from the perspective of each individual participant.
I'm also reminded of the Netflix b-movie "Circle" [1]: a group of fifty people are forced to vote every two minutes on which of them will be killed (if they refuse, someone is killed at random). At first, they decide to buy time to think, by starting with older people who are closer to the grave; but the older crowd bands together in self-defense, creating a two-party system of old-vs-young. As the headcount shrinks, new rifts and coalitions emerge; some organic, some arbitrary. It's a brilliant thought experiment despite being terrible as a film. :)
From the perspextive of evolutionary game theory, right? I don't remember exactly what was Schelling's approach, but "game theory", without qualifiers, usually refers to games between given rational players as opposed to say populations with predetermined strategies.
I am not sure I believe in the implicit premise. Why would, in effect, everyone vote to avoid the randomness? That isn't the way society works in practice, is it?
I think the idea is similar to statistical sampling, or Nielsen ratings: to have a branch of government which is, on average, mathematically representative of the public, in a way that no electoral process could ever hope to accomplish.
The specific proposal I would make for the US is what I call the People's Congress, replacing the House of Representatives, leaving the Senate and executive roles as-is (other than unrelated electoral reforms like RCV).
As a check against abuse of power, or nominating someone unfit, every randomly-selected candidate can be voted out, albeit requiring a very high margin (maybe 66%: "the People's Veto"). Note that this position would be a mandatory form of public service, not unlike jury duty. Terms would be two years, and representatives would cycle in and out on a regular, rolling basis.
A realistic proposal? Not even slightly. In the current climate we can barely get basics like mail-in voting right. (Maybe it's something that be done as proof-of-concept at the scale of an eccentric municipality?) Nonetheless: my hunch is that having a branch of government, possibly even the entire legislative body, being statistically comprised of We The People in a way that is impossible to game, would generally be less corrupt, and more responsive to the needs and preferences of constituents.
> I'm reminded of the experiments where camp kids were randomly given blue and red shirts, and it took them less than an hour to form in-group/out-group dynamics and tribal loyalty based on shirts alone.
You slightly misremember that (Robbers cave study). The effect is even more powerful: all it took was the seperation into two groups and being made aware of the existence of the other group for them to develop an identity and name for their respective group.
The category I'm thinking of is a subset of self-referential; a concept which is encapsulated in its expression, where it is an example of itself: "This is a sentence" or "is sentence fragment" or `<html>`. It's an admittedly fuzzy/arbitrary category that I made up. :)
An implication of this is that labeling groups you disagree with may actually serve to strengthen their commitment to that disagreement. I.e. calling someone a climate change denier or an anti-vaxxer, groups them with other people with the same misconceptions, and strengthens their commitment to the ideas because it's now a commitment to their group.
Scroll up in the linked Wikipedia submission, and read Cat's Cradle if you haven't. This is nothing new - Cat's Cradle was published in 1963 - just looked back to Seuss and star-bellied Sneetches. It's simply become magnified w/ self-reinforcing social platform dynamics.
"They had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A."
– Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
The COVID-19 pandemic will test the assertion that the USA is a granfalloon. And presage our ability to tackle climate change.
I think Ad Hominems are sometimes a trivial instance of this. The idea being that you have said this or that which apparently contradicts what you've just said and, basically, you wouldn't want to disagree with yourself, do you? (the Granfalloon). Which is infuriating on multiple levels. One is that the person sometimes shifts from asking a question (but then why did you say...?) to an accusation (but you've said...!), as if they knew your thoughts better than you. But the other is that, sometimes, I do actually change my mind and, as a matter of fact, I don't judge others for doing so.
The other instance would be those debates where the only bipartisan position is that that non-partisanship is not an option. As if people couldn't find both sides stupid and think if either side got their way, they would get us all killed, because they're idiots.
Management and politicians are notorious for doing this; if there is threat of a union forming, historically the management’s first move is to sow discord between immigrants and natives, French and Irish, or black and white- anything to keep people from forming groups based on actual shared economic interests. 90% of the acrimony in politics is just this phenomenon writ large. Urban vs rural, native vs immigrant, it’s just a control mechanism.
I get how Hoosiers are a granfalloon (the borders of the state of Indiana being essentially arbitrary), but how are groups defined by a shared philosophy and belief system like the Communist party a granfalloon? Like, what are some examples of groups that everyone would agree are definitely a “karass” rather than a “granfalloon”?
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadPeople identify with political parties as though they are sports teams. Team R or Team D.
If you're one of such people (and there seem to be relatively few of them on HN), please consider where this will lead the country.
From a team building and gamification perspective, granfalloons (while perhaps as objectively specious as TFA) points out, can help to focus group activities.
Whether the direction of that focus be good or evil is another discussion.
But if there is a natural disaster, and some granfalloon relief agency shows up to help you out, will you be quick to denounce it?
That's an oxymoron. By definition, the group "relief agency" has a specific purpose that the group "Hoosiers" does not.
The US looks very much like a nation in precipitous decline. Its hapless response to the current crisis may be the coup de grace.
The conflation of self-interest and rationality is just ideology (often forcefully conveyed by evangelists for the most salient superstition of our age, ie. economics).
(I don't btw agree that values are entirely arbitrary, but that's a discussion for another day).
Part of what you're saying is right: it's rational to cooperate to achieve goals.
However, you're wrong in 2 ways:
1. Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation. I can vote to support gay rights without being gay. I can vote to support gun freedom without owning a gun. You're using the vague word "align" to mean both identifying as part of a group and cooperating, but these are not the same thing.
2. Your post is only looking at cooperating toward goals that arise from shared identification as part of a group. This is a myopic view: there are lots of people who despite identifying as part of the same groups, have different, incompatible goals. This is exactly why not identifying as part of a group is rational: if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
For example: I find myself cooperating with a certain political party more often than not--I've fairly consistently voted for them, and even worked for some of their political campaigns. But I don't identify as part of that party. This means that when someone criticizes that political party, I'm not offended: they're not criticizing me, because I don't identify as part of that party. I don't take it personally. And it also means that when I disagree with that political party, I don't fall prey to the Granfalloon technique. If I disagree with them (and I do) I don't feel any pressure to conform my views to the political party. I can rationally support my own goals, not theirs.
I didn't say or suggest it was.
>if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.
Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.
> Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals. That sort of behavior is quite destructive to the group, and groups have (of course imperfect) mechanisms to punish people that behave that way. If you can get away with behaving that way, so be it, but the group has a strong incentive to stop you from doing so.
>It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group, maybe it means trying to change the group.
This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
> In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish. If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest, then all cooperation lasts only as long as you have the same goals anyway, so your position is self-contradictory. That is, unfortunately, how a lot of the capitalist economy works, but that's not how relationships and cooperation really work in a lot of cases. The reality is that when I cooperate with people, even if they have different goals than me, I often learn things from them that change my goals, or form a new goal of maintaining a relationship with that person. Goals can be prosocial.
But that is still parasitic in the sense that others are, as a consequence of identifying strongly with the group, sacrificing their own personal goals in order to achieve group goals, where you are not.
>This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
Hah, well I don't mean it as an accusation. I'm not criticizing your position on any kind of moral basis, just on a practical one.
>That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
Sure, but the point is that if the members strongly identify as members of the group, the group will be more effective in the short term.
>To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish.
Well, it's more that I think your position would not end up working for most people trying to further their own self interest, so it's not rational for them to act that way. I think it is generally rational for people to make membership of certain types of groups a significant part of their self-identity.
>If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest
I would not make a claim like that unless "rational self-interest" was defined in such a way as to make that claim tautological and therefore uninteresting.
But that is still parasitic in the sense that others are, as a consequence of identifying strongly with the group, sacrificing their own personal goals in order to achieve group goals, where you are not.
>This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
Hah, well I don't mean it as an accusation. I'm not criticizing your position on any kind of moral basis, just on a practical one.
>That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
Sure, but the point is that if the members strongly identify as members of the group, the group will be more effective in the short term.
>To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish.
Well, it's more that I think your position would not end up working for most people trying to further their own self interest, so it's not rational for them to act that way. I think it is generally rational for people to make membership of certain types of groups a significant part of their self-identity.
>If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest
I would not make a claim like that unless "rational self-interest" was defined in such a way as to make that claim tautological and therefore uninteresting.
Unfortunately, humans are to some extent intrinsically tribal (when Haidt calls us "90% ape, 10% beehive", I think he's being exceptionally generous). This is so pervasive in our nature, it tends to be unconscious: if I consider an existential crisis for the opposing political party to win, I'll likely filter my thinking to that end, minimizing faults and maximizing virtues in my party, and doing the opposite with my opponents. As they do the same, it creates a race to the bottom, and all norms and decorum and fairness go out the window, in pursuit of victory and raw power.
Jason Brennan makes a compelling case [0] that democracy makes this problem worse. A lot can be chalked up to our electoral process being an utter failure of implementing democracy, from campaign finance corruption to First-Past-The-Post (to say nothing of more advanced ideas like holacracy, liquid democracy, public choice econ, etc); nonetheless, there's a case that the tribal dynamics inherent to politics creates perverse incentives for truth-seeking and sense-making.
I'm starting to think that democracy is only the second-worst system (except for all the others), and we'd get better results with a completely random lottery [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
The best use it well. The average deny it. The worst are used well by it.
In its simplest form it lifts you up on a dreary Thursday as you get off the train, walk to the stadium gates, and yell a chant that is picked up by others who know nothing of you but that you know the chant and that you wear the colours. Such power in that unity.
In its most powerful form it motivates people to form great civil change. You are a civil rights activist, not merely a person who believes in the inherent rights of all people. You are a gay rights activist, or a climate change activist, or a revolutionary.
Learning to harness that mindhack of unity was so fulfilling to me. Yell the right words and you have sixty thousand at your back yelling them with you. You feel gigantic, not like a single man, but like a giant ocean swell. And it is such a trick. I do not share that much with the coal miner and the bus driver and the man who bought a flat in Highbury. But we share this. And over this we can talk. And through the talking we come to share more.
Oh, I think that as a American who disdains both major political parties, I can claim that honor.
> The best use it well.
Sure, modern politicians are great at that.
> The worst are used well by it.
Yep. Sounds about right.
By the way, it's going to destroy your country, too. Surprised that's not obvious. Civil wars suck, I've worked in the aftermath of two. Likely will not go that far in the UK, likely just a breakup and some civil unrest, but there is that risk with any breakup. In the US, I'd say there's a much higher chance.
> You feel gigantic, not like a single man, but like a giant ocean swell.
It's always amazing to me how different individuals can be. The idea of gaining power and feeling great because I'm shouting with thousands of other people gives me the willies. Sure, protests are necessary, but it's not a feeling we should relish. It means our government is failing.
And more often, when large groups of people gather to express emotion, it's for far more malevolent ends.
0: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Poe's Law strikes again.
Procopius of Caesarea wrote in History of the Wars in 545 CE:
In every city the population has been divided for a long time past into the Blue and the Green factions [...] And they fight against their opponents knowing not for what end they imperil themselves [...] So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colours be brothers or any other kin.
Spoiler: Blue and Green were indeed sports teams.
The thing is, from a game-theoretic standpoint, tribal loyalty is a Schelling focus [0]: your calculation about what alliance(s) to invest in, are inherently influenced by your calculations of the calculations of others. What defines the tribal boundary can be utterly non-sensical (from the objective viewpoint of a proverbial Martian), yet still be a rational choice from the perspective of each individual participant.
I'm also reminded of the Netflix b-movie "Circle" [1]: a group of fifty people are forced to vote every two minutes on which of them will be killed (if they refuse, someone is killed at random). At first, they decide to buy time to think, by starting with older people who are closer to the grave; but the older crowd bands together in self-defense, creating a two-party system of old-vs-young. As the headcount shrinks, new rifts and coalitions emerge; some organic, some arbitrary. It's a brilliant thought experiment despite being terrible as a film. :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_(2015_film)
The specific proposal I would make for the US is what I call the People's Congress, replacing the House of Representatives, leaving the Senate and executive roles as-is (other than unrelated electoral reforms like RCV).
As a check against abuse of power, or nominating someone unfit, every randomly-selected candidate can be voted out, albeit requiring a very high margin (maybe 66%: "the People's Veto"). Note that this position would be a mandatory form of public service, not unlike jury duty. Terms would be two years, and representatives would cycle in and out on a regular, rolling basis.
A realistic proposal? Not even slightly. In the current climate we can barely get basics like mail-in voting right. (Maybe it's something that be done as proof-of-concept at the scale of an eccentric municipality?) Nonetheless: my hunch is that having a branch of government, possibly even the entire legislative body, being statistically comprised of We The People in a way that is impossible to game, would generally be less corrupt, and more responsive to the needs and preferences of constituents.
You slightly misremember that (Robbers cave study). The effect is even more powerful: all it took was the seperation into two groups and being made aware of the existence of the other group for them to develop an identity and name for their respective group.
- "word"
- every Audible book begins with: "this is audible"
- "shibboleth" works perfectly well as a shibboleth
Is the word "non-self-referential"
self-referential?
Is it non-self-referential?
> shibboleth" works perfectly well as a shibboleth
You know why that is, right? The concept is named after the use of the word.
> Is it non-self-referential?
Haha, nice. I also like "non-descript".
> The concept is named after the use of the word.
Cool, TIL :)
Scroll up in the linked Wikipedia submission, and read Cat's Cradle if you haven't. This is nothing new - Cat's Cradle was published in 1963 - just looked back to Seuss and star-bellied Sneetches. It's simply become magnified w/ self-reinforcing social platform dynamics.
The COVID-19 pandemic will test the assertion that the USA is a granfalloon. And presage our ability to tackle climate change.
The other instance would be those debates where the only bipartisan position is that that non-partisanship is not an option. As if people couldn't find both sides stupid and think if either side got their way, they would get us all killed, because they're idiots.