I’ve told you on IRC how I think the tribalism post is bullshit, but I have zero interest in writing up an email and sending it off and the email either never being seen or at best quoted.
Could you give a quick summary here? I’d be interested in seeing it, since at a glance the post seemed reasonable to me.
I don’t especially want to defend my criticism, but my basic point was that quoting reams of material on tribal warfare does nothing at all towards addressing the LW ‘tribalism’ view of personal identity & group solidarity as fundamentally motivated cognition and is a giant non sequitur, and his attempt to contextualize the Byzantine isn’t much better because pointing out that factions latched onto the mobs is like saying there is no such thing as xenophobia or nationalism because in China the xenophobic nationalist mobs protesting Korea or Japan are manipulated by the government and shut down when necessary—if people really are easily manipulated and propagandized as part of group conflict, you would expect various factions to exploit this.
More concisely, the article presents a long and elaborate rebuttal to the name “tribalism” without actually discussing the concept of tribalism at all. It also points out the fancy in Eliezer’s fanciful example at great length.
Could you give a quick summary here? I’d be interested in seeing it, since at a glance the post seemed reasonable to me.
I don’t especially want to defend my criticism, but my basic point was that quoting reams of material on tribal warfare does nothing at all towards addressing the LW ‘tribalism’ view of personal identity & group solidarity as fundamentally motivated cognition and is a giant non sequitur, and his attempt to contextualize the Byzantine isn’t much better because pointing out that factions latched onto the mobs is like saying there is no such thing as xenophobia or nationalism because in China the xenophobic nationalist mobs protesting Korea or Japan are manipulated by the government and shut down when necessary—if people really are easily manipulated and propagandized as part of group conflict, you would expect various factions to exploit this.
More concisely, the article presents a long and elaborate rebuttal to the name “tribalism” without actually discussing the concept of tribalism at all. It also points out the fancy in Eliezer’s fanciful example at great length.
Thanks. That’s a succinct and strong set of criticisms.