Doing a thing that hurts me is stupid, in isolation. But having a precommitment to do X even if it hurts me, can be a powerful tool in negotiation. “Give me a dollar, or I swear I will click this button and kill us both” can be a good strategy to gain a dollar even if you don’t want to die, assuming you are sufficiently certain that your opponent fears death, too. (“My opponent doesn’t seem to have sufficiently strong precommitments against blackmail, and he knows he has more to lose than I have” is a possible heuristic for when this strategy might work.)
People won’t express it this way, either because they are not fully conscious of the game-theoretical mechanism their instincts tell them to use, or because they want to be the good guys in their story. (Actually, not understanding your own motivation is another game-theoretical tool: if you can’t understand it, you can’t change it, and that makes your precommitments more credible.) From inside, it’s just when the world feels unfair, strategy “if you won’t make me happy, I will burn down the entire place” feels like the right thing to do. The explanations how burning things actually improves places are just rationalizations.
Then there are many biases and lot of hypocrisy on top of that. Because we are evolutionarily optimized to live in smaller groups, people are probably likely to overestimate their chances in violent conflict. (When hundreds of people are on your side, what could possibly go wrong? In a Dunbar-sized tribe, nothing.) On the other hand, most people will only speak about violence, and expect someone else to initiate it and bear the risk. Etc.
What I don’t understand is how leftists could look at the current political climate in the US and think that violent revolution would work out well for them?
Do they mean it, or do they just bond over the sound of talking violence? (Simulacrum level 1 or 3?)
Assuming they mean it literally (which I don’t think is the case for most), I can imagine some possible sources of bias. Maybe the near-mode experience of living in a strong bubble at campus trumps the far-mode knowledge of election results. Or the belief that they represent the majority is so strong it resists empirical falsification. (“We are the people. Those who vote against us are just temporarily confused, but they will join us when they see us fighting for their rights.”) Maybe they assume the opponents are less organized on average, or unwilling to fight. (A smaller organized group can defeat a larger disorganized crowd. Also, elections show the direction but not the magnitude of your political faith: “I weakly believe that X is lesser evil than Y” vs “I am willing to sacrifice my life for X”.)
Doing a thing that hurts me is stupid, in isolation. But having a precommitment to do X even if it hurts me, can be a powerful tool in negotiation. “Give me a dollar, or I swear I will click this button and kill us both” can be a good strategy to gain a dollar even if you don’t want to die, assuming you are sufficiently certain that your opponent fears death, too. (“My opponent doesn’t seem to have sufficiently strong precommitments against blackmail, and he knows he has more to lose than I have” is a possible heuristic for when this strategy might work.)
People won’t express it this way, either because they are not fully conscious of the game-theoretical mechanism their instincts tell them to use, or because they want to be the good guys in their story. (Actually, not understanding your own motivation is another game-theoretical tool: if you can’t understand it, you can’t change it, and that makes your precommitments more credible.) From inside, it’s just when the world feels unfair, strategy “if you won’t make me happy, I will burn down the entire place” feels like the right thing to do. The explanations how burning things actually improves places are just rationalizations.
Then there are many biases and lot of hypocrisy on top of that. Because we are evolutionarily optimized to live in smaller groups, people are probably likely to overestimate their chances in violent conflict. (When hundreds of people are on your side, what could possibly go wrong? In a Dunbar-sized tribe, nothing.) On the other hand, most people will only speak about violence, and expect someone else to initiate it and bear the risk. Etc.
Do they mean it, or do they just bond over the sound of talking violence? (Simulacrum level 1 or 3?)
Assuming they mean it literally (which I don’t think is the case for most), I can imagine some possible sources of bias. Maybe the near-mode experience of living in a strong bubble at campus trumps the far-mode knowledge of election results. Or the belief that they represent the majority is so strong it resists empirical falsification. (“We are the people. Those who vote against us are just temporarily confused, but they will join us when they see us fighting for their rights.”) Maybe they assume the opponents are less organized on average, or unwilling to fight. (A smaller organized group can defeat a larger disorganized crowd. Also, elections show the direction but not the magnitude of your political faith: “I weakly believe that X is lesser evil than Y” vs “I am willing to sacrifice my life for X”.)