So… we should respond by removing the things people love?
I think about it like a memetic ecosystem. Ideas can spread because they’re visibly helping someone else, or because they’re catchy, or because they tap into primal instincts, or because there’s an abstract argument for them, or combinations of such things. Ideas in an ecosystem have properties at different levels: they have appeal that helps them spread, they have effects on peoples’ actions, and they can also be understood as having effects on the ecosystem. The idea of the scientific method, for example, has some philosophical appeal, it changes peoples’ actions to involve more testing, and it also changes what thoughts those people think and spread.
In this framing, my claimed problem with the mythic mode is that it pushes people, and to an extent the entire ecosystem, more towards spreading ideas based on how they tap into primal instincts and emotions, at the expense of appeal based on certain sorts of abstract argument about value.
So to be more precise, information that has a lot of appeal not based on its value is dangerous, because I think we need this memetic ecosystem to appeal mostly based on value and knowledge. Hence why my example was the dangers of political discussion, not the dangers of chocolate (though my belly might argue for certain dangers of that too). Even if the mythic mode is valuable, or if certain political discussions are valuable, we need to balance this local value with the effect it’s going to have on the global value generated. A ban is one sort of meme that shapes the memetic ecosystem—but it’s not the only way.
Trump
I live in central Illinois and do my interaction with rationalists via the internet these days, deliberately ignoring 99.9% of people talking about politics, so I’m guessing you experienced something pretty different out in Berkeley. Given this, I think I just don’t have the context to interpret your argument. Arguing that we should systematically outperform Nate Silver seems wrong, but I suspect that’s not what you’re arguing.
I think about it like a memetic ecosystem. Ideas can spread because they’re visibly helping someone else, or because they’re catchy, or because they tap into primal instincts, or because there’s an abstract argument for them, or combinations of such things. Ideas in an ecosystem have properties at different levels: they have appeal that helps them spread, they have effects on peoples’ actions, and they can also be understood as having effects on the ecosystem. The idea of the scientific method, for example, has some philosophical appeal, it changes peoples’ actions to involve more testing, and it also changes what thoughts those people think and spread.
In this framing, my claimed problem with the mythic mode is that it pushes people, and to an extent the entire ecosystem, more towards spreading ideas based on how they tap into primal instincts and emotions, at the expense of appeal based on certain sorts of abstract argument about value.
So to be more precise, information that has a lot of appeal not based on its value is dangerous, because I think we need this memetic ecosystem to appeal mostly based on value and knowledge. Hence why my example was the dangers of political discussion, not the dangers of chocolate (though my belly might argue for certain dangers of that too). Even if the mythic mode is valuable, or if certain political discussions are valuable, we need to balance this local value with the effect it’s going to have on the global value generated. A ban is one sort of meme that shapes the memetic ecosystem—but it’s not the only way.
I live in central Illinois and do my interaction with rationalists via the internet these days, deliberately ignoring 99.9% of people talking about politics, so I’m guessing you experienced something pretty different out in Berkeley. Given this, I think I just don’t have the context to interpret your argument. Arguing that we should systematically outperform Nate Silver seems wrong, but I suspect that’s not what you’re arguing.